What substances will you proscribe? In what cases? In
what proportion? Will you prohibit chicory in coffee, glucose in
beer, water, cider, and three-six alcohol in wine?
The Chamber of Deputies, in the rude attempt at a law which it
was pleased to make this year regarding the adulteration of
wines, stopped in the very middle of its work, overcome by the
inextricable difficulties of the question. It succeeded in
declaring that the introduction of water into wine, and of
alcohol above the proportion of eighteen per cent., was
fraudulent, and in putting this fraud into the category of
offences. It was on the ground of ideology; there one never
meets an obstacle. But everybody has seen in this redoubling of
severity the interest of the treasury much more than that of the
consumer; the Chamber did not dare to create a whole army of
wine-tasters, inspectors, etc., to watch for fraud and identify
it, and thus load the budget with a few extra millions; in
prohibiting watering and alcoholization, the only means left to
the merchant-manufacturers of putting wine within the reach of
all and realizing profits, it did not succeed in increasing the
market by a decrease in production.
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