CHINESE BRANDY AND GIN IN MELBOURNE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 3367, 20 November 1872, Page 5

CHINESE BRANDY AND GIN IN MELBOURNE.

(Daily Tde'jraph.)

The Chinese, with all the cunning characteristic of what our fathers called "the subtlety of Eas ems," manage to keep, like the witches in "Macbeth," the words of promise to the ear and break it to the hope, co far aa Custom House ofljeers jrre concerned. They import spirits of a more potent and deadlj* kind than any other spirits sent into Australia. They have a drug which is called Chinese brandy, and which is imported by them, and sold without license. It is a brandy more destructive to the stomach aud liver and brain of Europeans than any of that stuff which a virtuous "Victorian Government draws a revenue from. The brandy is a spirit similar to rum in j its appearance, imported in bottles of English manufacture, and these protected by envelopes of English straw, "with the peculiarity only that the straw envelopes are worked transversely, instead of perpundicularly, as European straw envelopes are. This brandy is a spirit prepared from rice, carrying with it no evidence of its having been rectified. An analysis shows that it contains, as sold by the Chinese, 30.:6 in the 100 gallons of proof -spirit, and ifdivested «"f itssaccharino matter it shows sper cent. more. It ;ilbo contains; a very large percentage of opium, and its effects are more stupefying;than mildly Intoxicating.■ It is taken by the Chinese in minute doses, and invariably forms with them a preliminary dram to the opium pipe. They sell it, however, cheaply, and many young Europeans of both, saxes, imitating

the Chinese habita in drinking it, imitate them only in that act, paying no regard to quantity. The result is a new type of drunkenness in young people which puzzles thoughtful magistrates, fills watch-houses and gaols, and is breeding a new type of criminal among younger Europeans. The

Chinese also import a spirit which they call gin, but which is pronounced by old Indians to be very bad arrack. It contains 33.9 of proof spirit, and is also largely mixed with opium. Its effects are much more intoxicating than the brandy, although the stupor it induces does not last so long, nor dxis it seem to have the serious-after effects which are inevitably the result of the other. An examination of one o£ the so-called bottles of gin showed that it was, although elaborately got up, evidently bottled in Melbourne, in an old porter bottle, corked with an old cork which had previously done duty in one of the quart bottles containing "Byass's Porter," that name being on it, and capitalled with about half an ounce of resin, all of whic'i unmistakably showed that the evil thing had been imported in bulk, and prepared for sale in Melbourne.