13 OCTOBER 1838, Page 7

The Commercial Association at Funchal has thought proper to pass

certain resolutions, to the effect that a statement in the Times relative to the " clandestine introduction" of the spurious French wines into that island, was "entirely without foundation." This is nearly RS bold an assertion as it would be to deny that brandies, and other highly- taxed commodities, are smuggled into this country ; and will therefore be taken for as much as it is worth, but no more. The comparative calculations of risk and result are an affair with which smugglers are most particularly conversant, and they are generally simple and intelli- gible. The question can easily be determined, whether the purchase of made.up Madeiras at Cette, their shipment to Madeira, where, by an understanding upon certain terms with subordinate or other functiona- ries, they are branded and reshipped or transshipped as the real vintage of the island for the United States or elsewhere, would or not be a feasible speculation. Its practicability is asserted by parties who have had means of verifying facts connected with the wine traffic in the Mediterranean ports of France, and in those of Italy, with respect to other places besides Madeira—parties, too, wholly unconnected with trade either in wines or any other commodity, and whose testimony, so far, must be quite as unimpeachable as that of the Com- mercial Association of Funchal ; and it may here be reiterated, in proof that the impression with respect to the reality and extent of this contraband and spurious wine-dealing is not confined to this country, but that it formed at the time, and previously, a daily subject of ob- servation and complaint in papers of the United States. That the discreditable manufacture of spurious wines, in imitation of the most accredited vintages of all countries, is carried on upon the most ex- tended scale in the South of France, is too notorious to admit of doubt. The circulars of the vast wine.manufactories of Marseilles and Cette, with lists and prices of every sort of wine, as if genuine, are forwarded to correspondents and customers with as little reserve as ordinary prices current of any more legitimate articles of merchandise. This sort of wine-traffic is well understood in Belgium and Holland more particu-

2"imes.