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by this drawing of a lodge of wine stores in Oporto. Twenty-one casks, or forty-two, or sixty-three, in twentyones, are made up according to the number of pipes it is intended to make of this particular lot: a can, containing an almude, which is about five gallons and a half (the twenty-first part of a pipe), is filled out of one of these pipes.

This is a drawing of a lodge at Villa Nova. The can that you see on the head of one of the coopers is a can that contains an almude of wine out of one of the pipes; another can resting on one of the pipes also contains an almude, the twenty-first part of a pipe.

From the pipe that is intended to be operated upon first, one almude at a time is taken and put into each of the other pipes, that is, one almude into each pipe. We have now got rid of one pipe; we have put it into twentyone empty casks: I will confine myself to the twenty-one. We then take another pipe, as near the same quality as it is possible for us to judge, and divide that in the same way, putting one almude of that pipe into each of the other twenty-one pipes; and so we go on until we have taken twenty-one pipes of wine that come from the Douro and blended them together. Then, having done that, it is sometimes necessary to add a little brandy. There is a measure called a canada; it is the twelfth part of an almude; and sometimes half a canada, or a canada, or a canada and a half, is put into each cask: a pipe consists of twenty-one almudes and six canadas. I have now gone through the process that is adopted, and made you acquainted with the secrets of my trade, as regards making up the vintage wines.

The next operation I will describe to you is the purchases of wine made in Villa Nova from speculators. The way in which all shipping houses, before the oïdium, used to manage, was this: all the wines that are purchased in the wine country are of course obliged to be paid for in ready money; at least, I am obliged to pay

what is called a signal on shipment, the moment I make my bargain with the farmers. At Midsummer and Michaelmas I give what are called escritos, or what would be called bills here, payable in Oporto; and at Michaelmas I have paid for every pipe of wine I have bought in the Douro.

I pay a deposit the moment I make my purchase; I receive my wines in February, but I do not make my second payment till Midsummer; at Michaelmas I have paid for all my vintage wines. I am not able to ship my wines at once; they are not fit for shipping till the year after; and I need not point out to your lordships and the jury that it would require a very large capital to ship 2,000 pipes of wine per annum. The mode in which the business is done by wealthy and respectable houses with capital, is to purchase as many wines as they can afford to pay for. If it is a fine vintage,' my late partner used to say, 'sell your shirt to buy wine.'

There are speculators at Oporto, many of them men of great wealth and very great respectability: many are Fidalgos. Persons of that class are always buyers, and the farmers know it; therefore we cannot buy the moderatepriced wines so cheaply as they can. We are jealous at Oporto as well as in London; all are desirous to get the best wines they can, and give sometimes ridiculous prices for them. The farmers know that, and keep up their prices; they know that they can always sell their wines to the Portuguese speculators.

These have large stocks: I know that when I was in Oporto one of them had 10,000 or 15,000 pipes of wine; I purchased very largely of him, and I think he must have had as many as that. In former times (and I am now speaking of a time when there was more wine than would have flooded the docks), these parties used to have large quantities; and we might at any time, or within a week, buy 1,000 pipes or 10,000 pipes, and they would give us two, three, four, or five years' credit. My

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house was offered 3,000 pipes of wine at five years' credit, by Visconde Ferreira, if I would buy them.

You see, then, our operations were very simple, and we could carry on a large business with a comparatively moderate amount of capital, because the large trade in this country is not a trade in fine wine, but for good, useful, honest, sound wine-wine that will not turn out bad, but which has no pretensions to be called superlative wine.

I purchase in Villa Nova a quantity of wine of a speculator, say a couple of hundred pipes; those wines are received into the lodge, as I have already described to you, and they are treated in precisely the same way as I have described with regard to the vintage wines.

We exercise the best judgment we can; we do not buy these wines for the purpose of keeping them, but the moment we get them, perhaps within a week of the time of our receiving them into the lodge, comes the operation of blending them, refreshing them with some of our fine new wines, and making them fit for the English market.

If you will allow me, I will go through my statement; I will get rid of the lodge diary altogether, and you will never have occasion to refer to it again. I have described to your lordships and the jury the operations that are gone through with regard to the vintage wines and the wines I buy at Villa Nova; I will now describe, if you please, the mode in which I export my wines.

In the first place, every house has its distinctive mark: they have, first of all, their brand, about which you have heard a great deal, which is a burnt mark at the end of the cask; you will see it on one of these (referring to the drawing before produced). There is a burnt mark at the end of the cask; that is our distinctive brand, which is our property, and which cannot be imitated by other houses, or they would be brought before a court of law for it: but

N

besides that, there is also a mark cut in, not branded, which every house also uses.

For instance, the plaintiffs in this case have, ever since I can recollect them, had a distinctive mark; it has been a house of the highest respectability, in former years particularly. They had a distinctive mark-a double diamond; and Dixon's double-diamond wines are known by every house all over the country, and would be bought without being tasted, their character being so high and so well known.

We have also distinctive marks. Instead of having one mark, we have three marks: we have three diamonds with grape, O, and a single grape; and those marks are well known throughout the trade. There are other houses who ship double diamonds like Mr. Dixon, and there are others, I am sorry to say, who put on three diamonds, the grape, and O's; but they must not put on our brand. When I speak, therefore, of a distinctive mark, I mean a distinctive mark coupled with a brand.

Now, having thus described the brand, I will now proceed to tell you what we do. I will assume that one of my friends (and I see many here who are listening to what I say with great attention) gives me an order for ten pipes of my three-diamond wine; I will describe to you the mode in which I should execute his order.

I have a large lot prepared of three-diamond wine, as well as of all these marks. The cooper would have instructions on a slip of paper similar to what has been shown to you in the evidence of D'Almeida, who is the cooper of Messrs. Gubian; that slip would be handed over by my manager at Oporto, who holds my procuration, and he would say, 'Prepare ten pipes of wine for Mr. Jones' (or rather, 'to be marked J,' for the cooper knows nothing of the buyer). He takes out the ten pipes; they are tasted very carefully, and in all probability, having been made up three or four months, they may be a little light;

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and a little new wine, or a little peculiar choice wine, which we keep for that purpose, to preserve identity of colour, would be put in, and then those wines would be shipped.

But I may get an order from London, not for my fine wine, but for my lower-priced wine, and then the operation would be this: I will take my own prices at the finest times, when the price was 40l., and when I used to ship good useful wines at 187. Suppose some gentleman gives me an order for fifty or one hundred pipes at 25l., I send that order out to my house at Oporto.

My eldest son, who is present, as well as his brother, (both are my partners,) if in Oporto, exercises his judgment; he might say, 'These wines are wanted at 251. Presuming we have never shipped any of that sort before, we think ten almudes out of the lot we bought of such a person at Oporto, and five almudes out of the lot, we bought of such another person (that would be fifteen), and six almudes out of our fine wine, will make up a very good wine.' They then make up a sample cask.

We make up the sample to the best of our ability; and having tasted that sample, we find perhaps that it is not quite so good as we intended it to be; or it may be too good, and we then make up another pipe; and, having made up our mind upon the subject, and perfectly satisfied ourselves as to its quality, the shipment is made up. Now the whole of that operation, including everything, appears in figures in our lodge diary; and it does so in every diary of every house.

To this information, I will add extracts from my note-book, when last in Oporto.

The first, is the calculation of the cost of a pipe of fine wine at that date.