Transcription

[Page 180]

it is a document [even?] wine merchants care little to compare with the price current they get from hence & where the chief study is to hide the truth rather than throw it more & more into the light.
If you could procure in London, a recent circular written by a Mr Keeling, on the wine trade and in consequence on the Claret trade you would see in connection with most important and official information on the wine trade of Great Britain & Ireland what discrepancies for the sake of [indecipherable]. occur in prices current & how far the printing of official figures & of real & bonafide calculations, can be coupled with great ignorance or wilful suppression of facts in the conclusions drawn, or in the prices current; which are after all the end of such documents.
I wish I could give you some good accounts respecting our [indecipherable] generally with regard to the vine disease & its prospects.  Nothing could be finer than the season, & had not this plague broken out, we should entertain the greatest hopes thus far of a good vintage five months hence.  At present the vine is still very much [stained?] with the black & brown spots, the sap, when a section takes places does not look healthy & is in general of a danker colour than usual especially [indecipherable] trees, [indecipherable] just now as rapidly as usual, all other crops, look uncommonly well & no untoward [blighty?] frost has come as yet over any of them.  You have

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