In France an ingenious method of influencing the sale of alcohol has lately been adopted, in the interests of public health, which has proved completely successful. The French national drink is light wine, which may be procured in abundance, of excellent and wholesome quality and very cheaply, provided it is not heavily taxed. But of recent years there has been a tendency in France to consume in large quantity the heavy alcoholic spirits, often of a specially deleterious kind. The plan has been adopted of placing a very high duty on distilled beverages and reducing the duty on the light wines, as well as beer, so that a wholesome and genuine wine can be supplied to the consumer at as low a price as beer. As a result the French consumer has shown a preference for the cheap and wholesome wine which is really his national drink, and there is an enormous fall in the consumption of spirits. Whereas formerly the consumption of brandy in French towns amounted to seven or eight litres of absolute alcohol per head, it has now fallen in the large towns to 4.23 litres. 17
In America, however, there is a tendency to deal with the sale of alcohol totally opposed to that which nearly everywhere prevails in Europe. When in Europe a man abandons the use of alcohol he makes no demand on his fellow men to follow his example, or, if he does, he is usually content to employ moral suasion to gain this end. But in the United States, where there is no single national drink, a large number of