The inhabitants of the wine countries are, in general, the soberest people of Europe; witness the Spaniards, the Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France.People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare.Nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer.On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice, as among the northern nations, and all those who live between the tropics, the negroes, for example, on the coast of Guinea.When a French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months' residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants.Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon malt, beer, and ale, to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety.At present drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors.A gentleman drunk with ale has scarce ever been seen among us." (121)The general question that may here be said to be proposed is, whether, or not, in any particular country, the cheapness.or the dearness of intoxicating liquors will most excite to their intemperate use?
The excessive cheapness of any of these liquors renders it incapable of affording any gratification to vanity, and an equal cheapness in them all would universally produce the same effect.That passion would, therefore, in such a ease have to turn itself to other objects, and these liquors ceasing to be luxuries, one main cause of their consumption would be done away with.To excite to their abuse, there would remain only the pleasure arising from their intoxicating qualities, joined to the facility with which it might be indulged.Whether, or not, the ease with which this propensity might be gratified would lead to long enduring excess, or the vulgarity of the enjoyment to speedy and general temperance, would probably depend on various circumstances.-- On the climate, whether near the equator, or at a distance from it.-- On the sort of liquor, whether purely alcoholic or mixed with much of foreign matter.-- On the strength of the effective desire of accumulation, for that desire, when strong, leads to a restricted consumption of things of which the immediate benefit is problematical, and the dangers to futurity, from excess in them, very great.If, then, the principle is naturally weak, or at the moment its action be clogged by the stock of instruments in the society being wrought fully up to the orders correspondent to it, or having passed these, then there will be a great probability of injurious and long continued national excesses.
Unless, then, we have the means of knowing perfectly the condition in which all these circumstances, and perhaps some others, exist in any society, it is impossible to ascertain, with any precision, what may be the effect of reducing very greatly the price of alcoholic liquors.The national drunkenness that Adam Smith speaks of may be short or long, or, for ought that we can say, perpetual.Over the greater part of the United States of America whiskey has long sold at about a shilling sterling per gallon, so that one day's wages of a common laborer will purchase a dozen bottles of that spirit.
It is therefore put out of the class of luxuries as completely as any intoxicating liquor can welt be.The consumption of it has, notwithstanding, been very great, and in few countries have instances of injurious excess been more frequent.It is true that the evil, now exposed to view stripped of every disguise, is seen in all its hideousness, and is in a fair way of being corrected.After having endured for more than one generation, what Adam Smith terms the period of general drunkenness, is probably passing away.
If the cure be thus effected, it may fairly be reckoned radical.Is it in all cases advisable to go through a similar course, even with the probability of a similar result? -- to induce a season of national drunkenness, even with the prospect of the public feeling being effectually roused to put down the vice for ever? To me it seems, that the remedy is so violent, that in many cases there might be a risk of the patient's sinking under its operation.A general drunkenness among the middle and inferior classes, however temporary, is a thing surely not to be lightly discussed in any speculations that lead to practice.Compared with it, the temporary subjugation of a country by a foreign enemy would, in its immediate effects, be a small practical evil.If an experiment fit to be tried, it should certainly only be so under the most favorable circumstances; to peril it when the vital powers are in an enfeebled condition, would be the height of rashness.
