CHAPTER XVIII.

THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM.

In a paper contributed by Judge Aldrich to the Fourth Annual Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, he alludes to Sweden as a country "somewhat isolated in position, and whose internal or domestic policy is less liable to be affected by foreign influences than that of most European countries; and the force and effect of whose legislation and domestic policy can therefore be the more surely determined." After alluding briefly to its history in previous centuries, he closes thus:

But there is not space here further to trace this very instructive branch of the history of one of the most remarkable nations of Europe, illustrating as it does nearly every phase of the 'Liquor Question' which has arisen in this country, or is likely to arise, and the careful study of which could hardly fail to furnish our legislators and statesmen with invaluable information to guide them in dealing with a subject second in importance to no other within the range of American legislation."

But we must not permit ourselves to stray

beyond such a brief survey of Swedish affairs as may enable the reader to understand the special topic of this chapter, and to determine its relative success or failure.

The Gothenburg system has heretofore incidentally received the favorable notice of Mr. Gladstone, and of Mr. Bruce, the Home Secretary under his ministry, and has excited considerable interest in England and Scotland; and in our country has been set forth in that pretentious treatise of Mr. Weeden, on "the Morality of Prohibitory Laws" with this unqualified eulogy:

"We can offer a system of regulated traffic which is based on justice, respects the individual, and is worked in every detail for the benefit of the whole community, so far as this appetite can be controlled by any mechanism. It has the further advantages of success after more than eight years of trial" (p. 164).

As we in Massachusetts are doing what is called, in sad irony, giving the license law "a fair and full trial," which is merely living over the dreary experience of our forefathers, let us turn and examine this novelty in a spirit of candor.

SWEDEN.

Sweden, although by its position and the occupation of its inhabitants, free from the pres

ence of many debasing factors which enter into European civilization, and unusually well supplied with facilities for religious and educational culture, has yet been for ages, as we have heretofore had occasion to notice, wonderfully cursed by intemperance.

For over a century, after a few brief efforts at restriction, there had been pursued a national policy of free trade in intoxicating liquors. And so it had come to pass, as reported by Mr. Laing in his "Tour in Sweden" in 1838, that "the best informed individuals impute the extraordinary state of the criminal returns of the country to the excessive drunkenness of the lowest class.

The evil, they say, goes beyond

the excess of all other nations, is the cause of three-fourths of all the crimes committed, and is destroying the very race, physically as well as morally." At last the public sentiment of the kingdom became aroused, and found expression in the report of a special committee of the Diet of Sweden made in 1854, in which it is said that "the researches of the philosopher and the honest feelings of the illiterate man have led them to the same conclusion; and that is, that the comfort of the Swedish peopleeven their existence as an enlightened, industrious, and loyal people-is at stake, unless means can be found to check the evil. . . . . It

might be said a cry of agony has burst forth from the hearts of the people, and an appeal and prayer made to all having influence in the fate of the country for deliverance from a scourge which previous legislators have planted and nourished." As the result there was passed what is known as the "Swedish Licensing Act of 1855." The principal features of this are as follows:

First. The Act abolishes domestic stills.

Second. It takes away the right theretofore existing of all persons to sell spirits in quantities of one kan (three-fifths of a gallon) and upwards. No sale can be made of less than eight and three-fifths gallons without license.

Third. The parochial authorities or the town councils fix, annually, the number of retail spiritshops and public-houses, subject to approval by the Governor of the Province.

Fourth. There are only two classes of licenses: one for shops to sell in quantities not less than half a kan (three-tenths of a gallon), not to be drunk on the premises; and the other to public-houses (including restaurants) for quantities however small, and with liberty to be drunk on the premises.

Fifth. The license tax to be paid by the store retailers is equivalent to 6d., and that by the publicans to 9d. a gallon.

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Sixth. There being no minimum fixed for the number of licenses, it is, in effect, a "local option" act.

Seventh. The licenses granted are to be sold by auction, for a term of three years, to those who undertake to pay the prescribed tax on the greatest number of kans of spirits, irrespective of their actual sales. There is also a provision that, with certain guarantees, and subject to the approval of the Governor of the Province, in case a company is formed to take the whole number of public-house licenses, the town authorities may dispose of the same to them without an auction.

"One result of the passing of this Act was the reduction of the number of distilleries from 44,000 in 1850 to 4,500, and, with the aid of auxiliary legislation, to 457 in 1869, and a reduction of the annual product from 26,000,000 to 6,900,000 gallons. All testimony concurs, also, that the effect on intemperance in the country districts was immediate and most remarkable."*

As already stated, the Act allowed of local prohibition; and under it the traffic in spirits was not licensed at all in certain parishes, and greatly restricted in others.

*Balfour's Letter to Gladstone, p. 12.