at (2) the restraints on its sale
may be a source of revenue to the State, and that (3) at the same time
this regulation of the sale may not be a vexatious and useless attempt
to interfere unduly with national customs. States have sought to attain
these ends in various ways. The sale of alcohol may be made a State
monopoly, as in Russia, or, again, it may be carried on under
disinterested municipal or other control, as by the Gothenburg system of
Sweden or the Samlag system of Norway.[206] In England the easier and more
usual plan is adopted of heavily taxing the sale, with, in addition,
various minor methods for restraining the sale of alcoholic drinks and
attempting to improve the conditions under which they are sold.

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.[207]

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 people have abandoned the use of alcohol, and have persuaded
themselves that its use by other people is a vice, for it is not
universally recognized that--"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to
live, it is asking others to live a