clxxx 



for this remarkable augmentation. The character of the beer has 

 changed and many are able to drink the lighter qualities now imported • 

 who were unable to drink the heavier beers of former years. There 

 has been a great increase in the classes of European population 

 accustomed to drink beer habitually, — artizans, workers in mills and 

 factories, men employed on railways and in land and coasting steamers 

 and so forth. There has also been created a taste for beer among 

 the Madras coolies who work for high wages in Burmah and return 

 annually to Madras with their earnings. The strength of the British 

 army has been largely augmented and the prices of beer have mate- 

 rially fallen. But it is hardly likely that these causes alone can have 

 brought about such a sudden development in consumption, and the 

 most effectual cause may perhaps be sought in competition. The 

 English brewers keenly felt the competition of the German and 

 Austrian brewers, and actively sought to retain a market which seemed 

 to be undermined from without by contiuental and from within by 

 Indian beer.^' The total population of the Presidency has increased 

 by 14 per cent, since 1871 and the European and Eurasian population 

 by 11*4 per cent. 



(9) On the whole, there has been great decrease in consumption 

 by the introduction of the '' excise system,^' and the assertion that 

 drunkenness is spreading is entirely without foundation so far as this 

 Presidency is concerned. 



(h) 1 — Statement showing the Number of Offences reported in 1850 and 

 1890 in the Madras Presidency. 



