LEGAL PREVENTIVES OF ALCOHOLISM. 393 



tion of seeing everything on the good side, and of experiencing 

 a momentary augmentation of strength. We should not be sur- 

 prised, therefore, to find that people who have for the first time 

 felt this sensation are tempted to seek it anew, and to ask of it 

 continually a forgetting, even though it "be only momentary, of 

 the difficulties of life, of the fatigues of their occupation, and the 

 illusion of a greater capacity for work which neither tea nor cof- 

 fee will ever procure for them. 



We might, therefore, regard the reduction of the duties on 

 wines as a suitable measure for diminishing the ravages of alco- 

 holism. I believe, in fact, that even the abuse of wine, supposing 

 it to be pure from all addition of alcohol, is not so injurious as 

 even the moderate use of alcoholic drinks ; but, with wine the 

 drinker will obtain the excitation he seeks only by drinking con- 

 siderable quantities, while a small portion of alcohol suffices for 

 producing, at less expense, the desired effect. 



Rational as these different measures may be, I consider them 

 powerless so long as the drinker of alcohol can find everywhere, 

 at every hour and every step, a shop for the sale of his favorite 

 beverage. To suppose them efficacious in the present state of 

 affairs that is, with unlimited liberty to every one to open a shop 

 is to expect on the part of the drinker, and especially for one to 

 whom life is a hard trial, a moral constraint and an effort of 

 reason of which he is incapable, at least in many mediums and 

 under many social conditions. For this reason, without discredit- 

 ing the results which may be reached by adjustment of taxation, 

 I am still convinced that the surest means of restraining the 

 drinker swiftly descending into alcoholism, and of preventing the 

 fall of those as yet unacquainted with the mischievous seductions 

 of the infirmity, is, first of all, to protect him against the tempta- 

 tion ; then, if the measures which I shall call prophylactic fail, to 

 inflict a punishment upon him proportionate to the gravity of his 

 offense ; and I am obliged to acknowledge with regret that noth- 

 ing serious has been as yet done in France in either of these direc- 

 tions. Norwegian legislation, on the contrary, appears to me to 

 be admirably conceived from the point of view of prophylactics. 

 In Norway, whoever wishes to open a liquor shop must ask per- 

 mission from the municipality, which may refuse it. In order to 

 take away all retroactive effect, they had, in the beginning, to ex- 

 empt dealers already established from the necessity of obtaining 

 a permit ; but when the successive extinctions did not diminish 

 the number of shops fast enough, the municipalities were au- 

 thorized to expropriate, on condition of indemnifying them, a 

 suitable number of the existing shops. 



This is evidently a measure which might give salutary results 

 in every country, provided the municipalities are sufficiently im- 



