OF THE VIN^E. 51 



the moral value of pure light wines, because they 

 very rarely find their way across the Atlantic. As 

 hocksj or claret, contain only about eight or nine per 

 cent of alcohol, they are far more wholesome than 

 coffee, and the cheap production of such wines will 

 do more to decrease the consumption of ardent 

 spirits, than any other circumstance*" 



President Jefferson said, " No nation is drunken 

 where wine is cheap; and none sober where the 

 dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the 

 common beverage." An intelligent American, Mr, 

 Fisher, after a residence of six years in the wine 

 districts of Europe, writes : " I have passed three 

 years in France, where I never saw a drunken 

 Frenchman — eighteen months in Italy, and in that 

 time not an Italian intoxicated^ — ^nearly two years 

 in Switzerland, of which I can not say the same, 

 but I can safely aver, that during that period I did 

 not see twenty drunken Swiss, and whenever my 

 feelings were thus pained, it was invariably on an 

 occasion of extraordinary festivity. In the argu- 

 ment therefore, which may be fairly urged in favor 

 of the cultivation of wine, a strongly inciting 

 motive addresses our personal interests, and invites 

 us to adopt a system, by which our resources will 

 be increased, and our agriculture improved." We 

 are told that fresh and dried grapes are both favora- 

 ble to health and longevity. Eipe grapes have 

 been administered to whole regiments of French 

 troops who have been ravaged with fluxes and 

 dysenteries, and a cure was soon effected. The 



