the Council attributed the increased alcoholism; but the popular opinion was against it on this point, and power was almost immediately afterwards given to the cantons to limit the number of public-houses. The chief recommendation of the Council was that steps should be taken to cheapen the price of beer and wine and to make spirits dearer. In order to accomplish this latter aim the Government caused a popular vote to be taken on the question whether the Constitution should be so altered as to permit the traffic in intoxicants to be subject to control. There was a two-thirds majority in favour of control, and soon afterwards a scheme was formulated for making the manufacture of spirits entirely a State monopoly. This plan was started partly in the hope of checking drunkenness and providing the people with pure drink; but undoubtedly a cause that was very largely responsible for its initiation was the hope of securing an abundant revenue. Has the monopoly law been a success? Financially, yes; so far as ensuring the purity of the spirits sold, also yes; but for checking the consumption of strong drink it has been almost if not quite a failure. In saying this I am well aware that I express an opinion different from that of nearly every English writer on the subject, official and otherwise. Some at least of the data on which English writers have founded favourable opinions is partly unreliable and partly misleading. Thus in the (English) Foreign Office Report on Switzerland (No. 939) it was stated that the consumption of spirits in 1885, before the passing of the measure, amounted to 10.26 litres per head, and that this has been reduced by the monopoly to a little over 6 litres. Now it is impossible to say exactly what was the average consumption in 1885; but the monopoly itself, in its official returns, places the amount drunk per head that year, not at 10.26 litres, but at 7.25. The difference is enormous, and it must be remembered that it is rather to the interest of the monopoly to overstate than to understate the quantity drunk before it took over control. Moreover, from the figures for 1885 a by no means negligable amount must be deducted for that which, though reckoned in the Swiss drink bill, was not consumed there but was smuggled to neighbouring countries.