Canns. Half-a-million take 5 drams daily or 60 canns yearly, 30,000,000 ” 3 ” 36 ” 18,000,000 ” 2 ” 24 ” 12,000,000[318] So far we have extracted verbatim. On the following page of his work the author tells us that 100 canns are equal to 69½ English wine gallons, and that the cann is computed to hold 30 drams. From this it would appear that, in round numbers, 3,000,000 people consumed, in 1830, 60,000,000 canns, or 41,700,000 gallons of spirits, being nearly 14 gallons per head of the population. But on the same page on which Morewood gives us this rough estimate, there is what appears to be an accurate “return of the number of pans (stills) employed, with the amount of canns of brandy manufactured in Sweden during the years specified.”[319] Those years are from 1825 to 1829, and the number of pans or stills agrees pretty well with Mr. Carnegie’s statement, fluctuating from 162,733 in 1827 to 173,126 in 1830, the year named by him. But the total quantity of spirits produced in the whole of the five years is set down as 17,623,837 canns, or considerably less than one-third of what the three writers estimate to have been the consumption in the year 1830 alone, in which the total production was 3,542,956 canns. (The imports appear on the same page, and are not worth considering.) This quantity is still enormous, for the reader will find, on reducing it to gallons, that a population of 2,904,538 consumed, in the year 1830, 2,462,264 gallons of spirits, whilst in England in the same year nearly 14,000,000 of people consumed 7,732,101 gallons.[320] Whence the writers in question have obtained their statistics we are unable to say, but, in justice to a brave and intelligent race of men, it is only fair to point out what appears to be a grave error affecting the character of a whole nation, and to give an opportunity for its rectification or explanation. In addition to spirits, the Swedes drank, at the time mentioned (and continue to consume), almost every kind of wine and a light palatable beer; and in consequence of the excessive drunkenness which prevailed, great efforts were made to promote reform. A temperance society was started in 1835 in Sweden, which Morewood tells us[321] had succeeded, in 1838, in reducing the number of stills to about 150,000 (the number named by Alison), and at length, in the year 1853, a bill was introduced into the Diet which effected a complete reform in the licensing system of Sweden, and which has wrought wonders in the habits of the people. The distinctive feature of the system is, now, that licenses are sold by auction, for a term not exceeding three years, to persons who undertake to pay certain duties annually to the local authorities; “or if a company is formed for taking the whole number of public-house licenses, the town authorities may