Alcohol in Its Relations to Economy

To our extracts from the article on 'Alcohol,' taken from the Edinburgh Review, we will add the following:

There is, however, yet another point of view in which the very general employment of alcohol as a beverage by man has to be looked at. In his Cantor lectures Dr. Richardson drew attention to the startling fact that the capital which is invested in the production of alcohol in the British Isles is not less than £117,000,000. But the enormous addition which would have to be made to this vast sum if, in the same way, the argument were enlarged, and the value were given of the capital employed in the production of wine in the wide stretch of the grape-yielding countries, it is quite impossible to conceive.

In the financial year ending in 1871, the duties paid within the British Isles for the various forms of fermented drink were for foreign spirits £5,329,650; foreign wine, £1,780,835; home-made spirits £11,639,562; and for malt to be converted into beer, £7,753,617. If to these various sums there be added the further amount which represents the brewer's license taking the place of the hop duty, and the duty on sugar consumed in brewing, it at once appears that at the present time the public revenue derives yearly a clear £30,000,000 sterling from direct taxes levied on alcoholic drink; and it will be further observed that of this great sum very nearly two-thirds relate to the concentrated form in which the powerful agent is procured by the employment of the still—that is, by the application of science and art to strengthen the spirit beyond the point to which it can possibly be raised by natural fermentation; and very nearly one half refers to the cheaper form of this concentrated product which is prepared in the home manufacture, and which, therefore, it is to be presumed, expresses approximately the consumption by the less wealthy portion of the community.

The exact number of the millions of pounds sterling that are swallowed in the form of strong drink in our own islands alone can scarcely be ascertained, on account of the diversity of form in which the product is presented for consumption, and on account of the complex relations which connect duty and quantity in the different forms. The amount can only be guessed at under the guidance of such figures as have been named. If, however, one penny in the pound on taxable incomes be taken to represent, as it is stated it will shortly do, a sum of two million pounds, then the £30,000,000 paid yearly to the revenue by alcohol is tantamount to an income tax of fifteen pence in the pound.