As early as 1885 it became apparent that neither of the two well-tried systems of liquor regulation had proved satisfactory. The excise system had served the State, but sacrificed the people. Local authorities, taking their cue from the central powers, could not resist the revenues from licensing retail establishments. Hence the burden of the system fell again upon the backs of those who were least prepared to resist it-that is, upon the poorer portion of the peasantry. The local, as well as the central, powers profited by burdens they thus placed upon the backs of the poor. All others could shift the burden; they could not. Did they not know their own interests? If the poor of any country saw a vision of their own interests for twenty-four hours, the next day would dawn upon one of the most signal and sure revolutions the world has ever known. The famine of 1891 precipitated a new project of reform, based on the idea that the preservation of the already too exhausted peasantry from the ravages of private profit was really the first consideration in the regulation of the liquor traffic. The autocratic constitution of the Russian government lends itself readily to a positive policy of this character. The monopoly system was again resorted to, but it was far more thoroughgoing than of old. Its pivotal feature consisted in divorcing the volume of traffic as far as possible from private profit. In 1894, after a most extended study of the situation, the system was finally inaugurated in the four governments out of seventy, namely, in Perm, Samara, Orenburg, and Ufa. Within a year or two the results warranted the extension of the system of State monopoly to a large number of other governments. In due time it is intended to have the system extend over the whole empire.*

The principal features of this monopoly are: (1) The sale of spirituous liquors-not including fermented beverages such as wine and beer-by the State; (2) The manufacture in each district of two thirds of the amount of spirits which that district consumes; (3) The limitation of the amount which each distillery may produce; (4) No new distilleries to be erected

* Issaleff, Zur Politik des Russischen Finanzministeriums, p. 31. Stuttgart, 1898.

or old ones reopened except by consent of the minister of finance and agriculture; (5) The same official to fix the price of two thirds of the supply required for each district, according to the local expenses of production; (6) Importation into monopolized districts is forbidden, and the government delivers spirits bottled and barreled to (a) its own shops and depots for sale, and (b) to traktirs, restaurants, and other private establishments which sell on commission of three and a half per cent for the government. The monopoly has been officially described by the minister of finance and agriculture, who is directly responsible for its execution, as a system by which the State hopes to put an end to the grievous influence of the retailers of spirits on the moral and economic condition of the people. The policy accepts as a fact the view that there is a limit beyond which the State may wisely halt in its efforts at liquor regulation. That limit is the minimum requirement of the community in this class of commodities. The community is a specified administrative district, to which a practical monopoly of the business is given. So that, if any economic advantage is to be derived from this industry and trade, it may inure to the locality itself. To this end the monopoly is so organized that the spirits it consumes are made in local distilleries out of grain, potatoes, and beets raised in the district. Hence the exploiter is ruled out of the system entirely, except so far as the government is obliged to play that rôle. Thus far the main end sought seems to be working out the desired results in social life. The customary kneipe are diminishing, if not disappearing. The practice of treating is being broken up, and the liquor stores are disappearing because it does not pay them to handle intoxicants at the low rate of profit allowed by the government. The quality of the liquors has been improved so much as to rob them of much of their damaging effects upon consumers. By the removal of the injurious fusel oil, once so prominent an ingredient, the government liquors, says an Orenburg correspondent, "do not go to the head," as formerly. In other respects the results have long ago and many times over justified the experiment. The

inhabitants of the villages, as they appear at the yearly fairs, on holidays, and at customary seasons of recreation, exhibit a gratifying reduction of drinking. There has been less drinking than formerly at the time the vintage is sold, and the earlier drinking sprees which went with this season have lost standing with the younger element.

From a fiscal standpoint this policy has been no less successful. The following figures apply to the two districts of Orsk and Orenburg. They present the results for two halfyear periods, the former under the old régime of private sales and the latter under the governmental management:

Reduction in quantity sold, 21 per cent. Increase in revenue, 43.6 per cent.

It is urged, on the other hand, however, that the monopoly policy is not altogether favorable in its effects. It is alleged that during the first nine months of 1894, under the excise system, the arrests for drunkenness (651) were less than under the new system (680), in Orenburg. But this is to be attributed to increased police activity natural under the newer régime. It is further held that, though the consumption has apparently decreased, there is a great deal of spirits smuggled into monopolized districts, and that this largely adds to the total consumption in the people's homes. No doubt lowpriced restaurants have to some extent succeeded to the former drinking halls, and the earlier kneipe taken refuge in the traktir. But the governmental authorities are awake to these facts, and are gradually abridging the rights of sale, wherever the agencies seem to frustrate the essential purposes of the policy the government seeks to carry out. In Slatourt the municipal authorities have so circumscribed the privileges of proprietors that there is no longer a single restaurant in the entire town. Street-drinking has ceased for the first time in a hundred years. In the villages the peasants gather at their guild meetings no longer at the restaurants, but at the house of one of their members.

This may depend Too strict a sur

Undoubtedly the present system has met with its best results in the village communities peculiar to the rural life of Russia. The results in the cities are less flattering. There, especially, the ousted retailers and wholesalers of the former system have an interest in the failure of the government's policy. In the cities drinking still goes on in street and garden. No one can tell when the interests of revenue may get the ascendency over the aims of reform. largely on the municipal authorities. veillance on the part of the police may lead them to drive the drinking customs into the household. Will it leave the drinking sprees there in full swing, before the eyes of the children who saw much less or very little of this demoralizing life as long as the drinking resorts relieved the family of such debauching examples? Is the whole result to be summed up in the statement that the drink habit has simply been dislodged from the drinking hall to take refuge in the household? The answer is not to be found simply in the purer purpose and quickened zeal of the public powers. Government never solves any social problem alone. The decisive factor is to be sought in the awakening of the social conscience. In Russia the rise of voluntary associations, such as the Unions for Popular Welfare, are instinct with the zeal of youth. It is young Russia that is backing this reform. Though it is still too soon to judge its ultimate results, its immediate results have a profound import for the future of Russia. The subordination of the drink business to the supreme end of national rejuvenation is an heroic policy. But it is one of the secrets of Russian development toward a happier day.

John Franklin browell

ART. VII.-SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY.

THE question of human destiny, like that of human origin, lies beyond the limits of direct observation and experiment, and consequently lies outside the province of inductive science. From a scientific standpoint the immortality of the soul is not as a fact established empirically, but as a deduction from certain universal facts and axiomatic principles. Let us, therefore, consider some of the facts and principles upon which the doctrine of immortality, as a purely scientific doctrine, rests. Among them we notice:

men.

1. The idea of immortality is practically universal among While the conceptions of the human estate after death widely vary, and while among the heathen peoples of both ancient and modern times they are in many instances very crude, still the idea of the survival of the soul after death seems to be everywhere entertained. It is worthy of note, too, that as paganism, whether ancient or modern, becomes more perfect in its morals and in its intellectual refinement the conception of immortality more and more approaches the Christian idea in its excellence.

2. The idea of immortality is intuitional. The universality and the persistence of this idea among men must be founded in some very sufficient reason. Some have tried to account for these facts by regarding the idea as an inheritance from a primitive revelation to mankind and handed down from generation to generation. It seems, however, that the very nature of man requires that such an idea should be intuitional. There are some things which man as a moral being should know by immediate knowledge. His responsibility demands in him an adequate sense of self and of supreme authority, of duty and its recompenses, and of destiny. All these ideas are actually possessed in greater or lesser development by the whole family of man. Now, while immortality as an idea may be intuitional, most of us derive it not from intuition,