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3;8 VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD (A.D. 18121910).
deadliest enemy of Sweden within. Every foreigner who
visited the country noticed it. Amongst others, I may
name our countryman, Bulstrode Whitelocke, who had
the moral courage to decline absolutely to drink the healths
to which he was almost forced at the various State banquets
and private dinners to which he was invited. Frederick
the Great of Prussia once said that the Swedes for cen
turies had been trying to work their own ruin by their
drunkenness, but, strange to say, had not yet succeeded.
It was one of the projects of his nephew, Gustavus III.,
at once to promote sobriety and to increase the revenues of
the crown, by stopping the multitude of private stills, and
making the sale of brandy a crown monopoly. Unfortu
nately his agents pushed the second part of the project so
vigorously that drunkenness on "
crown brandy" became
a sort of evidence of patriotism, and the evil was worse than
before.11
Much secret distillation took place, and the
crown lost rather than gained in revenue, while Gustavus
himself owr
ed his final unpopularity very largely to this
ill-considered project. The monopoly was given up and
the evil went on as before. Up till 1830 the consumption
of brandy was enormous, that is to say, at last it rose to
forty litres per head of the population per annum, and, of
course, enormously more than this for every full-grown
man. It was no uncommon thing to see a drunken judge
and drunken officers deciding in court the fate of unhappy
prisoners. The average of human life fell to thirty-five
years, whereas now it has risen to fifty.
It was with such a gigantic evil as this that Wieselgren
felt that he was called to struggle, and he had prepared
himself for it by a boyish spirit of adventure climbing the
highest fir trees that were to be found, and wandering far
afield, in the hope of losing his way and having to find it
again. Thus the boy was father to the man. He formed
a society for total abstinence from all spirituous liquors
with five of his school-fellows, and thus the first temperance
11
See Grimberg : I.e., p. 439 foil.
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