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Doc. 173.] 493
ON THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.
herself, so that even in such a case the expected advantage
would be small and short- lived.
To judge from the present conjuncture how it may be ten
or twenty years hence, is like adventuring in a lottery, where,
if you have once been favoured by fortune, you think it will be
always so, and that in the future you will be successful also.
[Eman. SWEDENBORG.]
[Stockholm , in the Autumn or Winter of 1734.]
DOCUMENT 173.
FRAGMENT OF A MEMORIAL BY SWEDENBORG
TO THE HOUSES OF THE SWEDISH DIET IN
1755, PRINCIPALLY RESPECTING THE
LIQUOR TRAFFIC .*
[Swedenborg clearly saw the importance of preserving the
balance of trade in favour of Sweden ; and in order to obtain
this desirable result, he advocated the development of the mining
interest and of home manufactures, and he was in favour of
stimulating the productive power of Sweden by all means
possible. Intemperance, which prevailed in an alarming degree
among his countrymen, he regarded as one of the worst internal
foes of Sweden, preventing her from becoming a great manu
facturing and agricultural nation. He was so much convinced
of this, that he wrote on the fly-leaf of one of his theological
MSS.: “ The immoderate use of spirituous liquors will be the
downfall of the Swedish people.” He proposed several measures
to the Swedish Diet intended to lessen the consumption of spirits,
and the waste of grain in the distillation of this pernicious drink.
* The original of this Fragment is in the volume of Swedenborg’s “ Riks
dagsskrifter,” leaf 7, in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in Stock
holm . It is important on account of fixing Swedenborg’s where-abouts in
1755.
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