Aguardente (cane spirit)

There are at present 40 factories in Madeira producing spirit (aguardente, distilled from sugar cane or wine) at 26 degrees Cartier (an old hydrometer scale of alcoholic strength), though some of them do not operate regularly. In the period from 1911 to 1917 these factories produced the following quantities of spirit:

Year	Quantity (litres)
1911	700,000
1912	1,436,305
1913	1,008,257
1914	826,678
1915	718,617
1916	1,098,175
1917	1,162,398

Before the decree of 11 March 1911, spirit production in the whole district amounted to around 1,200,000 litres, not counting pomace spirits, which are obtained by passing the cane a second time through the rollers of the sugar mill (engenho) after some water has been added to it.

The decree of 11 March 1911 established a tax of 100 réis (old Portuguese money of account; 1$000 = 1,000 réis, 1:000$000 = one conto = 1,000,000 réis) for the first three years, and of 150 réis for the following years up to 1918, on all spirits produced in unregistered factories. From the third year, however, the maximum tax began to be collected – at the request, it is said, of the registered factories (fábricas matriculadas). All the spirit produced by the unregistered factories stays in the archipelago, and part of it is used in treating wines not intended for shipment. It has been calculated that 30 kilos of cane produce on average 2 litres of spirit.

The registered factories were formerly obliged to buy, at the price of 930 réis per galão (Portuguese gallon, about 3.16 litres) (3.16), the surplus spirit at 26 degrees Cartier that the unregistered factories distilled each year for consumption in Madeira, but they fulfilled this obligation in full only in 1904 and 1905.

The tax on the resale of spirit, authorised by the law of 2 May 1919 and the regulations of 25 May 1920, yielded 82,434.87 escudos in 1920. Of this, 79,137.48 escudos was shared among the Municipal Councils, with the Council of Funchal receiving 39,518.64 escudos. The sum of 3,297.39 escudos was set aside to pay the staff involved in collecting the tax.

The decree of 11 March 1911 cited above contained one of the most important measures that the governments of mainland Portugal have taken concerning this archipelago in the long span of five centuries: the expropriation of the spirit factories. In connection with this salutary measure, we wish to reproduce here some passages of what we wrote on the subject when the idea of re-establishing those same factories arose.

“

Everyone knows that one of the greatest scourges that has afflicted Madeira, and to a large extent afflicts it still, especially in its sad and baleful consequences, is that well-known and terrible social cancer which bears the dreadful name of alcoholism. Although it is vigorously fought everywhere as a true measure of public salvation, it pitched its camp among us with the manifest consent of the laws, which indirectly protected it, and it was even regarded as one of the sources of the common wealth of the whole district!

The Madeiran was thus placed on a far lower footing than the African Black! Let there be no suspicion of exaggeration in the comparison. By international measures, the traffic in alcoholic drinks on the African continent was prohibited, in order to safeguard the integrity of the native race and spare it the ravages of that great evil. What was, as a matter of course, considered a saving provision for the African savages was not considered a necessary measure of genuine social importance for the poor inhabitants of this remote archipelago.

Madeira even came to be known as the island of Spirit (aguardente, distilled from sugar cane or wine), a name given to it in a legislative instrument because of the huge consumption of that poison, which reached almost incredible proportions, and because of the truly appalling damage it caused, as the same decree states. A former minister, a professor of medicine and distinguished man of science, on whom the municipality of this city conferred the title of meritorious citizen of Funchal, had the courage, in a public lecture held in the city of Porto that became famous, to call the Madeirans drunkards and alcoholics. This was certainly a great discourtesy to the inhabitants of this island, but not far removed from the sad and acknowledged reality of the facts. It is known, although the general public has not yet become aware of it, that in recent decades a notable decline of the race has been occurring on this island. In stature, in bodily constitution, in muscular strength, etc. etc., a marked physiological decadence can be seen, which has not escaped the observation of several physicians, and especially of some army doctors employed for many years in examining the young men liable to army conscription. Alcoholism is identified as one of the main causes of this alarming fact. There are, however, still graver and more frightening signs, which threaten the complete annihilation of a population unless some of the measures already taken are maintained and others with more immediate and effective results are adopted. This is the astonishing percentage of cases of insanity that the population of this island keeps supplying. In addition, the cases of idiocy, epilepsy, nervous convulsions and other more or less proven degenerative conditions are countless and multiply prodigiously, giving cause for the greatest wonder and dismay if we compare them with similar cases in other populous centres. Let a few of the physicians who have particularly devoted themselves to the study of these diseases be consulted, and let the doors of our asylums be crossed, and we shall without effort be convinced of the sad truth of these assertions. Eighty per cent of the poor patients confined there are victims of alcoholism! And if to this dreadful picture we add those whom that terrible cancer has sacrificed to tuberculosis and to many other diseases, we shall form an approximate idea of the harm caused by fifty laboratories of toxic substances which for many years went on poisoning, brutalising and driving mad the unwary population of an entire district!

The lowering of the intellectual level is also notable. Among other facts, there is one that proves it. The present author, and many other people who have stayed for a longer or shorter time in the parishes of the north of the island, have noted the marked mental difference between the inhabitants of certain localities in the northern and southern parts of Madeira, to the disadvantage of the south-coast parishes. It is known that the production and consumption of spirit was almost nil in the northern parishes, where the planting of sugar cane began only a few years ago and is now spreading, whereas its cultivation in the southern region of our island goes back centuries.

The sad situation that alcoholism has created in Madeira, which we have lightly sketched, is defined in lapidary fashion by the following words taken from the report cited above: “The prosperity of the archipelago is indissolubly bound up with the physical, intellectual and moral worth of its population, and that worth diminishes in the same proportion as the consumption of spirit increases, so that, unless a prompt remedy is provided for so great an evil, there is legitimate fear that the degeneration may reach irremediable extremes.

The decree of 11 March 1911, countersigned by Brito Camacho, established the saving measure of expropriating the spirit distilleries, which several legal provisions decreed later altered in essential points. This was a very grave error, and it was cause enough for regret that so salutary and necessary a provision had not been maintained in full and was not observed in all its comprehensive scope.

Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the restrictions placed on the production of this terrible poison and the suspension imposed on the operation of the distilleries represent a great and inestimable service to the whole population of the archipelago, whose beneficial results are already markedly felt everywhere. To complete a great humanitarian work, however, a more radical and more definitive measure must be decreed, one that absolutely rules out any return to the manufacture of any quantity, however small, of that poison which gave our land the pejorative name of the Island of Spirit.’