on the capacity of the still.

Such a measure could not fail to be intensely unpopular, especially among
the small farmers to whom the whiskey derived from their grain was the
principal source of income and support. To the large distillers the tax
was not altogether odious, as they comprehended that the new law would
add greatly to their trade by cutting off their lesser rivals, and
securing the manufacture of spirits to the well-to-do and
well-established few. On the same ground distillers to-day are very
generally opposed to the removal of the internal revenue tax on spirits.
But popular clamor carried all before it, and it would have been unsafe
for any one to openly avow himself in favor of the excise. At a meeting
held in Pittsburg, on the seventh of September, 1791, resolutions were
adopted denouncing the tax as "operating on a domestic manufacture--a
manufacture not equal through the States. It is insulting to the feelings
of the people to have their vessels marked, houses painted and ransacked,
to be subject to informers gaining by the occasional delinquency of
others. It is a bad precedent, tending to introduce the excise laws of
Great Britain and of countries where the liberty, property and even the
morals of the people are sported with to gratify particular men in their
ambitious and interested measures." The duties were likewise denounced as
injurious to agricultural interests.

So far as refusal to obey the excise law, and defiance of the Federal
officers empowered to enforce it, constituted rebellion, the western
counties of Pennsylvania were in a condition of rebellion for over three
years. President Washington was patient; the Congress was conciliatory;
the State authorities were more than tolerant. General John Neville, a
man of great wealth and well-deserved popularity, accepted the office of
Inspector of the Revenue. Had he been discovered guilty of a monstrous
crime, his popularity could not have more rapidly waned. Albert Gallatin,
Brackenridge and other men, respected not only in Pennsylvania, but
wherever known in the country at large, took counsel, and appeared to
take sides with the multitude in their opposition to the national law.
Their motives have been variously interpreted, according to prejudice or
favor, but Marshall, in his "Life of Washington," gave the fair and
reasonable view of their position when he said that "men of property and
intelligence who had contributed to kindle the flame