It is time for our smarmy British Friends to face the truth in this issue, and that is that the excise tax was a much resented British institution, and the rebelling distillers were Scots--here is an excerpt from the History of Westmoreland country, linked in my post above:


The trouble was due to the method adopted, mainly by the National Government, of raising money by taxation. This tax was known in the popular language of that days as an excise tax, a term extremely opprobrious to the English speak-in- people of all ages.

These people were not opposed to paving tax, if levied, for example, on landed property, for then it was at least supposed to be based on the valuation of the land. Nor did they seriously object to a tariff, which is primarily a duty collected on all articles brought into this country from abroad. But an excise tax is one levied on home manufactures, and collected either when the material is produced, or when it is first offered for sale.

If fairly collected, its very nature demands that the government imposing and collecting it shall take charge, to a very great extent, of the labor and the raw material which produces the commodity to be taxed. Because of this necessary supervision on the part of the government, the excise tax had for ages been obnoxious in Great Britain.

In Scotland the inherent hatred, of excise duties had become proverbial before the days of Robert Burns, for in his age, among the peasantry, the killing of an excise tax-collector was considered almost, if not entirely a virtue.