National Gazette

The oppressive inequality of the Excise Law has been loudly and justly complained of: but those, who uttered the complaint, have been stigmatized as "enemies to the government," and branded with every odious name, that interested ingenuity could devise. The friends of that law must however prepare to encounter a much more numerous host of new and unexpected opponents. Let them therefore sharpen their pens, dip them deep in gall, and write in the bitterest strain of virulence against that powerful confederacy, who feeling their wrath and indignation roused at the destruction of the southern and western orchards by an eastern excise, have sworn the destruction of all the apple-trees in New-England, and are already carrying their threats into execution; since the papers from Massachusetts dolefully complain, that they [the canker-worms] "are making dreadful ravages among the apple-trees in that state and the State of Connecticut."