National Gazette

To Sidney and the Whiskey-Drinkers.

YOU are an unreasonable set of fellows, to make such a plaguy rout about a paltry excise. What? do not you know it has the sanction of some of the most experienced distillers in the United States, men of wealth and opulence, who could buy and sell the whole ragged race of whiskey-drinkers, twenty times over? When Members of Congress rise in their places and modestly inform the House that they are personally concerned in some of the most extensive distilleries in New-England, you cannot surely imagine those honorable distillers would be such fools as to join in any plan to ruin the distillery—that of rum and gin I mean—for as to your vulgar whiskey, it is not to be expected that genteel well-bred men should pay any regard to such mean plebeian liquor. When they assure you that New-England gin is equal at least, if not superior to any that is imported, can you question the truth of their disinterested assertions, or hesitate to swallow their rum and their gin together with their excise, in preference to your filthy whiskey, that is only fit to poison the hostile Indians?

If you were not an ungrateful antifederal crew, you would thank them for sparing you the trouble of distilling for yourselves. All the plague and pother of whiskey-brewing will now be at an end: You will have nothing more to do henceforth, than to drag down your grain to the sea-coast, a trifling distance of five or six hundred miles (which is nothing to a back-woods-man) and there barter it for the ambrosial juices of the New-England stills. Ought you not to think yourselves happy to get any thing for the redundant produce of your farms? How much worse would be your situation, if the gin distillers were to take it for nothing?

Take a hint from a friend: hold your tongues, and either pay the excise duty, or break up your stills, lest an army of militia, collected from the gin and rum distillers, should be sent out into the back country, to make you sing a different tune over your whiskey. Recollect the law that has been lately passed, authorizing the President to march and counter-march the militia as he pleases.

Recollect and tremble: for although the present chief magistrate would never consent to murder his fellow citizens for drinking his health and toasting the federal constitution in a glass of un-excised whiskey—who knows what freak his successor may take into his head, if ever he gets it heated with high-proof rum or gin?

MUM.