These remarks on the moral effects of the tax were violently attacked by two members from the eastward. Fisher Ames quite forgot himself, and reminded the committee, with great vehemence of gesture and speech, that they were not in church or at school, to sit listening to harangues of speculative piety. We are, exclaimed he, to talk of the political interests committed to our care. When we take up the subject of morality then let our system look toward morality, and not confound itself with revenue and the protection of manufactures. If any man supposes that a mere law can turn the taste of a people from ardent spirits to malt liquors, he has a most romantic notion of legislative power. Lawrence, one of the members from New York, took up the attack. He was for low tariff. "If," said he, "the committee is to reason and act as moralists, the arguments of the member from New Jersey are sound. For it must be the wish of every man of sense to discourage the use of articles so ruinous to health and morals as rum. But we are to act as politicians, not as moralists. Rum, not morality, is to be taxed. Money, not sobriety, is the object of the tax." The justness of this reasoning was lost on the committee, and spirits of Jamaica proof were taxed at fifteen cents a gallon. The duty finally levied on all distilled spirits was due to the influence of Hamilton, whose first tariff bill also imposed a duty on glass, "with the significant reservation," as Blaine states, "in deference to popular habits that black quart bottles should be admitted free." _Internal Revenue Tax_ The system of internal taxation by the federal government began on that memorable day in 1791 when Washington signed the bill laying a duty on domestic distilled spirits; a tax which, proving more harsh in its operations than was expected, was amended in 1792, and after being denounced by legislatures and by mass meetings as oppressive, unequal, and unjust, was openly resisted by the people of western Pennsylvania, who rose in armed rebellion in 1794. In that same year taxes were laid on licenses for retailing wine and liquor, and on the manufacture of snuff, tobacco, and refined sugar, on carriages, and on sales at auction. In 1801 the taxes on carriages, on licenses for retailing liquor, on snuff and refined sugar, on sales at auction, when about to expire, were continued without a time limit; but the next year the republicans were in control, and every kind of internal tax was abolished with exultation.