MacMasters says of the Southern planter: "Numerous slaves and white servants attended them in every capacity that use or ostentation could suggest. On their tables were to be found the luxuries of the Old World and the New, and chief among these stood Madeira and rum. That the men of that generation drank more deeply than the men of this is not to be doubted." Another writer says: "The Maryland gentry ordered champagne from Europe by the cask and Madeira by the pipe and dressed in the latest fashion." Betting and gambling were with drunkenness and a passion for duelling and running in debt the chief sins of the South Carolina gentleman. _The Indian Tribes_ When Gladwyn wrote to Amherst, "If your Excellency still intends to punish the Indians farther for their barbarities it may easily be done without any expense to the crown by permitting a free sale of rum which will destroy them more effectually than fire and sword," he indicated the policy toward the Indian tribes which has been steadily pursued by all civilized nations on the American continent except the French. Irving, in his _Knickerbocker's History of New York_, has stated the truth on this, as he often does on other matters: "Our benevolent forefathers endeavored as much as possible to ameliorate their situation by giving them gin, wine and glass beads in exchange for their peltries, for it seemed the kind-hearted Dutchmen had conceived a great friendship for their savage neighbors; on account of their being pleasant men to trade with, and little skilled in the art of making a bargain." There is extant a letter of Ebenezer Hazard to Silas Deane of date February 25, 1775, in which Hazard says: "I am told the Committee appointed by the House to state the grievances of this Colony, though mostly Tories, have included all those complained of by Congress and mentioned some new ones, particularly the destruction of the Indian Trade by the Quebec Duty Act. You know that trade cannot be carried on without rum. By the Quebec Duty Act no rum may be sold in the Province but what is entered and the duty paid at Quebec or on Lake Champlain. The Virginians, etc., cannot afford to carry their rum to these places to be entered, and consequently can have no trade. This I am very credibly informed is one of the grievances they have enumerated."