III. The Excise.--Unexpectedly productive as the tariff had proved, public income still fell short of what these vast operations required. Direct taxation or a higher tariff being out of the question, Hamilton proposed, and Congress voted, an excise on spirits, from nine to twenty-five cents a gallon if from grain, from eleven to thirty if from imported material, as molasses. Excise was a hated form of tax, and this measure awakened great opposition in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and New England, and most of all in Pennsylvania, in whose western counties distilling was the staple industry. Here, far from the seats of power, even the state government had asserted itself little. The general Government was defied. A meeting in Washington County voted to regard as an enemy any person taking office under the excise law. September 6, 1791, a revenue officer was tarred and feathered. Other such cases followed. Secret societies were formed to oppose the law. Whippings and even murders resulted. At last there was a veritable reign of terror. The President proceeded slowly but with firmness, accounting this a good opportunity vividly to reveal to the people the might of the new Government. Militia and volunteers were called out, who arrived in the rebellious districts in November, 1794. Happily, their presence sufficed. The opposition faded away before them, not a shot being fired on either side. [Illustration: Several men working with a large still.] Illicit Distillers warned of the Approach of Revenue Officers. IV. The Bank.--The Secretary of the Treasury pleaded for a United States Bank as not only profitable to Government but indispensable to the proper administration of the national finances. Congress acquiesced, yet with so violent hostility on the part of many that before approving the Charter Act Washington required the written opinions of his official advisers. Jefferson powerfully opposed such an institution as unconstitutional, his acute argument being the arsenal whence close constructionists have gotten their weapons ever since. Randolph sided with Jefferson, Knox with Hamilton. The President at last signed, agreeing with Hamilton in the view that Congress, being the agent of a sovereignty, is not, within any sphere of action constitutionally open to it, shut up to specific or enumerated modes of attaining its ends, but has choice among all those that nations customarily use. The Supreme Court has proceeded on this doctrine ever since. The bank proved vastly advantageous. Three-fourths of every private subscription to its stock had to be in government paper, which raised this to par, while it naturally became the interest of all stockholders to maintain and increase the stability and credit of the Government. CHAPTER IV. RELATIONS WITH ENGLAND [1793]