"As to your question, my dear general," said Colonel Humphries in reply, "respecting the cause and origin of these commotions, I hardly find myself in condition to give a certain answer. If from all the information I have been able to obtain, I might be authorized to hazard an opinion, I should attribute them to all the three causes which you have suggested. In Massachusetts particularly, I believe there are a few real grievances; and also some wicked agents or emissaries who have been busy in magnifying the positive evils, and fomenting causeless jealousies and disturbances. But it rather appears to me, that there is a licentious spirit prevailing among many of the people; a levelling principle; a desire of change; and a wish to annihilate all debts, public and private." "It is indeed a fact," said General Knox, after returning from a visit to the eastern country, "that high taxes are the ostensible cause of the commotion, but that they are the real cause, is as far remote from truth, as light is from darkness. The people who are the insurgents have never paid any, or but very little taxes. But they see the weakness of government. They feel at once their own poverty compared with the opulent, and their own force; and they are determined to make use of the latter, in order to remedy the former. Their creed is, that the property of the United States has been protected from confiscation by the joint exertions of all, and therefore ought to be common to all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept from the face of the earth."