But they presently discovered that their arrival had not only been observed but foreseen, for the whole country-side was up, and several hundred men, women, and children were assembled on the hill-sides to bid active defiance to them. The excisemen keenly desired to bring the affair to a decisive issue, but the thirty seamen who accompanied them had a due amount of discretion, and refused to match their pistols and cutlasses against the muskets that the smugglers ostentatiously displayed. The party accordingly marched ingloriously back, except indeed those sailors who, having responded too freely to the smugglers’ invitation to partake of a “wee drappie,” returned gloriously drunk. The excisemen, so unexpectedly baulked of what they had thought their certain prey, ungraciously refused a taste. This formed the limit of the sorely tried Government’s patience, and in 1829 a detachment of regulars was ordered up to Braemar, with the result that smuggling was gradually reduced to less formidable proportions. The Celtic nature perceives no reason why Governments should confer upon themselves the rights of taxing and inspecting the manufacture of spirits, any more than any other commodity. The matter appears to resolve itself merely into expediency: and the doctrine of expediency we all know to be immoral. The situation was—and is, whether you apply it to spirits or to other articles in general demand—the Government wants revenue, and, seeking it, naturally taxes the most popular articles of public consumption. The producers and the consumers of the articles selected for these imposts just as naturally seek to evade the taxes. This, to the Celtic mind, impatient of control, is the simplest of equations. About 1886 was the dullest time in the illicit whisky-distilling industry of Scotland, and prosecutions fell to an average of about twenty a year. Since then there has been, as official reports tell us, in the language of officialdom, a “marked recrudescence” of the practice. As Mr. Micawber might explain, in plainer English, “there is—ah—in fact, more whisky made now.” Several contributory causes are responsible for this state of things. Firstly, an economical Government reduced the excise establishment; then the price of barley, the raw material, fell; and the veiled rebellion of the crofters in the north induced a more daring and lawless spirit than had been known for generations past. Also, restrictions upon the making of malt—another of the essential constituents from which the spirit is distilled—were at this time removed, and any one who cared might make it freely and without license.