The hostility which was so much and so sincerely lamented sustained no diminution, and its consequences became every day more diffusive.
Among the immediate effects of these internal dissensions, was the encouragement they afforded to a daring and criminal resistance which was made to the execution of the laws imposing a duty on spirits distilled within the United States.
To the inhabitants of that part of Pennsylvania which lies west of the Alleghany mountains, this duty was, from local considerations, peculiarly odious; nor was their hostility to the measure diminished by any affection for the source in which it originated.

The constitution itself had encountered the most decided opposition from that part of the state; and that early enmity to the government which exerted every faculty to prevent its adoption, had sustained no abatement.

Its measures generally, and the whole system of finance particularly, had been reprobated with peculiar bitterness by many of the most popular men of that district.

With these dispositions, a tax law, the operation of which was extended to them, could not be favourably received, however generally it might be supported in other parts of the union.

But when, to this pre-existing temper, were superadded the motives which arose from perceiving that the measure was censured on the floor of congress as unnecessary and tyrannical; that resistance to its execution was treated as probable; that a powerful and active party, pervading the union, arraigned with extreme acrimony the whole system of finance as being hostile to liberty; and, with all the passionate vehemence of conviction, charged its advocates with designing to subvert the republican institutions of America; we ought not to be surprised that the awful impressions, which usually restrain combinations to resist the laws, were lessened; and that the malcontents were emboldened to hope that those combinations might be successful.
[Sidenote: Opposition to the excise law.] Some discontents had been manifested in several parts of the union on the first introduction of the act; but the prudence and firmness of the government and its officers had dissipated them; and the law had been carried into general operation.