The excise law is an infernal one

[This is from my letter to James Madison, December 28, 1794, regarding the unpopular distilled spirits excise tax (“whiskey tax”) that I later repealed in 1802. The people didn’t need to be burdened with taxes without their consent. The enforcement of this excise tax was an unnecessary display of federal government might that risked dismembering the Union. Unfortunately, this issue and others caused a rift in my relationship with Gen. Washington. When I was President, I abolished all internal taxes and their collectors, including this excise tax, and allowed the United States to support itself on land sales tax and import customs duties alone. Despite the tax cuts, Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin and I were still able to reduce the national debt by 30 percent.]

With respect to the transactions against the excise-law, it appears to me that you are all swept away in the torrent of governmental opinions, or that we do not know what these transactions have been. We know of none which according to the definitions of the law, have been any thing more than riotous. There was indeed a meeting to consult about a separation. But to consult on a question does not amount to a determination of that question in the affirmative, still less to the acting on such a determination: but we shall see I suppose what the court lawyers, & courtly judges & would-be Ambassadors will make of it.

The excise-law is an infernal one. The first error was to admit it by the constitution. The 2nd to act on that admission. The 3rd & last will be to make it the instrument of dismembering the Union, & setting us all afloat to chuse which part of it we will adhere to. The information of our militia returned from the Westward is uniform, that tho the people there let them pass quietly, they were objects of their laughter, not of their fear, that 1000 men could have cut off their whole force in a thousand places of the Alleganey, that their detestation of the excise law is universal, and has now associated to it a detestation of the government, & that separation which perhaps was a very distant & problematical event, is now near, & certain & determined in the mind of every man.