¹ Quoted in Ehrman, John, The Younger Pitt. Volume One: The Years of Acclaim (London, 1969), p. 133Google Scholar.

² First Report From the Committee, Appointed To Enquire Into the Illicit Practices Used in Defrauding the Revenue (London, 1784)Google Scholar. The first report was issued on December 24, 1783. Two others followed: the second on March 1, 1784, and the third on March 24, 1784.

³ Brewer, John, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (New York, 1989), p. 114Google Scholar; Rose, George, A Brief Examination Into the Increase of the Revenue, Commerce and Navigation of Great Britain, Since the Conclusion of the Peace of 1783 (Dublin, 1792), pp. 1–2, 8–9Google Scholar.

⁴ Cole, W. A., “Trends in Eighteenth-Century Smuggling,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 10, no. 3 (1958): 395–409Google Scholar; Ehrman, , Younger Pitt, pp. 240–45Google Scholar.

⁵ When his superiors arrived with a company of twenty-four dragoons, Burns led the attack on the ship, the Rosamond. He later purchased its guns (four carronades) and sent them as a token of his republican sentiments to the French legislative assembly. Needless to say, he almost lost his job as a result of this and other political indiscretions. See National Dictionary of Biography, s.v. “Robert Burns”; Carswell, Catherine, The Life of Robert Burns (London, 1930), pp. 388–89Google Scholar; Fitzhugh, Robert T., Robert Burns: The Man and the Poet (Boston, 1970), pp. 217–20Google Scholar.

⁶ Crafts, N. F. R., “British Economic Growth, 1700–1831: A Revision of the Evidence.” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 36, no. 2 (1983): 177–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crafts, N. F. R., British Economic Growth during the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar. For an example of how Crafts's work has been embraced as the new orthodoxy, see O'Brien, Patrick, Griffiths, Trevor, and Hunt, Philip, “Political Components of the Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Cotton Textile Industry, 1660–1774,” Economic History Review 44, no. 3 (1991): 395CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ Brewer, Sinews of Power; for the contribution of excise returns, see pp. 96–99, esp. fig. 4.3. O'Brien, Patrick K. confirms these conclusions in “The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 41, no. 1 (1988): 9CrossRefGoogle Scholar, table 4, although he includes stamp duties in his calculations of the Excise, classing them together as indirect duties levied on domestic productions and services. For the five-year period centering on 1780, O'Brien cites an average return of £6.6 million, or 56 percent of total revenue; for 1785, £7.8 million, or 57 percent.

⁸ This general process is the subject of Harling, Philip and Mandler's, Peter important article, “From ‘Fiscal-Military’ State to Laissez-faire State, 1760–1850,” Journal of British Studies 32 (1993): 44–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁹ O'Brien, pp. 6–8; Brewer, p. 100.

¹⁰ O'Brien, Griffiths, and Hunt, p. 416, n. 92.

¹¹ The Parliamentary Register; or History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, ed. Debrett, John, 45 vols. (London, 1780–1796), 31:216Google Scholar. For various interpretations of the influence of free trade ideas on Shelburne and Pitt, see Norris, John, Shelburne and Reform (London, 1963), pp. 32, 36–38, 82, 262, 280–81Google Scholar; Ehrman (n. 1 above), pp. 66, 86, 95, 132, 167, 277, 336, 483, 511–12; Semmel, Bernard, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 30–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Harlow, Vincent T., The Founding of the Second British Empire: I. Discovery and Revolution (London, 1952)Google Scholar. Michael Fry illuminates Smith's long acquaintance with Henry Dundas, crediting the latter with bringing the philosopher's ideas into the political mainstream, in The Dundas Despotism (Edinburgh, 1992), pp. 62–65, 141Google Scholar.

¹² Hilton, Boyd, Corn, Cash, and Commerce: The Economic Policies of the Tory Governments, 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1977), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

¹³ Pitt to Wilberforce, September 30, 1785, The Correspondence of William Wilberforce, ed. Wilberforce, Robert I. and Wilberforce, Samuel, 2 vols. (London, 1840), 1:9Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Walpole declared the unhampered operation of his Sinking Fund a “fundamental law” never to be broken, only to be the first chancellor of the Exchequer to so break it. Langford, Paul, Public Life and the Propertied Englishman, 1689–1798 (Oxford, 1991), p. 155Google Scholar; Brewer (n. 3 above), p. 123.

¹⁵ Ehrman, , Younger Pitt, pp. 260–63Google Scholar; Hargreaves, E. L., The National Debt (London, 1930), pp. 91–107Google Scholar; Binney, J. E. D., British Public Finance and Administration, 1774–92 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 110–12Google Scholar.

¹⁶ The Parliamentary Register, 21:4, 29–31Google Scholar. Pitt's Sinking Fund was enacted under 26 Geo. III c. 31.

¹⁷ Binney, pp. 114–15.

¹⁸ Tomline, George, Memoirs of the Life of the Right Honorable William Pitt, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1821), 2:14Google Scholar; The Parliamentary Register, 21:329–30Google Scholar.

¹⁹ The Parliamentary Register, 21:328, 334–36Google Scholar. In fact, a Commissioner of Customs had recommended the consolidation of customs duties in 1756, a recommendation that was echoed by a Select Committee of the House of Commons and the Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts in 1782 and 1785, respectively. Hoon, Elizabeth R., The Organization of the English Customs System, 1696–1786 (New York, 1938; reprint, London, 1968), p. 249Google Scholar; Ehrman, pp. 270–71.

²⁰ Hoon, , English Customs System, p. 4Google Scholar.

²¹ Stanhope, Earl, Life of the Right Honourable William Pitt, 3d ed., 4 vols. (London, 1867), 1:178Google Scholar; Ehrman (n. 1 above), p. 152.

²² Effingham to Wyvill, January 16, 1784, Wyvill, Christopher, Political Papers, Chiefly Respecting the Attempt of the County of York and Other Considerable Districts, … to Effect a Reformation of the Parliament of Great-Britain, 6 vols. (York, 1794–1902; reprint, Ann Arbor, Mich., 1975), 4:357Google Scholar.

²³ Colley, Linda, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), p. 151Google Scholar. For a glowing contemporary account of Pitt's industriousness, see Wilberforce's, William “Sketch of Pitt,” in Private Papers of William Wilberforce, ed. Wilberforce, A. M. (London, 1887), pp. 45–81Google Scholar; for its contribution to his early death, see Tomline, 1:12. On the subject of Pitt's drinking, which became noticeably heavy in the 1790s and was attributed by many of his friends to his association with Henry Dundas, see Ehrman, pp. 584–86.

²⁴ This list includes the “Pittites,” political protégés like Canning and Peel, and others, like Gladstone, who more generally sought to emulate his governing style. Even Newt Gingrich might be added to this list, for in an extraordinary (and somewhat befuddled) search for revolutionary-conservative progenitors in the early months of his leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, he too seized on the image of Pitt. See “Capital's Virtual Reality: Gingrich Rides 3d Wave,” New York Times (January 11, 1995)Google Scholar; and Gopnik, Adam, “Man of the Moment Pitt the Younger: Newt's New Hero?” New Yorker (January 23, 1995), p. 27Google Scholar.

²⁵ Colley, pp. 182–90.

²⁶ Records of the Manchester Pitt Club, 1813–31, Manchester Central Library MS FF 367 M56.

²⁷ A manuscript copy of Canning's song was found among William Wilberforce's papers by their editor, Wilberforce, A. M., and reproduced in his Private Papers of William Wilberforce, pp. 79–80Google Scholar. Colley, too, quotes from the song (pp. 189–90), a copy of which she discovered in the minutes of a later Pitt Club.

²⁸ Public Advertiser (August 6, 1784; March 19, 1785). For a rather rude expression of such sentiments, see the 1786 song “Billy's Too Young to Drive Us,” in Morris, Charles, Political and Other Songs, 15th ed. (London, 1798), p. 7Google Scholar.

²⁹ The fate of the Commission of Fees offers a telling example. See Breihan, John R., “William Pitt and the Commission on Fees, 1785–1801,” Historical Journal 27, no. 1 (1984): 59–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Binney (n. 15 above), p. 17.

³⁰ To the contrary, 250 men and women remained their happy beneficiaries in 1810, not to mention the many others who enjoyed pensions, fees, and other emoluments, all fuelling the radical critique of “Old Corruption.” See Colley, p. 188; Rubinstein, W. D., “The End of ‘Old Corruption’ in Britain, 1780–1860,” Past and Present, no. 101 (1983), pp. 55–86Google Scholar. Harling's, Philip “Rethinking ‘Old Corruption,’” Past and Present, no. 147 (1995), pp. 127–58Google Scholar, places the subject in an important perspective. For a discussion of some senior Pittites' reluctance, especially marked during the war years, to follow their leader's personal example, see Harling, Philip, The Waning of “Old Corruption”: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1779–1846 (Oxford, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Colley, p. 191. This important point is also made by Harling.

³² Wheatley, Henry B., ed., The Historical and the Posthumous Memoirs of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, 1772–1784, 5 vols. (New York, 1884), 4:100Google Scholar.

³³ This was certainly the case of those who had formerly floated government loans and managed government contracts. One of Pitt's first acts was to extend plans already afoot under North and Shelburne to free loans and contracts from government patronage and to open them to competitive bidding. In 1784, only sealed bids were accepted for a new loan, while Treasury clerks seeking advance information for their friends about an upcoming budget were, apparently for the first time, turned away empty-handed. See Ehrman (n. 1 above), pp. 257–58; Binney, p. 279; Roseveare, Henry, The Treasury: The Evolution of a British Institution (New York, 1969), pp. 123, 128Google Scholar.

³⁴ “Return by the Commissioners of Excise in Scotland, respecting the general Mode of carrying on the Survey on Distillery, from 1776 to 1786,” in Report Respecting the Scotch Distillery Duties (hereafter Distillery Report) (London, 1798), app. 25, p. 379Google Scholar.

³⁵ Glen, Isabel Ann, “An Economic History of the Distilling Industry, Scotland: 1750–1914” (Ph.D. diss., University of Strathclyde, 1969), pp. 37–38Google Scholar; SirSinclair, John, The Statistical Account of Scotland, 21 vols. (Edinburgh, 1791–1799), 14:623–26Google Scholar; minutes of evidence taken before a committee of the whole House, examination of Alexander Fairly, February 5, 1788, Distillery Report, app. 21, pp. 368–69; Moss, Michael S. and Hume, John R., The Making of Scotch Whisky: A History of the Scotch Whisky Distilling Industry (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 38–39, 45Google Scholar. The following discussion, as the notes will indicate, is especially indebted to the work of Drs. Moss and Hume.

³⁶ It was, to a certain extent, a family business, with four of John Stein's grandsons, James, John, Robert, and William Haig, all establishing businesses in Edinburgh and Fife. The Haig daughters, too, did not stray far from the fold, one marrying a prominent Scottish distiller and the other the founder of Jameson's Irish Whisky. Establishments with no connections to the Steins were also constructed which, if not truly “great” (many were instead referred to as “middle-class”), nonetheless operated on impressive and relatively unprecedented scales. In 1797, when the Lowland distillers gathered for a meeting at the Royal Exchange Coffee-House in Edinburgh, the Steins and Haigs were joined by nineteen fellow producers or their representatives. See Laver, James, The House of Haig (Markinch, 1958)Google Scholar; Moss and Hume, pp. 38–39; minutes of a meeting of the Lowland distillers, August 9, 1797, Distillery Report, app. 44, p. 471.

³⁷ “Account of the Total Quantities of British Spirits, permitted from Scotland into England …,” Distillery Report, app. 35, p. 431Google Scholar; Moss and Hume, p. 41.

³⁸ One famous exception to this rule existed at Ferintosh, where, in compensation for the devastation of his estate by Jacobite rebels, Duncan Forbes of Culloden had obtained an exemption from excise duties. In the early 1780s, Ferintosh sported a distillery capable of producing over five thousand gallons of spirits every six months and stocked a London warehouse. Pitt's reform program abolished the Ferintosh exemption, but only after awarding the Forbes family £20,000 for its loss. Mowat, M., Easter Ross, 1750–1850: The Double Frontier (Edinburgh, 1981), pp. 58–59Google Scholar.

³⁹ Examination of the Rev. George Keith, April 23, 1798, Distillery Report, app. 1, p. 61; “Report of the Board of Excise in Scotland respecting distilling in the Highlands,” March 31, 1781, Distillery Report, app. 22, pp. 372, 375Google Scholar; Daiches, David, Scotch Whisky: Its Past and Present (London, 1969), p. 34Google Scholar; Cregeen, Eric R., ed., Argyll Estate Instructions: Mull, Morvern, Tiree, 1771–1805 (Edinburgh, 1964), pp. 16, 32–33Google Scholar; Devine, T. M., “The Rise and Fall of Illicit Whisky-Making in Northern Scotland, c. 1780–1840,” Scottish Historical Review 54, no. 158 (1975): 156Google Scholar.

⁴⁰ Sinclair, , Statistical Account, 10:397–98Google Scholar; Cregeen, ed., p. 2. Although David Turnock argues that the Highland preoccupation with distilling as a ”traditional” activity was an invention of the late eighteenth century and that, until this time, “distilling in the Highlands was not particularly widespread” (The Historical Geography of Scotland since 1707: Geographical Aspects of Modernisation [Cambridge, 1982], p. 98Google Scholar), those Highland regions that were to become “the important foci of production” were, as T. M. Devine suggests (p. 156), already well on their way by midcentury.

⁴¹ Two statutes (19 Geo. III c. 50 and 21 Geo. III c. 55) resulted, the first limiting and the second abolishing the operation of unentered (or untaxed) “private stills.”

⁴² “Return by the Commissioners of Excise in Scotland, respecting the general Mode of carrying on the Survey on Distillery, from 1776 to 1786,” Distillery Report, app. 25, pp. 379–82Google Scholar.

⁴³ So argued Walter Stanhope in the House of Commons on April 19, 1790, on “observing the small return of the Excise duties in Scotland.” Stanhope “had always understood, that in England the Excise was the best collected system of taxes in the country, and in Scotland, … he feared it was the worst.” This comparative indictment did not, however, take account of Scotland's smaller population and industrial base, points which the Scottish excise officials made in their own defense. The Parliamentary Register, 27:466–67Google Scholar; Commissioners of Excise to Henry Dundas, May 4, 1790, National Library of Scotland, Melville Papers MSS 14, fols. 86–89. On the difficulties attending excise collection on the periphery, see Slaughter, Thomas P., The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (Oxford, 1986), pp. 12–13Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ James Stodart to [Henry Dundas], November 28, 1797, Public Record Office (PRO), Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/318, fols. 217–19.

⁴⁵ Quoted in Hughes, Edward, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934; reprint, Philadelphia, 1980), p. 124Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ O'Brien (n. 7 above), p. 13.

⁴⁷ “Report from the Select Committee on Petitions complaining of the additional Duty on Malt in Scotland,” evidence of Woodbine Parrish, May 1821, Parliamentary Papers (1821), 8:256Google Scholar; “Two Reports of Woodbine Parrish, Esquire, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners in Scotland, on the Subject of Illicit Distillation in Scotland,” April 25 and May 24, 1816, Parliamentary Papers (1816), 8:400Google Scholar. Beer of course was the quintessential taxable necessity, providing (with malt) one-quarter of national revenue returns in the mid-1730s and almost a half in the late 1780s and sparking considerable consumer and industrial protest over the years. Mathias, Peter, The Brewing Industry in England, 1700–1830 (London, 1959), pp. 355–61Google Scholar; Kennedy, William, English Taxation, 1640–1799: An Essay in Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), pp. 53–54Google Scholar; Slaughter, , Whiskey Rebellion, p. 12Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ Dowell, Stephen, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England From the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 3d ed., 4 vols. (London, 1884; reprint, New York, 1965), 4:180Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ H. Arnot, cited in Glen (n. 35 above), pp. 30–31, 68; Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices Used in Defrauding the Revenue (London, 1784), pp. 36–37Google Scholar; “Report, by the Commissioners of Excise in Scotland, to the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the Year 1783 …,” Distillery Report (n. 34 above), app. 28, p. 401Google Scholar; “Account of illegal Stills seized and condemned in Scotland …,” Distillery Report, app. 36, p. 432Google Scholar; Devine (n. 39 above), p. 155, n. 1.

⁵⁰ For petitions from the London and Lowland distillers, see Journal of the House of Commons (1784), 34:835–36, 974Google Scholar. The Lowland Distillers also sent their “Plan by the Scotch Distillers for Regulating the Distillery” directly to Pitt, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/319, fols. 13–15.

⁵¹ The Corn Distillery Stated to the Consideration of the Landed Interest of England (London, 1783), esp. pp. 11–13, 23Google Scholar; “Observations upon a Plan for the better Regulation of the Distillery, proposed by the Malt Distillers in London,” PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/296, fols. 155–59.

⁵² Act 24 Geo. III c. 46.

⁵³ Assuming that one hundred gallons of wash would yield twenty gallons of spirit (of a particular proof), the government estimated that an excise duty of 5d. per gallon on fermented wash would generate the revenue equivalent of 2s. 1d. per gallon of whisky produced.

⁵⁴ “Report by the Commissioners of Excise in Scotland, to the Committee of the House of Commons, appointed in the Year 1783 …,” Distillery Report, app. 28, p. 402Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ In the Highlands (Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Ross, Inverness, Argyll, Bute, Stirling, Lanark, Perth, Dumbarton, Aberdeen, Forfar, Kincardine, Banff, Nairn, and Moray) licenses were paid at a rate of £1 per gallon of a still's cubic capacity, and distillers were exempt from payment of the malt tax. Meanwhile, to prevent abuses of this special arrangement, the Wash Act prohibited Highland stills larger than twenty gallons, limited their number, required they use only local grain, and instituted heavy fines for all violations.

⁵⁶ No one was more upset than the Highland heritors who, while not opposed to a license system or Highland-Lowland divide per se, objected to details of the Wash Act, especially their personal liability for any distillery fines their tenants failed to pay. For expressions of the heritors' position, see the resolutions of the Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply for the county of Perth in PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/319, fols. 2–6; The Defence of the Perthshire Resolutions (Edinburgh, 1784)Google Scholar; and Sir James Grant to James McGregor (copy), October 25, 1784, Letter Book of Sir James Grant of Grant, Scottish Record Office (SRO) GD 248/2083, pp. 20–22. Their critics found a voice in A Letter Upon the Distillery to the Framers of the Perth-shire Resolutions [n.p., 1784].

⁵⁷ Moss and Hume (n. 35 above), pp. 44–45.

⁵⁸ Treasury Papers, April 9, 1789, PRO T1/667/689, p. 4.

⁵⁹ Act 25 Geo. III c. 22.

⁶⁰ Robert Dalyell to Pitt, July 7, September 3, and December 31, 1785, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/318, fols. 51–55, 59–63.

⁶¹ Act 26 Geo. III c. 64.

⁶² The Lowlanders, however, did not hold a monopoly on dishonorable dealings. For an account of the London distillers' efforts to undersell Scottish spirits in the English market, to bribe port officials to harass their competitors, and to seek legislative relief on the grounds that the Lowland exporters must be engaging in illicit production, see Sinclair (n. 35 above), 14:624; Glen (n. 35 above), p. 135; Moss and Hume, pp. 45–46.

⁶³ Treasury Papers, January 5, 1788, PRO T1/653/50, p. 3.

⁶⁴ Figures in Pitt's papers reveal a marked increase in the revenue generated from the Scottish distillery duties under the Wash Act, with £60,222 returned in 1785 and £102,874 in 1786, as opposed to only £36,124 in 1783. The official statistics confirm the trend, although they are slightly higher for 1785 and lower for 1786. PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/319, fol. 29; “An Account of the Quantities of British Spirits Charged with Duty,” PRO CUST 44/5, p. 6.

⁶⁵ Treasury Papers, April 9, 1789, PRO T1/667/689, p. 2 (emphasis added).

⁶⁶ George Home to Patrick Home, June 30, 1785, SRO GD 267/1/10/73. I thank David Brown for introducing me to the Home correspondence and, more generally, for his generous assistance at the Scottish Record Office concerning the distilleries.

⁶⁷ Scots Magazine 48 (1786): 615–17Google Scholar.

⁶⁸ Treasury Papers, February 7, 1787, PRO T1/642/339, p. 3.

⁶⁹ For examples from the pamphlet literature, see Manufactures Improper Subjects of Taxation (London, 1785)Google Scholar; Wright, John, An Address to the Members of Both Houses of Parliament on the Late Tax Laid on Fustian, and other Cotton Goods (Warrington, 1785)Google Scholar. For accounts of manufacturers' efforts to unite in 1784–86 against the threat of the Excise, see Langford, John Alfred, A Century of Birmingham Life, 2 vols. (Birmingham, 1868), 1:320–22Google Scholar; The Parliamentary Register, 17:428–29Google Scholar; Wedgwood, Josiah to Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, October 3, 1785, The Selected Letters of Josiah Wedgwood, eds. Finer, A. and Savage, G. (London, 1965), p. 286Google Scholar; Samuel Garbett to James Watt, December 6, 1784, Birmingham Reference Library, Garbett Papers (photostat copies of original Mss.), vol. 1, fol. 122. See also Dietz, Vivien E., “Before the Age of Capital: Manufacturing Interests and the British State, 1780–1800” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1991)Google Scholar, chap. 2, for a discussion of the movement.

⁷⁰ This is the subject of my unpublished paper, “Manufacturing Interest: The Fustian Industry, Taxes and the Eighteenth-Century British State,” presented at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies, Princeton University, November 1995.

⁷¹ See his letter to William Eden on the occasion of planning a commercial treaty with France, in The Journal and Correspondence of William, Lord Auckland, ed. the Bishop of Bath and Wells, 4 vols. (London, 1861), 1:90–91Google Scholar.

⁷² Scots Magazine 48 (1786): 47–49Google Scholar.

⁷³ Ross, Walter, The Present State of the Distillery in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1786), pp. 89–90Google Scholar.

⁷⁴ George Home to Patrick Home, January 11, 1786, SRO GD 267/1/4/14–16.

⁷⁵ Commissioners of Excise to Henry Dundas, May 4, 1790, National Library of Scotland, Melville Papers MSS 14, fols. 86–89. Perhaps the most public outcry came from brewers, who complained in the late 1780s and early 1790s that the Scottish Excise Office was not only plagued by corruption but, as result, responsible for making Scottish beer uncompetitive against English imports. See Bell, Hugh, An Impartial Account of the Conduct of the Excise towards the Breweries of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1791)Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ [SirGlanville, John], Excise Anotomized, and Trade Epitomized (London, 1659), pp. 5–6Google Scholar; Johnson, Samuel, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755; reprint, New York, 1979)Google Scholar, s.v. “excise.”

⁷⁷ The malt tax offers a case in point. Because of local opposition, England's malt tax was not extended to Scotland until seven years after union (1714), and then little attempt was made at enforcing it for another eleven years until, in 1725, the Scottish duty was reduced by half on account of local hardships. Even under such lenient conditions, opposition to the tax proved intense, especially in Glasgow, where maltsters resisted excise inspection and the provost and magistrates were subsequently arrested for their sympathetic response to the rioters. See Mathias (n. 47 above), p. 355; Hamilton, Henry, An Economic History of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1963), p. 105Google Scholar.

⁷⁸ Moss and Hume (n. 35 above), p. 46; Resolutions of the Landed Interest of Scotland Respecting the Distillery (Edinburgh, 1786)Google Scholar; George Home to Patrick Home, January 11, 1786, SRO GD 267/1/4/14–16. Home, however, maintained that “the landed Gentlemen are blind to their own Interest in this matter.” The fact that the great distillers imported some of their grain from England, while simultaneously striving to convince the landed gentlemen that their futures were inextricably linked, only sharpened Home's conviction that they were a disreputable, cheating lot.

⁷⁹ Daniel Pulteney to the duke of Rutland, August 13, 1784, Historical Manuscript Commission, Fourteenth Report, Rutland, 4 vols. (London, 1888–1905), 3:131Google Scholar; Argyll's comment, made in 1787, is quoted in Murdoch, Alexander, The People Above: Politics and Administration in Mid-Eighteenth Century Scotland (Edinburgh, 1980), p. 11Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ Colley (n. 23 above), pp. 125–26.

⁸¹ Ehrman (n. 1 above), pp. 131–32.

⁸² Political Creed [London, 1797]Google Scholar.

⁸³ In this regard, the campaign for the Lowland license act resembled that launched in 1763 for the repeal of that year's cider tax. Not only was elite participation crucial in the cider counties' well-orchestrated endeavor, but its leaders sought to replicate the political unity already associated with the “Scottish Members” and the Scottish interest. See Woodland, Patrick, “Extra-parliamentary Political Organization in the Making: Benjamin Heath and the Opposition to the 1763 Cider Excise,” Parliamentary History 4 (1985): 119, 124–26Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Ross (n. 73 above), pp. 78–80, 85–88; Message to Pitt, May 2, 1786, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/318, fol. 111.

⁸⁵ Treasury Papers, April 9, 1789, PRO T1/667/689, p. 2.

⁸⁶ “Account of the Total Quantities of British Spirits, permitted from Scotland into England …,” Distillery Report (n. 34 above), app. 35, p. 431Google Scholar. For an account of the resulting troubles of the Lowland distillers, some of whom declared bankruptcy or went out of business, see Moss and Hume, pp. 46–48.

⁸⁷ Richard Bush & Co. to Pitt, September 13, October 25, and November 23, 1787, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/296, fols. 172–73, 176–79; Nehemiah Bartley to Pitt, December 31, 1787, and January 2, 1788, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/296, fols. 189–92.

⁸⁸ The Parliamentary Register, 23:139–41Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ The first, temporary measure was enacted under 28 Geo. III c. 4; its “revision.” under 28 Geo. III c. 46.

⁹⁰ “Account of the Total Quantities of British Spirits, permitted from Scotland into England …,” Distillery Report, app. 35, p. 431Google Scholar; Moss and Hume, pp. 48–49.

⁹¹ Moss and Hume (n. 35 above), p. 48.

⁹² Treasury Papers, January 5, 1788, PRO T1/653/50, p. 15.

⁹³ “An Account of the Quantities of British Spirits Charged with Duty,” PRO CUST 44/5, p. 6; Moss and Hume, pp. 50–51. See table 1 for the various rate increases, the most successful (in revenue terms) being that of 1793.

⁹⁴ Minutes of evidence taken before a committee of the whole House in the year 1788, respecting the Distillery, Scotch, Distillery Report, app. 21, pp. 351–71Google Scholar; Treasury Papers, January 5, 1788, PRO T1/653/50, pp. 9–11.

⁹⁵ Act 33 Geo. III c. 61 increased the Lowland license fee to £9 per gallon of still capacity; Act 35 Geo. III c. 59 to £18; and Act 37 Geo. III c. 17 to £54.

⁹⁶ Moss and Hume, pp. 50–51; John Leven to Pitt. PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/318, fols. 127–28; Examination of Solicitor John Bonar, March 30, April 2, 1798, Distillery Report, app. 1, pp. 32, 36.

⁹⁷ Evidence of Solicitor John Bonar, May 2, 1798, Distillery Report (n. 34 above), app. 1, p. 90.

⁹⁸ Sinclair (n. 35 above), 11:404; Report of General Supervisor John Leven, 1798, Distillery Report, app. 5, p. 246; evidence of John Stewart, David Ritchie, and Rev. William Johnston, April 18, 20, and 25, 1798, app. 1, pp. 49–50, 55, 68.

⁹⁹ Sinclair, 1:286–87, 361; Edgar Corrie to Pitt, March 20, 1795, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/125, fols. 287–91.

¹⁰⁰ Pitt received numerous communications on the subject. In addition to that from Dundas (March 14, 1795), see those of David Steuart (September 28, 1794), J. Fife (March 15, 1793), and the Edinburgh brewers (March 10, 1795). See PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/135, fols. 105–6; PRO 30/8/318, fols. 207–10; and PRO 30/8/319, fols. 78–80, 81. On the campaign against “Mother Gin,” see George, M. Dorothy, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, 2d ed. (London, 1985), pp. 47–51Google Scholar; Clark, Peter, “The ‘Mother Gin’ Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 38 (1988): 63–84Google Scholar.

¹⁰¹ Memorial to the Lord Commissioners of the Treasury from the Heritors and JPs of the County of Edinburgh, November 1796, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/319, fols. 97–103.

¹⁰² Devine (n. 39 above), pp. 170–72; Hamilton (n. 77 above), pp. 105–6; Moss and Hume (n. 35 above), p. 55; John Stein to John Maitland, August 19, 1797, Distillery Report, app. 44, pp. 466–67; minutes of a meeting of the Lowland Distillers, August 9, 1797, Distillery Report, app. 44, pp. 472–44.

¹⁰³ According to Commissioner of Excise James Stodart, 9,500 gallons of still capacity were licensed in 1795 in the Lowlands, while over 12,500 gallons were licensed in the Highlands. Stodart to [the Lords of the Treasury], November 30, 1796, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/318, fols. 213–14.

¹⁰⁴ Robert Dundas to Henry Dundas, November 26, 1796, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/131, fols. 56–60. By comparison, not a single licensed still was to be found in 1798 in the Lowland counties of Air and Wigtown, or in the stewartry of Kirkcudbright. Evidence of Solicitor John Bonar, March 28, 1798, Distillery Report, app. 1, p. 23.

¹⁰⁵ James Stodart to [Pitt], November 22, 1796, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/319, fols. 280–83. For more on the illegal grain market, see examination of Millar, James, Distillery Report, app. 1, p. 39Google Scholar; minutes of meeting of Distillers, Lowland, Distillery Report, app. 44, pp. 472–74Google Scholar. T. M. Devine (pp. 165–71) also demonstrates how this grain trade became especially important to farmers when beer and barley prices fell after the French Wars, for illegal distillers apparently paid more than the ordinary market price.

¹⁰⁶ Cited in Devine, p. 155. The Lowland distillers had good reason, of course, to exaggerate such figures.

¹⁰⁷ Stodart to [Pitt], November 22, 1796, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/319, fols. 280–83. See also his letters to Pitt and the Treasury, October 11 (PRO 30/317, fols. 41–44), October 28 (PRO 30/8/181, fols. 16–17), November 30 (PRO 30/8/318, fols. 213–14).

¹⁰⁸ Robert to Henry Dundas, November 26, 1796, PRO, Chatham Papers PRO 30/8/131, fols. 56–60. Henry's thoughts are scrawled on the last page of a letter to him from Stodart, November 28, 1797, PRO 30/8/318, fols. 217–19. See also letters to Henry Dundas from Stodart and James Young, an excise officer stationed in the Highlands, July 8 and 10, 1797, SRO GD 51/5/239–40.

¹⁰⁹ See Henry Cockburn's description of a drinking party, at which Dundas was present, quoted in Smout, T. C. and Wood, Sydney, eds., Scottish Voices (London, 1990), p. 148Google Scholar.

¹¹⁰ Report Respecting the Distilleries in Scotland (London, 1799), pp. 39–42Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ Cooper, Richard, “William Pitt, Taxation, and the Needs of War,” Journal of British Studies 22 (1982): 96, 99–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹² Act 39 Geo. III c. 78; Acts 39 and 40 Geo. III c. 73. The Lowland license duty was doubled to £108 and the intermediate zone, which had proved an ineffectual deterrent to smuggling, abolished. To remove the incentive for rapid distillation, additional duties were levied throughout Scotland on quantities of spirits produced either above or below a still's projected yield. Both the Highlands and Lowlands were also subjected to a general survey on all spirits produced, while a wash survey was reintroduced in the Lowlands. See table 1 for details.

¹¹³ Bans were in effect in 1800–1801, 1804–8, 1809–10, and sporadically to 1813. Devine (n. 39 above), p. 160.

¹¹⁴ “Copy of Report to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury, by the Chairman of the Board of Excise in Scotland … respecting the existing Distillery Laws,” Parliamentary Papers (1822), 21:176Google Scholar.

¹¹⁵ Act 54 Geo. III c. 178.

¹¹⁶ Moss and Hume (n. 35 above), p. 64.

¹¹⁷ “Report from the Select Committee on Petitions complaining of the additional Duty on Malt in Scotland,” evidence of Woodbine Parrish, May 1821, Parliamentary Papers (1821), 8:256Google Scholar; Act 56 Geo. III c. 106.

¹¹⁸ Improved enforcement procedures rendered intermediate blows in 1818 and 1822 (Acts 56 Geo. III c. 106 and 3 Geo. IV c. 52). But it was the Excise Act (4 Geo. IV c. 94) which ultimately encouraged legal distillation by removing the incentives for fraud.

¹¹⁹ Devine, , Illicit Whisky-Making, p. 171Google Scholar; Turnock (n. 40 above), p. 107.

¹²⁰ “Whisky on the Rocks,” Economist (March 6, 1993), p. 58Google Scholar.