Preventive men were stationed thickly over the face of the Highlands, the system then employed being the establishment of “Preventive Stations” in important districts, and “Preventive Rides” in less important neighbourhoods. The stations consisted of an officer and one or two men, who were expected by the regulations not to sleep at the station more than six nights in the fortnight. During the other eight days and nights they were to be on outside duty. A ride was a solitary affair, of one exciseman. Placed in authority over the stations were “supervisors,” who had each five stations under his charge, which he was bound to visit once a week.
George Smith, of Glenlivet, already quoted, early found his position desperate. He was a legalised distiller, and paid his covenanted duty to Government, and he rightly considered himself entitled, in return for the tribute he rendered, to some measure of protection. He therefore petitioned the Lords of the Treasury to that effect; and my lords duly replied, after the manner of such, that the Government would prosecute any who dared molest him. This, however, was not altogether satisfactory from Smith’s point of view. He desired rather to be protected from molestation than to be left open to attack and the aggressors to be punished. A dead man derives no satisfaction from the execution of his assassin. Moreover, even the prosecution was uncertain. In Smith’s own words, “I cannot say the assurance gave me much ease, for I could see no one in Glenlivet who dared institute such proceedings.”
It was necessary for a revenue officer to be almost killed in the execution of his duty before the Government resorted to the force requisite for the support of the civil power. A revenue cutter was stationed in the Moray Firth, with a crew of fifty men, designed to be under the orders of the excise officers in cases of emergency.
But the smugglers were not greatly impressed with this display, and when the excisemen, accompanied with perhaps five-and-twenty sailors, made raids up-country, frequently met them in great gangs of perhaps a hundred and fifty, and recaptured any seizures they had made and adopted so threatening an attitude that the sailors were not infrequently compelled to beat a hasty and undignified retreat. One of these expeditions was into Glenlivet itself, where the smugglers were all Roman Catholics. The excisemen, with this in mind, considered that the best time for a raid would be Monday morning, after the debauch of the Sunday afternoon and night in which the Roman Catholics were wont to indulge; and accordingly, marching out of Elgin town on the Sunday, arrived at Glenlivet at daybreak. At the time of their arrival the glen was, to all appearance, deserted, and their coming unnoticed, and the sight of the peat-reek rising in the still air from some forty or fifty “sma’ stills” rejoiced their hearts.
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.
Your true Highlander will not relinquish his “mountain-dew” without a struggle. His forefathers made as much of it as they liked, out of inexpensive materials, and drank it fresh and raw. No one bought whisky; and a whole clachan would be roaring drunk for a week without a coin having changed hands. Naturally, the descendants of these men—“it wass the fine time they had, whateffer”—dislike the notion of buying their whisky from the grocer and drinking stuff made in up-to-date distilleries. They prefer the heady stuff of the old brae-side pot-still, with a rasp on it like sulphuric acid and a consequent feeling as though one had swallowed lighted petroleum: stuff with a headache for the Southerner in every drop, not like the tamed and subdued creature that whisky-merchants assure their customers has not got a headache in a hogshead.
The time-honoured brae-side manner of brewing whisky is not very abstruse. First find your lonely situation, the lonelier and the more difficult of access, obviously the better. If it is at once lonely and difficult of approach, and at the same time commands good views of such approaches as there are, by so much it is the better. But one very cardinal fact must not be forgotten: the site of the proposed still and its sheltering shieling, or bothy, must have a water-supply, either from a mountain-stream naturally passing, or by an artfully constructed rude system of pipes.