Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 [New ed.] 0199259216, 9780199259212

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Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Title Pages (p.i) Customs and Excise (p.iii) Customs and Excise

(p.iv) This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability

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Title Pages in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © William J. Ashworth, 2003 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) Reprinted 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or tinder terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover And you must impose this same condition on any acquirer ISBN 978-0-19-925921-2

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Dedication

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Dedication (p.v) In Memory of FREDA AND DEREK ASHWORTH

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Acknowledgements

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

(p.vii) Acknowledgements I STARTED THIS BOOK in May 1996 as a Research Fellow at the University of Liverpool in what was then the Department of Economic and Social History. The position was jointly funded by HM Customs and Excise and the National Museum and Galleries on Merseyside. I am deeply grateful for their generosity and support. I was also extremely fortunate in gaining a Senior Research Fellowship at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (2001–2). This enabled me to complete the book free from distraction in a wonderful office overlooking, appropriately, the River Charles. In the process of researching this book I was kindly aided by a number of institutions. 1 thank the staff of the Public Record Office at Kew, the British Library, Cambridge University Library, the Sydney Jones Library at the University of Liverpool, the Widener Library at Harvard University, the Dewey Library at MIT, HM Customs and Excise Records Management Services at Salford, the Customs and Excise Museum at Liverpool, NMAM Maritime Records, the Dorset County Records Office, and Manchester Central Library. Ruth Parr, Anne Gelling, and Rowena Anketell at Oxford University Press have made the whole experience of publishing a book both enjoyable and easy. I am obliged to their patience, understanding, and good judgement. I also thank Johns Hopkins Press and the journal Technology and Culture for allowing me to reproduce a version of my published essay, ‘“Between the Trader and the Public”: British Alcohol Standards and the Proof of Good Governance’, 42 (2001), 27–50, in Chapter 14. Many friends and colleagues have encouraged and advised me over the course of this book and beyond. I want to first and foremost thank my teacher Simon Schaffer for sharing his enthusiasm, briliance, and support over the years. I owe Page 1 of 2

 

Acknowledgements him an immense and heartfelt gratitude, While I was a Fellow at the Dibner I was extremely fortunate to have the company, friendship, and learning of Leonard N. Rosenband. Our daily lunches and walks were a constant source of stimulation and education that were vital in inspiring and enriching this book (not to mention future planned projects). I was also exceptionally lucky in having the companionship of Andre Wakefield who not only raised a number of important suggestions and queries concerning this book, but introduced me to the joy of ice fishing in Minnesota. Very particular thanks go to Patrick K. O‘Brien, Martin Daunton, and Julian Hoppit for their scholarly work and encouragement in informing this project. I have benefited enormously from the camaraderie and feedback at various conferences from a great number of people; in particular, Crosbie Smith, Boyd (p.viii) Hilton, Iwan Moras, Pat Hudson, Andrew Warwick, Arne Hessunbruch, Graeme Gooday, Brian Dolan, Timothy Alborn, John Staudmisser, Theodore Porter, Menachem Fisch, Myles Jackson, Larry Stewart, M, Norton Wise, Robert Brain, Graeme Milne, Jeff Hughes, and Robert Iliffe. A special thanks to Peter Line-baugh, who at short notice kindly responded in detail to an impromptu request to comment on an early draft of my Introduction. Living with someone working on taxation must be trying for anyone, but it was also during the course of writing this book that our two children, Oliver and Harvey, were born, and I started a lectureship in the School of History at the University of Liverpool Throughout Liza has been magnificent; her amazing stamina, love, and patience made this book possible. 1 am also indebted to my colleagues at Liverpool—both at the University and at the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside—for being so understanding and supportive; in particular, Robert Lee, Mike Stammers, Steve Butler, Karen Bradbury, Anne Maclaren, Eve Rosenhaft, Adrian Jarvis, Charles Esdaile, John Belchem and Pauline Stafford. W.J.A.

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Abbreviations

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

(p.xi) Abbreviations AH Architectural History AHR American Historical Review BCTHS Bulletin of the Cleveland and Teeside Local History Society BEM Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine BJHS British Journal for the History of Science BL British Library BRLCJ British Review and London Critical Journal BTR British Tax Review BSSLH Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History CEMS HM Customs and Excise Records Management Services, Saiford GUI CH(H) Cholmondley Houghton Papers, Cambridge University Library DCRO Dorset County Records Office DNB Dictionary of National Biography ECL Eighteenth Century Life Page 1 of 4

 

Abbreviations EBB Explorations in Economic History EG Economic Geography ECHR Economic History Review EHR English Historical Review FHR French Historical Review FHS French Historical Studies H History HCSP House of Commons Sessional Papers, ed. S. Lambert, 147 vols. (Delaware, 1975) HJ Historical Journal HR Historical Research HW History Workshop IAR Industrial Archaeology Review IEP International Economic Papers JBS Journal of British Studies JEEH Journal of European Economic History JEH Journal of Economic History JHI Journal of the History of Ideas J1H Journal of Interdisciplinary History JMH Journal of Modern History Journal of Political Economy JSAHR Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research L The Library LJ Page 2 of 4

 

Abbreviations London Journal MCL Manchester Central Library MM Mariner’s Mirror NMGM National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (p.xii)

PA Public Administration PEMS Proceedings of the Edinburgh Mathematical Society PER Parliaments, Estates and Representation PH Parliamentary History P&P Past and Present PP Home of Commons Parliamentary Papers PR Political Register P&P Public Record Office P&S Politics and Society PTRS Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society SH Southern History SOH Social History SSH Social Science History SSS Social Studies of Science TCLAS Transactions of the Cheshire and Lancashire Antiquarian Society THSLC Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancaster and Cheshire TLMAS Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Page 3 of 4

 

Abbreviations WCH A Calendar of the Weymouth Custom House records compiled by B. R. Leftwich, typed MS, n.d. Customs and Excise Museum, NMGM, Liver pool WMQ William and Mary Quarterly

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Epigraph

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Epigraph (p.xiii) There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776)

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Introduction

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Introduction WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0001

Abstract and Keywords This introductory chapter begins with a historical background of taxation in Britain starting from the late 1600s. It then discusses the purpose of the book, which is to reveal the ingenious ways in which common folks, manufacturers, and traders successfully defied the ever-encroaching hands of state inference and policing. One of the conclusions of the book is that the state, through customs and excise, tried to shape and regulate the production of taxed goods by increasingly standardizing and policing the qualities that defined them. An overview of the six parts of the book is presented. Keywords:   excise, taxation, tax policy, customs

‘THE TAXING A NATION’, reflected the merchant and writer Daniel Defoe, ‘is like a Physician breathing a Vein in a Patient, the Skill of which, depends upon the choosing the proper Vein to Bleed, and knowing what quantity of Blood to draw’. By the close of the Napoleonic Wars most British people felt they were ‘bleeding to death’; incomes were diminishing, social unrest was swelling, and the country seemed to be sinking beneath ever-increasing layers of tax. The cost of this long military encounter had inlated the already large national debt to what many considered an apocalyptic level. The promiscuous liberty the state was taking in accessing the population’s hard-earned money was equally draining the people’s patience. The situation was further exacerbated by the government’s loss of the temporary wartime income tax, resulting in an even greater burden of taxation falling upon the war-weary masses. The result was a rising tide of discontent in which fiscal policy was spilling over into a pool of political discord, confrontation, and violence. Writing in December 1819, with Page 1 of 14

 

Introduction the Peterloo Massacre still fresh in his thoughts, the worried agrarian political radical and prolific journalist William Cobbett claimed pauperism had ‘increased in an exact proportion to the increase of the taxes’.1 A few weeks prior to the Manchester magistrates ordering the local, drunken yeomanry to arrest the popular political activist Henry Hunt and other radical leaders at St Peter’s Field, the government had made a number of large increases on the excise duties of popular addictive items such as tea, malt, tobacco, and spirits. The status and incidence of taxation was a prominent factor in the radicals’ drive for political reform. Cobbett was quick to compare the equitable system of tax he claimed to have experienced on Long Island, with the oppressive and unjust tax that characterized the position in England: ‘Let us look at the United States of America, where there is almost a total absence of taxation. There is no misery in that country, arising from what is called pauperism’. He then went on to explain his point in the plain and accessible speaking his numerous readers had come to expect. In addition to addictive luxuries, Cobbett was careful to highlight those highly taxed necessities that were wholesome and nutritious for the body and mind: If the American farmer had twenty English shillings to pay for a bushel of English salt, in place of two and a half English shillings, which he now pays for that very salt: if he had tax on his windows, tax on his horses, tax on his leather, tax on every thing that goes to the composition of the implements he uses upon his farm; if he was forbidden under heavy penalty to turn the fat of his own oxen and sheep into soap and candles, and compelled to (p.2) pay a heavy tax upon the soap and candles which he purchases: if the hops which he grows in his garden made him a criminal, unless he first went and entered the spot at an Excise-office and engaged to pay the duty upon the hops: if it were criminal for him to convert his barley into beer without a similar process of restraint and exaction: if his dogs were taxed: if he could not take his family to Church in his light wagon without paying an enormous duty: if he could not read a newspaper without paying about twenty dollars a year: if his spirits, his wine, his tea, his coffee, his sugar, his molasses, his spices and all other articles but those of his own produce paid a tax equal to the present price of them in his country: if this were the situation of the American farmer, where could he find the means of acting towards his unfortunate or poor relations as he now acts?2 The ex-excise officer and global political campaigner Thomas Paine had already argued much the same thing in his The Rights of Man, Part II published in 1792: ‘There [North America], the poor are not oppressed, the rich are not privileged. Industry is not mortified by the splendid extravagance of a court rioting at its expense. Their taxes are few, because their government is just; and as there is nothing to render them wretched, there is nothing to engender riots and Page 2 of 14

 

Introduction tumults’. Here fair taxation was equated with minimal state bureaucracy and a representative government. In a public letter the same year he also threateningly warned the secretary for the Home Department, Henry Dundas, that ‘excessive taxation’ played a major role in triggering ‘riots, tumults and disorders’.3 According to this argument the poor were being consumed by a swollen, corrupt state that kept an idle, exploitative elite in riches and power. In addition, the state was also preventing the ‘natural’ flow of commerce and therefore stifling the nation’ s prosperity. As an evangelical advocate of unimpeded trade, Paine believed that a combination of uncivilized government, monarchical wars, and excessive taxation prevented the peaceful and prosperous effects of commerce both for Britain and the world. This aspect of Paine’s radicalism sat well with an emerging commercial liberalism. More generally the London Corresponding Society and most radical societies during the 1790s similarly condemned ‘oppressive taxes’. Indeed, perhaps the most forceful attack on the unjust taxing of the politically unrepresented masses came from the chief orator of the London Corresponding Society and leader of the working classes, John Thelwall: ‘it should be remembered, Citizens, that the real sources of all revenue, and, indeed, all the enjoyments and necessaries of life, are the labours of those classes of society, whom we treated with so much contempt; but to whom, if we were just, we shall acknowledge the greatest of all possible obligations’.4 (p.3) It was not just popular radicals, old and new, who condemned the hugely expensive state, but, especially by the close of the Napoleonic Wars, most of the country. What John Brewer terms the ‘English fiscal-military’ state was over inflated and something was going to have to give—either social authority or taxes.5 For many, like Paine and Cobbett, North America had come to represent the nemesis of the British state. Its seemingly simple, just, visible, meritocratic, and efficient bureaucracy was held up as a model and cure to the excesses of the unjust British state apparatus riddled with ‘Old Corruption’. The small, devolved power and predominantly voluntary nature of the North American public sphere was much cheaper than in Britain. In 1820 the radical voice of The Black Book boomed that services costing North America £46,000 per year cost ‘Old England’ £900,000.6 The encumbrance of a bloated national debt, reliance on public credit, and the intense consumption of the people’s purse, had not always been the case. A mere century and a half prior to this ‘artificial situation’, England had been a lightly taxed second-rate power. In the words of Jonathan Scott: ‘What distinguished the early Stuart crown in a European context was its financial, military and political weakness’. The excise, the primary target of Cobbett’s caustic tongue, had only (p.4) come into being, reluctantly, in 1643 during the English Civil War. Since then, particularly after the Glorious Revolution of

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Introduction 1688-9, a state had developed that was defined by and moulded by the search for revenue.7 An excise, strictly speaking, is a tax on goods manufactured or grown domestically. It is meant to be a duty on inland goods as distinct from customs levied on imported commodities. However, this definition does not clearly hold for the period surveyed in this book; in particular, certain imports came under the management of the excise, a situation lasting from 1643 to 1825 when most of the excised imports were transferred to the customs. To add to this confusion some exports during the English Civil War and Interregnum also paid an excise. Between 1693 and 1815 England/Britain was at war for fifty-six years, while revenues grew by a factor of thirty-six. between the reign of Charles 1 and the arrival of Lord Liverpool’s administration in the 1810s. By this time too, as Cobbett reminded his readers, the number of paupers had also increased; ‘there now exists twenty paupers for one that existed at that time [the Restoration]’.8 While war, Protestantism, and a growing obsession with property may have come to be central features of Englishness and later Britishness during the eighteenth century, so has the related issue of taxation. After all it was revenue that enabled England/Britain to wield its sword ever more powerfully and further afield.9 For the government to extract such large increases in tax, especially in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, required much greater intervention in the everyday life of people and therefore an extension to the boundaries of state power. The dramatic increase in taxation is graphically demonstrated in Patrick O’Brien and Philip A. Hunt’s calculations of total tax receipts between 1490 and 1820. The figures reveal that under the Commonwealth and Protectorate taxes took off from a prior flat rate that had spanned almost a hundred and fifty years. From the 1680s the figures accelerated, reaching almost a vertical line during the (p. 5) Napoleonic Wars. Direct taxes fell from 47 per cent during the 1690s to 21 per cent in the 1790s (although they once again rose with the introduction of the temporary wartime income tax in 1799). Customs duties fluctuated from a third of national revenues between 1675 and 1685 to less than a quarter a century later, while excise dirties increased from 36 per cent in 1685 to 56 per cent during the American War of Independence before falling back again during the Napoleonic Wars.10 The huge expansion of the number of people employed by the government after 1689 was also accompanied by a large increase in the number of men legally or illegally making profits from their work in the collection of taxes. Widespread corruption within the revenue services was partly fuelled by their relatively low wages and dependence, particularly in the case of customs officers, on fees, However, as certain historians have rightly argued, confused, corrupt, irregular, and incompetent as the English fiscal system was, it nonetheless worked well Page 4 of 14

 

Introduction enough to satisfy the hefty demands of William Ill’s and Queen Anne’s wars (and, of course, beyond). This is the crucial point. For all the corruption, inefficiency, and cancerous sinecures characterizing state offices, the revenue departments, especially the excise, managed to sustain the necessary trust to service a monstrous national debt. Any history of the long eighteenth century cannot avoid the muscle and reach of the state’s tax-gathering machine. Its impact could be felt at all layers of society as well as by countries thousands of miles away.11 By contrast the French sources of revenue and accompanying mode of collection were very different. For all its well-known attempts at rational reform of revenue administration and policy, France could not escape its world of venal offices, hidden mechanisms, and strong independent regions. The English revenue system, in general, was much more unified than any of its European rivals, and subject to a great deal more centralized control by the Treasury and accounting tools tracking revenue flows. The bottom line for the Western states in the early modern period, and indeed ever since, was to raise as much money as possible through taxation. As Joseph Schumpeter once wrote; ‘Taxes not only helped to create the state, they helped to form it’. The political philosopher and MP Edmund Burke had come to much the same conclusion well over a century earlier: ‘Revenue is the chief preoccupation of the state. Nay more it is the state’—a rare point shared by his ideological opponent Paine in his scathing essay on the English System of Finance, published in 1796. As we have seen, however, for Paine taxation coupled with a vastly overweight and unjust state was the antecedent to social revolution.12 (p.6) Indirect tax, as Gobbett, Paine, Thelwall, and others taught, and a far greater number experienced, was immensely more insidious than a simple fiscal instrument designed to finance the fundamental activities of the state. These political commentators may well have reflected and helped redefine political boundaries, but the actual arguments they utilized were as old as the excise itself. Indeed, as soon as the tax was introduced in 1643, particular excises quickly became the predominant target of sharply worded petitions, noisy protests, and, not infrequently, bloody conflict. Taxation has profound implications not only for the relationship between the people and the state, but crucially for the nature of production, trade, and consumption. In recent years historians have focused on the emergence of consumption, especially during the eighteenth century. Taste and demand, it has been argued, were the decisive factors fuelling production. This argument, in some ways, has undermined a traditional emphasis by economic historians on technically enhanced production as the key factor to consumption. However,

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Introduction perhaps far more important (and far more neglected) in shaping both consumption and production was state regulation. Tax is a powerful tool that can redistribute wealth by targeting specific groups and can redefine taste by taxes on consumption at the level of production by specifying and policing a commodity’s ingredients and manufacturing process or simply by influencing its price, and sometimes, attempting to banish it completely. In short, it has the ability to change the structure of the economy by moulding the shape of supply through legal revenue demands, and nurturing consumption through the manipulation of people’s choices. Implicit within this is also the moral definition of forms of consumption as luxuries or necessaries.13 The excise, especially, was instrumental in defining the method, materials, and architecture of production. To tax a good frequently required it to be rendered visible both in terms of its ingredients and in the way it was produced. This ultimately required an attempt to regulate its qualities and for the site of production to be reconfigured to meet the excise’s process of measurement. If the eighteenth century can be seen as a period witnessing the emergence of a culture of visibility, in this case particularly through the excise administration and its targeting of production, then it was also the moment a powerful counterculture of invisibility appeared through a vast illicit economy. It was predominantly through revenue concerns that the parameters of the legal market were defined, while simultaneously creating a shadow illicit market; it was compliance and resistance among the people that were the key factors in deciding the size of each market. Within this nexus the relationship between taxation and the people took a great deal of ongoing work, monitoring, and research. The Financial Reform Association reflected in 1859 that Indirect Taxation is essentially and (p.7) unavoidably a conflict of class interests,—a direct provocative to class hatreds’, while Edwin Seligman, one-time professor of political economy at Columbia University, writing over a century ago, also sensed the inherent struggle involved in taxation and concluded that its history was also the history of ‘class antagonisms.14 This book reveals the ingenious ways in which everyday folk, manufacturers, and traders successfully defied the ever-encroaching hands of state interference and policing. As such my focus is just as much on the emancipation of the material commodity from increasingly rigid legal chains. I emphasize the ways in which the law was defied and the culture that grew up around defiance. As a government committee set up to investigate illicit practices used to defraud the revenue reported in 1784: ‘The system of Taxation created by the Public Necessities, has opened a large Field for the Exercise of interested Ingenuity; and it is but too probable, that many Frauds are successfully pursued, in different Branches both of Trade and Manufacture, to a great Extent, which have escaped the Observation of Your Committee’. In fact, it was due to the skills and practices manufacturers devised in avoiding duties that scientific and Page 6 of 14

 

Introduction sophisticated techniques were increasingly developed to detect adulteration and technological schemes of avoidance.15 In summary, it is one conclusion of this book that the state, through customs and excise, tried deliberately and, at times, inadvertently, to shape and regulate the production of taxed goods, by increasingly standardizing and policing the qualities that defined them. By attempting to force regularization across industries, a focus on efficiency and quality in production costs was brought to the fore. An emphasis on legal stipulations concerning the make-up (quality) of taxed goods was made manifest, and with it an increased general awareness among government circles of manufacturing knowledge. For example, revenue policy entailed close scrutiny and continuous fiddling of relevant statutes and the relentless and systematic patrolling of manufacturing sites, retail outlets, and ports. In addition, it needed to effectively diffuse customs and excise information concerning duties and how the goods were to be measured. Importantly, it required extensive regional knowledge, surveillance, and an attempt to control, albeit unsuccessfully, the common economy (pilfering, smuggling, and adulteration) that it helped to create. And ultimately it meant the attempted suppression of local customs in the market place (regional and colonial variations in the quality of products), and regional or trade variations in weights, measures, and packaging. To assist in its attempt to define and levy the production of home-produced goods, the excise, in particular, turned to quantification, and a particular notion of accuracy that tried to advertise claims to precision and equity in its gauging activities. Within this (p.8) context ideals of scientific objectivity were actively promoted and revised to aid administrative practices.16 Although the organization of this book is largely thematic, its trajectory is generally chronological in design. Part I is primarily concerned with the relationship between war, revenue, and high politics from the second half of the seventeenth century. The huge expansion of indirect tax, especially after the Hanoverian succession in 1714 when the land tax was significantly reduced, had an important impact on the shape the home economy took. For example, how does the emergence of high indirect taxation fit in with current debates over a so-called eighteenth-century ‘consumer revolution’, and the later eruption of an ‘industrial revolution’? Was there a set of consistent policies during the eighteenth century that we can loosely term an industrial policy? If so, what role did customs and excise play in guiding it? A fierce dispute accompanied the introduction of the excise in 1643, and continued throughout the eighteenth century and well into the nineteenth century. This heated and frequently angry exchange—centring upon the incidence of taxation, notions of liberty, and ultimately political representation— informed a distinct form of radicalism to a far greater extent than has hitherto been underlined. Few taxes during the long eighteenth century, if any, made Page 7 of 14

 

Introduction such an impact on politics as the excise. This theme is continued in Part III. One of the most volatile and organized protests of the eighteenth century greeted Robert Walpole’s proposed Excise Bill on tobacco and wine in 1733. The almost national roar of irate sentiments that accompanied this Bill could also be echoed at the micro-level in the numerous legal cases brought by and against the excise throughout the century. The excise was viewed as a dangerous and erosive threat to an Englishman’s liberty and property, and as a potential source for funding arbitrary government. Indirect taxation, especially the excise, played the key role in sustaining the ‘mysterious’ entity of public credit. In so doing, as Norriss Brisco long ago pointed out: ‘The producer became the all-important person, and it was through him that the country was to secure the means of increasing national wealth and power’. It was during the post-Glorious Revolution era, and especially Walpole’s reign, that the importance of domestic manufactures as a source of revenue came to the fore.17 This, in turn, required an effective process of extracting the levy. Just what was it about the organization of the excise that made it comparatively efficient and a model for bureaucratic reform in the late eighteenth and early (p.9) nineteenth centuries? The remainder of Part II concentrates on this question, with a close examination of the administrative, bureaucratic, and structural changes made to the excise from 1643 to the late eighteenth century. Part III goes behind the iron gate and looks at the form and work of the customs administration. Specific emphasis is placed on the medieval aspects of this organization and the deeply embedded features of sinecures, customary fees, and corruption, which characterized it for the whole of the long eighteenth century. Like the excise, the bottom line in the collection of customs revenue rested squarely with the ordinary officers working in and around the waterfront, The commissioners investigating the public accounts during the 1780s fully understood this: ‘The Revenue of the Customs, however considerable in the Aggregate, rests, and must rest, in Origin, materially upon the Integrity and Diligence of Officers not high in the Official Scale’.18 As such, any understanding of the customs requires an exploration of the everyday labour of those employed by it, and a survey of the physical and social geography in which they operated. What was it like to work in the bustle of the hectic, smelly, and cosmopolitan space of the London Custom House; to deal with bad-tempered merchants and weather-beaten sailors impatient to be on their way; or try to prevent gangs roving the quays waiting to take a slice of the wealth sucked up the Thames? These and other day-to-day aspects of life congealing about the bottleneck of a port will be examined. Eighteenth-century England can, at one level, be characterized as a vast world of pilfering and smuggling. The former was largely confined to London and the various outports, and was to a certain extent reluctantly accepted by social Page 8 of 14

 

Introduction authority as a perquisite of those who worked along the waterfront. This, however, rapidly changed as the voice of the expanding middling ranks and the more commercially minded aristocracy grew stronger and more convinced about perceived ‘rights’ to property. Far and away the largest form of illicit activity was smuggling. The two most popular and lucrative commodities involved in free trade were tea and tobacco. To aid the smugglers’ activities, ingenious schemes of concealment were devised along with innovative technological developments in ship and boat design. The extent of the illicit trade was such that it permeated all levels of society, and found its way into every corner of the British Isles. In numerous coastal areas large armies of men and women gathered to unload cargoes of illicit goods and take them to their destination. The organization of the common economy was, more often than not, better than the legal low of goods. Indeed illicit trade routes opened up the domestic economy by reaching isolated communities that would not normally have been served.19 Part IV examines the work of excise officers and illuminates some of the daytoday practices and procedures these men used in their visits to the manufacturers (p.10) of taxed goods; brewers, malsters, cider, and perry makers; distillers; candle makers and tallow chandlers; leather producers; soap makers; starch makers; paper makers; hop farms; printers of silk and linen; glass manufacturers; salt producers; and both traders and retailers of coffee, tea, and chocolate. Close attention is paid to the techniques the officers brought to the business of taxing these goods, and how, in turn, this shaped the method of production. The constitution and stages of manufacture had to be deined and made clearly accessible to the excise method. What ingredients could manufactures use for their products? At what times could they begin production? What shape should the site of manufacture be? What techniques should be implemented to ensure the excise officer was doing his job? By drawing upon contemporary court cases, official excise manuals, in-house instructions, and the labyrinth of legal changes, it will be seen how these demands were implemented and administered. The strict specifications legislated by various governments were frequently violated by manufacturers, and for much of Part IV the emphasis is on the variety and ingenuity of producers in their continual quest to defeat the excise method. As such, this part can be seen as revealing how the state’ s attempt at shaping domestic commodity production through excise demands really took form. Part V continues with this theme. In addition to helping define taxed goods, customs and excise also played a crucial part in trying to specify weights, measures, and container dimensions. Eventually, national linear standards defined from the imperial standard legislated in the early nineteenth century were established, and all duties, allowances, drawbacks, payments, and accounts under any law of customs and excise were made to these standards. Page 9 of 14

 

Introduction From this moment on, as one popular author of a nineteenth-century manual for excise officers wrote: ‘The Winchester bushel, and all local or customary measures are abolished’.20 As the capital city—and moreover increasingly the world’ s financial capitalexpanded, it simultaneously left its marks on the people and landscape. The characteristic rationality underpinning this growth was a developing political economy that emphasized enclosure, such as greater urbanization, prison architecture, and a brutal acceleration in agriculture and manufactures (both at home and in the colonies). By the early nineteenth century it also became embedded in the geography of ports which, like agriculture and certain manufacturing sites, had hitherto relied partly on customary rights and practices for remuneration (as well as greater autonomy). The formidable walls that now surrounded new bonded warehouses were a clear attempt at suppressing such customs. The development of commercial enclosure forms the subject of the final theme of Part V. After describing the switch in trading policy from drawbacks to bonded warehouses, we return to domestic industry. In the wake of huge excise rises and the department’s attempt to regularize producers, the excise had simultaneously helped create a huge invisible market for adulterated goods. To tackle the expanding and expensive problem of food and drink adulteration, the excise (p.11) intensified its use of science in the determining of goods. The process of policing taxed commodities climaxed with their internalization within a controlled space to be subject to scientific scrutiny. This can be seen in the establishment of the first ever British state laboratory set up in 1842 to analyse remaining excised products for adulteration. It can. be argued that the excise concerns accompanying revenue losses through food and drink adulteration, helped fuel the emergence of ‘public health’ as a major issue in the nineteenth century. The excise laboratory, followed a few years later by the customs laboratory, became a pioneer in enforcing stricter controls over the constitution of commodities. It was during the latter half of the eighteenth, and especially in the early nineteenth, century that the relationship between taxation, politics, trade, and production changed. This is the subject of the book’s final theme. The American War of Independence reawakened and informed the debate between taxpayers and political representation in Britain. If the Seven Years War had partly triggered the American impulse to independence through attempts afterward to tax the colonies, the hugely expensive War of Independence left the British government in a dire financial position with very few traditional avenues of revenue left open. The tax state had reached its optimum level. Indeed it was at this moment that a new industrial policy was hatched during William Pitt’ s government of the 1780s, which focused on the lightly or untaxed new

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Introduction industries. Against this backdrop radical and landed criticism of the government and state administration took on a powerful and venomous dimension. Within this turbulent context numerous committees were rushed into existence to investigate the state’s accounts, finances, and bureaucracy. All of them held up the excise as the ideal model of administrative structure and blueprint for general bureaucratic reform. Thence the final irony came in the nineteenth century when this backbone of the fiscal-military state, the excise department, was turned inwards, and used as the tool to reform the very state apparatus and imperatives that had led to its creation. In this sense the crafting of a new administrative rationality and emphasis on systematized practices was not the final severing of the ‘Old Regime’, but rather the most successful product of it. It was also within this volatile social and fiscal environment that laissez-faire policies decisively entered economic policy, and the old system of tariff protection and the excise was dismantled, culminating in free trade and the permanent introduction of the Income tax in 1842. (p.12) (p.13) (p.14) Notes:

(1) Defoe’s Review: Reproduced from the Original Editions, with introduction and bibliographical notes by A. W. Secord, viii (New York, 1938), 735; W. Cobbett, PR, Dec. 1819. (2) Cobbett, PR, Dec. 19. For the increase in duties see S. Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. 13rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), ii. 266–7. For a useful discussion of Cobbett’s critique of taxation see N. Thompson, The Real Rights of Man: Political Economies for the Working Class 1775–1850 (London, 1998), 20–9. (3) T. Paine, The Rights of Man, Part II (17921, in Thomas Paine: Political Writings, ed. B. Kuklick (Cambridge, 1989), 145–203, on 158; ‘To Mr.Secretary Dundas’ (6 June 1792), in The Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. M. D. Conway, 6 vols., iii (London, 1996), 15–29, on 22. (4) G. Glaeys, ‘Republicanism versus Commercial Society: Paine, Burke, and the French Revolution Debate’, BSSLH 54 (1989). 4–13; J. Stevensen, ‘Painites to a Man? The English Popular Radical Societies in the 1790s’, BSSLH 54 (1989), 14– 25; I. Dyck, ‘Local Attachments, National Identities and World Citizenship in the Thought of Thomas Paine’, HW 35 (1993), 117–35; J. Thelwall, ‘On the Exhausted State of Our National Resources, and the Consequent Condition of Our Labourers and Manufacturers’, The Tribune (1795), in The Politics of English Jacobinism: Writings of John Thelwall ed. G. Claeys (Pennsylvania, 1995), 74; I. Hampsher-Monk, ‘John Thelwall and the Eighteenth-Century Radical Response to Political Economy’, HJ 34 (1991), 1–20, on 4–5.

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Introduction (5) For the evolution of the ‘fiscal-military’ state see J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the bnglish State, 1688–1783 (London, 1989); P. Mathias and P. O’Brien, Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810’, JEEH 5 (1976), 601– 40; P. O’Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815’, EcHR 41 (1988), 1–32; J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth in Eighteenth-Century England’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 43 (1990), 377–403; P. O’Brien and P. A. Hunt, ‘The Fiscal State in England, 1485–1815’, HR 160 (1993), 129–76; M. J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996) and State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000). War and revenue on a more international stage is discussed in Richard, Bean, ‘War and the Birth of the Nation State’, JEH 33 (1973), 203–21; T. Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building Stales and Regimes in Medieval and Early Modem Europe (Cambridge, 1999); R. Bonney (ed.), The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c.1200–1815 (Oxford, 1999). (6) S. E. Finer, ‘Patronage and the Public Service: Jeffersonian Bureaucracy and the British Tradition’, PA 30 (1952), 329–60, on 331–2. However, the situation in North America was not quite as ideal as the English radicals depicted it. It was certainly true that many of those British emigrants to North America, who had not been physically or verbally forced from their native home, had partly gone to escape high taxation. But things were changing and a different picture was emerging in the post-colonial period. The brutality and necessity of military might to establish independence and safeguard sovereignty soon reared its head after the War of Independence. The scars of this conflict ran deep and left a federal domestic debt of about $26,200,000. Now the survival of the new republic depended implicitly on adopting policies that had been so viciously condemned in the build-up to the war. To survive, it needed to quickly establish a credible taxing authority and effective machine for gathering revenue. Initially, the various state governments consistently failed to enforce taxation on the people, and Congress had great difficulty in sustaining trust with domestic and foreign creditors. Eventually, however, necessity and the need for some consensus overcame ideological reluctance regarding taxation. This, argues Roger H. Brown, became a crucial factor in shaping the US Constitution; see his Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution (Baltimore, 1993). (7) The expression ‘artificial situation’ was used two years earlier in 1817 by David Ricardo to describe the national debt; see his On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, ed. P. Srafta with M. H. Dobb (London, 1817; repr. Cambridge, 1991), 247; J. Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), p. 84 and ch. 7. It should be noted that minor internal duties did exist prior to the introduction of the excise in 1643; see P. O’Brien and P. Hunt, ‘The Emergence

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Introduction and Consolidation of Excises in the English Fiscal System before the Glorious Revolution’, BTR 1 (1997), 35–58, on 41. (8) The figures are taken from O’Brien and Hunt, ‘The Fiscal State’, 155; Cobbett, PR, Dec. 1819, Paine also emphasized the huge growth in the burden of taxation since 1688 in his public letter ‘To Mr. Secretary Dundas’, 23. Under the Act of Union in 1707 England, Wales, and Scotland were united, becoming Great Britain. (9) For war. Protestantism, and Britishness see L. Colley, Britons: Purging the Nation 1707-1857 (StIves, 1992), and for the emphasis on fiscal pressure in determining society and culture see J. A. Schuinpeter, ‘The Crisis of the Tax State’ (1918); repr. in IEP 4 (1954), 5–38, on 7, and most persuasively within the English context in Brewer, Sinews of Power. The key to England’ s rise as a European superpower should not, however, simply be seen in terms of a fiscal ingenuity. Far more important during the 1690s and 1700s were elements of luck and favourable developments in the course and geography (aiding commerce) of the various wars fought during this period; see D. W. Jones, ‘Sequel to Revolution: The Economics of England’s Emergence as a Great Power, 1688-1712’, in ). J.I. Israel (ed.), tThe Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays in the Clarions Revolution and its World Impact (Cambridge, 1991), 389–406. (10) O’Brien and Hunt, ‘Rise of a Fiscal State’, 150–2. (11) J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), 117–18; G. Holmesa, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982), 239-61. This has since been underlined in the work of P. O’Brien and J. Brewer. (12) Schumpeter, ‘Crisis’; T. Paine, ‘The English System of Finance’ (1996), in The Writings of Paine, ed. Conway, iii, 286–312. Edmund Burke is quoted in E Dietz, English Government Finance 1485–1558 (London, 1964). 213. (13) Rebecca Spang has recently shown the problem Revolutionary France bad in grappling with issues defining goods as necessities or luxuries; see her ‘What is Rum? The Politics of Consumption in the French Revolution’, in M. Daunton and M. Hilton (eds.), The Politics of Consumption: Material Culture and Citizenship in Europe and America (Oxford, 2001), 33–49. (14) The Financial Reform Association is quoted in M. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain 1799–1914 (Cambridge, 2001), 164; E. R. A. Seligman, Essays in Taxation (New York, 1895), 16. (15) ‘Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38.15.

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Introduction (16) In this sense my work engages with and builds upon themes raised esp. by T. M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public life (Princeton, 1995); M. N. Wise (ed.), The Values of Precision Measurement (Princeton, 1995); M. Power (ed.), Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason (Cambridge, 1996). On a related note Michael Braddick writes: ‘One defence against charges of corruption was precision about the task in hand—expressed in our terms as professionalisation, specialisation and bureaucratisation. The “bureaucratisation” of the excise can be seen, therefore, as a means of legitimation’; see his State formation, 263. (17) N. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole (London, 1907), 166. (18) ‘Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners Investigating the Public Accounts’ (1787), HCSP 45. 66. (19) This is a point argued by H. and L. Mui in their study of tea in the 18th cent.; see their ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade before 1784’, AHR 74 (1968), 44–73. (20) J. Bateman, The Excise Officer’s Manual, and Improved Practical Ganger (London, 1846), 28-9.

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0002

Abstract and Keywords By the early 19th century, piercing commentary on the corrupting and wasteful effects of war, the expansion of the state, and the intense consumptions of public funds had spread across the country. This chapter discusses the events during the 18th century that led to such epidemic and widespread concern among the population. The starting point to answering this question is the 17th-century relationship between the crown and parliament with respect to the question of revenue. Keywords:   taxation, taxes, public credit, war, revenue

The Crown, Parliament, And Revenue Piercing commentary on the corrupting and wasteful effects of war, the expansion of the state, and the intense consumption of the people’s purse could be heard right across the land by the early nineteenth century. So what had happened during the long eighteenth century to generate such epidemic and widespread concern among the population? The starting point to answering this question is the seventeenth-century relationship between the crown and parliament with respect to the question of revenue. The early seventeenth century witnessed the gradual erosion of a system of finance dominated by a reliance on ordinary revenues, such as royal incomes from the crown lands, the customs (regarded as rent to the crown), and feudal prerogatives and dues. The crown had increasingly required extraordinary revenue, through taxation, which had to be sanctioned by parliament. Page 1 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 After the outbreak of the Civil War, parliament could not finance military action through demesne revenues (royal incomes roughly corresponding to the ordinary revenue) and turned decisively to taxation. It commenced with sequestration, then a weekly (and later monthly) assessment, and finally the introduction of the excise in 1643 on an array of domestically produced items and some foreign imports. ‘By reason whereof the Lords and Commons do hold it fit, that some constant and equal way for the levying of monies for the future maintenance of the Parliament forces, and other great affairs of the Commonwealth may be had and established, whereby the said malignants and neutrals may be brought to and compelled to pay their proportional parts of the aforesaid charge, and that the levies hereafter to be made for the purposes aforesaid, may be borne with as much indifference to the subject in general as may be’. From the start the emphasis on legitimating the excise was its supposed equitable nature. After fiercely opposing such a tax just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, the royalists also quickly turned to the excise to assist their finances, something conveniently forgotten after the Restoration. They were, however, never as successful at implementing the new tax. As James Scott Wheeler summarizes; ‘Ultimately… the Royalists failed to consolidate and rationalize their financial system in a manner similar to that pursued by the Parliamentarians’. As we shall see, the excise was retained in 1660 (p.16) while the assessment eventually transmuted into something termed the land tax. The leading historian of finances for this period, Michael Braddick, has concluded that although the conversion of the demesne state was not yet complete, ‘the materials were available for the construction of a tax state.’1 The financial settlement that accompanied the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 incorporated many of the legacies of the Interregnum. First, it continued with the policy that the yearly costs of government could be accurately assessed and provided for by the country’s representatives in parliament This approach had become official policy during the Barebones Parliament of 1653, when it was estimated that £200,000 per annum should suffice for the ordinary day-to-day costs of government. Prior to this moment no government had attempted to lay down such a planned overview of fiscal targets. Indeed, until this juncture, the monarch had been expected to live off his or her own hereditary resources and occasionally ‘extraordinary’ taxes that were voted by parliament.2 The old distinction between ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary’ revenue was resurrected, and with it once again the idea that the king should ‘live of his own’. Charles II was awarded a payment of £1,200,000 per annum. Although in one respect this made him better off (the Interregnum excise on liquors was given to him half in perpetuity and half for the duration of his life), he was still saddled with a pitifully outmoded financial settlement that would raise serious tensions in the working relationship between the executive with the legislature. The poverty of the crown had been perhaps the most serious single element of unbalance in the pre-war constitution. Without resort to deeply unpopular forms Page 2 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 of taxation the crown had been, from Charles I’s point of view, unhealthily dependent on parliamentary charity. As a result he had resorted to raising money, without parliament, in a number of controversial and devious ways. In practice, post-1660, parliament conceded that adjustments would have to be made, since the sources of revenue enjoyed by Charles I could not be expected in themselves to yield his son an adequate peacetime income. In particular, the crown would have to be compensated for the loss of two unpopular sources of revenue, those from wardship and feudal tenures, which had been abolished in 1643 and 1646 respectively (although they remained in statute until 1660). What the financial settlement did not do, points out Jonathan Scott, ‘was take any such step boldly enough to endanger that state of mutual dependence (between Commons and (p.17) crown) essential to the unreformed polity’. In 1662 the king was reluctantly also granted a new tax on chimneys known as the hearth tax, with parliament rather optimistically hoping this would make up the king’s deficit of £300,000.3 Parliament had greatly overestimated the expected yield of the revenue, which can probably be seen as a deliberate move to keep the king dependent on them. The tactic worked, since Charles II found, unlike his predecessors, that he could not live without annual parliamentary sessions. It soon became clear that he had to quickly learn how to manage parliament, which, in turn, required the king to find loyal politicians to manage his interests. Parliament also took the view that Charles’s personal debt inherited from his father in 1649 was his own responsibility, thus the crown in 1660 was already £800,000 in the red. He also inherited the effects of the dire trade depression of the late 1650s, which left the crown on average each year between 1660 and 1664 almost £400,000 short of expected revenue. Poor harvests throughout Western Europe between 1661 and 1663 led to high food prices that, in turn, further affected trade and manufactures by reducing demand, and thus bringing the customs and excise yield down. By 1664 Charles was more than £1 million in debt. Events were plunged into further darkness by the Second Dutch War of 1665–7, and compounded by the Great Plague and Fire of London in 1666.4 State reform and building was essential in the midst of the Dutch and later French wars. The first thing Charles and his team of advisers had to do was improve the weak system of Treasury management, since far too much of the crown’s revenue was diverted at source by the revenue farmers, state officials, and a variety of government creditors. This irregular and unpunctual process, as the king’s representative at The Hague, George Downing, verbosely underlined, was undermining the credit of the Exchequer and thus damaging the king’s reputation. Downing—a keen advocate of Dutch fiscal methods and especially the excise—set about spearheading the reform of the English fiscal apparatus, and creating a parliamentary-based system of public credit. The first task of the Treasury during the 1660s was to try and get the Exchequer to actually function properly. As Henry Roseveare puts it: ‘Tardy, piecemeal, archaic, the processes Page 3 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 of Exchequer audit were not designed to produce an accurate or comprehensive account of what was really happening to public funds.’ Top offices such as the king’s remembrancer, the Lord Treasurer’s remembrancer, and the clerk of the pells were hereditary. As a result their occupants could not be sacked for idleness, inability, or dishonesty, besides which, it was their deputies who actually undertook the work, and this was also true for most of the leading positions in the customs.5 (p.18) Against this context, and despite Downing’s and others’ efforts, the whole fiscal edifice came to a sudden halt in January 1672 when the crown declared itself bankrupt: the so-called ‘Stop of the Exchequer’. Indeed, it had come about partly due to recent financial reforms. The situation was exceptional since £1 million of capital owed to bankers had suddenly become due for redemption thanks to a new state fiscal innovation. An earlier Treasury commission had regularized the methods by making payments systematically ordered in sequence. In the long term this proved to be a successful development, but in the short term it led to the need for an increased proportion of revenue to make these payments that simply was not there. The crown, perhaps, could have found a way to pay it back but with war looming against the Dutch, and Charles’s secret signing of the Treaty of Dover with France, it could not be risked. The impetus behind the Stop was less to do with bankruptcy and much more a scheme to ease the crown’s short-term debt, coupled with the belief that the fight against the Dutch would be a long-term investment through trade gains. As it turned out, the war was a disaster and parliament forced Charles to pull out of the Third Dutch War in 1673.6 By 1678 the royal debt was at a record £2.5 million due primarily to expensive war preparations. In addition, customs revenue was seriously affected after a three-year ban on trade with France had been introduced. Against this situation the Lord Treasurer, Thomas Osborne Danby, battled hard to manage parliament. His main coup was to persuade enough MPs to secure a three-year renewal of both the additional excise of 1671–7 and the auxiliary wine duties of 1670–8. If it had not been for this, Charles would probably not have gained the final power to survive the hostile parliaments of the Exclusion period. The additional revenue gave the crown roughly £214,000 extra, which, when combined with savings made by retrenchment measures under the new Treasury regime, gave Charles just enough to live within his means.7 The king could now hardly hope for ‘forced loans’ through his prerogative. Instead he had to instigate more businesslike attractions to creditors, while simultaneously building up trust through values of probity and punctuality— not easy for a king associated with a lavish lifestyle and shadowy foreign policy. Not surprisingly, such values along with prudence, visibility, and predictability were

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 to become fundamental features synonymous with emerging notions of both credit and objectivity. Despite the débâcle of the ‘Stop’ and the secretive dealings of the king, mechanisms designed to promote credibility had, as we have seen, already commenced with the Additional Act of 1665. The aim of the initiative, vigorously promoted by Downing, was to facilitate the government’s wartime borrowing. (p.19) The scheme required parliament to guarantee that loans made to the king for the conduct of the Dutch War should be systematically repaid with interest out of specially marked funds. The lenders would be given official receipts that were numbered in sequence and signed by the Lord Treasurer and chancellor of the Exchequer. These receipts, in turn, could—if they wished—be sold and assigned to others by a written endorsement. The 6 per cent per annum interest was guaranteed and paid half-yearly, while the easy transferability of the security made it a modern innovation in England. It was hoped that this would keep the country abreast of new fiscal inventions from its main commercial rival, the Dutch. For generations the Dutch had been well used to investing in a variety of state-guaranteed securities. This financial instrument was destined to become a very important feature of the fiscal developments that characterized the period just after the Glorious Revolution. Ultimately it was a step towards practical parliamentary control of the country’s purse. For in 1666, much to the king’s annoyance, the principle of ‘appropriation’ (legal clauses tying the spending of money to the purpose intended) was combined with demands for an ‘audit’ (provision for a retrospective check that the appropriation had been obeyed).8 It was also under the impetus of Downing, one-time scoutmaster-general of Cromwell’s army in Scotland, that Treasury bookkeeping practices were regular ized and registers kept regarding most aspects of Treasury business. Without the consolidation of the Treasury’s power the direct collection of revenue would have been extremely difficult. With some justification Howard Tomlinson prefers to emphasize this period as the crucial moment regarding the history of English fiscal innovations: For most of the essential features of the ‘financial revolution’—the notion of a National Bank (the Exchequer rather than a private institution), the securing of Treasury supremacy and the institution of a modern system of debt management—had been attempted, with greater or lesser success, prior to the invitation of William of Orange. It was the wars against the Dutch rather than those against the French that were instrumental in creating the conditions for fiscal change in the late seventeenth century. Again, like the equally important fiscal innovations of the 1640s and 1650s it came during a period of ‘parliamentary war-mongering’. The use of Dutch fiscal

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 techniques to fight the Dutch themselves would greatly accelerate after the Glorious Revolution with war against France.9 Between 1677 and 1679 Charles was faced with legislative clauses of unparalleled strictness. The campaign to curb the crown’s financial autonomy culminated in the resolutions of the House of Commons on 7 January 1681 that anyone who lent money to the government or dealt in government securities without (p.20) parliamentary authority would be judged an enemy of parliament. Roseveare has interpreted these moves as the precursor to a ‘philosophy of accountability’ that would subsequently ‘shape post-Revolution financial control’. Similarly, Patrick O’Brien and Philip A. Hunt have argued that prior to the Restoration responsibility for receiving the revenues had been diffused among several courts, chambers, and offices of state, all with their own ad hoc form of bookkeeping. Now, unlike many of England’s European rivals— most notably the French—the majority of such revenues were sent to and accounted for by one centralized authority: ‘When such figures are available it becomes possible for some authority (the king, parliament or the treasury) to audit, monitor and plan for the expenditures by separate departments of government’. Thus, by the late seventeenth century, all fiscal departments had become more accountable to a single body, the Treasury. Hence a map of the flow of money available to the king’s advisers, and the various parliamentary committees created to examine the public accounts was available to scrutiny. This form of tractability would, over the course of the eighteenth century, lend credibility to the fiscal system and, as John Brewer has convincingly argued, provide a crucial input to confidence in public credit.10

The Glorious Revolution, Taxation, And The Rise Of The English State The foremost legacy of the Glorious Revolution was the initiation of a long period of war with France and its allies that lasted nearly half of the following 130 years. During this period the state became the largest employer, borrower, and spender of money in England/Britain.11 In terms of the financial settlement with Dutch William and Mary, a central objective was to ensure that the crown could never become financially independent of parliament as had occurred under Charles II and James II. Now the crown was to be granted the revenue for no longer than a specified period. The Commons, if it chose, could thus force its wishes on the monarch by withholding supply. In this sense, the import of the financial settlement, compounded by war, was more significant than a change of ruler or the Bill of Rights. It was to result in a dramatic change in the shape and context of power. Parliament was, this time, determined to overturn the equation that ‘When Princes have not needed money, they have not needed us’. Without assured revenue for life, William and Mary remained reliant on parliament. Similarly, Sir Thomas Meres had earlier told the House of Commons: ‘I am for keeping the revenue from being too big, for then you’ll need Parliaments’. This sentiment was finally legally grounded in the Triennial Act of 1694. As we have (p.21) seen, all these developments were part of a country, and later Tory, Page 6 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 objective of administrative vigilance: to monitor and have some check on the power of the king and, vitally, his ministers who ran the executive machinery of the state. Having some control of the revenue was an effective means of making the ministers accountable. It also served to secure a fund of credit to moneylenders based on taxes that were glued to temporal specificity and would not end with the death of the monarch.12 Parliament, especially the House of Commons, would now control the country’s purse. In 1690 Wiliam and Mary were voted the customs revenue for just four years—although this was renewed in 1694 for a further five years. For the first time since Henry VI (and Charles I in 1627) the monarch was not voted, much to William’s disgust, the customs for life. Parliament estimated that it was worth some £577,507 per year, constituting 45 per cent of the revenue allocated to the new monarchy. The rest of the crown’s income was comprised of the hereditary and temporary excise estimated at £610,486 per year; unlike the customs, William and Mary did obtain the temporary excise for the duration of their lives. Further, William was authorized by parliament to borrow £250,000 on the security of the temporary excise and a further £500,000 on the customs. Nonetheless, the crown would have no choice but to rely on parliament to vote money for wars. All in all this was obviously not what he had either wanted or expected.13 Wiliam and Mary’s financial predicament was made worse by the royal debt they inherited. For example, sums amounting to £384,368 were still owed on arrears incurred prior to 1671; not less than £300,000 was owed to the army and navy; a further figure of £277,525 had also recently been amassed; and money totalling around £477,400 was still owed to the bankers who had lost their money in 1672 during the Stop of the Exchequer. In addition, the £1,459,293 accumulated total of these debts was being funded at a charge of 8 per cent per annum, requiring £116,743 of revenue to service it, while the costs accumulating on the interest of the bankers’ debt came to £79,566 per year, which brought the annual charge on interest to nearly £200,000.14 Although the work of government had greatly expanded under Charles II and James II, it was slight compared to what developed after the Revolution. The (p. 22) explosion in the size of the navy, military, and diplomatic services required an ever more elaborate network of communications and labour. To fund these services required the government to increasingly borrow and service subsequent loans through taxation. Consequently, one of the primary roles of parliament was to ensure there was an adequate administrative infrastructure to ensure trust in the fiscal future of the state. The result was a dramatic enlargement of administration between 1689 and 1715.15

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 The huge expansion of the executive was fuelled by the two major wars with France immediately after the Revolution. If England did not fight France, so the argument went, James II would probably return with a French army, the Dutch would be defeated, and Protestantism would be totally eclipsed. William’s concerns were also obviously different to former English monarchs, with his primary aims being the protection of Dutch trade and the defence of Protestantism from the French. Regarding the latter, parliament had never opposed military action against European popery. What was new this time, as Scott points out, ‘was a monarch whose own priority was to give this practical expression’.16 From this perspective the Nine Years War, far more than the events of 1688–9, represents the real revolution. Expensive and sustained warfare needed money and plenty of it. Charles Davenant, a former excise commissioner, Tory MP, and later commissioner of exports and imports, caught the new mood and environment when he wrote in 1695: ‘For war is quite changed from what it was in the time of our forefathers; when in a hasty expedition and a pitched field, the matter was decided by courage; but now the whole art of war is in a manner reduced to money; and now-a-days, That prince, who can best find money to feed, cloath and pay his army, not he that has the most valiant troops, is surest of success and conquest’.17 Brewer has articulated the irresolvable paradox that lay at the heart of parliamentary politics. The Glorious Revolution embodied both a Protestant and a ‘country’ revolution, which was concerned both to preserve the true (Protestant) faith as England’s official religion and to reduce the powers of central government. However, in order to defend and secure the revolution from its opponents, the power and consequently sinews of the state had to grow as never before. Thus, although opponents of big government fought to stem its expansion, they also recognized that the establishment of the ‘fiscal military state’ protected an Englishman’s liberty as well as threatening it. The place of the excise loomed (p.23) large within this contradiction. Many considered that a general excise was a genuine possibility and would allow the monarch to acquire the fiscal independence that s/he had been deprived of during the Glorious Revolution settlement. As John Swynfen declared in familiar rhetoric during a debate over the possibility of a general excise in 1690: ‘I am not for saving our lands to enslave our persons by excise’. Another anonymously penned memorial also warned that year: ‘There’s no end of this tax! If you lay it now on some commodities, next time you may lay it on others, and this we ought the more to consider because of those in our Court and Councils who have been bred up in Holland where everything is taxed’. Excises were seen to jeopardize the Glorious Revolution and as a result the land tax went on to bear the brant of taxation for the first twenty-five years of the post-Revolution period.18 However, a few contemporary economic commentators from both Whig and Tory sides started to emphasize the virtues of the excise. Davenant, for example, believed the excise would save landowners from becoming indebted and losing Page 8 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 their estates to unscrupulous scriveners and sly bankers as the high cost of war continued to make deep inroads. In addition, he claimed, the excise would overcome the regional inequality that characterized the returns of the land tax. According to Davenant the excise targeted the two-thirds of the population unaffected by the land tax and customs. Such a policy would have a moral edge since that proportion included greedy ‘usurers, lawyers, tradesmen and retailers’. Playing on contemporary Tory prejudices, Davenant sneered that this group, who ‘maintain themselves by our vice and luxury, and who make the easiest and most certain gain and profit in the commonwealth, contribute little to its support; all which, by excises, would be brought to bear their proportion of the common burthen’. In this respect he was revealing himself as a country Tory who disliked the heavy taxation of the landed class and the expansion of the executive and new monied ranks.19 Most Tories, however, even those with a country interest, did not share Davenant’s conclusions and passionately opposed the excise. Such was their opposition that William and Mary could only expand the excise to a few new commodities—most prominently on salt and hides. The same arguments that, as we shall see, reared their head in 1733 with such ferocity, were already well established by 1700. It was argued that the excise taxed necessaries—items like beer, salt, leather, coal, and candles—and so bore unjustly on the poor, while the excise officers had too much power—especially their right to enter private dwellings to investigate suspected fraud. Indeed, it was claimed, such was the efficiency and regularity of this form of income that the role of parliament (p. 24) would be substantially reduced and the court’s power increased. It was further argued that the huge increase in revenue officials would give new and, perhaps, decisive patronage to the ministry in parliamentary boroughs. Lastly, excises were a foreign invention that made them a symbol of Continental tyranny and popery. This rearguard action had the impact, as we have seen, of limiting the arms of government and helping to make the state’s institutions a little more visible and accountable through political scrutiny. Many MPs, especially those from the country, expected prudent and honest government clothed in a strong Anglican tone. Most were gentry who had neither the resources nor, indeed, the desire to become powerful politicians or administrators, and since they were not paid wages they found it expensive coming to stay in London. At the centre of ‘country party’ expectations was a strict appropriation of supply, a regular parliamentary audit of accounts, and vigilant control of government credit. The various parliamentary accounts commissions set up to investigate public expenditure during the 1690s, early 1700s, and again in the early 1710s eventually spearheaded these objectives.20 Ironically, as Brewer in particular has emphasized, this made the state even more powerful, since it made its actions look more legitimate. Parliamentary commissioners investigating all aspects of public administration and public finance litter the eighteenth century. Ultimately, Page 9 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 as long as civil society was protected from militarization, the fiscal-military state could function. Military action may have been out of sight, but it was certainly felt by the country’s purse.21 Although taxes were raised on a significant number of commodities during the reign of William and Maty, the increase was small in comparison to the hike under Queen Anne. To help prepare the ground, Anne stated in her first speech to parliament in October 1702 that she was unhappy with the general state of revenue accounts: ‘That my Subjects may the more cheerfully bear the necessary taxes, I desire you to inspect the accounts of the public receipt and expenditure, and if there have been any abuses or mismanagements, I hope you will detect them, that the offenders may be punished’. Between 1702 and 1714 more duties were levied on new commodities than had been imposed in total since 1660. This greatly expanded the work of customs and excise, while other taxes also required new organizations such as the departments for the land tax and salt duties. The overall result was a large extension in the number of people employed by government in the collection of revenue.22 (p.25) Meanwhile, the union with Scotland in 1707 altered the national structure of customs and excise. The English customs at this point averaged £1,350,000 and the excise £950,000, whereas the Scottish revenue (which was still privately farmed) only amounted to £30,000 and £35,000 respectively. Since it was deemed unfair to burden the Scottish people with the English national debt that was absorbing so much of the English purse, a scheme of ‘equivalence’ was arrived at. This meant that Scotland would receive a cash sum of £398,085 followed by a further instalment in seven years’ time to balance the increased taxation accompanying the Union.23 Such a relatively generous settlement also came with a clause. Whitehall insisted on sending to Scotland one of its revenue henchmen, John Donner, as ‘Methodizer of Excise’, to try and put the Scottish proceedings on a parity with England. There were numerous differences in the methods of collecting tax that exacerbated the situation. For example, English beer was of two kinds, strong and small, with the former paying four shillings and ninepence per barrel and the latter just one shilling and threepence a barrel. Conversely, Scottish beer was of neither standard, being somewhere in between both strengths, and retailing at about one penny per English quart. The differences in the composition, measurement, and calculation of duties made a union of the two departments extremely difficult. It was found that many of the duties that Scotland was to be exempt from were only temporary in England. It was thus deemed best to defer the question of adjustment until they expired. The duty that created the most tension was for salt, which was used in the crucial Scottish fishing industry; this led to Scottish exemption from the salt duty for seven years.24

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 Fiscal Innovations And Taxation England in 1688 still had only a relatively elementary bureaucratic set-up and was poor by comparison with much of Europe. Within this context direct and indirect taxes were never going to be enough to provide the necessary expenditure for sustained war. Taxation, partly to pay off the interest on government short-term loans, was already at stretching point. As we shall now see, a new approach was needed to fund the escalation of military involvement, and the solution was to come in the development of well-organized long-term loans. The Nine Years War (1688–97) cost an average of £5.5 million per annum. How was a parliament, predominantly composed of landowners, going to finance such expenses? The options were shrinking by the day with the French economic blockade hurting, and rising prices crippling consumption. As we have seen, (p. 26) there was a deep aversion to a ‘general excise’ on all retailed commodities, and fiscal advisers had therefore concentrated on levying wealth and status. The introduction of the poll tax was deeply unpopular and in the event not hugely successful. It was soon abandoned in 1698 with the yield and distribution from 1693 taken as a fixed quota to be shared out among the counties. This was subsequently, and a little misleadingly, referred to as the ‘land tax’ and became a relatively reliable annual resource (pitched at between one and four shillings in the pound). Between 1689 and 1700 these assessed taxes produced over 39 per cent of government income compared with below 24 per cent from customs and under 26 per cent from excise.25 The deteriorating state of the nation’s finance threatened to bring English involvement in war to an end in 1696–7. This, along with poor harvests, made the possibility of a return to Stuart rule under French guidance a greater possibility. Due to a number of factors, the government had borrowed more than it could repay on short term. First, it had underestimated and not planned for the length of the war. Secondly, parliament had been unwilling to impose new taxes for more than limited periods, since it believed that consumers should not be burdened with wartime taxes after war had been concluded. Thirdly, the number of taxes on which short-term loans were made had become too extensive and was verging on chaos. It was clear that the situation would have been far less desperate had they got larger loans spread over a longer period serviced by fewer taxes. Lastly, and perhaps above all, there had been insufficient research done on the prospective yield of new taxes, which had saddled them with the greater loans they were struggling to repay. Davenant, Gregory King, and other numerically minded contemporaries, complained that consumption patterns should be systematically examined before the yield of new taxes could be calculated. The whole situation was compounded by the recoinage of 1696–7 in which the circulation of specie was written down by 50 per cent. Within this

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 complicated and potentially dire environment the credibility of government tallies took a real hammering.26 In desperation the government resorted to three foreign financial instruments, namely tontines, annuities, and lotteries, all of which appealed to the prevalent gambling spirit that the predominantly Dutch advisers to William and Mary sought to cultivate and exploit. The Tontine Act to raise £1 million was introduced in 1693; the subscriber would nominate a life and receive 10 per cent per annum for the duration of that life until 1700 after which he or she would receive 7 per cent. For the less optimistic subscribers there was a 14 per cent annuity on their own lives that, in the event, received nearly all the £1 million subscription it was designated. All loans for life and long annuities were received at the Exchequer. The subscriber was given a tally of receipt and a paper standing order that was assignable for the future payment of the annuity. The official establishment of the (p.27) national debt is usually taken from this Act. The annuities were to be paid by a fund secured by a new excise on duties taken from beer and other liquors placed in a separate fund at the Exchequer. This established two principles; first, that the annuitant would not see his or her capital again, and secondly, that the creditor lent upon the security of an Act of sovereign parliament and not upon the security of the king’s word. The ‘Million Lottery’ of March 1694 offered 100,000 tickets at £10 with the least prize being £1 per annum for sixteen years and the best at £1,000 per annum paid by the salt and liquor duties. The lotteries of 1711–14 paid a top prize of £20,000. Payment could be made by a certain amount over a defined number of years (although in the case of the 1697 lottery no term was actually set). These three financial instruments represent a deliberate move into the realm of long-term borrowing. They also put a greater reliance and public faith in the ability of the revenue bodies to collect taxes, coupled with a trust in mathematical calculations, such as mortality tables.27 The 1670s and 1680s had seen the credibility of individual bankers substantially eroded but not the belief in banking principles. In fact the general fear now was that there were too few bankers and that those that existed operated far too secretively. A public guarantee of a national bank was needed to underpin a new system of credit. The story normally begins with the setting up of a House of Commons committee in January 1692 to consider the realm of long-term borrowing. The committee eventually came down in favour of a proposal advanced by the successful Scottish projector William Paterson and the financier Michael Godfrey. Disagreements subsequently ensued and the debate continued for another two years. The actual legislation that inaugurated the Bank of England, the Tonnage Act of April 1694, was devised by the chancellor of the Exchequer, Charles Montagu, as a compromise with the Paterson–Godfrey proposal. This Whig creation pledged taxes on shipping and liquors to a tune of £140,000 per annum to secure a loan of £1.2 million from creditors. In the event some 1,268 subscribers rapidly filled it with Paterson and Godfrey appointed Page 12 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 directors of the Bank. Under a charter of incorporation they were empowered to borrow money on parliamentary security, deal in bills of exchange, and act as pawnbrokers. Tories condemned the bank as ‘fit only for republics’, antiagrarian, and demonstrative of an unnatural transformation in power from land to finance and commerce. Interestingly, Edward Hughes has shown how the Bank’s system of management was modelled upon the excise office. This, he claims, ‘furnishes no small tribute to the undoubted efficiency of the new revenue department’. Perhaps, not surprisingly, some of the newly appointed excise commissioners, most notably Charles Duncombe, greatly opposed the establishment of the Bank because it threatened their own handsome profits as creditors to the government.28 (p.28) The single greatest category of long-term debts was held not by the great companies, but by individuals who held fixed term annuities. These were favoured because, although they were a fixed term obligation, they would eventually be paid off and therefore avoided the fear of a perpetual national debt. But because annuities (often ninety-nine years in all) were irredeemable they were also a disadvantage since the state had opted to pay a fixed interest rate for a specified time. Therefore if interest rates fell, as they did after 1713, the state would not benefit. Between 1710 and 1714 the Tory government introduced new or revised excise duties on candles, hops, soap, paper, wine, and starch to service £6.3 million in government loans and lotteries.29 The general economic background to the rise of the new financial interest and the fiscal innovations just described was not good. As early as 1694 England was paying more resources into European war than any of her allies. Directly supplying the array was impractical, which meant spending domestic taxes and loans abroad—thus threatening domestic employment, trade, and the balance of payments. Very little of this money was likely to return to English shores. The country’s trading surpluses with Europe primarily depended on commerce in sugar, tobacco, dyestuffs, and East Indian textiles from its various colonies. War drained the country of the manpower needed to sustain this trade, and therefore delayed the times at which the merchant vessels could sail. This invariably meant sailing at adverse times of the year. In addition, there was now little protection against the numerous French privateers roving the channel for easy pickings. AM this was potentially devastating for England’s military commitments. It was a tightrope between re-exportation sales to Europe—if they could get through the blockade—and bringing back bullion. As D. W. Jones has shown, the 1690s nearly witnessed the complete collapse of England’s economy rather than its rise. This was compounded by the exportation of English silver to Europe through coin clipping resulting in the Recoinage Act of 1697. Interestingly, however, as Jones also points out, clipping actually aided the economy for a brief period. It provided new income and therefore spending,

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 while the coin melted down produced much-needed bullion to pay debts that otherwise would not have been paid.30 Excise revenues were depleted by a large slump in brewing. There were some 8,800 fewer brewing victuallers in 1695 than there had been just before the Revolution. This was still further weighted by internal fighting within the Excise Office that led to loss of morale among the officers and a surge in corruption. Within this environment government attempts to expand the arms of indirect tax and impose a general excise, rather like that witnessed during the English Civil War, were thwarted by parliament. Many landed gentlemen would rather pay (p. 29) high land taxes than allow the expansion of the evil republican excise and its swarm of insidious money-grabbing ‘locusts’.31 Over the course of the 1690s two political parties had crudely emerged out of court and country lines. Broadly, the Whigs fervently supported the wars on land and sea, and worked hard to provide new ways of financing the ever-growing expenditure that was needed. The landed ranks were partly willing, at least initially, to pay the brunt of high taxation out of a seemingly urgent need to protect the English Protestant polity from ‘popery and slavery’. However, they soon became disillusioned. They constantly scrutinized reports demonstrating military and naval incompetence and simultaneously raised the volume of their complaints. The great increase in the scale of government and in the amount of money handled highlighted the impact of incompetence and increased corruption. But above all the Tories were deeply opposed to a land war and wanted to see financial energies focused on a cheaper naval war. This disillusionment was reinforced by their belief that the war was being prolonged to feed the interests of the Whigs, who were now associated with the new ‘monied interest’, and Dutch foreigners seen to be exploiting England’s wealth for their own ends.32 England’s luck, however, experienced a dramatic change during the War of the Spanish Succession in the 1700s. It was here that England’s trade doubled and at times tripled. Gold from Brazil also started restocking England’s bullion supply due to its trading surplus with Portugal. Even more important was the way in which the geography of war was now favouring England at the expense of its European trading rivals. For example, England became one of the most important suppliers of military textiles for the new standard uniforms of the Russian army and those armies being financed by the English. In addition, rival woollen textiles manufactured in the Low Countries and in the Saxon and Lusatian areas were severely disrupted by the war now coagulating there. English exports of grain were also booming as European supplies continued to suffer under the burden of sustained land war. Lastly, huge investments made in India, fuelled by the battle between the new and old East India Companies, had led to a great deal of silver accumulating within that area. This now begun to bear fruit, sustaining a low of imports and therefore re-exports for a significant Page 14 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 period. Consequently, the prior negative balance of bullion purchases through East India re-export sales evolved into a positive one during the 1700s.33 Despite this change in economic fortune, the land tax continued to grate on the patience of the landed classes. Indeed, their wealth accounted for over £46 million out of a total taxation figure of some £122 million between 1688 and 1714. As already noted, they began to suspect the Whig junta of deliberately sustaining war to feed the ballooning financial guts of the new monied ranks, which the equally (p.30) new political order had so effectively created and fed. It was within this context that the Tories were re-elected in 1710 and subsequently lowered the land tax with the coming of peace in 1713. Robert Harley, the earl of Oxford, also successfully introduced a number of new inland duties on domestically produced commodities. So, ironically, it was the actions of the excise’s sternest opponents which eventually elevated it to centre stage. Thereafter the excise rapidly started its ascent to become the most important source of revenue to a state increasingly built and moulded by the urgency of war. By 1714 the landed class were actually contributing a diminishing proportion of total tax revenue. By the mid-eighteenth century it was beyond dispute that consumers as a whole were bearing the brunt of indirect taxes in the form of both customs and, especially, the excise. In addition, the new wealth stemming from dealings in the form of public funds and securities meant that landowners were able to diversify their sources of income by buying into the growing issues of government stock.34

Taxation And The Hanoverian Succession When George of Hanover took over the British throne in 1714 his government faced debts totalling approximately £48 million. Of this £40.3 million was ‘funded’, by which parliament had pledged public funds to the payment of interest at rates ranging between 6 and 9 per cent The rest was unfunded and consisted of Exchequer bills totalling more than £4.5 million, and an intermediate ‘floating debt’ owed by the navy, ordinance, and victualling departments all amounting to £3 million per annum on interest which was half its total revenue income.35 Against this background of debt the air was alive with the threat of Jacobites and Protestant anxiety. In the aftermath of the Hanoverian succession numerous revenue officers got entrapped within the frenzied atmosphere, and Jacobite sympathies were, whenever located, ruthlessly expelled from the revenue service. In 1716 the Treasury informed the Excise Office that a number of excise surveyors and farmers ‘did on the first day of November last past in the Great parlour in the Talbott Inn of Stourbridge in the county of Worcester in a very solemn manner drink the Pretenders Health there by the Name of King James the third’. One of the officers later pleaded that it had simply been the drink Page 15 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 talking: It was ‘very much against his Inclination and the Defr. saith that as soon as ever he came to himself and was sober he began to be very uneasy sorry and ashamed that he had been guilty of so much Disloyalty and Folly’. He was subsequently excused with a (p.31) caution while the other men were dismissed—although, as it turned out, they had already been expelled by the excise several weeks earlier.36 A month later the Treasury was sent an anonymous letter concerning a certain William Harrison, ‘now an Examiner at the excise Office’, who was ‘a noted profest Jacobite[,] the author of a scandalous & seditious pamphlet called the Pilgrims[,] dispersed about the Town by himself and his Brother a Bookseller and the sd. Wm. Harrison had formerly writ verses in praise of dr. Sacheverell and has also cast many scandalous Reflexions about King Wiiiam & the Duke of Marlborough’. The anonymous letter also claimed he had knowledge concerning two other excise employees who were Jacobites. The commissioners ordered an investigation beginning with an analysis of the said book, The Pilgrims, published in 1701. They claimed it appeared to be simply an ‘impertinent Foolish book intended for a comedy, but to contain nothing that is scandalous or seditious’. There was also no evidence regarding verse in praise of Henry Sacheverell or any of the other accusations. However, they did uncover credible information that strongly suggested he was ‘a friend to the Pretender’, which resulted in his discharge. As to the other two men accused, William Chainy and John Thorn, the latter resigned and the former remained, being ‘well dispersed to King George’.37 In addition to their tasks of gauging and collecting tax, the revenue departments provided the state with a ready mobilized police force. March 1717 was particularly volatile, with Jacobite rebels passing through Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire. On their Journey they ‘extorted from several Victuallers, Malsters and Chandlers, and Printers of Linen several sums of money being the Duty then charged upon them, and which was to have been collected at the following sitting’. In total they took £379—some of which, it would seem, was given voluntarily.38 The late 1710s were awash with Jacobite paranoia which continued to intensify as the decade drew to a close. In November 1719 the Treasury was worried about rumours of seditious meetings in Holywell. They had heard that several young Gentlemen & others at Holywell have a while since formed themselves into a Troop of Dragoons with the proper officers who take their several Filles accordingly, possibly wearing cockades &c. There had also resided amongst them since last spring a person whom they themselves represent and commissioned from abroad to keep up their spirits and dispose the country to an insurrection at a due time which

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 perhaps may be the present. This man—calls himself Cutler and is said to be a bastard of Ormonds. On receiving this news the Treasury immediately notified the nearest policing resource, namely the excise, to investigate.39 (p.32) The Excise Office promptly dispatched instructions for their local collector, based in Holywell, to make inquiries. The collector, R. Davies, quickly reported back that there seemed to be very little in the story. It was true that there were a group of young men who got drunk with the Dragoons, and that a man called Cutler had on occasion also drunk with them but that was all. The youths held no Jacobite allegiances and were simply enjoying themselves, while Cutler, although a shady figure with ‘a zeal to popery’, did not stay long and spent most of the time in Chester. He was said to be either a Yorkshireman or an Irishman, and, although ‘suspected by his Maj.tys Friends to be an Enemy to the government’, he had no following, and there were no signs of insurrection. Davies assured the Excise Office that he would be keeping a close eye for ‘any Treachery or Rebellion’ by residing in Holywell during his rounds.40 Customs and excise officers frequently acted as the state’s spies in locating known Jacobites. For example, the customs collector at Liverpool was ordered to do his best to apprehend the former chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir William Wyndham, a well-known Jacobite. Indeed all employees were ordered ‘to use their utmost care and diligence to detect all secret practices whatever which may at any time be carrying on to the disturbance of the Government’. In November 1715 the collector at Liverpool expressed his fear for the safety of money, books, and bonds he held in the wake of news from Preston that the Old Pretender was imminently expected.41 This politically fraught environment was mirrored in the fiscal arena. Something drastic clearly needed to be done to tackle the national debt. Individual creditors with redeemable annuities were threatened with premature repayment unless they accepted a reduction of interest. Similarly, the great corporations were persuaded that it was to their long-term advantage to accept a little less. Thus in 1717 legislation was passed that converted selected liabilities to a rate of 5 per cent per annum, saving the government some £326,000 per annum. These savings were known as ‘the Sinking Fund’ and were to be used to buy up and cancel other debts. This still left ‘irredeemables’ consisting of long annuities of capital, which yielded their holders nearly 7 per cent per annum and were not due to finish til between 1792 and 1807, while the misleadingly termed short annuities, giving 9 per cent per annum, did not end until 1742. These were therefore a safe, substantial, and almost perpetual income for the holders. To compulsorily terminate them would instantly destroy the government’s credit and ability to raise future loans. Consequently to make creditors exchange them would require something quite special. The eventual carrot to be offered was a Page 17 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 risky scheme for capital appreciation. Holders of the debt were to be offered not money, nor other government stock, but new South Sea Company stock: twothirds eventually succumbed.42 (p.33) The only conceivable gain for the South Sea Company and its potential shareholders was that the company might become profitable leading to massive share price rises. This was coupled with the certainty that for every £100 of debt taken over, the company could issue shares of an equivalent amount. Thus if all the redeemables and irredeemables were subscribed, the company could create £31 million of stock. If the company’s shares rose to say double overnight, a £100 share would become £200 and cancel £200 of debt. Hence £15.5 million worth of stock would clear the whole national debt, leaving the company free to sell the remaining £15.5 million of stock that it was entitled to create. It was therefore in the company’s interest for the value of its stock to go as high as possible to enable it to launch even more stock, since the ratio of exchange had not been defined prior to the launch of the scheme.43 In the event the shares tripled in value. Within a fortnight of launching this innovative and daring scheme and before any debts were taken over, the company was able to sell £2.25 million of its anticipated surplus stock at 300 per cent, a fortnight later £1.5 million at 400 per cent, and seven weeks after that £5 million at 1,000 per cent. Carried along by this frenzied buying, the owners of irredeemable annuities could no longer resist and 80 per cent of their assets were eagerly surrendered for the company’s stock, as were 85 per cent of the redeemables. By the end of the operation £26 million of the public claims on the national debt had been handed over for company shares with a face value of £10 million. Sound judgement, including subscriptions made by the Bank of England, the Million Bank, and numerous wealthy individuals, became submerged in an orgy of speculation. The bubble finally burst as external capital left England to promote schemes in the Low Countries, and withdrawals of loans made on the company’s stock by the Bank of England, the East India Company, and the Million Bank led to internal drains. The pound had also fallen to a very low level followed by a credit crunch in London.44 All told, an estimated 30,000 people were at one time sucked into the South Sea Company’s scheme. Not everyone suffered but the majority lost a fortune. Investors started selling in their droves once it was realized that the commercial prospects of the company were groundless. On the fourth flotation of the shares on 1 September they stood at 775, but by 1 October they had dropped to 290. Stocks from the Bank of England and East India Company also followed a similar trajectory.45 Although this shook public credit to its foundations it did not topple, and ironically it eventually left the national debt in a more sturdy position. This outcome had been anything but inevitable but was crucial in strengthening the Page 18 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 increasingly distinct and innovative English fiscal system. For example, in 1717 the (p.34) annual charge of terminable annuities to public expenditure was £1,870,000. Five years later it had been reduced to £212,000. This episode led to two major developments. First, the power of the incorporated companies was diluted by broadening the base of the debt and using City underwriters. Secondly, the horror of the bubble dramatically revealed the need for greater fiscal probity and vigilance. City underwriters, such as Samson Gideon, would purchase government stocks at a discount and then sell them in the market place for a profit. These stocks could be traded and exchanged for cash, the whole process eventually culminating in the 1770s with the building of the Stock Exchange to house such activities under one roof. In 1709 the number of stockholders was 10,000 but by the outbreak of the Seven Years War it had increased to 60,000. As the number of public creditors grew, the corporations came to assume a managerial role acting more like fiscal departments of the government.46 In conclusion we can say that the subsequent dependence on indirect taxes, especially after 1714, was linked to the growth of the long-term national debt. Within this context the development of a market in securities in London between 1688 and 1760 was of prime importance. If the lenders could not have sold to a third party their claim on the state to annual interest, then the government’s system of long-term borrowing would never have got off the ground. The rise of the market allowed permanent debts of the state to become liquid for the individual—subject only to the risk of capital loss if the market prices fell. Lastly, the period between the early 1690s and the early 1750s witnessed a major reduction in interest rates for both long- and short-term loans. One reason for this was perceived greater political stability and public confidence in the system,47 the bottom line for public credit being trust in the state’s ability to farm the purse of the people, increasingly through their consumption of imported goods and especially domestic manufactures. Notes:

(1) ‘The Introduction of Excise, 1643’, in J. Thirsk (ed.), Seventeenth-Century Documents (Oxford, 1972), 631–2; J. S. Wheeler, The Making of a World Power: War and the Military Revolution in Seventeenth Century England (Stroud, 1999), 77; M. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Administration and Response (Suffolk, 1994), 2 and 8–10. The significance of the Stuarts’ inability to wage successful war is described by J, Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000) (2) C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1660–1688 (Oxford, 1975), 1; H. Roseveare, The Financial Revolution, 1660-1760 (London, 1991), 6–7; P. O’Brien and P. Hunt, ‘The Emergence and Consolidation of Excises in the English Fiscal System before the Glorious Revolution’, BTR 1 (1997) 35–58; M. J. Page 19 of 24

 

The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 221 and 254–5. Christopher Hill claims that ‘The military revolution necessitated a financial revolution’. See his God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, 1970), 68. (3) G. Holmes, The Making of a Great Power: Late Stuart and Early Georgian Britain (London, 1993), 33–5; J. R. Jones, Country and Court: England 1658–1714 (London, 1991), 58–9; Scott, England’s Troubles 414. For the collection of the hearth tax see L. M. Marshall, ‘The Levying of the Hearth Tax, 1662–1688’, EHR 51 (1936), 628–46. (4) Jones, Country and Court, 45, 59, and 155; Scott, England’s Troubles 413; Holmes, Making of a Great Power, 88–90. (5) H. Roseveare, The Treasury, 1660–1870: The Foundations of Control (London, 1973), 22–3 and 48–9; Scott, England’s Troubles, 401–2. For the importance of Dutch finance see M. ’t. Hart, ‘“The Devil or the Dutch”: Holland’s Impact on the Financial Revolution in Kngland, 1643–1694’, PER 2 (1991), 39–5.1, on 43. (6) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 21, and Treasury, 39; Holmes, Making of a Great Power, 90; Jones, Country and Court, 173; B. Coward, The Stuart Age: England, 1603–1714 (2nd edn., London, 1994), 305. The secret Treaty of Dover was signed in May 1670. Charles received a French pension of approximately £150,000 a year in peacetime and £225,000 in wartime to remain the ally of Louis XIV. He was also paid £160,000 for keeping parliament in abeyance, that is suspended, between 1676 and 1677. (7) Holmes, Making of a Great Power, 91. The ‘Exclusion Crisis’ describes the political turmoil surrounding the attempt to prevent the duke of York succeeding to the throne. (8) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 14 and Treasury, 23–4. (9) H. Tomlinson, ‘Financial and Administrative Developments in England, 1660– 1688’, in J. R. Jones (ed.), The Restored Monarchy 1660–1688 (London, 1979), 94–117, on 96–9 and 104–5; Scott, England’s Troubles, 397 and 415. (10) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 15–16; P. O’Brien and P. A. Hunt, ‘The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485–1815’, HR 160 (1993), 129–76, on 131–2; J. Brewer, ‘The English State and Fiscal Appropriation, 1688–1789’, P&S 16 (1988), 373–4. (11) Holmes, Making of a Great Power, 217–18; Jones, Country ami Court, 48 and 252; J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688– 1783 (London, 1989), 9 and 23–4.

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 (12) C. Roberts, ‘The Constitutional Significance of the Financial Settlement of 1690’, HJ 20 (1977), 59–76, on 65–75; Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 31–2 For the integration of the English and Dutch capital markets during this century see L. Neal, The Rise of Financial Capitalism: International Capital Markets in the Age of Reason (Cambridge, 1990), ch. 7. (13) Roberts, ‘Constitutional Significance’, 62–4. For political reasons William had renounced the deeply unpopular hearth tax in 1689. (14) Ibid. 65. J. K. Horsefield has documented the political and legal debates in the aftermath of the Stop, and speculates ‘that the most significant effect of the Stop was to postpone for as much as ten to fifteen years the beginning of jointstock banking in England’; see his ‘The “Stop of the Exchequer” Revisited’, EcHR, NS 35 (1982), 511–28. on 528. The repayment to the goldsmith bankers heralded in the national debt by the establishment of annuities; see F. Capie, ‘The Origins and Development of State Fiscal and Monetary Institutions in England’, in M. D. Bordo and R. Cortes-Conde (eds.), Transferring Wealth and Power from the Old to the New World: Monetary and fiscal Innovations in the 17th through the 19th Centuries (Cambridge, 2001), 19–58, on 44. (15) P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756 (London, 1967); C. Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship 1603–1763 (London, 1979); J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), 99–105. (16) Brewer, Sinews of Power, J. Miller, The Glorious Revolution (London, 1985; 2nd edn., London, 1997), 47; Scott, England’s Troubles, 478. (17) C. Davenant, An Essay upon Ways and Means (London, 1695}, in The Political and Commercial Works of Charles Davenant, ed. C. Whitworth, 5 vols. (London, 1771), i. 16. For the importance of Dutch trade in William’s agenda see J. Israel, ‘England, the Dutch, and the Struggle for Mastery of World Trade in the Age of the Glorious Revolution (1682–1702)’, in D. Hoak and M. Feingokl (eds.), The World of William and Mary: Anglo-Dutch Perspectives on the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, 1996), 75–86. (18) Brewer, Sinews of Power, pp. xix-xx and 142. J. Swynfen is quoted in J. V. Beckett, ‘Land Tax or Excise: The Levying of Taxation in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century England’, EHR 100 (1985), 300. The anonymous memorial is quoted in E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558– 1825 (Manchester, 1934), 172. (19) Beckett, ‘Land Tax or Excise’, 300–1 and 304–5, Davenant is quoted in M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (London, 1998), 166.

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 (20) J. A. Downie, ‘The Commission of Public Accounts and the Formation of the Country Party’, EHR 258 (1976), 33–51; J. Miller, Restoration England: The Reign of Charles 1 (London, 1985), 35–6; Jones, Country and Court, 48 and 85; Roseveare, Treasury, 54. (21) Plumb, Political Stability, 97; Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 216; Brewer, Sinews of Power, pp. xviii–xix and ‘The English State’, 288–385, on 363; L. Stone, ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed.), An Imperial State at War: Britain front 1698 to 1815 (London, 1994), 1–32, on 6–7 and 21–3. (22) Plumb, Political Stability, 115–17; Holmes, Augustan England, 239–61; S. Powell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), ii. 65. Anne is quoted in J. Owens, Plain Papers Relating to the Excise Branch of the Inland Revenue Department from 1621 to 1878: or A History of the Excise (Linlithgow, 1879), 15. (23) G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 34. The excise was first introduced in Scotland in 1644; see B. R.Leftwich, A History of the Excise; with Hints on Investigating Pension Claims (London, 1908), 56. For details concerning the actual tax charges imposed on Scotland see Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 70–2. (24) Owens, Plain Papers, 15; Leftwich, History of the Excise, 61–2. (25) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 34; Hughes, Studies, 168 (26) Dickson, Financial Revolution, 348–9; C. Brooks, ‘Projecting Political Arithmetic and the Act of 1685’, EcHR 97 (1982), 31–53. (27) Dicksona, Financial Revolution, 45–54 and 76–8; Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 218; Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 35; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 119–20. (28) Hughes, Studies, 172–3.; Dickson, Financial Revolution, 51–7; Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 219; Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 36; Coward, Stuart Age, 379; M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1995). 513. (29) Brewer, Sinews of Power, 122, and ‘The English State’, 350. (30) D. W. fones, ‘Sequel to Revolution: The Economics of England’s Emergence as a Great Power, 1688–1712’, in J. I. Israel (ed.), The Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on the Glorious Revolution and its World Impact (Cambridge, 1991), 389– 406, on 391–9; D. W. Jones, ‘Defending the Revolution: The Economics, Logistics, and finance of England’s War Effort, 1688–1712’, in Hoak and Feingold (eds.), World of William and Mary, 59–74, on 62–3 and 72.

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 (31) For the background to the mid-1690s excise debates see Brooks, ‘Projecting Political Arithmetic’, 46–8. (32) Miller, Glorious Revolution, 51; H. V. Bowen, ‘“The Pests of Human Society”: Stockbrokers, Jobbers and Speculators in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain’, H 78 (1993), 38–53. (33) Jones, ‘Sequel to Revolution’, 403–6, and ‘Defending the Revolution’, 70–3. (34) Brewer, Sinews of Power, 199–206; Plumb, Growth of Political Stability, 137; Dickson, The Financial Revolution, 29; Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 514 For the land tax during this period see C. Brooks, ‘Public Finance and Political Stability: The Administration of the Land Tax, 1688–1720’, HJ 17 (1974), 281– 300. (35) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 52–3. (36) Treasury to Excise, 20 Dec. 1716, CUST 48/11. (37) Treasury to Excise, 20 Dec. 1716; Excise to Treasury, 4 Jan. 1716[17]; Treasury to Excise, 9 Feb. 1716 [17]; Excise to Treasury, Feb. 1716[17]: PRO CUST 48/11. Henry Sacheverell was a Tory High Anglican who preached treasonable sermons condemning the Glorious Revolution and the subsequent regime. He became a hero during the widespread publicity surrounding his trial. (38) Excise to Treasury, 16 Mar. 1716[17], PRO CUST 48/11. (39) Treasury to Excise, 9 Nov. 1719, PRO CUST 48/11. (40) R. Davies to Excise, 24 Nov. 1719, PRO CUST 48/11. (41) E. A. Carson, The Ancient and Rightful Customs: A History of the English Customs Service (London, 1972), 61. (42) Dickson, Financial Revolution, 84–9 and 92–3; Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 33; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 124. (43) Dickson, Financial Revolution, 94 and 101; Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 55;Neal, Rise of Financial Capitalism, 98. (44) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 55; Dickson, Financial Revolution, 133–43; Neal, Rise of Financial Capitalism, 104–6. (45) Roseveare, Financial Revolution, 56–7. (46) Dickson, Financial Revolution, 168; Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 512; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 125–6.

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The Emergence of Public Credit:War, Revenue, and High Politics, 1643–1721 (47) Dickson, Financial Revolution,399–400, 457, and 482; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 116.

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0003

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the development of English commercial policy. It takes at its starting point the introduction of the Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1662, which stipulated that all commerce conducted between England and the Colonies was to be confined to English citizens. Keywords:   taxes, taxation, consumption, trade, Navigation Acts, commercial policy

An industrial Policy? Negotiating taxation, wrote Daniel Defoe in June 1712, was imbued with social difficulties: 'The Tradesmen cry out, Tax the Land; the Landed Men cry. Tax your Trade; the manufacturers cry. Tax your Foreign Goods; the Merchants cry. Tax your Home Consumption; the Plow man says, Tax your superfluities; the Retailers cry, Tax your General Consumption; Thus every Man speaks his own Way’, Despite the need to navigate this gamut of interests it is possible to detect a clear approach, albeit not always systematically applied, to domestic industry. It is difficult to identify a single origin to this policy but, perhaps, the best starting point is the introduction of the Navigation Acts.1 The establishment of the navy as a crucial instrument within English commercial policy emerged during the Interregnum and Restoration period. The significant legislation was the Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1662, against a background of the various naval wars with the Dutch. By the close of the century sea power had become intrinsic to state defence and trade. The relationship was also reciprocal in the sense that revenue from the latter funded the former. The first Navigation Page 1 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade Act of 1651 stipulated that only goods coming in from the country of origin or which had first exported them, would be allowed entry to the English or Irish market. Further, the merchandise had to be carried in English ships or ships belonging to the country from which the items originated. It was a policy explicitly aimed at snatching some of the lucrative Dutch carrying trade. Although the Dutch ships were technically superior they were, at this stage, largely unarmed. It was primarily because of this that the First Dutch War of 1652 brought them such terrible losses, much to the delight of English merchants who subsequently found it hard to forgive Cromwell when he decided to stop the hostilities for political and religious reasons.2 (p.36) To ensure all colonial cargoes were first landed at an English or Irish port, bonds had to be given to the governors of the English plantations. Under the Navigation Acts all commerce conducted between Europe and the Colonies was to be confined to English citizens—a category that included colonists and, until 1670, the Irish. Enumerated colonial goods heading for Europe had to first come via an English or Irish port before being re-exported, while enumerated commodities from Europe heading to a colony also had to initially enter through an English or Irish port. In addition, some colonial goods, such as naval stores and indigo, were given a subsidy, while certain other items like manufactured fur hats were prohibited. The general impact of the Acts amounted to a common market between England and its colonies, with the huge advantage lying with the former. Although the Acts protected the American merchants from Dutch and French competition, it forced them to compete with English merchants. The encumbrance of the Acts on the colonial merchants was considerable and it is not surprising to find them prominent among those seeking American independence over a century later.3 From the 1660s a policy designed to ensure that food provisions would always be available to the English labouring masses took root. The objective was to guarantee that they would be protected from dearth through stable supplies of corn. Setting the pace were the Corn Laws of 1663, 1670, and 1689, all of which were designed to encourage the corn producer and thus secure a regular flow of grain. The central mechanism was a sliding scale on imports that increased if there were plenty of domestic supplies, and decreased if that was not the case (bounties were later provided for home-produced corn exported in times of excess).4 Also commencing in the 1660s was a concerted targeting of Irish trade to England. In 1663 parliament erected a duty of £1 per head on all Irish cattle and 10s. on sheep to protect English and Welsh stock (and therefore the rent and value of land). Three years later a total ban on all foreign cattle, sheep, and pigs was enacted. William Petty claimed that before this legislation was passed something like three-fourths of all Irish foreign trade was to England, sinking to less than one-fourth afterwards. In addition, after years of enjoying trade parity Page 2 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade to the English colonies Ireland was brutally shut off from all participation in 1670. As T. J. Pittar of the London Custom House Statistical Office wrote in 1897: ‘Thus the commercial code of Ireland stood at the beginning of the eighteenth century in a condition which was most unfavourable to the development of those industries and trades as to which her national resources and geographical position would have best fitted her to compete successfully with other countries’.5 The theme continued in the 1690s when numerous other Acts of Parliament and regulations affecting forms of trade and industry, including the cloth industry, (p.37) were implemented. Pressure exerted by the powerful English woollen, manufacturers in response to the dangers to its industry from Irish rivals pushed parliament into action. This, once again, meant more pain for Ireland’s ailing economy, resulting in the suppression of its wool in an Act of 1699. Instead, the Irish were forcibly advised to cultivate and concentrate on building a linen industry. The English woollen interest also joined the weavers in East Anglia and the silk weavers of London and Canterbury in condemning the threat of imported silks and calicoes by the East India Company. This time they had a battle on their hands. Although the wool industry had powerful interests in the House of Commons, the East India Company was equally powerful in the House of Lords. The result was a compromise with the introduction of a special duty of 20 per cent on imports of cheap Indian and Chinese textiles, followed in 1701 by an actual prohibition of all Asian cloth that was painted, dyed, printed, or stained. The company could, however, still re-export such items and, crucially, plain calicoes could still be finished and sold in England (muslin cloth was also still legal).6 Prohibitive duties also appeared on French goods between 1693 and 1696 that were kept in force for nearly the whole of the eighteenth century. This was a measure again designed to protect domestic industrial interests, leading to the substitution of French silks, linens, and white paper with English supplies, although, as we shall see in a later chapter, foreign suppliers still found it easy to penetrate the English market through a vast illicit market, or simply by shipping such goods under the cloak of another European country, most notably the Dutch Republic. Ideally, to fight the huge illicit or rather common economy required the production of goods of an equivalent quality—this was where excise quality checks and duties came in. In taxing infant industries—such as paper, glass, and soap—it was also important that they worked to try and reach the quality of foreign equivalents. In this sense the excise, to begin with at least, helped nurture the quality of such goods. Other new duties appeared on tea, coffee, coconuts, and spices with an. aim of stemming Dutch competition in these commodities. It was also during the 1690s that criticism of export duties began to rear its head. First came the abolition of all export duties upon woollen cloth in 1700, and eventually Walpole’s extensive Page 3 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade customs reform of 1722, which abolished export duties on all British goods. By this time most export duties were eradicated and a series of bounties had been enacted to stimulate home industry. Protective duties on competing manufactured imports were simultaneously increased, while primary materials produced at home were prioritized for the benefit of domestic industry. This all helped to strengthen and expand the excise.7 (p.38) Despite the 1701 setback to the Indian calico trade there had been some very forceful printed defences of the trade. In addition to being seen as detrimental to the nation’s wool and infant silk industry, a primary source of attack had been its apparent role in draining the country’s specie. Regardless of how important the balance of trade may have been—as measured by the ratio of exports to imports and, crucially, the accumulation of bullion—it undoubtedly informed a great deal of contemporary thought on economic matters.8 Within this context Charles Davenant, in his defence of the East India Company’s trade, argued that English trade to the East and West Indies actually provided a surplus in the balance of trade and was not causing a drain on the nation’s wealth. He agreed that it was vital the woollen trade was encouraged, ‘but ‘tis its Exportation Abroad, and not the Consumption of it at Home, that must bring Profit to the kingdom’. Davenant was also, of course, very conscious of the fact that wool was not subject to an excise tax.9 Davenant deeply opposed any attempt at prohibiting cloth from the east. He claimed that, since a market had been created for these products throughout Europe, a monopoly in the importation had developed between the English and the Dutch, ‘which together are not a Tenth part of Europe … and if it be a Burthen, it lyes not upon the one, but on the other Nine parts, So that if the East-India Trade carry out the Gold and Silver from this side of the World, ‘tis truly, and properly, at the Cost and Expence, of France, Germany, Spain, and the Northern Kingdoms, who have little, or no Opportunities of Trading thither’.10 He reduced the issue down to the price of labour, arguing that for wool to be encouraged it required cheaper labour. ‘The Act for maintenance of the Poor, is the true Bane, and Destruction to all the English Manufacturers in General. For it apparently Encourages Sloth, and Beggary; Whereas if the Legislative Power would make some good Provision, that Workhouses might in every Parish be Erected, and the Poor, such as are Able, compell’d to work, so many new Hands might thereby be brought in, as would indeed make the English Manufactures Flourish’. Poorly paid sweathouses were the key to success, while forced consumption via a protective market was only the right policy for those goods that had an excise. As we shall also see in Chapter 3, the idea of taxing people’s necessaries was promoted by some as keeping them at the level of subsistence and therefore forcing them to work harder.11

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade Contrary to Davenant’s arguments the government believed that a ban on silk cloth, and printed and dyed calicoes, would stem domestic unemployment and increasing social protest. The actual title of the 1701 legislation was ‘an act for the (p.39) more effective employing the poor by encouraging the manufactures of the kingdom’. However, as we have seen, this legislation actually still allowed the importation of plain calicoes, which in turn helped fuel the establishment of a large printing and dyeing cloth industry in London—thereby further aiding employment. This new industry quickly began to successfully imitate the popular oriental designs and, according to the East India. Company, print the cloth at half the price charged by Indian goods. Probably as a result, import duties were also placed on plain calicoes in 1701 followed by rises in 1704 and 1708, while excise duties were subsequently put on domestically manufactured printed calicoes in 1712 and 1714.12 Davenant once again fiercely defended the East India. Company and its trade in cloth. He stressed that, since East Indian silks and cotton stuffs had been banned from being imported into the English market, they had simply been taken to Holland instead, which now dictated the price for such goods. He was not convinced that their domestic importation actually damaged the market for British, wool manufacturers: ‘These silks and stuffs seem rather a commodity calculated for the middle Rank of the People; They are too Vulgar to be worn by the best sort, and too costly for the lowest Rank, so that the use of them remains to the middle rank (who the luxuries of the world still increasing) would wear European silks, if they had not East India Stuffs and Painted calicoes, whereby the vent of our woollen goods abroad would certainly be lessened’, He suggested that a duty of 30 per cent should be placed on wrought silks; Bengals, East India, or Chinese stuffs; and upon all calicoes printed, dyed, or stained, and all intended for the home market—with a drawback available for all re-exports. This policy, he claimed, would provide an adequate check on. their flow into the country, while the 30 per cent foreign excise (i.e. those customs duties collected by the excise) would provide a useful and urgent security to fund some of the prevailing unfunded debt. Despite such arguments, the continual lobbying of woollen and silk pressure resulted in the Calico Act of 1721, which, legislated a total ban. on all. calicoes, and just for good measure, it was now made illegal to wear such cloth.13 The Act of 1721 still allowed calico printing for the export trade and exempted the printing of fustians. Due to the similarity of English fustian with Indian calico, manufacturers were able to exploit the demand in both the domestic and. the European market, especially with France where calico printing had been banned since 1686. The eventual winner in all this was not wool but domestic linen and ultimately cotton. Indeed, the government was keen to encourage the taxed, linen industry to offset European imports. Besides, to ban domestic production as the woollen interests hoped, would have been catastrophic to social (p.40) relations in Ireland, Scotland, and several regions of England, and Page 5 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade to a growing source of revenue. Therefore the prohibition on East Indian textile imports, far from securing the domestic future of wool, actually stimulated the emergence of linen and cotton. Indeed, the archetypal representation of the Industrial Revolution, the cotton industry, was a product of state protectionist policies while being almost exempt from taxation.14 The intensification of trade protection and the phenomenal implementation of tariffs between 1690 and 1714—the same period in which most of the fiscal innovations described in Chapter 1 were developed—saw the level of duties on imports roughly quadruple. High import duties were fixed on luxury items such as silk, brandy, lace, and spices, and on products of necessity. This also heralded in a huge escalation in smuggling. The success of the free traders greatly reduced anticipated revenue and often resulted in further duty increases, which only exacerbated the problem, thus starting a particularly vicious circle. In 1695 an additional duty of 25 per cent had been placed on French goods, and the excise duty on beer was doubled. In addition, a new duty on low wines (spirits extracted after the first distillation) was introduced, and a duty on malt (barley or other grain used in brewing or a distillery) was passed two years later in 1697. In short, 1690–1714 was characterized by the introduction of huge custom and later excise increases and the creation of numerous other articles to tax. Duties were placed on sail, glass, paper, tobacco pipes, malt, stone bottles, hackney carriages, and windows,15 all of which brought excise officers into contact with ever-greater sections of the manufacturing community. It also complicated their work due to the increased sensitivity and technical nature of gauging many of the new goods. With the exception of wool and one or two other items, English exports of manufactured goods were not performing that impressively. For some time trade in re-exports, as concentrated on by the Dutch, seemed a sensible solution to some commentators. Davenant advised in his second report to the commissioners of the public accounts, ‘if the Merchant had been at Liberty to Chuse his own market his Reexportations had been larger, Tobacco, Sugars, Drugs and Wood for Dyers &c; brought from America and Reexported, are in a manner as profitable to the publick as if the value thereof were brought home in bullion. Upon which account, the merchant, should be fixed from all unreasonable and needless Restraints’. It was the Dutch, he claimed, who were reaping all the rewards of this form of trade: ‘They supply those parts which wee for want of Industry have not embrac’d, or where our Traffick has been interrupted by the war’.16. (p.41) Making London the ‘great Magazine’ far East India wares would also make England, rather than the Dutch, the dictator of prices. The axiom was simple, ‘it being a certain rule that a People who will be gainers in Trade, must as much as possible have their General Warehouse at home’. Under Walpole and subsequent British administrations this became a prominent policy. Davenant Page 6 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade estimated that almost a third of British exports terminated in the Netherlands. Apart from the high cost of war and the cessation of trade with Spain and France, Britain was also indebted to Dutch creditors. He sighed, ‘the Dutch more especially, for these eight or nine years last part, have been deeply concerned in all the Funds … and the produce of such effects lodg’d here, must be returned to them either in Bullion, Bills of Exchange, or commoditys, which will be a constant drain to England, and a weight against us in the Balance of Trade with that country, so long as the funds continue’. He thus concluded that Britain had to reduce duties on all those goods which were advantageous to British trade and industry, improve the system of drawbacks on reexportation, make Britain a free port, and focus like the Dutch on certain excises. This, of course, was exactly what Walpole attempted a few years later.17 The Anglo-French trade treaty of 1713 marks an important moment in the evolution of British tax policy. Those who favoured good and relatively lightly taxed trade relations with France were defeated. The prevailing view was that there was a fixed market and the task was to snatch as much of that market as possible. Consequently, trade with countries was classed as either injurious as in the case of France, or beneficial, as in the case of the colonies. Numerous products imported from France were deemed luxuries, while others were condemned as adverse to the sale of domestic manufactures. It was therefore claimed that trade with France had a negative impact on the balance of trade, resulting in a loss of bullion coupled with higher unemployment. Such was the strength of this sentiment that a substantial number of Tories joined the opposition in June 1713 to vote against the government’s initial plan for a trade treaty. The eventual agreement ensured that the trade between the two countries remained highly regulated for most of the eighteenth century. Prohibiting duties and actual bans acted to try and keep nearly all French manufactures out of Britain for over a century. Although a large illicit trade in such goods erupted upon the scene, the legislation worked well enough to protect and nurture many British equivalents.18 Another contentious and related issue stemmed over the taxation of raw materials used for English/British industry, which from 1704 bore 15 to over 25 (p.42) per cent duty. A minor concession was given to the textile industries with the abolition of duty on cochineal and some minor dyestuffs in 1714, followed by a reduction in the duty on Turkish silk and mohair yarn in 1718, But it was not until, once again, Walpole’s measures in 1722 that more substantial reductions were made. Implicit within these debates was the issue of drawbacks (a return payment on certain taxed imports and home-produced goods that were subsequently exported) and the concern that if imported raw materials were reexported, a foreign country with low duties could get them cheaper than English manufacturers. The argument was particularly releYant to goods for which England was an important entrepôt—mainly colonial and Eastern commodities destined for Europe, and European goods going to the colonies, Page 7 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade otherwise the foreign merchant could not have imported them directly from their source. Despite the concession of 1714, the greatest complaints remained over drawbacks on dyestuffs, which eventually led to the total abolition of duties on them in 1722 (a year after the total ban on all imported calico cloth).19 By now the higher customs duties had demonstrated the potential for the protection of English/British goods and the nurturing of domestic infant industries. Demands were increasingly made for bolstering this system. Domestic manufactures wanted full protection of colonial markets, which the higher levels of duty were giving them in the home market, and the abolition of drawbacks (tax returns) on the re-export of certain foreign goods to the colonies. By suppressing drawback on foreign goods, the price of English equivalents in the colonies would rise.20 Britain’s relatively new Hanoverian king told parliament through a translator in October 1717: ‘It is very obvious that nothing would more conduce to the obtaining so public a good, than to make the exportation of our own manufactures and the importation of the commodities used in the manufacturing of them, as practicable and easy as may be; by this means, the balance in trade may be preserved in our favour, our navigation greatly increased and greater numbers of our poor employed’. By the 1720s a discernible approach to tariffs and nurturing domestic manufactures could be seen, with an underlying impetus from various theories stressing the importance of an advantageous balance of trade, employment, and revenue.21 The aim to increase turnover in foreign trade, primarily colonial re-exports, by making London a free port, started with tea, coffee, and cocoa beans in the early 1720s and, as we shall see in Chapter 4, was one of the intentions behind the excise scheme on wine and tobacco in 1733. This enabled re-exports to be placed in excise-managed warehouses prior to reshipment, and therefore avoid the frustration and delay of customs procedures (as well as various scams involving drawbacks). However, in the long run Walpole’s policies were not enough to remove (p.43) obstacles in the way of commercial expansion. Rather, that would come from Lord Chatham’s aggressive policies during the 1740s when French competition in the Mediterranean, India, Africa, the West Indies, and North America would be taken on. Nevertheless, Walpole had consolidated the political, industrial, and fiscal structure that would enable successors to fight expensive trade wars. Reexports, as Jacob M. Price underlines, should not be underemphasized. By 1772–4 they constituted just over 66 per cent of domestic exports.22 Martin Daunton has argued that the negotiation between the government’s pitching of duties and the affected interest groups was vital to the formation of the English state; ‘The shift towards protection was an incidental result of the government’s search for revenue rather than a conscious act of policy. The tariff Page 8 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade structure was shaped by interplay between the government and the interest groups seeking special treatment. The government was anxious to make duties acceptable to those interests, which would ease the task of enforcement and collection, and also attach them to the state’.23 The result, argues Michael Braddick, may have seemed with hindsight to be ‘a “mercantilist” revision, favouring domestic manufactures and luxuries’ but actually was far more pragmatic.24 According to this view it was a mutual settlement between all groups involved, rather than a clearly defined mercantilist policy as painted by Adam Smith. However, protecting domestic industry, especially infant sectors, through high tariff duties was less unplanned than this argument implies. It may not have been a full-blown industrial policy systematically applied but it did represent a recognized, actively pursued, and ultimately successful strategy. The protective barriers allowed manufactures to develop, which enabled the excise to expand and farm industry. This made revenue collection more efficient, and crucially, relatively predictable (compared to customs). In turn, this allowed more of the population to be employed and therefore alleviated the threat of domestic social unrest and the drain on the nation’s bullion. All this made the country more selfsufficient at a time when it was so often at war. In addition, as Defoe underlined, England had a much more integrated economy than its European rivals: ‘The inland trade of England … is the foundation of all our wealth and greatness; it is the support of all our foreign trade, and of our manufacturing, and of the tradesmen who carry it on’.25 (p.44) It was, as Patrick K. O’Brien has argued, by cultivating and securing the home markets from foreign competition, that the organized pressure from manufactures opposed to government taxation policies lost much of its bite. ‘In this respect’, he concludes, ‘excises were being collected at the expense of customs duties’.26 Protectionist policies, then, made possible the fertility necessary for the nurturing of domestic manufactures and the subsequent extensive taxing of its fruits. As D. C. Coleman similarly remarks: ‘It was a complex product of the needs of wartime finance which led to higher import duties and helped thereby to build a protective wall, and of the already proceeding industrial diversification’. This, he concludes, ‘cannot be understood without regard to that most important of all the State’s economic functions in this period, the raising of revenue’.27 All this—along with the specification of ingredients, production, and system of gauging devised to measure commodities —was important in defining the shape of both taxed and untaxed manufactures. The pragmatism came in the setting of domestic excise rates: here it was up to the manufacturers to lobby and secure the best rate they could at the expense of another industry or indeed within industries. England/Britain clearly pursued its revenue as part of a general economic policy. By contrast, as J. F. Bosher points out, France ‘valued the customs for their financial yield. It treated them primarily as a tax rather than an instrument of economic policy’.28 Page 9 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade The introduction of inland duties was an attempt to tax consumption, although in practice, it had become by the eighteenth century a levy on the production of particular goods. The tax was increasingly applied at the site of manufacture rather than the point of sale. John Torrance captures the situation; ‘reliance on excises had presupposed a new prevalence of commodity production in certain branches of the economy, and to that extent was a specific adaptation of the state to a capitalistic market society’. He concludes: ‘as commodity taxes on home products, excises had made possible, and necessitated, an unprecedented continuous, uniform, impersonal and co-ordinated method of collection, and in that respect bureaucracy was a child of capitalism’. It is, however, the premiss of this book that excises were not just the offspring of an emerging capitalist society, but played an integral part in shaping it—a theme we investigate in Part V. For now my concern is tracing the seemingly paradoxical growth in high taxation and consumption.29

(p.45) Tax, Consumption, and Manufactures Greater consumption and trade can Initially be linked to the desire of Charles II and James II for absolutism after the Restoration (1660–88). The crown’s quest for financial independence from parliament could only ultimately be achieved by expanding overseas commerce to increase the monarch’s designated life revenues, and it was through this channel that customs revenue grew. The later Stuart period was, after all, the era in which new addictive products (tobacco, tea, sugar, coffee, and chocolate) started to significantly impact upon English society. As Price rightly emphasizes, the consumer-revolution school have neglected the fact that ‘the most dynamic component (accounting for over half of all imports in the 1770s) were items of food and drink, particularly the exotics— sugar, tea, tobacco, and coffee— all of them only recently items of mass consumption and heavy taxation’. It is also the case that, as Daunton points out, goods like sugar and wine were income-elastic luxuries. Elsewhere larger yields from other taxes on consumption further enlarged the king’s purse. This is a point highlighted by Cecil Chandaman in his discussion of the customs during the last years of the Restoration period; The trade boom of the eighties is a fact of some importance for political as well as economic history. The striking increase in the yield of the customs was a major factor in the financial solvency and political assertiveness of the Stuart monarchy after 1681. The customs revenue, which had provided a means during the seventies for a parliamentary attack on the Crown, helped to supply the resources during the eighties for a prerogative counter-attack. Wealth generated through trade was also faster and more quickly realized in the form of tax payments, advances, and loans, than that generated through agricultural wealth.30

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade It is not, perhaps, a coincidence that a small but growing group of commentators expounding the benefits of consumption began to get louder in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. For example, Nicholas Barbon, the most successful speculative builder of Restoration London, encouraged the consumption of luxuries among the rich. He was the son of the Baptist ‘Praisegod’ Barbon or Barebone, whose name was given to Cromwell’s Barebones Parliament. He had studied medicine at the Dutch University of Leiden in 1661, before turning his attention to the construction and insurance of buildings. He made his huge (p. 46) fortune in fire insurance and was one of the founders of the Insurance Office for Houses’ located in the heart of the City just behind the Royal Exchange. In his A Discourse of Trade, published in 1690, he observed: ‘Prodigality is a vice that is prejudicial to the Man, but not to the Trade; It is living a pace, and spending that in a Year, that should last all his life; Covetousness is a Vice, prejudicial both to Man & Trade; It starves the Man, and breaks the Trade: and by the same way the Covetous Man thinks he grows rich, he grows poor’. Barbon, like a number of his contemporaries, stressed the link between income (wages), consumption, and revenue: ‘Trade Increaseth the Revenue of the Government, by providing an Imploy for the People: For every Man that Works, pays by those things which he Eats and Wears, something to the Government. Thus the Excise and Customs are raised, and the more every Man Earns, the more he Consumes, and the King’s Revenue is the more Increased’.31 The most infamous and public exponent of promiscuous consumption was a Dutch emigrant, Bernard Mandeville, whose anonymous sixpenny pamphlet The Grumbling Hive (1705), followed up by the much longer The Fable of the Bees (1714), sent shivers down the spine of the landed elite. Indeed, the 1723 edition of The Fable was described, to a loud fanfare, as a ‘public nuisance’ by the grand jury of Middlesex. Consumption patterns were a defining sign of one’s place in the world. However, Mandeville’s views would not have shocked many of the new guns at the vanguard of government finance, nor would it have escaped people’s notice that he was a close friend of the Lord Chancellor, the earl of Macclesfield. The Mandevillian voice was, no doubt, quietly being sponsored or applauded behind the scenes in post-1688 England. The anti-luxury protagonists may have sounded dominant but, for all their heated emissions, they could not stem the contagious rise of commerce and consumption, nor the reality of the state’s fiscal demands. Consumption and production were intrinsically bound to the fiscal policy described in Chapter 1. The eighteenth century has been described as the birth of a consumer society but it was, moreover, the advent of a highly taxed one. The surest thing in life is the need to consume food and drink and wear items of clothing to keep warm, as well as the requirement to secure a place to live—either through owning or renting land. What safer and more predictable form of revenue could there be than to tax land, imports, and manufactures of these descriptions? The more Page 11 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade England/Britain owned, traded, manufactured, and consumed, the more there was to tax. In the words of Peter Mathias and Patrick O’Brien, ‘the growing ability of that population to sustain indirect taxation of commodities in mass demand, was the principal means by which the requirements of the state were met’.32 (p.47) Consider the phenomenal rise of sugar. In 1660 England consumed something like 1,000 hogsheads and exported about 18,000. By 1730 the figures were 100,000 and 18,000 respectively. England’s consumption of this commodity rose one hundred times in the space of seventy years. By 1753 it had increased by a further 10,000 hogsheads to a new annual total of 110,000 for home consumption, while exports had decreased to 6,000. By the mid-1770s sugar was worth £2.4 million at official Values and £3.3 million at market Values. As its historian, Sidney W. Mintz, tellingly writes; ‘On the one hand, they [English/ British sugar colonies] represent an extension of empire outward, but on the other, they mark an absorption, a kind of swallowing up, of sugar consumption as a national habit. Like tea, sugar came to define English “character”’.33 Neil McKendrick observes that during the final fifteen years of the eighteenth century ‘the consumption of excised commodities in mass demand, such as tobacco, soap, candles, printed fabrics, spirits, and beer, was increasing more than twice as fast as the population’, which, he concludes ‘makes acceptance of rising patterns of consumption difficult to avoid’. During this time the revenue generated by items like sugar, fruit, tea, tobacco, and wine increased by a factor of five. Contemporary economic writers were now also admitting that an increased availability in consumer goods could act as a stimulus to industry throughout all ranks of society. Many also now dared to publicly claim that the consumption of luxuries—frequently becoming necessaries—was harmless, desirable, and inevitable. All this raises the question of the relationship between the simultaneous growth of war, taxation, production, and consumption.34 Beckett and Turner argue that it was probably international demand which played the crucial role in fuelling domestic manufactures during the period known as the Industrial Revolution, and that certain excises were regressive and may have actually slowed down industrialization. In terms of simply production and output, they conclude, this would explain why the Industrial Revolution—as measured by national economic growth—was more significant after 1830. In other words, the impact of a regressive tax regime may have reduced domestic demand, but the gaining of overseas markets and acquisition of raw materials created a surge in overall national economic growth later in the nineteenth century. However, this is to ignore the fact that many of Britain’s industries (p. 48) would not have existed if they had not been protected and qualitycontrolled, while the foreign markets Beckett and Turner emphasize, would not have been available without the excise revenue from domestic industry to fund the military. In addition, as Price points out, ‘for many of the key industries, Page 12 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade domestic demand not only accounted for 75 or 80 percent of production, but it was as dynamic as aggregate foreign demand’.35 The combination of repealing duties on imported raw materials, the disciplining of the quality of domestic manufactures through excise regulations and surveillance, and implementing bounties and drawbacks on home-produced manufactures provided a crucial input in the shaping of English/British production, administration, and commercial practices. Being, as we shall see in Part IV, at the mercy of a relatively efficient body like the excise, also forced industries to innovate to save costs—both legally and illegally, A great deal of innovation, for example, occurred during the eighteenth century in highly taxed industries such as leather tanning, soap, sugar refining, hat making, brewing, distilleries, and, by the close of the century, paper making. Indeed, the industrial techniques that characterized English industry after 1830 would not have been possible if the shape of manufactures sculptured, directly and indirectly, by the government’s dominant preoccupation with funding war and sustaining public credit had not already evolved. It is also the case that excises on certain homeproduced goods eventually were undermined at the expense of those industries traditionally associated with the Industrial Revolution. As we shall see, this became a calculated industrial policy under William Pitt the younger, resulting in wool, pottery, iron, and cotton being either lightly or untaxed. It is also the case, as we have seen, that many more people were buying taxed goods at the end of the century than at the start—and this was not simply a result of population growth. To generate revenue from, say, malt, tea, coffee, spirits, and sugar, and former subsistence items, most notably beer, candles, salt, soap, and starch, required people to consume them ready made. The taxing of these goods lends weight to those historians who have emphasized the importance of the household economy and the impact of women moving into the manufacturing sector and therefore no longer being able to produce traditional subsistence goods at home. They were compelled to buy such items from manufacturers, making such products much larger sources of revenue. The point being, whether one agrees or not that income was increasing, people were certainly buying more taxed goods and patterns of consumption were clearly changing. Even if we accept the most gloomy of the figures of the ‘new economic historians* for national economic growth between 1700 and 1800—namely, that it was only about 1 per cent per year for the whole century, as Nicholas Crafts calculates, and national real income only increased by a factor of three between 1670 and 1810—the fact is that tax rose more than sixteen times over the same period. So the question of whether there was substantially more wealth is not the (p.49) issue; rather, it was the case that the government’s revenuecollecting machinery was getting better at extracting people’s wealth. Thomas Paine recognized this when he wrote: ‘whatever the constitution may be in other Page 13 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade respects, it has undoubtedly been the most productive machine for taxation that was ever invented’.36 Leading politicians were all well aware of the need to continually improve the revenue machine as the loans continued to multiply. Central to this aim, as we have seen, was the careful nurturing of domestic industry and consumption. The successful Dutch emigrant and London timber merchant Jacob Vanderlint spelled out the situation as he saw it in the early 1730s, He warned his readers, in the aftermath of Walpole’s disastrous attempt at introducing an excise on wine and tobacco, that a reduction of consumption among the labouring ranks would have a catastrophic effect on the country’s finances: ‘must not the Revenue be greatly dtminish’d likewise, since in this Case the Consumption of Things, on which the Revenue intirely depends, must be lessen’d very much?’ He urged: ‘Things should be made so plentiful, that they might be greater Consumers’. He further implied that this was the way to reduce the national debt and simultaneously the burden of taxation. ‘For as the Produce of the Earth, and Consumption thereof, will certainly be greatly encreased, which Things always go together, the Revenue must, I think, increase too; since the Malt Tax, Excise on Beer, Duty on Leather and Tallow, and whatever other Parts of our Produce are taxed, would evidently be as much augmented as the Produce and Consumption of these would be augmented*. This, he claimed, would lead to a surplus of revenue that could then be used to pay off the public creditors.37 In comparison to other countries England/Britain both nurtured and subsequently exploited its domestic manufactures, which were enjoying their comparatively well-developed home commodity markets. For instance, malt, beer, and spirits were made in specific plants by established firms that were typically close to an. urban location. It was within this type of geography that the excise thrived, and it therefore encouraged monopolistic and permanent sites of production within easy reach of the excise officer’s gauging rod. This is a point emphasized by Sir James Steuart in the case of malt, and much more recently by Mathias and O’Brien in the case of English beer and spirit production.38 Another good example is salt. Since 1694 it had long been recognized that the large discounts allowed for prompt payment of tax worked against smaller concerns. After the 1798 Salt Act duties had to be paid within a week of the removal of the salt from the works, unless a bond to the tune of double their value was given. A slightly later Act required proprietors to pay the duty before they (p.50) removed it from their warehouses. Sir Thomas Bernard, a prominent proponent of the early nineteenth-century repeal movement, claimed: ‘The trade in duty-paid salt is now in very few hands who are called in that county [Cheshire] “the monopolists”’, Henry Brougham concluded: ‘Taxes had the obvious effect of excluding small capitals from trade’. Edward Hughes has traced the clear policy of the various English/British governments since 1702 in restricting the number of salt refineries on the grounds that more of them would Page 14 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade be detrimental to both the cost of collection and the amount of fraud. This is in keeping with the argument that robust and established internal commodity markets, with a monopolistic bent, were essential to the success of the excise. It also reveals why the Scottish excise was so poor in comparison. Scottish excisable goods, in contrast to England, were made in small, frequently remote sites, making them hard to tax.39 Steuart proposed that the best way to collect what he termed ‘proportional taxes* (all excises, customs, stamp duties, etc.) would be to restrict and confine all such taxed articles in ‘properly enclosed’ spaces. In many ways this was already apparent, as we have already mentioned, in some of the large breweries in London, while enclosed docks would soon take off in London and some of the larger outports. He claimed: ‘Were those undertakings few and large, were spacious magazines of all sorts prepared, at the public expense, in all Sea-port towns, and surrounded with walls, an entire liberty might be allowed within the Inclosures, and no questions would be asked, but on going in and coming out’. This would save both on expenses involved in revenue collection and on the number of people needed in manufacturing. He further wrote: ‘forty men, in a large brew-house, make more beer than an hundred disposed as they are in country villages. This resembles the introduction of machines into manufactures’. Steuart briskly dismissed all the passionate arguments over infringements of liberty, claiming it was all a deliberate conspiracy, ‘more a pretext, in order to facilitate fraud, than any thing else’.40

Customs, Excise, and an Industrious People During the early 1760s Adam Smith taught his students at Glasgow University the importance of consumption. ‘The consumptibility, if we may use the word, of goods, is the great cause of human industry, and an industrious people wil always produce more than they consume’. Some recent commentators, most notably Jan de Vries, have pursued this line further, arguing that much of the eighteenth century can be characterized as an ‘industrious revolution’ centring upon the consuming habits of the household, in particular the switch from producing (p.51) traditional necessaries at home to buying them in the market place. De Vries persuasively argues that changes in household behaviour constituted an ‘industrious revolution’, which ‘preceded and prepared the way for the industrial revolution’. He claims this was demand-oriented as opposed to the traditional supply-side character associated with British industrialization. The main characteristics of this development consisted in a ‘reduction of leisure time as the marginal utility of money income rose, and the reallocation of labour from goods and services for direct consumption to marketed goods—that is, a new strategy for the maximisation of household utility’.41 The possible purchase of luxury goods, ready-made necessaries, and generally a plug into a more accessible market provided the carrot, as opposed to the stick, to enable the creation of an industrious culture. Signs of an industrious Page 15 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade mentality can certainly be gleaned in the theoretical writings that characterized the Scottish Enlightenment. De Vries cites David Hume as a typical example: ‘Furnish him [the labourer] with the manufactures and commodities and he will do it [toil to produce a marketable surplus] himself. Steuart had written a few years earlier, ‘men are forced to labour now because they are slaves to their own wants’, and concluded that ‘wants promote industry, industry gives food, food increases numbers’. As already argued, this shift toward a market-oriented sphere of production meant the replacement of typically female-supplied homeproduced goods, with the money-earning female and child now a crucial addition to the household income. The adult industrial worker was now not able to exist as an individual. As a shoemaker from Northampton wrote; ‘No single-handed man can live; he must have a whole family at work’.42 This move is supported by Sara Horrelfs recent empirical research assessing the household budgets of the labouring ranks, which shows that greater opportunities for female and child labour and a declining subsistence sector combined to create a demand for the products of traditional industries and a decline for those of the new industries. Demand for (excised) goods such as tobacco, soap, candles, printed fabrics, spirits, and beer rapidly increased during the final two decades of the eighteenth century. By contrast there was a greater demand from the middling ranks for the products of the new industries, with something like a rise from one-third to nearly one-half of all such industrial output consumed by this class.43 The taxing of necessaries was, in many ways, the most prominent development of tax policy during the long eighteenth century. As Beckett and Turner have (p. 52) remarked: ‘The more necessary they became—out of habit rather than, survival needs—the more they provided a guaranteed source of revenue to the government, essential in view of its costly overseas policy’,44 Elsewhere, even in times of scarcity, the significant importance to the revenue of imports such as sugar, tea, and coffee was recognized by everyone. As the late nineteenthcentury historian of British taxation Stephen Dowell argued, these taxes ‘held in their [the government’s] opinion, a position of peculiar importance: to be kept, in time of peace, at low rates at which, so evenly do these taxes lie over the whole surface of the nation, the pressure was not felt by anyone, they were powerful engines available when the nation should be called upon for a general effort in time of war. To abolish these taxes would be to remove the mainstays of our system of taxation’. This was why, taxes on these items particularly sugar, were the last to be severed in the nineteenth century. Addictive items like these and, of course, alcohol-based drinks proved by far the best security for loans.45 In this sense addiction played a vital role in forging the English/British state. The cleric David Davies perceptively responded in 1795 to moral crusaders cursing the cancerous spread of goods like tea and sugar into the diets of the labouring masses; ‘After all, it appears a very strange thing, that the common people of any European nation should be obliged to use, as part of their diet, two articles Page 16 of 21

 

The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade imported from opposite sides of the earth. But if high taxes, in consequence of expensive wars, and the changes which time insensibly makes in the circumstance of countries, have debarred the poorer inhabitants of their kingdom the use of such things as are the natural products of the soil, and forced them to recur to those of foreign growth; surely this is not their fault’.46 Notes:

(1) Defoe’s Review: Reproduced from the Original Editions, with an introduction and bibliographical notes by A. W. Secord, viii (New York, 1938), 739. (2) J. E. Farnell, ‘The Navigation Act of 1651, the first Dutch War, and the London (Merchant Community’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 16 (1964), 439–54; C. Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship 1603–1763 (London, 1979), 58–64; C. Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, 1970), 125–7. The best study on English commercial policy during this period is R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–1653 (Princeton, 1993), ch. 12. (3) L. Sawyers, ‘The Navigation Acts Revisited’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 45 (1992), 262– 84; J- M. Price, ‘What Did Merchants Do? Refections on British Overseas Trade, 1660–1790’, JEH, 49 (1989), 267–84, on 270. (4) M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty; An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1995), 546–7. (5) Customs Tariffs of the United Kingdom from 1800 to 1897. With Some Notes Upon the History of the More Important Branches of Receipt from the Year 1660 (London, 1897), 27–30. (6) P. O’Brien, T. Griffiths and P. Hunt, ‘Political Components of the Industrial Revolution: Parliament and the English Textile Industry, 1660–1774’, EcHR, NS 44 (1991), 395–423, on 398; H. F. Kearney, ‘The Political Background to English Mercantilism, 1695–1700’, EcHR11 (1959), 484–96, on 485–6. (7) R. Davis, ‘The Rise of Protection in England, 1689–1786’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 19 (1966), 309–11; Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 236–7 and 267–9; E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 176. (8) D. C. Coleman, ‘Introduction’, in id. (ed)., Revisions in Mercantilism (London, 1969), 1–18, on 4–5; C. Wilson, ‘The Other Face of Mercantilism’, in Coleman (ed.), Revisions in Mercantilism, 118–39, on 120–1 and 128–9. (9) C. Davenant, An Essay on the East-India-Trade. By the Author of the Essay upon Waves and Means (London, 1696), 6 and 10. (10) Ibid. 12,15, 20–1, and 28.

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade (11) Ibid. 26–7. (12) E. Upson, The Economic History of England, 3 vols., iii (3rd edn., London, 1943), 41–2. The importance of imitation fuelling industrial innovation is convincingly argued in M. Berg, ‘From Imitation to Invention: Creating Commodities in Fighteenth-Century Britain’, EcHR 55 (2002), 1–30. (13) C. Davenant, ‘A Second Report to the Commissioners for Putting in Execution the Act entitled an Act for Taking, Examining, and Stating the Publick Accompts of the Kingdom’, Dec. 1711, BL Add. MS 17767. (14) The key role of ‘the visible hands of law and regulation’ behind the rise of cotton is best described in O’Brien, Griffiths and Hunt, ‘Political Components’, esp. 409–18, and Dauntona, Progress and Poverty, 539–45 and 557; Lipson, Economic History of England 44, See also S. L. Engerman, ‘Mercantilism and Overseas Trade, 1700–1800’, in R. Floud and D. McCloskey (eds.), The Economic History of Britain since 1700, 2 vols. (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1995, i. 182–204, on 189; S. D. Chapman, The Cotton industry in the Industrial Revolution (London, 1972), 12–13. (15) Davis, ‘Rise of Protection’, 306; G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 24–7 (16) Davenant, ‘Second Report’. (17) Ibid. tor Dutch investment see Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 520–1. (18) D. C Coleman, ‘Politics and Economics in the Age of Anne: The Case of the Anglo-French Trade Treaty of 1713’, in id. and A. H. John (eds.). Trade, Government and Economy in Prc-Industrial England: Essays Presented to F. J. Fisher(London, 1976), 187–211, on 190–1 and 205–6; J.M. Price, ‘Colonial Development and British F.conomk Development, 1660–1775’, in id. Overseas Trade and Traders: Essays on some Commercial, Financial and Political Challenges Facing British Atlantic Merchants, 1660–1775 (Aldershot, 1996), 106–26, on 117. for the French objectives sec D. Miquelon, ‘Envisioning the French Empire: Utrecht, 1711–1713’, FHS 24 (2001), 653–77. (19) Davis, ‘The Rise of Protection’, 312. (20) Ibid. 313. (21) N. A. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole (London, 1907), 129–32 and 148–155; S. Dowel, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), it. 90–2.

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade (22) P. G. M. Dickson, The financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London, 1967), 201–4; Price, ‘Colonial Trade’, 110 (23) Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 538 and 543; Davis, ‘Rise of Protection’, 316–17; C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1600–1688 (Oxford, 1975) 34–5; P. I. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion 1688–1914 (Harlow, 1993), 73. Many contemporary commercial commentators were highly critical of too much state interference; see L. Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (London, 1994), 211. (24) M. J. Braddiek, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), 122 and 151–2; Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 12. (25) Daniel Defoe is quoted in J. R. Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World (Chicago, 1958), 318. However, Braddiek has since remarked: ‘After 1660 the tariffs were more consciously manipulated to promote trade and domestic manufactures, not simply to raise revenue’; sec his State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 263. (26) P. O’Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 41 (1988), 14 and 27; Davis, ‘Rise of Protection’, 306–17, on 307; Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpok, 166–87. (27) D. C. Coleman, The Economic History of England 1450–1750 (Oxford, 1977), 188. William Cunningham makes a similar argument in his The Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1908), 494. (28) J. E Bosher, The Single Duty Project; A Study of the Movement for a French Customs Union in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1969), 95. (29) J. Torrance, ‘Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation: The Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts 1780–1787*. P&P 78 (1978), 56–81, on 80–1. (30) Price, ‘What Did Merchants Do?’, 271; Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 537; J. Walvin, Fruits of Empire: Exotic Produce and British Taste, 1660–1800 (London, 1997), 195. Sidney W. Mintz also makes the point that ‘in the work of recent theorists on consumption, food figures hardly at all’; see his ‘The Changing Roles of Food in the Study of Consumption’, in J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds.) Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1994), 261–73, on 263. For the link between absolutism and taxes see Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 35–6 and 40, and J. R. Jones, Country and Court: England 1658– 1714 (London, 1991), 165. The tea and coffee duties were variously used to fund annuities and

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade take loans from the Bank of England; see ‘Report on the Gross and Net Produce of the Duties on Coffee and Tea for 7 Years’, 28 Aug. 1723, CUL Ch (H) 27/1. (31) Magnusson, Mercantilism, 124; P. G. M. Dickson, The Sun Insurance. Office 1710-1960: The Historyof Two and a Half Centuries of British Insurance (London, 1960), 7–12; R. C. Wiles, ‘The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism’, EcHR, NS 21 (1968), 113–26, on 119. (32) P. Mathias and P. O’Brien, ‘Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810’, JEEH5 (1976), 621–23; J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth in Eighteenth-Century England’. EcHR, 2nd ser., 43 (1990), 377–403, on 382–3 and 387. (33) S. W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (Harmondsworth, 1985), 39; Price, ‘Colonial Trade and British Economic Development’, 110. (34) J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), 3; N. McKendrick, J. Brewer and J. H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialisation of Eighteenth Century England (Bloomington, 1982), 29 and 33; R. Davis, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade (Leicester, 1979), 52; A. W. Coats, ‘Changing Attitudes to Labour in the MidEighteenth Century’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 11 (1958), 35–51, on 49–50; L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760 (London, 1988), 28 and 158. The literature on consumption is vast; in addition to the above, see H. Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society (London, 1968); C. Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford, 1987); B, Lemire, Fashions Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991); Brewer and Porter (eds.), Consumption. (35) Beckett and Turner, ‘Taxation’, 397 and 401–2; Price, ‘Colonial Development’, 122. (36) N. E. Crafts, British Economic Growth During the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1985), 45; T. Paine, The Rights of Man, Part II (London, 1792), 182. for figures demonstratingias and O’Brien, Taxation, 605. (37) J. Vanderlint, Money Answers All Things (London, 1734), 21 and 107–8. (38) J, Steuart, An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy, ed. and introd. Andrew S, Skinner, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1966), ii. 700; Mathias and O’Brien, ‘Taxation, 638–40. (39) Hughes, Studies, 358–9 and 397; J. Brewer, The English State and Fiscal Appropriation, 1688– 1789’, P&S 16 (1988), 288–385, on 350; P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200–1830 (London, 1983), 184–6.

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The ‘Consumptibility’ of Goods: Customs, Excise, and Trade (40) Steuart, An Inquiry, ii. 702. (41) A. Smith, Lectures on Justice. Police, Revenue and Arms, delivered in the University of Glasgow and reported by a student in 1763, ed. E. Cannan (Oxford, 1869), 199; J. De Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’, JEH 54 (1994), 249–70, on 256–7. (42) De Vries, ‘Industrial Revolution’, 261 and 264, and J. De Vries, ‘Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe’, in Brewer and Porter (eds.), Consumption, 85–132, on 107–12 and 116. (43) S. Horrell, ‘Home Demand and British Industrialization’, JEH 56 (1996), 561–604; McKendrick et al., Birlh of a Consumer Society, 23–9. (44) Beckett and Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth’, 391. (45) Dowell, History of Taxation, ii, 32–3; Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 116. (46) David Davies is quoted in Mintz, Sweetness and Power, 116

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The Equitable Tax?

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

The Equitable Tax? WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0004

Abstract and Keywords This chapter shows how parliament enacted a pattern of taxation targeting consumption. Fiscal necessity introduced an inland tax on various homeproduced and grown goods along with a levy on certain imports. The poor were now required to pay tax primarily in the shape of excise duties. From the moment the state began taxing the poor during the English Civil War, an added dimension to radical sentiments emerged, which came to play an important role in the discontent that pitted the social landscape over the next two centuries. Keywords:   taxes, taxation, tax policy, parliament, consumption, poor

It was in response to the high costs involved in fighting the crown during the 1640s that parliament enacted a pattern of taxation which particularly targeted consumption. Fiscal necessity introduced an inland tax on various homeproduced and grown goods along with a levy on certain imports. From now on, the poor were to pay tax primarily in the shape of excise duties. To begin with, at various levels of intensity, as many commodities (or their ingredients or both) as possible were taxed. This was accompanied by a theoretical argument that attempted to give such a policy legitimacy. The old view that the poor should not be taxed, which had dominated debates over taxation from the middle of the sixteenth century to the time of the English Civil War, was now irretrievably eroded. This was in part through fiscal necessity but also owing to a recognition by the lawmakers as to the widening consumption prospects and opportunities of the poor. The question now revolved around the extent and nature of the commodities to be taxed; namely, luxuries versus necessaries (the rich versus

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The Equitable Tax? the poor). This also generated a language of radicalism that would have a profound impact on politics. From the moment the state began to tax the poor during the English Civil War an. added dimension to radical sentiments emerged, which, it will be shown, came to play an important part in the discontent that pitted the social landscape over the next two centuries. Although initially never made consistently explicit, an obvious issue was that, if the poor could be taxed because everyone regardless of wealth had a stake in the well-being of the nation, then should they not also have a greater say in the running of it? The propertyless masses may not have owned land, but with the introduction of the excise they could now claim to have a virtual stake in deciding its shape and future. Certainly, George Smith, a gentleman and supporter of the Presbyterians, was sufficiently worried to warn in 1645 that the unfair incidence of taxation ‘put the people upon resolutions of setting up a third party’. The London merchant and Leveller, William Walwyn, cited the excise in 1649 as an institutional sponge for corrupt patronage and making illegitimate loans. Indeed, Walwyn concluded that the excise was far worse than the system of taxation characterizing the pre-Revolution days: ‘Did you ever dream that the oppressors of committees would have exceeded those of the Council-table; or that in the place of Patents and Projects, you should have seen an Excise established, ten fold surpassing all those, and shipmoney together?’ He sighed, ‘every person in England hath as clear a right to elect his representative as the greatest person in England … because all (p.54) government is in the free consent of the people’. The parliamentarian army colonel and Leveller Thomas Rainsborough told Cromwell’s son-in-law, the army general and anti-Leveller Henry Ireton: ‘I think it’s clear, that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not had a voice to put himself under.’ Ireton replied in a familiar propertied tone that would continue to be dominant for nearly two more centuries: ‘I think that no person hath a right to an interest or share in the disposing of the affairs of the kingdom, as in determining or choosing those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by here—no person hath a sborough was assassinated by a royalist raiding party a year later.1 If it had not been for the fundamental importance of the excise in paying army wage arrears, this tax, no doubt, would have been much more targeted than it was by the Levellers, More generally, in a heated debate over the Protectorate’s policies in Scotland and Ireland, the relationship between taxation and representation in the late 1650s came to the fore: ‘You take upon you to bind these nations by the laws you make here [Westminster]. Will you have none here to represent them? Is this just?’ Crucially, the MP told parliament, ‘How, then, can the laws touching taxes bind them, if they have no representatives?’ One of Page 2 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? the members for Ireland was outraged: ‘Will you lay a tax upon us, and we have no representatives? If the Petition and Advice be a law to impose new taxes on us, surely it is, as to our right of sitting here? You will either refund our money to us and give us a Parliament of our own, or else allow us our possessory right’. Another member was of the opinion that not only should Ireland and Scotland be represented in parliament but Jamaica too.2 For a while, especially after the Restoration, such sentiments as these were unimaginable in the minds of most people, and by the eighteenth century debates tended to revolve around notions of liberty and legal rights. This was, partly, because radicalism had become diluted due to the hangover of the English Civil War and Interregnum period, and partly because (p.55) of the emigration and forced exportation of so many key leaders and important political groups to North America and other colonies during the 1660s and 1670s.3 To underline a point I have been making, and will continue to pursue in later chapters, the moulding of political radicalism, path of industrialization, and changing consumer habits were entwined within an evolving fiscal state. The impetus forging these interlinked vectors was first civil war at home, then trade wars with the Dutch, and later the long military encounters with the French. The shape of England’s fiscal engine was contingent and certainly drew upon developments in other countries, most notably the Dutch Republic. However, unlike the Dutch, England had an expanding industrial sector to tap in addition to a growing business in trade. Well-known contemporary commentators, such as the seventeenth-century land surveyor of Ireland, landowner, and evangelical advocate of the new political arithmetic Sir William Petty, stressed the lucrative revenue to be made by taxing certain excise products. In the midst of designing and developing his pioneering double-bottom boat and conducting experiments in the art of cloth making, Petty wrote a treatise on taxation. He wanted to find ‘accumulative excises’, which targeted commodities that were consumed in quantities dependent upon wealth —in other words, to find taxed items that ideally had some relation to a person’s ability to pay. He claimed, ‘the very perfect Idea of making a Levy upon Consumption, is to rate every particular Necessary, just when it is ripe for Consumption; that is to say, not to rate Corn until it be Bread, nor Wool until it be cloth,—or rather until it be a very Garment’. As Petty sat in his Irish country estate he enthused at the equitable nature of excises: ‘The Natural Justice that every man should pay according to what he actually enjoyeth; upon which account this Tax is scarce forced upon any, and is very light to those, who please to be content with natural Necessaries’.4 As already discussed in Chapter 2, Charles Davenant was an important—albeit pragmatic—advocate of the excise and enthusiastic follower of Petty’s political arithmetic. He was also an excise commissioner between 1678 and 1688, during part of which time the excise had been farmed before being nationalized in Page 3 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? 1682. Davenant had particularly prospered under James II’s brief reign before he, likewise, was forced out of office after the Glorious Revolution. He spent the next decade trying desperately to regain a prestigious office. His writings, as D. Waddell and Douglas Coombs have shown, often reflect—as do those of most of his contemporaries—an attempt to win favour with whoever was in political (p. 56) power at the time. He eventually gained office in 1703 as inspector-general of exports and imports with a salary of £1,000 per annum.5 Not surprisingly, as a prominent economic commentator writing in the midst of war during the 1690s, Davenan’s fiscal views permanently gravitated around the issue of how best to finance it: ‘To support a long war, the taxes should be so contrived, as that they may lie equally upon the nation; and when they are equally laid, they will in consequence be easier, and longer, and more patiently suffered’. The most effective way to achieve this, he argued, was through the excise.6 The adverse reputation of excises was ill judged and not ‘thoroughly weighed and compared … with other taxes’. They were, in fact, ‘the most proper Ways and Means to support the government in a long war, because they would lie equally upon the whole, and produce great sums, proportional to the great wants of the public’. Not only would they raise an impressive, constant, and secure amount of revenue but were ‘very easy, where every one, in a manner, taxes himself, making consumption according to his will or ability’. He also highlighted the fact that numerous excises were levied in Holland and Venice, and yet there were no emotional cries concerning the erosion of liberty emanating from these two successful commercial commonwealths.7 Davenant acknowledged that ideally high excises should be put on luxuries and low excises on the necessaries of life, but admitted such a situation simply was not practical; ‘things of that nature are of little bulk, easily hid, vended by a number of different traders, and require many officers to inspect the making, selling and retailing of them’. Necessaries, by their nature, were much more widespread and visible and thus easier to tax. It was alright in a country like Holland where a duty on luxuries was easy to manage, ‘where the people are shut up within a narrow compass, and where the execution of the laws is strict and steady’. However, he claimed, England had people dispersed throughout the land, while the English constitution could not bear such strict regulation. Excises that targeted mainly public dealers and bypassed private families could raise a great deal of money: ‘There may a sum large enough arise, only from a duty upon such things as are sold, made, or retailed in market towns and great cities, to be paid only by the seller, maker, or retailer’.8 However, the view that the poor should not be taxed still retained the moral high ground and at times projected a powerful voice. Take, for example, the (p.57) Bristol merchant John. Gary who, also writing in the turbulent 1690s, emphasized the fact that a poor man spent far more of his income on ordinary excised commodities than a rich man did. This view, however, made little Page 4 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? headway with the hard-boiled pragmatist Davenant, who, as we have just seen, claimed that excise duties were equitable because ‘everyone, in a manner, taxes himself, making consumption according to his will or ability’ During the course of the eighteenth century this argument, as we shall now see, became one of the most frequently wheeled out to legitimate the vast increase in excises. Supporters of the excise claimed that the amount spent on such taxed goods was dependent on the individual’s ability to do so, that a richer man normally used more of it than a poor man, and hence tax would be more fairly distributed. The extremely controversial and unpopular notion that the poor should pay taxes had seeped in through the door of suspect logic and financial imperative. The dubious claim that every citizen benefited from the work of the state and that therefore everyone should pay tax was nonetheless frequently questioned, and, as we shall see later, was one of the main sources of condemnation by late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century radicals. A substantial number of the landed elite remained publicly concerned and seemingly guided by a paternal compassion that the poor should not pay tax. Paternal compassion is, however, the wrong expression, since deep down they knew that this shift in incidence could have a divisive effect on the traditional geography of social authority. By taxing the poor the balance and monopoly on which the ruling landed elite held power was being undermined. It was less paternal compassion and much more privileged landed pragmatism. As Paul Langford neatly summarizes: ‘The price of paternalism was the land tax’.9 Despite paternal grunts and commercial grumblings, yet another view had emerged to add to the equitable argument. John Houghton, a prominent fellow of the Royal Society and economic commentator, argued with confident gusto in 1698 that a tax on necessaries was a good thing, since it made the ‘very lazy and expensive’ labouring poor work harder, and therefore helped manufacture cheaper goods in ever greater quantities. Walpole later latched on to this argument and made it one of his central axioms legitimating his excise-oriented fiscal policy. He gleefully demonstrated his belief in taxing the poor when he restored the salt tax in 1732 and simultaneously reduced the land tax by a shilling. He believed it kept wages low and therefore encouraged the slovenly masses to work. This increasingly popular view was forcibly argued, since it was claimed a rise in wages would make England less competitive in the exportation of manufactured goods. Living on the edge of subsistence kept the workers industrious.10 By the 1720s there were broadly two dominant perspectives towards indirect taxation. First, those in the powerful Petty–Davenant–Houghton–Walpole camp (p.58) believed that a general excise on consumable goods was the best and most equitable tax, while having the additional bonus of making people more industrious, Secondly, those roughly siding with Gary’s paternal argument bolstered by the view of his friend, the political philosopher and member of the Page 5 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? Council of Trade John Locke, argued that a tax on the great masses would ultimately fall on the land since the price of commodities would rise and therefore, since labour already existed at the subsistence level, wages would also rise. This would mean a farmer would have to pay more for labour, resulting in the tax ultimately resting on the land. In addition, the increase in wages would have an impact on domestic industry and international trade. Locke, and some of his followers, therefore advocated a single direct tax on land. Walpole underlined Davenant’s arguments concerning the excise and told the House of Commons in 1733; ‘As to the manner of raising taxes upon the people, it is a certain maxim that that tax which is the most equal and the most general is the most just and least burdensome’. This was in stark contrast, he added, to the land tax which was ‘the most grievous and most unequal of all our taxes’. A year earlier Walpole had explained his argument in more detail during his successful defence of the reintroduction of the salt tax: ‘This is the excellency of the salt tax’, he told a packed parliament, ‘that every man is thereby obliged to contribute to the public charge according to his condition in life … and it is selfevident that it is a more just, a more equal and a better proportioned tax than any that is raised or can be contrived’. Walpole was attempting to invert the Lockean view, claiming that the land tax was a greater burden on the common people because it forced landlords to increase rent and therefore the cost on certain items of food and drink—‘so that what the land pays, the people too pay’. Thus getting rid of the land tax would actually more than compensate the people for the rise of existing excises or the introduction of new ones. However, for Lord Bathurst, Walpole’s defence of the salt tax was outrageous: ‘In all cases it is hard, it is cruel to tax the poor journeymen and day labourers because it is not to be presumed that they can get any more than bare subsistence by their daily labour, the profits that may be made go all to the benefit of the master who employs them. He it is that has the whole benefit of their labour and therefore he ought to pay the taxes’.11 The patrician view found an ally, for completely different reasons, in many of the growing mercantile interest, who questioned the labour arguments so powerfully implemented by Walpole and many early eighteenth-century economic writers. Great merchants and directors of large trading companies sat in their grand buildings, erected in the heart of London, puffing on unadulterated Virginian tobacco, taking generous gulps of smuggled French brandy, and reflected on the issue. They complained that a tax on necessaries, through the excise, actually raised wages and therefore damaged British manufactures and (p.59) trade. Leading spokesmen of this view included Sir Matthew Decker, a director and one-time governor of the East India Company; Francis Fauquier, a director of the South Sea Company and later lieutenant-governor of Virginia; Malachy Postlethwayt, a well-known economic journalist; Sir John Barnard, a successful

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The Equitable Tax? merchant and MP for the City of London; Jacob Vanderlint; and numerous others.12 The Dutch emigrant and London timber merchant Vanderlint penned his wellknown treatise, Money Answers all Things, a year after Walpole had been so dramatically and decisively defeated over his proposed excise on wine and tobacco in 1733. Vanderlint set out to show, in some detail, how the price of labour could be reduced in order to aid English commerce and industry. His basic suggestion was to bring far more land into cultivation and to catch more fish from the sea. Here he was probably thinking of the Dutch fishing industry and land-reclamation projects. This, he claimed, would provide greater produce and therefore increase the consumption and availability of necessaries. Vanderlint then gave the spin-off: ‘By thus making the Necessaries of Life cheaper, to such a Degree as shall be found effectual to reduce the present Rates of Labour, and thereby the Price of every Thing else, so much, that the Money, now circulating amongst the people, may extend a vast deal further than it now will do’. The outcome would also be the production of much cheaper goods than England’s competitors and therefore an increase in the nation’s exports. This would result in more money through a positive balance of trade, which, in turn, would lead to greater consumption. Consequently, ‘the Revenue needs must increase likewise, since the Duties are always levied on the Things which the People consume and use’ In this way, he claimed, the interests of merchants, industrialists, and the government were all met.13 Vanderlint advised that trade should not be restrained in any way, especially via government intervention through the imposition of taxes. He spelt out the natural way, as he saw it, to prohibit imports; ‘I am entirely for preventing the Importation of all foreign Commodities, as much as possible; but not by Acts of Parliament, which never can do any good to Trade; but by raising such Goods ourselves, so cheap as to make it impossible for other Nations to find their Account in bringing them to us’. Through a combination of this policy and the greater abundance of necessaries, he argued, the vast trade in illicit merchandise would also be vanquished. However, the most important development would be the reduction in the cost of labour, ‘because whilst the Necessaries of life cost so (p.60) much as they now do amongst us, most other Nations will be able to work a great deal cheaper than we’.14 Vanderlint saved his best for last. His final suggestion would have caused dismay among many of the landed gentry, since it focused on the sensitive domain of the land tax, which, as everyone knew, was based on totally out-of-date assessments. The tax, he boldly suggested, was not charged at half its value and therefore should be revalued. He then conjured up the possibility that all taxes on goods could be repealed and replaced by a single tax on land and houses. This simple and narrowly focused policy would subsequently save money incurred in the collection of customs and excise. Besides, he claimed, drawing upon the Lockean Page 7 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? view, taxes always ended up on the land—the ultimate source of everything: ‘I might, without going any further, insist on it, as a self-evident Principle, that that which gives all must pay all’.15 A few years later yet another Dutch emigrant, the successful London merchant and landscape gardening enthusiast Matthew Decker, also proposed a radical overhaul of English taxation. Like Vanderlint, he advocated a single tax but simply on houses. While roaming his huge garden on Richmond Green inspecting the condition of his rose bushes and the extent of pernicious greenly, Decker gathered his thoughts on the subject of tax. This culminated in 1743 with his Serious Considerations on the Several High Duties which the Nation … Labours Under (1743). He began by stressing the extent which tea smuggling had reached and the terrible violence that accompanied it. After much pontificating and meandering he came to the purpose of his pamphlet: to replace all the high duties on goods with ‘one Single Excise Duty over all Great Britain, and that upon HOUSES’. This, he claimed, would stop illicit trade and remove the threat to labour stemming from a tax on necessaries: ‘That the most wealthy, and most substantial Part of any Nation Should bear the greatest Part of the Burthen, is certainly most reasonable, but as seldom put in practice’. As a result the ‘poorest sort of People’, who he estimated lived in 500,000 houses out of a total of 1,200,000, would not pay tax. He reminded his readers why this was a good thing: ‘thereby their labour might, become so much cheaper, and the Goods, which are the Produce of their Labour, might, by this Means, be sold at as Low, or Even a lower Rate than can be afforded by other Nations’. He also emphasized the amount of labour that would be freed from the smuggling trade and the ‘fifteen or sixteen Thousand in the several Gaols in England’, which could otherwise be put to good constructive work.16 The most vocal exponent of Walpole’s industrious view came in the mideighteenth century. The bad-tempered cloth manufacturer from Troubridge in the West Country, William Temple, taught: ‘The only way to make the poor industrious is to lay them under the necessity of labouring all the time they can spare from meals and sleep in order to procure the common necessities of life’.17 (p.61) Temple’s primary target for propagating the view that taxing necessaries led to higher wages and therefore more expensive labour, was the economic journalist Malachy Postlethwayt. Temple was unimpressed by Postlewayt’s arguments and claimed that ‘when provisions are cheap, labour is always, relatively, dear’. Making provisions more expensive would thus lead to the greater availability of labour, ‘always well performed, and of course [is] always cheaper than when provisions are at a low price’. He therefore wanted to see necessaries highly taxed and the labouring masses working a six-day week, and warned that ‘the very reverse happens, when wheat and other provisions are at a low price—Tippling-houses and skittle-grounds are then crowded instead of their masters court-yards’. All this, he concluded, led to idleness, debauchery, scarce labour, and the destruction of manufactures. Thus taxing necessaries to Page 8 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? the hilt would make labourers work six days a week and, because they were sober, it would improve the quality of their work.18 He claimed that the typical labourer would live on ‘great heaps of fat beer or bacon, and eat perhaps till he spewed; and having gorged and gotten dead drunk, lie down like a pig, and snore till he was fresh. This is the common consequence of high wages and plenty’. Temple’s argument was, in one sense, the concentrated blast of a widespread but now declining view.19 Temple’s cynicism knew no bounds. He criticized popular notions of liberty and the view that England was the freest land in Europe. Such rhetoric may be of use ‘as far as it may effect the bravery of our troops’, he sneered, but ‘the less the manufactory poor have of it, certainly the better for themselves and so the state’. The labouring masses should never think themselves independent of their superiors. The word liberty, he scoffed, ‘operates like magic on the unthinking multitude, and appears to them to sanctify any name that is joined with it. It is extremely dangerous to encourage mobs in a commercial state like ours’. The labouring masses had too much money, too much leisure, and were developing a political consciousness that frightened men like Temple. They had become ‘a many headed monster, which everyone should oppose, because everyone’s property is endangered by it’. To illustrate his point he boiled down the recent Spitalfields riots by weavers to too much time and money, allowing them to ‘enter into illegal combinations [,] destroy the works of those who are disposed to be industrious, turning regularity and order into riot and confusion’. The solution, he believed, was not to be found in the sharp edge of a sword or the blast of a musket, but simply in taxing them into submission.20 An alternative perspective to making workers industrious had been put forward by Vanderlint some years earlier. He acknowledged that many working people wasted a great deal of time, but ‘nevertheless do Work enough, and too much too, as Things now stand; and that they would do more, if it were provided in a Way that would encourage their Industry’. His fundamental principle was the exact opposite to Temple’s: ‘I take it as a Maxim, that the People of no Class will (p.62) ever want Industry, if they don’t want Encouragement’. For Vanderlint, as we have seen, this meant much cheaper and more abundant necessaries. Interestingly, however, he also argued that by reducing the price of necessaries by half, wages could also potentially drop by a quarter. A very similar emphasis on improving the labourer’s living standards was plagiarized by Postlethwayt in his Britain’s Commercial Interest Explained, 1757, and earlier articulated by Bishop Berkely in his The Querist, 1735–7.21 W. Coats has detected the above change in outlook toward labour becoming much more prevalent during the second half of the eighteenth century. A more widespread view had emerged, which emphasized the need to reward British workers for their superior skills and energy as compared with Continental workers. Coats claims: ‘Circumstances had changed … and it was deemed Page 9 of 12

 

The Equitable Tax? necessary to redress the balance in favour of the “carrot” of incentives, and against the “stick” of necessity’. Such a shift from wants to needs only served to enhance the value, and potential, of the excise.22 Notes:

(1) J. C. Davies, ‘The Levellers and Democracy’, P&P 40 (1968), 174–80, on 177– 9; B. Coward, The Stuart Age: England, 1603–1714 (London, 1994), 233. George Smith is quoted in C. Hill, ‘The Many-Headed Monster’, in id., Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (London, 1974), 181–204, on 199. For William Walwyn’s comments see The Writings of William Walwyn, ed. J. R. McMichael and B. Taft (Athens, Oh., 1989), 299, 377, and 424. For the heterogeneous nature of the various strands of those lumped under ‘Levellers’— esp. with regard to the franchise—see K. Thomas, ‘The Levellers and the Franchise’, in G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660 (London, 1972), 57–78. It should be underlined that the Levellers were not dominated by the question of the franchise; see J. Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Stability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), 277–8. (2) Diary of Thomas Barton, Member in the Parliaments of Oliver and Richard Cromwell, From 1656 to 1659, ed. J. T. Rutt, 4 vols. (London, 1828), iv. 93-4 and 239; L. F. Brown, ‘Ideas of Representation from Elizabeth to Charles II’, JMH 11 (1939), 23–40, on 37. Scotland had been under English army occupation since 1652. For the subsequent relationship between Scottish representation and Westminster see E. D Goldwater, ‘The Scottish Franchise: Lobbying during the Cromwellian Protectorate’, HI 21 (1978), 27–42. (3) For the ambiguous place of the excise in the Levellers’ political agenda, see M. J. Braddick, ‘Popular Politics and Public Policy: The Excise Riot at Smithfield in February 1647 and its Aftermath’, HJ 34 (1991), 597–626, on 618–23. Jonathan Scott claims ‘the first and final imperative of restoration was forgetting’ the republican interlude; see England’s Troubles, 43. (4) W. Petty, A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions (London, 1662), in The Economic Writings of William Petty, ed. C. H. Hull, 2 vols. (New York, 1963), i– 91–4; M. J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), 116–117. (5) D. Waddell, ‘Charles Davenant (1656–1714): A Biographical Sketch’, EcHR, 2nd sen., 11 (1958), 279–88; D. Coombs, ‘Dr Davenant and the Debate on Franco-Dutch Trade’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 10 (1957–8), 94–103. Davenant was also offered the office of comptroller of the excise in 1692 and survey-generalship of excise in 1696 but turned them down; see S. E. Fine, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643–1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 114.

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The Equitable Tax? (6) C. Davenant, An Essay upon Ways and Means (London, 1695), repr. in The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D’Avenant, ed. C. Whitworth, 5 vols. (London, 1771), i. 17–18. (7) Ibid. 61–3. (8) Ibid. 66–7; C. Davenant, Discourses on the Public Revenues, and on the Trade of England in Two Paris, pt. 1 (London, 1698), repr. in Works of Davenant, ed. Whitworth, 142 and 271. (9) P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People: England 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1992), 28. (10) W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640–1799: An Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), 70–5; J. H. Plumb, Sir Robert Walpole (London, 1956), 240–1; A. W. Coats, ‘Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 11 (1958), 35–51. (11) Walpole is quoted in N. A. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole (London, 1907), 88–92, and Lord Bathurst in E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 456–7. For the background to some of these views see D. C. Coleman, ‘Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth Century’, EcHR, 2nd set., 8 (1955–6), 280–95. (12) M. Decker, Serious Considerations on the several High Duties which the Nation … Labours Under (London, 1743); F. Fauquier, An Essay on Ways and Means for Raising Money for the Support of the Present war without Increasing the Public Debts (London, 1756); M., The Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, 2 vols, (London, 1756); J. Vanderlint, Money Answers all Things (London, 1734). Earlier, Dudley North, Gary, and Defoe had claimed high wages would act as a stimulus to the worker to be industrious and fuel demand for goods. For this prominent, but historically neglected, view, see R. G. Wiles, ‘The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism’, EcHR, NS 21 (1968), 113–26. (13) Vanderlint, Money, 6–8, 50–1 and 86–9. (14) Vanderlint, Money, 26 and 54–61. (15) Ibid. 110–16. (16) Decker, Serious Considerations, 14–16 and 22–3. (17) W. Temple, A Vindication of Commerce and the Arts (London, 1758), 30–1. (18) Temple, An Essay, 14–16 and 30. (19) Ibid. 44–7, and Vindication, 17, 25–7, 32–3, and 43.

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The Equitable Tax? (20) Temple, An Essay, 50–7, and Vindication, 83 and 31. (21) Vanderlint, Money, 120–2; Coats, ‘Changing Attitudes’, 37–8. (22) A. W. Coats, ‘Economic Thought and Poor Law Policy in the Eighteenth Century’; EcHR, NS 13 (1960), 39–51, on 49, and ‘Changing Attitudes’, 43 and 46; J. De Vries, ‘The Industrial Revolution and the Industrious Revolution’, JEH 54 (1994), 249–70.

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Liberty, Property, and the Excise WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0005

Abstract and Keywords Robert Walpole's appointment as First Lord of the Treasury enabled him to recapture public confidence in the credibility of the government's financial dealings and preserve the central aim of the South Sea Company's scheme, namely, the conversion of a large portion of the long-term national debt into a redeemable stock. From now on the most important elements of future dealings were social as well as economic budgeting, which involved the skilful management and courtship of the money market and ensuring the efficient gathering of revenue. Walpole was adept at this important aspect of political maneuvering, which, in turn, enabled a long period of financial consolidation and relative stability. This chapter shows that at the heart of Walpole's administrative fiscal policy was the excise. Keywords:   excise, taxation, tax policy, Robert Walpole

‘Excis’ d, Excis’ d, Excis’ d, Sir!’ An immediate result of the bursting of the South Sea Bubble in 1720 was the elevation of Robert Walpole as First Lord of the Treasury. The political turmoil unleashed by this Iscal disaster provided the context for Walpole to step out of the debacle with an immense amount of personal credit and power. Over the next twenty-one years he became the dominant Whig at court, in the Commons, and in the executive. Walpole’s achievement was to recapture public confidence in the credibility of the government’s financial dealings and preserve the central aim of the South Sea Company’s scheme; namely, the conversion of a large portion of the long-term (fixed-interest) national debt into a redeemable (lowinterest) stock. The major lesson from the crisis was the centrality of financial Page 1 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise competence to the future stability of the nation. From now on the most important elements of future dealings were social as well as economic budgeting. This involved the skilful management and courtship of the money market and, above all, ensuring the efficient gathering of revenue. Walpole proved a master of this important aspect of political manoeuvring, which, in turn, enabled a long period of financial consolidation and relative stability. At the heart of his administrative fiscal policy was the excise.1 From its inception the dislike of the excise, as we have seen, had become deeply embedded within the culture of the English (and subsequently British) people—a hatred that spread its tentacles deep into the very tissue of Englishness; ‘You can be no Stranger, Sure, Sir Andrew, to the Conspiracy that’s form’d against us’, said the fictional character Timothy Squat to the equally imaginary merchant member of the Spectator Club Sir Andrew Freeport. Squat’s concern, or rather his anonymous creator’s anxiety, was Walpole’s proposed excise scheme on wine and tobacco in 1733. Freeport replied: ‘Bless us! What is there a Proclamation to be issu’d against Trade? Is our Privilege of being govern’d by Parliaments to be taken away? Is ship-money, or Tonnage and Poundage going to be levy’d upon us? Is a Star-chamber to be erected? Is the Habeas Corpus Act repeal’d? Or is the Pretender and Popery coming in upon us?’ For Squat the future was even bleaker: ‘Psha! those are mere Trifles; Popery is as any other Religion, and the Pretender is nothing (p.64) but a political Scare-Crow,—No, Sir, ‘tis something more terrible than, any thing you have mention’d, We are to be Excis’d, Excis’d, Excis’d, Sir!’2 Walpole’s policy of indirect taxation, at one level, was an attempt to neutralize country Tory and dissident Whig arguments concerning the land tax. By keeping direct taxation at a minimum, he could draw out some of the venom from early eighteenth-century politics, in particular, the belief that the Inancial burden for the recent military expenses and rapid expansion of the state, had fallen upon the landed ranks at the expense of the new monied and commercial classes. Ironically, however, this provided the opposition with a source to vent their attack upon Walpole’s administration.3 After being in power for several years Walpole’s political tactics were becoming far more obvious to his enemies, perhaps none more so than his former ally William Pulteney, who was seething with hostility after his former friend failed to give him office in 1721. Since then he had continually inflicted heavy verbal blows upon Walpole’s policies and, more importantly, character. In 1725 he had openly joined forces with the scheming Jacobite and Tory Viscount Bolingbroke to bolster the flagging Tory crusade and was one of the most prolific writers in the anti-Walpolean paper The Craftsmen. During the late 1720s he successfully mobilized discontented Whigs under the banner of patriotism along with the staunch Jacobite Sir William Wyndham, a close associate of Bolingbroke. In 1733 Pulteney tried to expose the hidden bribery embedded within Walpole’s scheme: Page 2 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise ‘I hope, Sir, that landed gentlemen will never consent to anything that may undo the nation, and overturn the constitution for so small a bribe… as that of being free from the payment of one shilling in the pound land-tax, and for one year only’.4

‘The Most Wretched Are The Most Heavily Taxed’: The Salt Tax Between 1722 and 1727 the land tax had been steady at two shillings in the pound until it was raised to four shillings in anticipation of war with Spain. It then fell to three shillings between 1728 and 1729, and then a year later back down to two shillings. Revenue proceeds were doing so well that Walpole also had the opportunity to drop one of the excise taxes. He tried desperately to convince the Commons that the tax on candles should be disposed of, since, on the whole during this period, candles were not greatly consumed by the poorer ranks, and it (p.65) was thus not an equitable tax in the sense he understood it. However, ways and means on taxation was a free vote and the House decided that the tax on salt should be removed. This was a decision Walpole greatly opposed, not strictly for the equitable arguments he had expounded regarding the consumption of mass goods, but primarily for the huge loss of patronage that would occur. The scrapping of the salt tax would mean the removal of some 350 revenue officers and therefore a useful slice of political placement. In addition, as we have seen, Walpole was a fervent exponent of the argument that a tax on necessaries, such as salt, made the labouring masses work harder.5 In 1731 the land tax was reduced to one shilling in the pound leading to a gap in the £500,000 required revenue. In order to fill this deficit Walpole quickly brought back a levy on salt a year later, with the remaining sum to be provided by the sinking fund, specifically set up in an Act of 1717 to pay off the national debt via surplus revenues. When Walpole declared his intention to siphon money from the fund it caused uproar, especially in the House of Lords. For the fervent anti-Walpolean John Carteret, earl of Granville, such a move was tantamount to both robbing public creditors and condemning the people to even more taxation. Undeterred, Walpole believed it was a less controversial move than the only other option of once again raising the land tax which, he told the House, ‘has continued so long and lain so heavy that many a landed gentleman in this Kingdom had been utterly ruined and undone’. This was also a calculated manoeuvre to win popular support from landowners in readiness for the introduction of his excise scheme on tobacco and wine. In addition, as already mentioned, it enabled him to purchase back the interests of the placemen who used to be employed in the Salt Office.6 The controversial reimposition of the salt tax in 1732 was carefully guided in through a set of familiar arguments. Walpole resolutely declared: ‘The duty upon salt is a tax that every man in the nation contributes to according to his circumstances and condition in life; every subject contributes something; if he be a poor man he contributes so small a trifle it will hardly bear a name; if he be Page 3 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise rich he lives more luxuriously and consequently contributes more; and if he be a man of a great estate, he keeps a great number of servants and must therefore contribute a great deal’. In reply Lord Carteret scoffed, ‘the most wretched are the most heavily taxed, and the more a man has, the less is he obliged to pay toward the public expense’. Wyndham agreed and promoted the principle that the amount of property an individual owned, rather than his expenditure on consumable commodities, should be the criterion used in measuring his ability to (p.66) pay for the support of the government. Property, then, rather than consumption, should be the only criterion.7 Wynctham warned that the salt tax would raise the price of food and lead to a decay in trade. This, in turn, would lead to rental arrears with the burden therefore ultimately falling upon, the gentry. Not only this, he continued, but the management of salt duties had been corrupt in the past, its officers had been used in elections, and the subsequent discontent led to a larger standing army to enforce the tax—thence even greater taxation and the illiberal threat of arbitrary government There was nothing original in Wyndham’s analysis, he was merely repeating at great length what the numerous anti-excise pamphlets had been saying during the English Civil War and interregnum period. Walpole found himself constantly having to deny the allegation that he planned to introduce a general excise, although it was clear to most eyes that he sympathized with that aim. Nonetheless, despite such opposition the tax was passed with a slim majority by parliament. The opposition, however, still had everything to play for.8 The salt duties had undermined the confidence of the Commons in Walpole’s ministry and released a powerful pent-up reaction that spread much further than merely the corridors of power. With two years to a. general election Walpole was dangerously complacent. By this point too, as Kathleen. Wilson has argued, popular protest had moved from its traditional orbit around Jacobitism to a more elliptical path about libertarianism. Much of this language was a return to some of the themes raised during the 1640s and 1650s. This shift generated, a far more effective opposition that focused, its attention on the structure of postRevolutionary political power as opposed to its dynastic legality. Such, a move had been fuelled by a number of events. As well as the salt tax there was the earlier fiasco surrounding the South Sea Bubble that remained stubbornly ingrained in contemporary memory. This event, despite Walpole’s personal distance from it, was commonly seen as a. Whig disaster and weighed, heavily against the government. Stockjobbers and the corporate companies were now well and truly seen by the opposition as the antithesis to the nation’s commercial and political interests. The liberty and constitutional rights of the people were being eroded by the alliance between a. corrupt expanding state, trade monopolies, and high finance.9

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise (p.67) The traditional association of Toryism with Jacobitism had reached its zenith in the aftermath of the Atterbury and Layer plots of 1722. These conspiracies had been hatched at a time deliberately calculated to exploit the South Sea Bubble disaster. In the short term they simply enhanced the standing of the Whig government and especially the status of Walpole (who took the opportunity to put a tax on papists). However, in the longer term, they forced the Whig opposition to rethink their objectives and tactics. And it was within this context that protest was shifted from dynastic issues to those of libertarianism. The central bulwark was now an onslaught on corruption within Whig power and it is against this that the huge opposition to the excise scheme has to be situated.10 It seems that Walpole had on this occasion seriously misread the expected reception to his scheme. For, as Paul. Langford concludes, he could only have planned it at the time he did because he believed it to be a vote-winning policy. After all, only a decade earlier he had successfully introduced an excise on tea, chocolate, and coffee without a public outcry or complaint from the affected commodity dealers. Everything, it seems, pointed toward the successful introduction of the new Excise Bill. Walpole had good reasons to presume it would be highly popular, since it would herald in the further possible reduction of the land tax and above all it was a levy on luxuries. ‘If there is one subject of taxation more obvious than another, more immediately within the direct aim of fiscal imposition than another, it is such an article of luxury as depends for its use on custom or caprice, and is by no means essential to the support of real comfort of human life’. Those arguments stemming over the unfair incidence of the excise on tobacco and wine could not be invoked in the way they had been over salt. However, if the debates and public discontent over the salt tax had caused Walpole at least a little anxiety, it was nothing compared to that which exploded onto the scene the following year.11

‘Tyrannical Oppressors and Monopolizers of Our Freedom’: The Excise Scheme on Tobacco and Wine The Hanoverian regime had evolved into what was effectively single-party rule, in which executive power had expanded its reach far more into everyday private lives and the purses of the people. Wilson has convincingly shown how the 1733 excise scheme was the pinnacle of a number of Walpole’s domestic policies that were perceived to be destructive of an Englishman’s liberty. These included the notorious Riot Act, the Septennial Act, and the Black Act; there were various election Acts cutting popular participation in local and parliamentary elections, (p.68) as well as serious attacks on the opposition press and theatre. Contemporaries were also dismayed at the large proportion of foreign mercenaries in the standing army and, as we have just seen, many were outraged by the reintroduction of the salt tax in 1732. All these measures, Wilson claims, ‘stimulated middling and plebeian apprehensions about the intentions of Walpole’s domestic policy… The once pervasive fear that the king Page 5 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise would rule without Parliament had thus been transformed into an intense anxiety at the way in which the king and his ministers ruled through it’. The coalition of Tories and dissident Whigs played on these extra-parliamentary fears, and channelled their energies into ‘patriotic’ reform and the elimination of ministerial corruption.12 This opposition ideology appealed to urban populations whose political power had been reduced under court Whig rule. It was this group, Wilson claims, who fuelled the addition of ideas over political accountability and representation into a large part of patriotic ideology. This opposition patriotic approach bracketed religious divisions and denied the existence of dynastic disputes, thereby allowing them to concentrate fuly on the crusade against corruption. The excise crisis of 1733 was a perfect moment to unleash the full power of this opposition. The government completely misread the situation. Henry Pelham, for example, was convinced that the volatility was local ‘and will be easier quel’d, than even those they have formerly been foil’d in’. The government had underestimated the evergrowing power of the press and its ability to mobilize opposition forces nationally and an increasingly hostile urban population.13 The timing of the Bill was also unfortunate for other reasons. The low price of wheat and certain goods such as meat and fruit was hitting the farmers hard, forcing many landlords to lower their rents. The dislike of the Excise Bill was therefore exacerbated by the government’s increasing unpopularity with the country electorates, who were predominantly composed of landowners and farmers. There was also a slight, but nonetheless significant, move away from the court by traditional Walpole supporters into the commercial world of financiers and merchants. The growing ranks of the urban middling sort, particularly in the City of London, were increasingly agitated by a political system dominated by a bulky Norfolk squire and his cronies. This had become intensified under the City Elections Act of 1725 that had further reduced the franchise and radically dimished the power of the City’s Common Council. A dangerous swelling of resentment, stemming predominantly from City merchants, had started to come knocking at Walpole’s door. Within this volatile environment the Excise Bill came to be seen as a symbol of the Whig government’s smothering of an Englishman’s liberty and property.14 Although not one to shy from smuggled goods for his own personal consumption, Walpole’s official argument for the Bill was, on the surface, seemingly (p.69) plausible and persuasive, at least to propertied ears. It was primarily designed to stem smuggling and the ‘shameful frauds’ associated with imports of wine and tobacco. On officially announcing the scheme to parliament Walpole spoke for two long hours. During his marathon oration, which was abundantly supported by facts and figures, a number of MPs dozed off while others could barely sit still as they struggled to restrain their frustration and come to grips with his evidence. Walpole, always well prepared, had digested layers of information Page 6 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise about smuggling and fraud.15 Opposition MPs were initially dazed and overwhelmed by the deluge of numbers spinning from his tongue; however, they soon got their balance back and released their attack. The debate lasted until two o’clock in the morning and, all things considered, the all-consuming prime minister had seemingly done well. Indeed, his advisers patted him on the back and congratulated him on what many thought was his finest speech. The House carried the motion by a vote of 266 to 205. However, an. ominous sign of things to come met Walpole as he sneaked away through the back of the Commons, only to find he was greeted by a large and angry crowd, tugging at his clothes and insisting on making him aware of their views toward the proposed scheme. The idea of the legislation was to convert the customs duties on imported tobacco and wine into excises levied on the commodities when removed from bonded warehouses for domestic sale. A cumbersome and congested system of bonds and drawbacks, which characterized the old system of customs, had already been replaced by a duty-free storage of bonded warehouses for tea, coffee, and chocolate. Such a system was seen as an added engine to Britain’s trading empire. If the particular commodity was to be exported the drawback could be avoided, and if it was intended for home consumption duty need not be paid till it came out of bond. As well as increasing revenue, the expansion of bonded warehouses would, argued Walpole and his allies, make London a ‘free port, and by consequence, the market of the world’.16 The plan was given added credibility through the carefully timed report of the commission into illicit trade, published just before the Excise Bill was announced. Between 1723 and 1733 something like 229 boats engaged in smuggling had been confiscated and some 2,000 persons prosecuted. Six customs officers had been murdered and another 250 seriously wounded. Over 192,515 gallons of brandy had been seized, while it was calculated that over a third of tobacco duties were unpaid. The latter was due to both smuggling and the skilled ways in which the merchants manipulated the methods by which the duties were collected. By law tobacco had to pay a duty of

. per pound on

landing in England. The importer could either pay this immediately, in which case he got a deduction of 10 per cent, or he might give a bond for future payment. Since a great deal of the tobacco was intended for (p.70) the European market it was frequently re-exported, and thus the merchant received back a large chunk of the original duty paid. This provided the merchant with ample opportunities for fraud. The overt objective of Walpole’s scheme was to increase the revenue, sever fraud, and reduce the amount of money or credit transferred during import and export transactions. To administer the new system it was proposed to introduce a further hundred or more new excise officers.17

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise Imported tobacco was frequently underweighed by some 20 per cent and overweighed by the same amount on export. In many cases the merchants were in collusion with government officials who received something like one-third of the illegal profits. False quantities would be recorded in the columns of the merchants’ books upon importation, and the real quantities written on separate pieces of paper. The true figures were then carefully pasted over the false Igures ready for exportation. After a long voyage tobacco became dry and thus weighed less when it came to pay duty; it was then stored in damp warehouses and deliberately allowed to get moist. It thus gained weight when it came to be reweighed for drawback. Another technique used to add additional weight was to mix it with worthless stalks and rubbish, and then toss it out to sea before it reached its destination. Perhaps the most commonly used technique was to weight the hogshead with lead prior to export. As a stark example, in 1732 customs men were instructed to strip all the hogsheads at Irvine, resulting in average exports dropping by a third. Cargoes of bogus re-exports of tobacco would also be immediately relanded at nearby smuggling havens such as the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and Flanders. In addition, a great deal of tobacco was taken as customary remuneration by the men working at the port. One of Walpole’s quantifying clerks calculated in 1728 that the Exchequer was loosing thousands of pounds per year through fraud. He based his calculations on the following: ‘Considering how great consumers most people are, that take Tobacco, especially working people, that will sooner go without one meal a day, than want Tobacco I think three pipes a day upon a medium cannot be deemed an extravagant computation’. A similar story could be told for wine, such as the promiscuous refilling of hogsheads with illicit wine after they had been registered as empty. Wine was also regularly mixed with the ‘Juice of Elder Grains, Wild Mulberries, and Cyder’ and sold as genuine wine. For Walpole the best way of suppressing all these practices was to change the process of collecting duties.18 Despite his initial success in presenting the excise scheme, serious tensions soon began to surface. Boroughs sent deputations to announce their opposition, (p. 71) while City corporations ceremoniously burnt ministerial pamphlets, Walpole’s Bill bore no resemblance to a general excise but his opponents mercilessly condemned it as such. As one MP had written several decades earlier with both eyes fixed firmly on the financial settlement of William and Mary: ‘There is no end of this tax [the excise;] if you lay it now on some commodities next time you may lay it on others. Another anonymous commentator wrote in an undated manuscript written against a proposed excise on iron: ‘If you lay an excise on one commodity so you may on others and at another time you or a future Parliament on more and so there is no end till all commodities are taxed and from a lower to a higher degree’,19

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise The excise commissioners were suitably alarmed by the general uproar. They were so concerned that they took the unusual step of advising their officers to try and reverse such rumours: ‘We the Commissioners of his Majesty’s Excise do hereby inform you, & desire you to inform all whom you survey, with as many more as you can of your neighbours, that we have seen this new Bill of Excise now before the Honourable House of Commons, and that by virtue thereof there are only two more commodities, but the collecting of the old duty is only to be transferred to the excise from the Customs, because of the many great frauds committed there in collecting the same’, Walpole also utilized the Post Office’s network to distribute pro-excise propaganda,20 The increase in the number of excise officers further fuelled matters. It was claimed that it would greatly assist the patronage of the crown and influence elections. This was a valid criticism and would have surprised nobody. Under Walpole the practices of the excise and customs were also perceived to have become much more repressive and illiberal. It was certainly true that the customs had helped secure seats in the coastal towns, and the potential for the excise to do likewise for much of the country was a genuine and grave concern for some time.21 For example, one anonymous writer commentating in the final days of the republic, claimed the excise commissioners encouraged their officers and people in general to give information, against any whom, they please [regarding the possession of supposed un-taxed goods], they being without Controversy believed, before never such able and honest Men, that can witness by Oath to the contrary; because they are Judges, and Parties, and shares in the Booties, though they veil this their arbitrary Proceedings with this (p.72) plausible Excuse, that an Oath on the behalf of the State renders them unquestionable, Thus they take the water out of the state’s stream, to drive the grinding Mill of their Oppressions, pushing Men of near Fortune into a capacity of undoing and ruining whom they please; their Poverty prompting them also for their own Profit, to swear anything, because by their arbitrary Power they have half whatever they can swear Men out of, and so erect their own Decays by others Ruins. The author of these words finished with the sombre conclusion that those running the excise were ‘tyrannical Oppressors and Monopolizers of our Freedom’. The substantial powers given to excise commissioners and country JPs in 1657 to judge excise cases remained unchanged, and was further regularized and put on a more efficient footing in 1698, leading to a steady stream of disapproving groans from dissident Whigs, Tories, manufacturers, and merchants.22

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise This animosity, as we have seen, was boiling over in 1733, Tobacco dealers were fuming and vigorously protested that by making them subject to the laws of the excise, the government was turning them into slaves, Walpole countered that brewers and malsters had been subject to the excise for years and they were not slaves! He also repudiated the allegation that the crown would gain from the move, insisting that the revenue would all go to the public. It was not, in other words, a step toward the crown—through his ministers in parliament—gaining arbitrary power as the opposition claimed. To dilute the fear expressed over judicial power of excise commissioners, three of the delegated twelve judges in the City of London had the power, in a summary way, to determine all appeals brought to them. The same policy would be applied throughout the country by one of the judges of the assize. This, it was hoped, would destroy claims of bias and state interest.23 Walpole also tried to claim that he actually had the support of most merchants. In fact he relied on the support of just one interested party, the Virginia Council and House of Burgesses, who represented the planters of Virginia. This important colonial lobbying group petitioned the King and Parliament in favour of an excise in the summer of 1732. However, there was much opposition to the Virginia petition, which was described as an elaborate fraud. The leading representative of the London tobacco merchants, the rather slippery Micajah Perry, claimed in the House of Commons that ‘the representation from Virginia was formed and cooked up here; not only the President (of the Virginia Council), Mr. Carter, now dead, repented the signing it, as he wrote me himself, but most of the planters have repented it too’.24 The rumour that the Governor of Virginia had been instructed by London to present the petition is confirmed in the Journals of the Virginia Council. It seems (p.73) that Lieutenant-Governor Gooch needed assistance from Walpole’s administration to help him stem the chronic overproduction of tobacco and improve its quality, Virginian approval, through the Privy Council, for the excise scheme had been interpreted by Walpole’s opponents as the price the planters had to pay to rectify their production problems. However, as Jacob M. Price has shown, this situation was far from clear-cut, and it was in fact much more the case that the Virginian planters genuinely put pressure on the government to follow through with the scheme. The reasons were clear. In addition to controlling over-production their support was fuelled by a desire to save money in commission fees to merchants, and therefore prevent greedy tobacco traders eroding the planter’s profits.25 Under the prevailing system the merchant offset the expense of fees made at the port of London on the planters. These expenses consisted of charges made for the transport of the tobacco from the ship to the quay—a process known as lighterage’ Then there were payments known as ‘primage’ that were made to the captain for the use of cables and ropes in the landing of goods, and to the Page 10 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise mariners for their services in unloading the tobacco. Fees were also made to the coopers for opening and closing tobacco hogsheads on the quay, and ‘porterage’ went to the porters for carrying the tobacco to the warehouse or carts. Further sums were paid for landing goods on a wharf or shipping them off, known as ‘wharfage’, followed by rent for the warehouse and payments to the officers involved in unloading the ship and watching the tobacco. The planter also bore the costs of freight, and the duties and commission that the merchant exacted for his trouble in passing the tobacco through the customs and selling it in the domestic or foreign market.26 The problem had begun nearly half a century earlier in 1685, when the tax on tobacco and wine had been greatly increased. Importers of both commodities could, to different degrees, bond some of the duties payable but by the 1690s the amount owed through this process had created a huge debt amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds. Of the two products most of the duties on tobacco were dealt with by a bond, except the old subsidy (first penny per pound) of 1660. By contrast many of the duties on wine had to be paid in cash at importation—only the additional duty of 1660 and the impost on wine of 1685 were bondable. The reason for the difference can largely be explained by the fact that nearly two-thirds of all imported tobacco was re-exported, while nearly all the wine went into domestic consumption. There thus seemed little point in making tobacco merchants pay cash duties when the product would be reexported a few months later.27 (p.74) This process carried a number of difficulties for both the government and the merchant. In the case of the former the fear was that the merchants might not pay their bonded debt in time or that they would go bankrupt and never pay. The opposite was the case of the merchant who might not have the cash ready on importation to pay all the necessary duties. From 1685 the problem of unpaid bonds steadily became worse as duties substantially rose. The government was forced to be lenient towards the accumulating interest on unpaid bonds, and between 1708 and 1712 a tidal wave of tobacco imports swamped the country with a spree of bankruptcies hitting the trade. It also led to a domino effect as one merchant’s failure brought down others due to the interlinking credit network they had of underwriting each other’s bonds.28 The Thames was often cluttered with ships loaded to the brim with hogsheads of tobacco for a year or longer, as the merchants who had consigned the vessel and commodity tried to find the cash to pay the old subsidy. This cumbersome process forced the crown to think long and hard about the prevailing bonding system. The most popular suggestion was for merchants to place tobacco dutyfree in a royal warehouse for up to a year, and pay duty in full when they removed it for domestic consumption. This proposal was given a wide airing through an article by Daniel Defoe for his Review in 1711, while the Customs Board officially proposed the scheme in May 1713. The proposal, however, was Page 11 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise aggressively opposed by the tobacco merchants, culminating with the essential features of the Bill being removed. Conversely, the Governor and Council of Virginia wrote to the Board of Trade to announce their enthusiasm for the scheme, pointing to the great benefits that would aid consigning planters. They argued that such a warehouse scheme would reduce the pressure to sell cheaply and therefore provide higher prices for the planter. Hence some twenty years prior to Walpole’s scheme many of the issues had been raised and debated, and the boundaries had clearly been drawn with the government and planters on one side and the tobacco merchants on the other.29 A petition on behalf of the planters sent in July 1728, warned that the situation concerning their livelihood and that of all those connected with the production of the commodity was pushing them to breaking point. Indeed, the petitioners claimed, many were thinking of diversifying and starting to manufacture domestic necessaries instead of buying them from Britain. If They should ever taste the sweet, of providing for their own necessities, within themselves, as they may very easily do’, warned the petitioners, it would not be in the interest of Britain. ‘Nothing by ye last necessity, I believe will ever put them heartily upon making Manufactures, indeed at present they are almost drove to that necessity, the produce of their labour for some years past, having hardly been sufficient to procure their Necessaries for themselves & Families’. The petitioners concluded that, without change, ‘our Tobacco colonies are in hazard to be undone’. Trouble in the colonies was the last thing Walpole and his government wanted.30 (p.75) The Virginian tobacco planters condemned the fact that the merchants’ freight and other charges and commissions remained constant while their earnings were greatly reduced. In a report submitted to Walpole, probably sometime in 1732, the condition of the planters was again emphasized: ‘The Tobacco-Trade for some years past hath been, & Now is at a very low Ebb, so that ye Planters are in a deplorable condition, scarce able to support themselves & families by their industry’. Due to the depressed state of the market the planters of Maryland had added something like a third more tobacco in each hogshead, ‘which has given the Mercht. ye better opportunity of defrauding ye Revenue; But ye poor Planter is so far from partaking of these illicit Gains, yt. he really is become a sufferer thereby; for these corrupt Practices are undoubted certain causes of ye Decay & Dullness of Trade’. Merchants working with waiters were defrauding the revenue to an estimated tune of £100,000.31 The extent of this illegal alliance was clearly visible just by pointing to the massive discrepancy in the price the purchaser gave for tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, and the price at which it was sold in Britain. The colonial planters were seething with contempt: ‘here lies the worm, that eats ye root of our Gourd, & makes it wither’.32

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise The feud between the Virginia planters and the tobacco merchants led by Perry came to a real head in the Colonial Debts Act of 1732. In particular, the second clause of the Act specified that the lands, houses, chattels, and slaves of debtors in the American colonies became liable for the satisfaction of debts ‘in the like Manner as Real Estates are by the Law of England liable to the satisfaction of Debts due by Bond or other Speciality’. This interference from a body separated by thousands of miles of ocean was deeply offensive to slave colonies like Virginia, in which planter legislators had for a number of years sought to protect their real estate and slaves from seizure for any debts except those secured by mortgage. Not surprisingly, then, the Virginians were furious with the merchants, in particular the despised Perry. Price claims that it was this which ‘converted them into ardent advocates of the excise proposal, now an. instrument of revenge against the merchants’. If the tobacco was warehoused under an excise regime, no duty would have to be paid or secured on the 70 per cent of the crop re-exported. It would also extinguish the practice of false weighing, confusing paperwork, and the commission of 3 per cent paid to the factor. Thus the planters stood to gain a great deal from the scheme. The situation in Virginia was further fuelled by a series of riots from, the small planters in response to the low tobacco prices of the past five years.33 The excise scheme also gained momentum as more serious allegations were received at the Treasury concerning frauds in the tobacco revenue at Glasgow. Reservations were voiced by English, merchants concerning the deal made at the Act of Union with regard to the tobacco trade. The Treasury Lords took the allegations seriously and commissioned an Edinburgh customs commissioner, Gwynn Vaugn, to investigate. His report of December 1732 revealed that legally (p.76) exported tobacco was being secretly relanded, In addition, because the officers did not weigh every hogshead, exporters were given an opportunity to put peat and stones in some hogsheads or to overestimate the weights of hogsheads not put on the scale. Further, there were numerous irregularities over record keeping and oath taking, to the extent that Scottish revenue for tobacco had dropped from £7,619 in 1719–22 to £2,953 in 1728–32. Despite such authoritative condemnation the Union remained, as did the tobacco frauds.34 This, perhaps, had been the final straw for Walpole, and in January 1733 he started to determinedly draw up detailed plans for the excise scheme, aided as ever by Scrope. By this stage, however, his enemies had been given more than enough time to plan and mobilize their offensive. Walpole was certainly warned to tread carefully by the MP for Worcester and a former Bristol-based merchant Sir Richard Lane who advised that the warehouse scheme was good but the excise administration ‘seems unnecessary and impracticable’, and ‘will certainly disoblige—so that we shall lose our Elections’. Walpole, however, ignored such prophetic advice, much to his cost in the election of 1734. Lord Stair counseled the queen of the impending assault: ‘he [Walpole] is hated by the city of London, Page 13 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise because he never did anything for the trading part of it, nor aimed at any interest of theirs but a corrupt influence over the directors and governors of the great moneyed company’. Nor were they enamoured by the tone of his language when he described them all as ‘sturdy beggars’.35 Despite its Virginian impulse, which Price has so well described, historians such as Morris Brisco, J. H. Plumb, Dorothy Marshall, Paul Langford, and Peter Linebaugh have also, rightly, emphasized the central place the excise scheme had in Walpole’s socio-economic agenda, rather than being simply a spontaneous reaction to the fair trader and distressed planter. It represented three of the main themes of Walpole’s fiscal policy; first, the growing emphasis on efficient taxation of internal consumption in the form of excises; secondly, Walpole’s desire to lift the burden of taxation off the landowners by reducing the land tax; and thirdly, Linebaugh’s point, it was an attack aimed not Just at corruption and smuggling, but also at customary practices in the port of London. Walpole’s deep dislike of the everyday conventions of the water people was widely known, and he furiously condemned the widespread pilfering of tobacco, commonly accepted as a necessary form of remuneration. In this sense the Bill targeted both groups Walpole despised: the tobacco merchants and the river people working and living in and around the port.36 (p.77) Walpole’s wrath did not stop with London; indeed, his purge was nationwide. Between 1723 and 1725 he mobilized the customs commissioners to crack down on wine smuggling. Informants and spies provided information against 400 people accused of being invoked in running 4,738 hogsheads in Hampshire, Dorsetshire, and Devonshire, resulting in ‘thirty eight of the principal offenders’ being ‘taken and committed to Gaol, one Hundred and eighteen admitted as Evidence, and forty five compounded for their Offences’ Two of the most notorious offenders were the Hampshire-based smugglers John Hutch and David Boyes, both eventually finding their way to Fleet Prison. It seems that their clerk, Isaac Poulsum, was instrumental in informing on their activities. He also provided useful details of the techniques used in their smuggling business. One such practice was to purchase great quantities of decayed French wine from a Custom House sale and use the certificate to run good French wine. Despite the aim of the 1733 excise scheme to prevent the running of wine, it was alleged by one commentator that the reverse would happen: ‘that some commodities already excised are the most run; witness Tea and Brandy; which must always be the Case where the Duty is very high, and collected with the most Rigour’.37 Some contemporary commentators viewed the 1733 excise scheme as ‘an endeavour to set the landed interest in a manner at war with the trading interest of the nation’, as Wyndham provocatively put it. This argument, clearly intended to invert Walpole’s purported aim, had been around for some time. Consider the comments of an anonymous pamphleteer in 1659: ‘’tis the general Opinion of Page 14 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise some… that this Parliament (being most, or all landed Men, and few Traders) will never take away the Excise, because their own Burthens will thereupon become greater’. While it is true that merchants and traders rallied together and mobilized unprecedented opposition to the Bill, it is also the case that the land tax was based on a 1692 assessment and was therefore unequally distributed and tended to favour the more recent prosperous areas of the country. Thus many landholders feared the abolition of the land tax in case it was subsequently reintroduced, based upon a more accurate assessment of land values.38 Thus having been unable to convince most landowners that they should support the excise scheme, Walpole was increasingly isolated. In a world defined by local communities and relatively poor roads and lines of communication, the remarkable aspect of the campaign against the 1733 excise (p.78) scheme was its mobilization, across numerous counties and social groups. Handbills covered the towns of England warning of the impending consumption of people’s trade and liberties by ruthless excisemen. The commotion was even more than the disorder and violence that characterized the Sacheverell Riots of 1710. Political outlet and symbolism spilled into the streets; towns were animated by the sound of ballads confidently voiced at full pitch. Groups of folk chanted repetitive anti-excise lyrics, drawing upon common national prejudices and memories in which the excise became associated with French and foreign subversion. Iconographic symbols such as wooden shoes, tea cloths, and various other items were carried on poles or depicted in political prints. A huge demand grew among everyday people for derogatory pictures of the ‘evil’ Walpole. Never before, perhaps, had so many diverse localized communities bonded together over one issue.39 Again, however, these sentiments were the intense manifestation of views ignited since the English Revolution. A commentator from 1659 hissed, ‘like swarms of noisome Locusts [excise officers]… over-spread and devour the substance of the whole Land, and become as chargeable to this Nation as a considerable Army, so that notwithstanding the Revenue that cometh in by Excise is so vast, yet the innumerable multitude of officers; all which (besides the large Profits which the Monopolizers therof reap, being near sufficient to maintain another Army) might be taken off, to an inexpressible Ease of the People’.40 In March 1733 the Northampton Mercury claimed that more pamphlets had been produced against the Excise Bill ‘than have been seen perhaps on any Occasion’. The government tried to whip up a counter-fear by claiming that the opposition was orchestrated by Jacobite and republican activists, restoking anxiety over popery and the memory of the English Revolution. An agitated Walpole wrote anonymously: ‘We have been told indeed, that the present clamour is universal, among all denominations of men; but I have heard but two particularly named, and these are persons of very remote principles the Jacobites and Republicans’. His opponents lampooned this accusation. One claimed, ‘you have formerly executed many hopeful Projects, by Virtue of this word Jacobite, Page 15 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise but it is too much worn at present to do you any service; and therefore you tack the word Republican to it… What does the City of London and most of the great trading Towns and corporations in England consist of nothing but Jacobites and Republicans?’41 Obviously Jacobites would have exploited the anti-excise sentiment, but what constituted a Jacobite for the government was frequently spread rather wide and had by now lost much of its former clout. The most celebrated Jacobite to oppose the Bill was the Lord Mayor of London, John Barber, of whom Langford writes; ‘While not actually responsible for initiating the city’s vigorous attack on the excise, it was he who claimed the merit of aligning it officially behind the (p.79) campaign launched by the merchants’. It seems that there were individual Jacobites invoked in the opposition of the excise but it is unlikely that they were part of a concerted conspiracy. It was clear on this occasion that the opposition to the Bill transcended a whole spectrum of political boundaries.42 Much of the opposition came from the impact it was deemed to have on small businessmen and retailers; in particular, concerns over everyday problems such as the monitoring, measurement, and weighing of groceries by excise officers. These small businessmen dominated most municipalities. This hostility, in turn, was bolstered and given direction by the great plutocratic merchant houses of the City of London. It was also claimed that the livelihoods of these people would be ruined by the excise’s exposure of their trade, skills, and secrets. ‘For God’s sake’, huffed Walpole, ‘What mighty mysteries are there to be discovered in the trades of wine and tobacco’. Rather, he claimed, ‘these are not the secrets and mysteries, the discovery of what are made to appear so dreadful. It is the discovery of the mysteries of iniquity which they dread, who are the gamers by it; and which every consumer: and every fair trader… ought, and will rejoice to see disco ver’d’. Walpole was pointing at the various tricks used to adulterate tobacco and wine. One sarcastic commentator dismissed such remarks and claimed Walpole would have trouble finding ‘officers of such exquisite Palates, as to distinguish real wines from the artful compositions of these subtle wizards, (as your Advocates call them) the coopers and wine-brewers’? The same writer rather astutely remarked that if Walpole was so set on making visible traders’ premises and techniques, he should also apply the same policy to himself; ‘Will you, Sir, who are so zealous for extending this Visitorial Power, be pleased to put your self under the same Jurisdiction, and consent to have your Accounts inspected, and the Mystery of your Dealings exposed, in the same rigorous Manner, by Commissioners, to be appointed by the people?’43 Excise duties on wine and tobacco affected not only the small businessmen who littered the country, but also, importantly, two of the most powerful commercial interests in the capital. Unanimity soon developed among the business community at both the metropolitan and provincial level. Walpole’s notion that his excise scheme would be warmly greeted by the commercial world could not Page 16 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise have been more seriously miscalculated. The excise on tea, coffee, and chocolate in 1723 had only generated ill-organized opposition. Part of the reason was simply that neither coffee nor chocolate were at this time really popular articles, while tea was controlled by the East India Company, which had a monopoly. The situation concerning wine and tobacco was very different. Large numbers of respectable merchants in both trades were heavily involved in fraud, which, given the prevalent difficulty in preventing tax evasion in the 1730s, made it very difficult (p.80) to believe that more than a tiny minority of dealers in either commodity could claim to have clean hands.44 Above all, as we have already seen, the proposed tax was perceived by many as the prequel to a general excise and was frequently depicted in political pamphlets as the ‘Monster Excise’ devouring all in its path. During the debate on Walpole taking revenue from the sinking fund in February 1733, Pulteney alluded to ‘that monster, the Excise, that plan of arbitrary power, which is expected to be laid before this House in the present session of Parliament’. The protestation of its enemies grew ever louder and they increasingly appealed to the constitution and to the fact that the excise was unknown to the founders of English government. It was described as an alien idea embraced by absolute papist monarchs abroad. Opponents claimed that the excise was part of a foreign conspiracy that contained all the trappings of French tyranny. In March 1733, The London Journal prophe-sised that ‘the Government will soon be arbitrary and tyrannical…that slavery, Beggary, and Wooden Shoes, of the French are preparing for them; and that a great many Pair of wooden shoes were lately imported, on purpose to be carried about the City on Poles or Sticks, as Emblems or Signs to the People, of what a dismal state they are coming to’.45 If at one extreme the excise was associated with potential absolutism, at the other it was deeply linked to republicanism. The major-generals of the Protectorate had bequested to the memory of the upper ranks a deep-rooted suspicion of standing armies that was one of the most significant legacies of the revolutionary decades. The general equation described a situation in which a large army needed the excise to fund it, while the excise needed the army to support it. Despite the association of the excise with the army, tobacco-loving soldiers also questioned the wisdom of the scheme, with Lord Scarborough warning Walpole that the army was ‘almost as ripe for mutiny as the nation for rebellion’.46 The excise officers were depicted as a foreign enemy waiting to invade and enter private houses anywhere and at any time. Walpole tried to dilute such arguments through anonymous pamphlets and responses in parliament. He rightly pointed out that the same concerns his opponents had, applied also to customs officers: ‘the Excise officer has the same power to visit, search, and examine, as the Custom-house officer has over the ship to which he is appointed: the retailer of Excisable goods is liable to great penalties on false accounts; the merchant is Page 17 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise liable to as great penalties on fake entries. The ship is the warehouse of the merchant; the shop or cellar, of the retailer, and tobacco factor’. He noted that for an excise officer to enter a person’s house, a warrant from a magistrate, the assistance of a peace officer, and an oath from a third party were all required: ‘Where then is the difference with regard to our liberties, between the officers of Excise and Customs?’ He also defended the fact that the excise could prosecute (p.81) without the use of a jury since it was less expensive and a more summary way to proceed. Besides, he concluded, the system was also used in numerous other areas such as the land tax, window tax, and disputes over parish rates to the church. Elsewhere Walpole had recorded in his own notes and calculations for the 1733 scheme; ‘Many are the Acts of Parliament that give Jurisdiction to Justices of the Peace &c. to proceed in a summary way without a Jury, and even to inflict Corporal punishments as well as to levy penalties, and to enter into houses and seize Goods’. For instance, physicians were allowed—whenever they liked—to enter any apothecary’s house in London to destroy bad drugs. JPs were empowered to enter the house of bakers or retailers of bread to ascertain whether it made or sold bread according to the legal requirements. In addition, storehouses could be searched for gunpowder subject to a justice’s warrant.47 The excise affair enabled a dangerous opposition to Walpole to build up in parliament, especially in the House of Lords. Resistance was particularly acute in Coventry and Nottingham, and in the trading interest of the City of London. Viscount Perceval wrote in his diary on 9 April 1733: ‘l heard the City have declared, pass what bill you will, they won’t comply with it’. This culminated in a petition from the City’s Corporation to the House of Commons on 10 April 1733. It was delivered to Westminster through a stately procession of some eighty coaches led by the sheriffs, alderman, common councilmen, merchants of the City, and a large noisy crowd. This intimidating demonstration of the City’s wealth was indeed a powerful spectacle. The petition claimed that taxation was already too great and that trade was in a depressed state. Walpole did not want to be seen yielding to the shouts from outside parliament and worked hard to ensure that the petition was rejected. He achieved this, just, by a vote of 214 to 197.48 Having barely scraped through, Walpole then dropped the whole scheme the next day when it came up for its second reading, by suspending its parliamentary scrutiny until 12 June when it was understood the House would be prorogued (it was adjourned between the 9th and 13th and then prorogued until 26 July). Dejected and humiliated, Walpole was led away by a small army. Despite this large bodyguard he was still mobbed, his son was injured, and his friend and supporter of the excise scheme, Lord Hervey, was hit over the head. That night Walpole’s effigy was burnt in Fleet Street, Smithfield, and Bishopsgate Street; bonfires were lit all round the country and bells were rang to spread the good news. Schoolboys in Bristol were given a holiday and employed to make squibs, while faggots and tar barrels were burned, the ships Page 18 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise were flagged, and the mayor erected a battery of seven guns behind his house. Men and women pinned badges to their hats inscribed with the words ‘Liberty, Property and No Excise’.49

(p.82) Liberty And Excise Officers The reputation of the excise was not improved by the officers themselves frequently overstepping the mark. Indeed, the excise commissioners in 1743 felt obliged to warn the collectors that officers who searched ‘the houses of private persons without a warrant looking for small quantities of smuggled brandy would be left to defend themselves from any actions brought against them for illegal proceedings’ Adam Smith later claimed that because the excise officer’s ‘duty obliges them to be frequently very troublesome to some of their neighbours’, they ‘commonly contract a certain hardness of character which the [customs] officers frequently have not’.50 In the numerous trials recorded in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the language of 1733 continually reappears. The legal representative of Timothy McDaniel, the publican of the Green Dragon in Shadwell Dock, was in no doubt about the abuse of excise power in the case of his client. Excise officers had broken into McDaniel’s cellar ‘with a view I suppose of seizing what was in it[,] not having any ground or reasonable suspicion whatsoever they found 57 or 58 Barrels of Beer there’. However, after gauging the barrels and trying them in various ways, they found nothing untoward and left. In addition, the officers had wrongly claimed that the barrels belonged to a brewer, when, in fact, they were the property of McDaniel. The lawyer used this episode to launch into a vigorous attack of excise officers in general: ‘all this wanton conduct without rhyme or reason ought to be resisted and repelled by an English Juryman or the necessary consequence will be that neither I nor you nor anybody that hears me can have a house of our own that would not be visited by these rude people[.] [W] ithout any pretence whatever they will toss about all your property[,] disturb your possession and disquiet your family just as their caprice and humour may dictate and unless they are restrained it will be productive of very serious mischief to the public’. Lord Chief Baron Skynner, the judge presiding over the case, awarded the plaintiff £5 in damages.51 Thomas Harris, a London grocer and soap boiler based in Tooley Street, had a similar experience at the hands of his local excise officers. As a result he sought £200 damages for the seizure of 1,720 lb. of soap that they claimed he had made illegally. Harris’s lawyer, Mr Baldwyn, described the events leading up to the seizure. In the early morning of 2 November between the hours of three and four, the excise officers—John Lees, John Dewick, Charles Barnes, James Raymond, and James Wentle— ‘by some means or other got into the plaintiffs soap house and they told a little boy [John Wilson] who is an apprentice to the plaintiff that they came in search of some soap which they pretended had been fraudulently made[.] [T]he boy said he knew nothing of any such thing and beg’d Page 19 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise they would (p.83) wait till his master got up in the morning’. They ignored his request and proceeded to rummage ‘all over the soap house and at last pitched upon a quantity of soap 1720 lbs. which at 51 per hundred amounts to about £44 in value’. They then went over to the boiler but found nothing to suggest that the soap had been made there. Baldwyn concluded that the officers ‘had no reason in the world… for seizing this soap but that it seemed warm’. Despite a great deal of circumstantial evidence and interesting illumination of the realm of fraudulent possibilities, the only real argument against the soap maker was the fact that he had locked up his building. ‘Because he locks his house at night that is all the evidence of hiding & concealing!,] because the warehouse is locked of nights & they think proper to break into it at 3 in the morning!,] Good God if that be evidence of hiding & concealing what situation is every man in this country!.] I will convict the fairest man that ever practised if that is to be law[,] if that is to be the practices of the excise Officers’. Lord Chief Pelacy came down in favour of the plaintiff and awarded £42 in damages.52 If a controversy involved excise officers breaking and entering the premises of a gentleman or lady of independent means, the stakes became much higher. Consider the seemingly wrongful targeting by excise officers of a large house in Chelsea where a certain Ann Williams resided. Her legal representative, the stoic excise-hater Sergeant Walker, described the officers’ actions as an ‘outrage’, and reminded the jury that ‘their being executive does not give them any exclusive privilege!,] that while they are going to look for goods suspected to be in certain places[,] they are not to go and search the houses of innocent persons who have not offended against the Revenue laws!,] and it is incumbent on them not to make the executive of the laws[,] which tho’ necessary and bothersome!,] more bothersome than they need be by rudeness and incivility and an oppressive manner in executing those laws’. Williams’s friend, the sensitive Mrs Wollaston, was with her at the time and claimed that soon after dinner there was ‘a very great rattling at the door… there was a set of very ill looking people at the door, she desired to know what they wanted…we had had so much riots [the Gordon Riot of 1780] before[,] I was vastly terrify’d[.] I desired to know what they wanted[,] I was so frightened, indeed I tremble at the thought of it now… it is quite a lonely place & there was only Mrs Williams & myself and one servant in the house. I never was so much frightened not even by the very riots or the fire which was so near us’. The excise officers had come armed with an iron crowbar. Joseph Scovin, a witness to the events, claimed: ‘The first thing I saw was them going up to a coach house door [and] a stable door which adjoin one another & attempt to pull it open[.] They smelt it with their noses[;] after that Cartwright jumped down… & called for an iron bar & began to break the bar of the window’. This failed and he ended up breaking in through the parlour window. Wollaston claimed that Page 20 of 26

 

Liberty, Property, and the Excise before (p.84) he got in, ‘he swore & made a vast noise at the door which terrify’d me very much’. Walker continued, ‘she [Williams] might have had smuggled goods and concealed stills in the house[,] however the situation of it in aspect did not lead those to expect any resistance… was it necessary to go in a body with an iron crow to the house and knock with violence [?] [ W]hy it was the very way to alarm the persons who were in the house and the very means to preclude their own admittance at the door of the house’. In short, it was their behaviour that had caused the plaintiff to refuse them entry. On entering the plaintiff’s house their conduct was apparently just as aggressive and intimidating. ‘Every door they attempted to open they smelt to find if they could smell anything’. Scovin also reported, ‘Mrs Williams & the other lady [Mrs Wollaston] were much frightened on their entering the house in such a manner, they [the officers] called out one to the other, see how frightened they are, see how frightened they are’. Wollaston further added, ‘I myself said if it was possible I would have them punished for terrifying me in that inhuman manner!.] [I]t was much worse than the Rioters & such a set of ill looking people 1 think I never saw together in my life’. On completing the search of the house the excise officers found no illicit excisable commodities or any hidden stills. In a now familiar language, Walker concluded that if their suspicions of hidden stills ‘is to excuse the conduct of the Defendants they may excuse their conduct by entering the house of any man and may disturb any man in the peaceable enjoyment of his house[,] they may disturb everyone of you’. Walker concluded by instructing the jury to make an example of these excise officers. This would be not only useful ‘with respect to the publick at large but likewise useful to those employed in collecting the Revenue for it will teach them to act more to the advantage and interest of the revenue’. Ann Williams was subsequently awarded £50 in damages for the distress she had received at the hands of the officers.53 Notes:

(1) N. A. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Walpole (London, 1907), 48–58; H. Roseveare, The Financial Revolution, 1660–1760 (London, 1991), 58–61; P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–1756 (London, 1967), 171–98; J. H. Plumb, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675–1725 (London, 1967), 176. (2) Anon., A Dialogue between Sir Andrew Freeport and Timothy Squat, Esquire (London, 1733), 5–6, quoted in R. Turner, ‘The Excise Scheme of 1733’, EHR 42 (1927), 34–57, on 39. (3) Plumb, Political Stability, 28–38; D. Marshall, Eighteenth Century England (London, 1962), 148; E Langford, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975), 31–4; H. M. Atherton, Political Prints in the Age of Hogarth: A Study of the Ideographic Representation of Politics (Oxford, 1974),

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise 158; H. V. Bowen, ‘“The Pests of Human Society”: Stockbrokers, Jobbers, and Speculators in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain’, H 78 (1993), 38–53. (4) Pulteney is quoted in I. Gilroour, Riot, Risings and Revolution: Governance and Violence in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1992), 73. (5) S. Dowell, History of Taxation and ‘Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), ii. 95–6; Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 75; J. H. Plumb, Walpole (London, 1956), 242; Gilmour, Riots, Risings and Revolution, 85–6. Salt was one of the more important necessaries in Britain’s economy. It was absolutely vital for curing fish and provisions and, as such, taxing it was a highly emotive issue. Effective taxation of salt actually began with the introduction of the excise in the Civil War. Its collection shifted from the excise in 1702 to a new body called the Salt Office. See E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance 1358–1823 (Manchester, 1934), 178–9. (6) Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 64–9; Hughes, Studies, 291–304. (7) W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640–1799: An Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), 101–7; Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 102–5. (8) Plumb, Wtdpole, 243–6. (9) Ibid. 243–6; K. Wilson, The Sense of the People: Polities, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715– 1785 (Cambridge, 1995) i, 117–19; anon., An Examination of the Late Conduct of the Ministry with Respect to the Duties on Tobacco and Wine (London, 1733), quoted in W. J. Bailsman and I. L. Neufeld, ‘Excise Anatomized: The Political Economy of Walpole’s 1733 Tax Scheme’, JEEH 10 (1981), 131–43, on 132. For the 1640s and 1650s sec M. J. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Administration and Response (Suffolk, 1994), esp. 198–9. D. Undcrtovvn writes: ‘The excise, clearly, was hated by all ranks of society, and attacks upon its agents expressed a traditional view of popular rights. Not all excise officers were outsiders to their communities, but they were agents of an intruding state in its most unpopular guise’; see his Revel, Riot and Rebellion: Poptdar Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985; repr. 1987), 216; J. S. Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces: Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War 1610–1650 (London, 1976; repr. 1980), 65 and 126. (10) The Jacobite Francis Atterbury, bishop of Rochester, was accused of plotting to bring the Hanoverian succession down. Walpole exaggerated the conspiracy and used it to smear his political opponents. See Wilson, Sense of the People, 120–1; Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution, 76. (10) Marshall, Eighteenth Century, 149; Langford, Excise Crisis, 32–4.

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise (11) Langford, Excise Crisis, 37– 40. Walpole is quoted in Hausman and Neufeld, ‘The Excise Anatomized’, 134. (12) Wilson, Sense of the People, 123. (13) Ibid. 124; N. Rogers, ‘The Urban Opposition to Whig Oligarchy, 1720–1760’, in M. C. Jacob and J. E. Jacob (eds.), The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism (Princeton, 1991). Henry Pelham is quoted in Turner, ‘Excise Scheme’, 35. (14) Langford, Excise Crisis, 24–5; Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution, 87. (15) See e.g. ‘Notes and Calculations by Walpole for the Excise Scheme 1732– 1733’, CUI. Ch(H) 43. Julian Hoppit has shown how political arithmetic as a tool of government took off during the 18th cent, with much of the data collected by revenue officers; see his ‘Political Arithmetic in Eighteenth Century England; EcHR 49 (1996), 516–40. (17) Anon., A Vindication of the Conduct of the Ministry, in the Scheme of the Excise on Wine and Tobacco (London, 1734), 9–13; Marshall, Eighteenth Century, 148–9; B. R. Leftwich, A History of the Excise; with Hints on Investigating Pension Claims (London, 1908), 70; Plumb, Walpole, 264–5; Hansman and Neufeld, ‘Excise Anatomized’, 134. (18) Anon., A Vindication, 22; J. Motley, Walpole (London, 1896), 169–70; Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 109; Marshall, Eighteenth Century, 48–149; Leftwich, History of the Excise, 77–8; Plumb, Walpole, 263–4; Langibrd, Excise Crisis, 26; CUL Ch(H) 43/9 and 11; ‘An Accompt from ye Custom House at London, of the whole quantity of Tobacco, imported & Lxported, at & from London, & all ye Out Ports of England’, London, 27 July 1728, CL’L Ch (H) 29. (19) Anon., ‘Some Considerations about an Excise’, 1689, BL Harley MS 1243/339; anon., ‘Against an Excise on Iron’, n.d., BL Harley MS 1243/390. (20) ‘A Representation front your Commissioners, of Excise to their several officers particularly in your county, concerning the new Method proposed in parliament for Collecting your Duties upon Tobacco and Wine’, n.d. probably 1733, CUL Ch(H) 44/65; anon., A Review of the Excise Scheme; In Answer to a Pamphlet, Infilled The Rise and fall of the Projected Excise, Impartially Considered (London, 1733). (21) This fear has to be put in the context of an electorate with an estimated 20 per cent being revenue officers. Since 1700 all customs officers were strictly forbidden to use their influence in parliamentary elections. These provisions were extended to the excise in 1711. Revenue officers lost their right to vote in 1782 in an Act introduced by the Rockingham ministry.

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise (22) Z.G. [attrib. Zachary Grafton], Excise Anatomiz’d. Declaring that Unequal Imposition of Excise to be the only anise of the Ruin of Trade, the Universal Impoverishment, and destructive to the Liberties of the whole Nation (London, 1659; repr. London, 1733), 6–7; Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution, 85; Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 331. (23) Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 110–11 and 119. (24) Micajah Perry is quoted in Langford, Excise Crisis, 28 (25) Ibid. 30–1; J. M. Price, ‘The Excise Affair Revisited: The Administrative and Colonial Dimensions of a Parliamentary Crisis’, in S. B. Baxter (ed.), England’s Rise to Crealness, 1660–1763 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1983), 257–321. The following discussion of the colonial dimension to the 1733 excise affair is indebted to Price’s study. (26) E. Hoon, The Organisation of the English Customs System 1696–1786 (London, 1937; repr. Newton Abbot, 1968), 252. (27) Price, ‘Excise Affair’, 261–2. (28) Price, ‘Excise Affiur’, 262–3. (29) Ibid. 263–4. (30) ‘A Representation of ye present state of ye Tobacco Trade, with Regard to Virginia & Maryland’, London, 24 July 1728, CUL Ch(H) 29/8. (31) CUL Ch(H) 43/11/6, n.d., probably sometime between 1732 and 1733. (32) ‘A Representation of ye present state of ye Tobacco Trade’, (33) Price, ‘Excise Affair’, 279 and 287–8. (34) Price, ‘Excise Affair’, 290. See also ‘An Accorapt from ye Custom House at London, of the whole quantity of Tobacco, Imported & Exported, at & from London; & all ye out ports’, London, 27 July 1728, CUL Ch(H) 29/8. For the background and context to the Scottish dimension see J. B. Price, ‘Glasgow, the Tobacco Trade, and the Scottish Customs, 1707–1730: Some Commercial, Administrative and Political Implications of the Union’, in id., Overseas Trade and Traders: Essays on Some Commercial, Financial and Political Challenges Facing British Atlantic Merchants, 1660–1775 (Aldershot, 1996), 1–36. (35) Price, ‘Excise Affair’, 292–4; P. Langford, A Polite and Commercial People; England 1727–1783 (Oxford, 1992), 30.

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise (36) Plumb, Walpole, 238–9; Marshall, Eighteenth Century, 147; Langford, Excise Crisis, 31–2; P. Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), 178–82;‘Observations on a Proposall for Laying Dutys on Tea, Coffee & Chocolate to be under the Management of the Commissioners of the Excise’, n.d., probably between 1721 and 1723, CUL Gh(H) 27/32. (37) Enquiry into the Frauds and Abuses of the Customs, 18; anon., A Review of the Excise-Scheme; In Answer to a Pamphlet, intitled The Rise and Fall of the projected Excise… (London, 1733), 14; anon., The Budget Opened. Or, an Answer to a Pamphlet Intitled, A Letter front a Member of Parliament to his Friends in the Country, concerning the Duties on WINE and TOBACCO (London, 1733), 21. For revenue and informers see J. Warner and R. Ivis, ‘Informers and: their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century London’, SSH 25 (2001), 563–87. (38) Hausman and Neufeld, ‘Excise Anatomized’, 135–6; Z.G., Excise Anatomiz’d, 17; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 99–100; Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 85–6. For the stark variations 5n the land tax quotas per county, see G. J. Wilson, ‘The Land Tax Problem’, EcHR 35 (1982), 422–6. (39) For an extensive surrey of the condemnation of the scheme by contemporary newspapers see Turner, ‘Excise Scheme’, 46; Plumb, Walpole, 251–2; Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution, 86–7. (40) Z.G., Excise Anatomiz’d, 16. (41) Anon., A Letter from a Member of Parliament to His Friends in the Country concerning the Duties on Wine and Tobacco (London, 1733), 18; anon., Budget Opened, 16–17. (42) Plumb, Walpole, 239; Langford, Excise Crisis, 46–55. It is worth noting that there is convincing evidence of Jacobite sympathy among smugglers in England and in Scotland they seemingly went hand in hand. See P. Monod, ‘Dangerous Merchandise: Smuggling, f acobitism, and Commercial Culture in Southeast England, 1690–1760’, JBS 30 (1991), 150–82. Walpole was the mastermanipulator of branding his opponents as Jacobite; see Plumb, Political Stability, 168–72. (43) Anon., Letter from a Member of Parliament, 28–9; anon., Budget Opened, 16–17 and 27. (44) Langford, Excise Crisis, 56–61. (45) Atherton, Political Prints, 154–5. Pulteney is quoted in Marshall, Eighteenth Century, 150.

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Liberty, Property, and the Excise (46) Atherton, Political Prints, 156–7. Lord Scarborough is quoted in Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution, 88. (47) Anon., A Letter from a Member of Parliament, 27 and 30–1;‘Proceedings where Property is Concerned, & also for crimes without a Jury’, n.d. probably 1732 or 1733, CUL Ch(H) 43/11/5. (48) Atherton, Political Prints, 159–60. Viscount Perceval is quoted in Marshall, The Eighteenth Century, 151; Leftwich, A History of the Excise, 73; Price, ‘The Excise Affair’, 300. (49) Morley, Walpole, 175; Brisco, Economic Policy of Walpole, 116–17; Gilmour, Riot, Risings and Revolution, 89; Marshall, Eighteenth Century, 151–2; Langford, Excise Crisis, 91 and 110–68; Atherton, Political Prints, 162; Leftwich, History of the Excise, 75–6; Taylor, ‘Excise Scheme’, 46. (50) The excise commissioners are quoted in J. Pink, The Excise Officers and their Duties in an English Market Town (Surbiton, 1995), 16; anon., A Review of the Excise Scheme, 26; A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London, 1776; repr. Indianapolis, 1981), ii. 899. (51) Timothy McDaniel v. Charles Barnes and Thomas Cooper, 20 Jan. 1780, PRO CUST 103/2, 4 Feb. 1778 to 4 July 1781. (52) Thomas Harris v. John Lees, John Dewick, Charles Barnes, James Raymond, and James Wentle, 7 Dec. 1778, PRO CUST 103/2, 4 Feb. 1778 to 4 July 1781. (53) Ann Williams v. Chissell and Others, 31 May 1781, PRO CUST 103/2, 4 Feb. 1778 to 4 July 1781.

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Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0006

Abstract and Keywords England's success in maintaining its credit was the marvel and envy of the 18th century, which contributed to its rise as a major commercial, military, and industrial power. The dominant consensus among ruling ranks during the late 17th and early 18th centuries was characterized by a prevalent anti-consuming mentality sunk within a classical notion of civic politics. This chapter shows that, ultimately, this view could not combat the implicit contradiction and inevitability that a hunger for state revenue had to encourage greater consumption of any product that could be profitably taxed. Keywords:   excise, taxation, tax policy, trust, credit

Every English Stock-jobber and Minister boasts of the credit of England. Its credit, say they, is greater than that of any Country in Europe. There is a good reason for this: for there is not another country in Europe that could be made the dupe of such a delusion. Thomas Paine, The English System of Finance (1796) Despite Paine’s slur, England’s success in sustaining its credit was the marvel and envy of the eighteenth century. It was a major part of a linked and complicated jigsaw that combined to fuel England’s rise as a major commercial, military, and finally industrial power.1 The dominant consensus among the ruling ranks during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was characterized by a prevalent anti-consuming mentality sunk within a classical notion of civic politics. However, ultimately this Page 1 of 8

 

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise view could not combat the implicit contradiction and inevitability that a hunger for state revenue had to encourage greater consumption of any product that could be profitably taxed. This was a crucial component in sustaining trust in England’s ability to woo and manage its creditors, which simultaneously meant justifying the growth and accompanying morality of trade, finance, and industry. Charles Davenant reluctantly admitted in the midst of England’s turmoil in the mid-1690S, ‘trade in general may have been hurtful to mankind, because it has introduced luxury and avarice’, but, he sighed, it was all too late, ‘the circumstance of time, and the posture other nations are in, make things absolutely necessary, which are not good in their own nature’. In other words a consumer mentality was deemed crucial to funding a country persistently at war. As the former excise commissioner continued to explain, ‘since France, Spain, Italy and Holland have addicted themselves so much of late years to trade, without that naval force which trade produces, we shall be constantly exposed to the insults and invasions of our neighbours’. Trade and war were inextricably linked; so too were credit and revenue.2 (p.88) As we saw in Chapter 2 the demand for excised commodities had greatly exceeded population growth by the late eighteenth century. The production of excised commodities had rapidly expanded and the state’s coffers were clearly benefiting in order to service the ever-increasing national debt. In a detailed and extensive study of excise and production in England between 1643 and 1825, S. E. Fine concluded that the huge growth in the manufacture of excise goods particularly took off after 1748. This date, he claimed, ‘appears to mark the start of a period of industrial expansion of great magnitude in the industries under examination’. By this time protected and excised domestic industries had taken root. Fine concluded that from the early part of the 1740s to the boom of 1825, printed goods, for example, increased 4,300 per cent, leather 122 per cent, candles 265 per cent, and soap 310 per cent.3 Interestingly, evidence underlining this linked amalgamation of developments can also be found in the transforming cultural and political debates surrounding notions of virtue and citizenship. In his unravelling of the evolution of a classical sense of civil politics against an increasingly commercial and militaristic context, John Pocock has traced the intellectual tools used to try and redefne virtue within such a changing milieu. The emergence of a fiscal-military-commercial state created manifest problems for traditional axioms of social authority. Such a situation demanded careful manœuvring. The fiscal structure was now in a position to effectively finance military force, most notably the hugely problematic issue of having a permanent standing army. This entailed, as we have seen, a massive increase in public borrowing and therefore in taxation, which required a huge growth in trade, commerce, and nurturing domestic industry. It was by tapping this wealth that the state could expand and stretch its tentacles, not just around the country but also across the globe. The period, as we saw in Chapter 1, witnessed the rise of the new monied interest making vast Page 2 of 8

 

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise profits from the interest on the loans made to government. This raised the spectre of property being ‘mobile and interchangeable, but wholly subjective and contingent. The value of anything was its value as security in an unreachable future’ totally dependent on public confidence. For many contemporary theorists, the fact that it was no longer rooted in real property meant it had become illusionary.4 The government stock was funded by the creditor who was promised the repayment of his or her (widows were significant investors) capital at a future date, and in the meantime he or she could either sell the stock or purchase more at the market price. Here its value rose or fell subject to the whispers and rumours spinning from the mouths of shady brokers, or stories reported in the pages of (p.89) dubious newspapers lying soiled in crowded coffee houses in and around Exchange Alley. Gauging the stability of the government and its future ability to meet repayments became a very profitable or devastatingly expensive game. There was often no tangible basis to the ebb and flow of stocks; rather, it seemed these pieces of paper simply moved to the whims of people’s fantasies. All this suggested that government, too, was ‘maintained by the investors’ imagination concerning a moment which will never exist in reality,’ i.e. repayment. It therefore represents a transient moment in the identity of the nation from one based on fixed property to one based on capital rooted in imaginary property. Virtue was seen, within a potent country ideology, to have become corrupted through the loss of independence gained by fixed property and the new dependence on the state and its ability to pay off its debt.5 It was within this context that the excise, as we shall see, became such a crucial source of sustaining public credit. Davenant had earlier voiced his concern that if the landed gentry continued to bear the bulk of the fiscal burden of war and continued to get more and more into debt, this would lead to irreversible corruption within the body politic. Public debt, for Davenant, accelerated the indebtedness of the landed gentry to parasitic creditors, and therefore drained them not only of their money but their independence. This, in turn, substantially reduced their political power with the end result, potentially, of reducing parliament to a corrupt and decayed institution. In this sense public credit was pulling everyone into a hole of debt, with those managing it taking control over all those trapped within it. One way to free up the landed gentry and spread the burden of taxation necessary to underpin public credit would be to extend the tentacles of taxation outward, in particular through an expansion of the excise. Davenant, as we have seen, was a consistent advocate of this approach. As things currently stood in the 1700s and 1710s, the aggrieved landed class believed their money was being used to feed the gluttonous belly of a new group of professional creditors all because of the expenses involved in sustaining what they now considered a dubious war. Within such an environment the widely feared excise looked like a Page 3 of 8

 

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise more inviting and credible pillar in sustaining public credit. It offered a solution to the moans increasingly coming from the aggrieved landed class. The public creditors did not care where the money came from as long as it came. First, then, they had to be convinced that the excise was a reliable, lucrative, and predictable source of revenue. Secondly, a means had to be devised of making the opinion which dictated the health of credit reliable, since such knowledge was vulnerable to scares, lies, fantastical stories. In short it frequently appeared mystical and was easily manipulated. The merchant and one-time bookkeeper to the excise commissioners, Daniel Defoe, was obsessed by it: ‘[credit] is neither visible or invisible; it is all consequence, and yet not the effect of a cause; it is being without (p.90) matter, a substance without form. A perfect free agent acting by wheels and springs absolutely undiscovered, it comes without call, and goes away unsent’.6 This seemingly irresolvable situation continued throughout eighteenth-century political discussions. There was one particular development that clearly offered a way to ease the dilemma left by the eclipse of agrarian virtue and a notion of trust defined by land. The emergence of public science offered a morality not rooted in custom and grounded in inherited property but, instead, fixed in God’s property (nature). An appropriate morality was accessible through the new natural and experimental philosophy. This, in turn, started to inform fiscal and political decision making, the structure of organizations, and the practices of record keeping. An empirical epistemology, an increasing emphasis on bookkeeping, and a flow of predominantly disgruntled country-dominated public select committees, were one way to monitor the veracity of opinion, safeguard against corruption, and make things real. If opinion could be defined by policing the credibility of passions, speculation, and general fears, then a level of trust could be ensured regarding the status of opinion. The phantasms of a commercial world in motion characterized by trade, mobile property, and credit could be mapped (bookkeeping) and thus ostensibly grounded in fact—or at least a language that sounded like fact. Why should these terrestrial objects not be as predictable as the heavens above? To make mobile property tangible required the ‘invisible phantom’ of credit to become manifest and trustworthy. To do this, as with any piece of knowledge, required agreement and the subsequent agencies to sustain that agreement. Defoe sought to define credit using the new language of experimental philosophy coupled with good mercantile bookkeeping practices, and to report information as if it were straight out of the Royal Society’s published Transactions. True credit was characterized by probity and prudence, attributes that had to be made apparent: ‘nothing can support credit, be it public or private, but honesty; a punctual dealing, a general probity in every transaction; he that once breaks through his honesty, violates his credit’. The outward embodiment of this was correctly kept account books absent of deliberate alterations or suspicious erasures; such was its importance that Defoe devoted a Page 4 of 8

 

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise significant chunk of his The Complete English Tradesman (1725) to this imperative. As he put it: ‘Next to taking care of his soul, a tradesman should take care of his books’. As such they ‘should always be kept clean and neat; and he that is not careful of both, will give but a sad account of himself either to God or man’. Socially it was symbolized by the taming of passions into credible opinion disciplined by commerce and a public display of politeness. The values of probity and prudence—glued to good bookkeeping practices—came to be offered as ideal business habits and equally features of good science—values that reached their apex in the nineteenth century. They were also values attempting to be imposed upon the government’s (p.91) elite revenue body, the excise; an institution Davenant, keen advocate of political arithmetic, had helped define as a commissioner in the last years of the Stuarts, and for whom Defoe had worked during the mid-1690s.7 If veracity and virtue could not be found in the person, they could be located in the method of ensuring trust. This method took on the nature of a seemingly non-social and mechanical process and realized its full potential in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. First, at a general level, to ground confidence requires faith in understanding and recording what is around you and the ability of society to structure its form of life around that faith. At a more local level, in this case the financial, the more its practices could conform to this epistemology the more credible they and the fiscal future would become. The disgraced and untrustworthy one-time Lord Chancellor and later guru of the new Restoration Royal Society of London, Francis Bacon, had recognized this a century earlier when he wrote, ‘Human knowledge and human power meet in one’.8 The founders of the Royal Society invoked Bacon’s authority as a blueprint for its operations, and sent their members out to observe and make the world more intelligible, calculable, predictable, and economically conquerable. The language they used to describe their observations and experiments was written as if the reader were there, as if the facts were self-evident and in front of their very eyes. It was this that Defoe found so useful in rescuing credit from a predominantly country ideology, now twisted and propagated by angry Tories and dissident Whigs who continued to question the credibility of credit. His nemesis was in the brilliant indeterminate narrative of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. This sort of attack, according to Defoe, helped undermine the pillars of the national debt, which was why he sought to counteract such damage by utilizing the new matter-of-fact language stemming from the written descriptions of experiments in the Transactions of the Royal Society,9 Such an empirical and systematic approach was also utilized by the excise, the body that came to be the heart of public credit during the eighteenth century. As we shall see, it recorded and observed manufacturers as if they were part of a (p.92) Royal Society trial. To achieve this required the manufacturers, Page 5 of 8

 

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise retailers, and traders to conform to the demands, methods, and calculations of the excise. The officers who actually carried out the work were also subject to the same process of monitoring by their superiors. This, along with the strict bookkeeping and emphasis on technical methods, lay at the heart of the excise. Importantly, this seemingly objective and visible approach helped the body weather the virulent attacks unleashed by its numerous enemies. The importance the excise was to have in fuelling the evolution of the English fiscal-military state and supplying a credible ‘sheet anchor’ for public credit, was consistently underlined by Davenant. During the 1680s, he had been prominent in reshaping its administration. In his unpublished ‘Memorial on Credit’, addressed to the Lords of the Treasury in July 1696, Davenant claimed true credit would survive fads, adverse opinion, and unexpected events: ‘Credit tho it may be for a while obscur’d, and labour under some difficultyes, yet it may recover where there is a safe and good foundation at the Bottome’. A few pages later he repeated what he had been arguing for several years, that the best ‘Bottome’ for the state’s public credit was the excise: ‘hardly any other thing can yield so great an Annuall Income, and upon which the Government may so well rely’. He recommended such goods as corn, malt, leather, soap, and candles as the ‘most proper to Charge a Duty upon’. Defoe similarly recommended ’salt, malt, coal, candles, leather, with the Excises upon Liquor &c.’ The beauty of these excises, concluded Davenant, was their predictability: ‘We believe a very near computation may be made, what sum an Imposition would produce, laid upon any or all of these Commo-dityes’. Excise taxes would be a ‘Sheet Anchor for the State to rely upon’.10 This last point concerning the predictability of revenue was, as we have seen, absolutely vital. The changing rates derived from land both after and before 1692 were, as Edward Hughes has shown, alarmingly unpredictable. As such they ‘could scarcely have served as an adequate basis for the annuities or long period loans even had the government so wished’. With the French blocking much of England’s trade, the potential customs revenue was also too unpredictable. With the major loans of the 1690s ‘directly conditioned by the consideration of whether the “funds”were grounded upon an assured basis of experience in revenue collection … confidence in revenue collection fastened itself mainly on the excise’. Thus, within this context, Davenant was merely underlining the fact that excise taxes were the only sound option.11 (p.93) It was against these events that a general approach to solving the issue of predictable revenue to service the national debt was grounded. Central was the establishment of a robust industrial base to feed the excise. Taxable domestic industries were to be nurtured and cultivated by a wall of tariffs, coupled with legislated quality requirements to help bring infant industries up to Continental equivalents. As we shall see, this approach was not and could not always be systematically applied due to an array of competing interests—giving Page 6 of 8

 

Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise the false impression, at times, of a seemingly confused approach to economic policy. However, at the heart of the evolving fiscal state was a discernable strategy towards industrialization that would last until the 1780s, when the high costs of servicing a monstrous national debt forced William Pitt’s government to forge a new economic policy. Notes:

(1) By contrast Paine had earlier lobbied hard trying to convince North Americans of the need to create some form of fiscal-military state; see A. O. Aldridge, ‘Some Writings of Thomas Paine in Pennsylvania Newspapers’, AHR 56 (1951), 832–8, on 833. (2) C. Davenant, An Essay upon Ways and Means (London, 1695), repr. in The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D’Avenant, ed. C. Whitworth, 5 vols. (London, 1771), i. 30. (3) S. E. Fine, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643–1825’ (unpublished Ph.D, thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 245. (4) J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Modernity and Anti-Modernity in the Anglophone Political Tradition’, in S. N. Eisenstadt (ed.), Patterns of Modernity Volume One: The West (London, 1988), 44–59, on 53; J. G. A. Pocock, ‘Standing Army and Public Credit: The Institutions of Leviathan, in D. Hoak and M. Feingold (eds.), The World of William and Mary: Anglo-Dutch Perspectives on the Revolution of 1688–89 (Stanford, 1996), 87–103, on 97–9; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Tradition (Princeton, 1975), 466. (5) J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 111–12 and 235. (6) D. Defoe, ‘Credit, the Invisible Phantom’, 14 June 1709, in The Best of Defoe’s Review: An Anthology Compiled and Edited by William C. Payne (New York, 1951), 117. (7) D. Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman, 2 vols, (London, 1725; repr. Oxford, 1841) vol. i, pp. xx, 27$, and 311. tor his long discussion on bookkeeping see ibid vi. 309–23 and ii. 1–61. For Defoe and the language of experimental philosophy see S. Schaffer, ‘Defoe’s Natural Philosophy and the World’s of Credit, in J. Christie and S. Sbuttleworth (eds.), Nature ‘Transformed: Science and literature 1700– 1900 (Manchester, 1984); Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 454 and 459, and Virtue, Commerce, and History, 113–15. For the formal marrying of probity, prudence, and precise bookkeeping in business and science in the early 19th cent. see W. J. Ashworth, ‘The Calculating Eye: Baily, Herschel, Babbage and the Business of Astronomy’, BJHS 27 (1994), 409–41.

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Delusion? Trust, Credit, and the Excise (8) F. Bacon, Novum Organuni(London, 1620), in The Complete Essay of brands Bacon, introd. by Henry LeRoy Finch (New York, 1963), 179–264, on 185. For the rise of public science and its embeddedness within commerce, industry, and speculation see L. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992), and ‘A Meaning for Machines: Modernity, Utility, and the Eighteenth-Century British Public’, JMH 70 (1998), 259–94. esp. 266–7. (9) For the Royal Society and the development of this approach see S. Shapin, ‘Pump and Circumstance; Robert Boyle’s Literary Technology’, SSS 14 (1984), 481–520, and S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985), ch. 2. (10) C. Davenant, ‘A Memoriall concerning Creditt and the means and methods by which it may be restored’, 15 July 1696, BL. Harleian MS 1223, fos. 71–95, 115–56; repr. in Two Manuscripts by Charles Davenant, introd. Abbott Parson Usher (Baltimore, 1942), 73 and 100–2; Defoe’s Review: Reprinted front the Original Editions, with an Introduction and Biographical Notes by Arthur Wellesley Secord, viii (New York, 1938), 735. Davenant’s argument regarding the excise and its potential strength in sustaining credit was an extension of his discussion written a year earlier in his An Essay upon Ways and Means, 62–81. For the importance of Baconian empiricism in 17th-cent. English economic perspectives, see L. Magnusson, Mercantilism: The Shaping of an Economic Language (London, 1994), 10–11, 76–8, and 132. (11) E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 169–70.

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The Introduction of the Excise

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

The Introduction of the Excise WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0007

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the introduction and implementation of the excise tax. The excise duties were formally announced to the Long Parliament on 16 May 1643. An ordinance was subsequently passed on 22 July stipulating that duties were to be renewed on a monthly basis. Treasurers in London had to provide warrants for the allocation of excise revenue, while parliament had auditors to keep track of and retain control of the flow of funds. Keywords:   excise tax, taxation, tax policy

War, Riot, And The Introduction Of The Excise Although the excise was not introduced till 1643, the idea had been bandied about for a number of years. In 1626 a commission of thirty-three Lords was appointed by Charles 1 to investigate the possibility of introducing excise duties, and although the commissioners came down in favour of implementing them, parliament quickly rejected their findings. Sir John Glanville, MP for Plymouth, solemnly warned that such a course of action was ‘the Devil’s remedy’. The king, however, did pursue a policy of providing generous privileges to industrial speculators, who as first makers of particular domestic commodities such as salt, agreed to pay impositions and undertake their collection. This, claims Edward Hughes, shows that the way was already paved for the development of the excise duty. Again, just prior to the outbreak of the English Civil War, negotiations between the MP and clerk to the Exchequer John Pym and the duke of Bedford centred upon the possibility of taxes on land being switched for a system of excises approved by parliament. A formidable and hostile reception once again greeted the suggestion, and it was squashed. This was partly a sign, Page 1 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise perhaps, of the suspicion that the landed ranks would later have in the eighteenth century towards attempts to totally relinquish the land tax at the expense of taxing the people through the excise. It was only due to the high costs of civil war that parliament introduced the excise to offset the king’s monopoly on custom duties. The defence of an Englishman’s liberty and property against the machinations of a crypto-Catholic king with absolutist tendencies, was enough to convince most of parliament and its followers that the temporary introduction of the excise was worth the price. Consequently a political paradox emerged; namely, liberty demanded illiberal methods.1 The excise duties were formally announced to the Long Parliament on 16 May 1643: For each barrel of strong beer or ale, of 8s. the barret, 1s.; for a hogshead of cyder or perry, 1s.; to be paid by the first buyer. The same tax was laid on the housekeeper for beer, ale, (p.95) cyder, or perry brewed or made for his own spending. All alehouse-keepers or inn-holders that brew and sell strong ale and beer of their own, each barrel, 2s. For all sorts of retailed wines, over and above the customs due for the same, to be paid by first retailers, a quart, 2d, On all sorts of wines bought here, besides customs to be paid by the first buyer, for all he should use in his own house, for a quart, 1d. The same to be paid by the merchant, for all the wine he shall use in his own house, besides the due customs. For a barrel of 6s. beer sold., to be spent, as well in private as in victualling houses to be paid by the common brewer, or those that brew or sell the same beer, 6d. On all tobacco not of English plantation, the pound value, not weight, 4s. For the English plantation, the same value, both over and above all other customs, 2s. An ordinance was subsequently passed on 22 July with the stipulation that the duties were to be renewed on a monthly basis. Treasurers in London had to provide warrants for the allocation of excise revenue, while parliament had auditors to keep track of and retain control of the flow of funds. Controversially, the excise officers had unprecedented power to enter cellars, warehouses, and shops, and examine persons on oath. The first excise ordinance was superseded later that year on 8 September by a new set of rates and additional taxes. Strong waters were to pay sixpence a gallon and raw silk sixpence in the pound sterling. Silks ‘in the gum’ paid ninepence and imported soap one shilling and sixpence. Soap and silk were two leading French exports so the policy of improving English equivalents may have been implicit from the start. English soaps were charged ten, nine, and eight pence per firkin. Foreign salt paid one penny, and English salt a halfpenny per gallon—although salt used in the fishing trade was exempt. Meat sold at butchers was taxed at 5 per cent while every rabbit paid an additional halfpenny and every dozen pigeons a penny. It was optimistically claimed that the excise was a way for parliament to have ‘some constant and Page 2 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise indifferent way… for levying money for the future maintenance of the Parliament forces, and other great affairs of the Commonwealth, whereby the malignants and neutrals may be compelled to pay their proportionable parts of these charges and the subject in general be rated and taxed with as much ease and indifference as may be’.2 The foreign articles taxed, known as the ‘foreign excise’, were wine, raisins, currants, sugar, gold and silver cloth, and damask table linen. Its differentiation from the customs was not in the nature of the article taxed but in the method of collection. The excise was also repaid if the said items were re-exported. At this point, unlike the private consortium of custom farmers, the excise commissioners were appointed by parliament. This enabled it to adjust both its rates and techniques of management much more easily than the customs. Eight commissioners were appointed to the Excise Office in London with further provincial (p.96) offices established in every county. The Excise Office was managed by the following commissioners: John Towse, alderman of the City of London; John Langham, one of the sheriffs of the City; Thomas Foot, another alderman of the City, Simon Edwards, John Lamot, and Edward Claxton, all merchants and defined as citizens of London.3 The agents operating from the provincial offices were either commissioners or farmers, alternating throughout the 1640s, although in actuality they were frequently the same people. They, in turn, depended upon sub-collectors and excise officers—often known as ‘gangers’ (someone who measures). Since they were not drawn from the ranks of the country and borough office holders they fuelled local suspicion and intensified an already deeply felt repugnance toward the tax. Opposition, as we have seen, came from all levels and strata of society. William Prynne argued vociferously against the tax in his tract of 1645 entitled A Legal Vindication of the Liberties of England against Illegal Taxes, in which he sought, unsuccessfully, to demonstrate that the excise was illegal, that it would destroy trade, and that it was a threat to an Englishman’s liberty. The result was the removal of his liberty and his incarceration for three years. He subsequently learnt his lesson and later tossed his convictions to the wind becoming a commissioner of the excise a few years after the Restoration, in 1666. The Civil War had also coincided with a series of poor harvests, so that the already high food prices were exacerbated by the increase in taxation from the excise. Elsewhere royalist privateering, French hostilities, and Dutch commercial might were affecting foreign trade. The combination of all these factors was taking its toll on home demand for excised manufactures and other taxed products. In 1645 the clutch of the excise was tightened with parliament issuing an ordinance on bartering: ‘the exchange of one sort of good for another is accounted a sale involving liability of Excise duty if both or either sort is of a dutiable description’. In other words, duty could not be avoided by, say, the common practice of bartering a gallon of beer for two gallons of cider. Just for Page 3 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise good measure new duties of 5 per cent ad valorem were also imposed on glass, oils, and wine, while the duty on English soap was raised, as were several other excises on imports. Officers were placed in all market towns and traders of excisable goods made their weekly entries on oath at the local excise office. These oaths were accepted without a formal check as to their veracity: trust was a matter of face-to-face contact and one’s word. This process lasted until 1660 when officers started actual inspections of brewers to check ‘the gage in the cask’.4 (p.97) Excise officers were frequently singled out for particular abuse because they appeared to many as acting above the law. However, although excise officers theoretically had indemnity against prosecution, they could be refused it in practice if they did not convince the indemnity committee. In such circumstances, the payer could then prosecute the officer under common law. Michael Braddick has examined the records of this committee and charted the kind of fiscal issues charged against the actions of the officers. Out of the eightyeight surviving cases, fifty-six were pleas for indemnity from prosecutions coming from the taking of distress. A taxpayer could refuse to pay the tax, in which case the Excise Office could summon him and charge a fine. If this, in turn, was not paid then a distress could be taken. The predominant complaints were over trespassing and to a much lesser extent accusations of assault. The whole process was frequently used as simply a mechanism of obstruction by frustrated taxpayers. Unlike the collectors of other sources of revenue the excise officers were outsiders and seemingly insensitive to local customs. In such a localized world as seventeenth-century England all outsiders coming to closeted counties, towns, and villages were treated suspiciously. Braddick sees the excise uniquely as ‘a confrontation between agents of the state and the locality’.5 The excise, or rather particular excises, managed to provoke large-scale riots in various parts of England and Wales. A year after its introduction commissioners were set upon in Pembrokeshire by ‘a company of the poorest sort of women’ who forced the men from their lodgings. On returning later to the town hall the commissioners were once again confronted by the same women and forced out. Elsewhere a ‘great company of people’ attacked a number of excise officers in Chippenham in 1647.6 Levying duties in populated places such as fairs and markets could quickly act as a trigger for social protest. Butchers and salt makers were two of the most prominent groups involved in such outbursts. Take the disturbance that occurred in Droitwich in Worcestershire in September 1649. Daniel Prescott, one of the sub-commissioners for the division, arrived early to collect the excise along with a number of other officers and assistants. Everything was proceeding well until the saltmen spread word that they were going ‘to beat’ Prescott ‘out of town’. He got wind of the rumour and sent them two shillings in an attempt to subdue them. Their answer was swift and unequivocal: they wanted £5 or they Page 4 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise would cut his throat. A few hours later, just before Prescott was retiring to bed, he again sensed hostility: ‘a great noise and tumult’ was coming from the town, and voices could be heard threatening to burn down his house: (p.98) The petitioner sent two of his officers to know the cause thereof who being threatened by the rioters to be killed were forced for the safety of their lives to run away with all speed being pursued at the very heels to the door of the house. So your petitioner mounted on horseback to see if he could pacify them by fair means but they shot at him, threw stones and knocked him off his horse which he had much to do to recover and with great difficulty got to his Inn, the rioters pursuing him thither crying out kill them, kill them rogues, fire the house and we shall have the better opportunity to fall upon those that set them on work, so that the petitioner was enforced (for the saving of his own life and the lives of others that were his assistants) to issue out upon them, and at length by the blessing of God to overcome them and drive them back to the salt works where divers of both sides were dangerously wounded and one of their party is since reported to be dead of his wounds, All that night the petitioner and his assistants were forced to stand upon their guard. The interesting aspect of Prescott’s account, as Braddtck suggests, is actually the lack of violence in his description, and the fact that work collecting the excise resumed the next day without any disturbance. The riot was disciplined, limited in its demands, confined to the saltrnen, and only aggressive when Prescott came out to confront them. In other words, it cannot be construed as a riot threatening the political power of the state—although authority could, and did, easily interpret it as such.7 As we have seen, women were prominent participants in excise protests. On 9 September 1644, for example, a number of women attacked and forced some excise commissioners from their lodgings in Haverford West. Again women were at the forefront of riots at Drayton in February 1648. Such participation is not surprising considering their key role in the market place, and their greater sensitivity to price changes and perceived abuses. Elsewhere butchers were responsible for some of the largest and most fiercely fought riots of the period. In 1646 two sheriffs arrested the butcher James Sherringham as a ringleader in orchestrating local opposition to the meat excise. A crowd of butchers quickly gathered and, during a pitched battle, eventually rescued him. Still seething with anger the crowd reconfigured two days later but, after careful negotiation, were persuaded to disperse.8 One of the most dramatic riots involved butchers in London at the heart of the capital’s meat market. On 15 February 1647 a butcher who had just purchased Page 5 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise an ox at Smithfield, refused to pay the duty on the meat. The animal could not be removed without a ticket confirming it had paid the excise. Bystanders, mainly other butchers, began to congeal around those involved in the dispute, and started to get increasingly agitated and shout insults at the excise officers. The tension increased when two of them charged at the officers and started to cudgel them with a pair of stout sticks. The gathering then proceeded to slowly disperse. However, later that evening the crowd regathered, again led by butchers, and (p.99) marched upon the Excise Office, which they proceeded to raid and burn to the ground. A large number of officers were beaten and £80 to £100 was taken and scattered outside. The crowd were only stopped when the Lord Mayor and sheriffs managed to gather enough men to crash the uprising.9 Despite the size of this uprising the government took no immediate action to address the situation. Although the repeal of meat (and salt) duties was eventually enacted, this was far less a response to the imminent threat of further riots than as Braddick concludes, a political calculation to ensure that such a situation could not arise in the future. This is persuasively supported by the fact that it was several months before they actually repealed it, during which time there do not seem to have been any other riots over the issue of meat. Rather, it seems that as the general political scene began to further deteriorate, the repeal was probably made as a gesture to prevent excuses for disorder and to win popularity with the London crowds. The repeal was one of several others made at the same time, most notably allowing apprentices recreation days—another issue which had been a source of popular agitation.10

The Implementation Of The Excise The administration of the excise was undoubtedly anything but regular during the Civil War. The political geography, after all, was frequently switching hands, making systematic revenue collection impossible for both sides. By July 1645 parliament had control of most of England except the south-west and Wales, and in March 1646 the war came to a close. In some areas an army commander was placed in charge of a district collection, while, elsewhere, a special committee appointed by the eight excise commissioners controlled one or more counties (although even here soldiers were often used to assist in its collection). The revenue gathered was then principally used to pay the army. This relationship between the excise and the army would become particularly entrenched during the rest of this and the following century.11 In 1649 ‘gangers’ were given power to enter the buildings of brewers to directly examine production, instead of relying on the brewer’s declaration at the Excise Office. Arrangements were also made to assess home-brewed beer production in hamlets and villages (this was so unpopular that it was repealed six months later). Interestingly, during this period of distrust, legislation passed in August attempted to systematize much of the excise organization. As for the manufacturers, although an allowance was introduced for leakage and the decay Page 6 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise of goods, overall the August ordinance increased the power of the excise by focusing more (p.100) on methods to prevent tax evasion. For example, brewers, tinners, lead smelters, and engrossers of excisable domestic commodities now had to make a weekly account of their business or else pay a fine double the value of undeclared items. In addition, producers and first vendors could not move any good without a ticket authorized by the excise. In the light of such an increase in power, it does not seem a coincidence that the irate butchers in Smithfield had further fuel to add to their riot a month later.12 Against this background parliament optimistically declared, ‘the impost of excise was the most easy and indifferent levy that could be laid upon the people’. As we have seen, however, the people did not agree. In 1650 there were riots in Worcester, Derby, Nottingham, and Stafford all against particular excises. Again in that year the soap makers of London petitioned against the duty on their product: ‘soap is most necessary for all sorts of people next to victuals, and must be used by the poorest people’. For Thomas Scott, a member of the Council of State, the situation was appalling. He told Cromwell in November 1650: ‘England is not as France, a meadow to be mowed [by taxation] as often as the governors please; our interest is to do our work with as little grievance to our new people, scarce yet proselytised, as is possible’. Another anonymous commentator raged: ‘Oh what Malignant ill-affected persons, what enemies, Pests, Vipers, Locusts, and Caterpillars to the Kingdome and Nation are all those, who impose, inforce, collect and continue such unjust, illegal, condemned, disclaimed Excizes on them’. However, parliament had made up its mind: the people were ripe to be cultivated and farmed for revenue. Despite powerful opposition, the Protectorate Parliament now grinding to a halt continued with its policy.13 Anti-excise complaints continued to mount with increased reports of aggressive conduct in its collection. Consequently the decision was taken to put it out to farm in September 1650—although according to Edward Hughes farming had almost certainly commenced earlier. This was for at least two reasons: first, the regime desperately needed more credit and, secondly, it wanted to be relieved of the burden of administration and the constant public reminder of state interference. The four Civil War ordinances concerning the excise were repealed and consolidated into one ordinance in March 1654. The list of duties was shortened and the method of charging them was altered. For example, alum, copperas, hops, and iron were now all charged by the hundredweight, instead of at 5 per cent ad valorem, and all excised imports were charged at a specific rate or a standard 5 per cent. It was the work of the excise commissioners to lease the farm, and they, in turn, were monitored by a parliamentary committee. A revenue farmer or consortium of farmers would lease a collection for a fixed period of time, (p.101) which until 1657 tended to be for either six or twelve weeks. There were also a few farms that operated on the basis of collecting duties on speciled goods across the whole country. Most of the country leases Page 7 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise were increasingly taken up by wealthy London merchants and financiers, while the collection for excised imports, with the exception of salt, remained in the control of the sub-commissioners located at particular ports.14 Although farms raised the excise yield, they did not make the tax any less unpopular. Indeed, they seemingly made matters worse. Proposals to abolish the excise were drafted during the Barebones Parliament of 1653, but it had simply become too important a source of revenue. In doing so it had also, as we ha¥e seen, expanded the role of the increasingly unpopular revenue farmers. At this stage many excise goods were still levied on the first buyer, the retailer, who then passed on the burden to the consumer. However, the mechanism changed in 1654 and 1657 when all home-produced goods were taxed on the maker. This move, as we saw earlier, had already been made on beer and had the crucial impact of making the tax less visible. By contrast, however, the excises on imports still continued to be levied on the first buyer. By 1654 over thirty-one counties were ‘farmed’. At the helm of the farms was Cromwell’s close financier Martin Noell, a leading West Indian shipper and a City of London alderman who alone handled the excise of salt, glass, wine, copperas, and alum. The Protectorate, claims G. E. Aylmer, ‘came to depend upon Noell more than it did on any single man, for ready cash and credit’.15 The actual pattern of the farms was haphazard with some regions concentrating on certain items and others on alternative goods; the regional variation was probably connected with the farmers’ commercial interests and the nature of the location. This, in turn, led to even more problems. The commissioners warned that if the London ale and beer excise was passed to a farm it could have dire consequences. Such fears were justified when the London farm complained in 1658, ‘we undertook the farm … and did our utmost to improve the revenue, but the London brewers, being exceedingly disturbed at this alteration, have done their best to oppose us, and to reduce that receipt to the former way of management’.16 The excise of the 1650s had become a very different instrument to (p.102) that of the 1640s, with a much more sensitive notion of what items could and could not be taxed having evolved, while, as we have just seen, the government increasingly turned its attention on production as opposed to sale in an attempt to avert the people’s gaze.

The Producer And The Excise The nature of animosity among the population was slowly changing from the fierce riots of a decade ago to a more coordinated attack through print. The switch from taxing the first buyer to the producer had stimulated an alteration in tactics. Complaints now came in the shape of pamphlets whirling from the hands of manufacturers and traders, rather than from the mouths and fists of crowds. Consider the tract entitled Excise Anatomiz’d published in 1659. The author alleged that the excise was not only oppressive, but also forced people of commercial integrity out of business due to the dishonest men who cheated the Page 8 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise system. Arguments were also less emotive and more technical. For example, it was claimed that in general the tax was inefficient and cost nearly as much to collect as the revenue it generated. One contemporary, James Ibeson, complained in A Condemnation of the Dutch Devil Excise in June 1653 that the excise was strangling liberty. He slammed it for its promiscuous seizures, its irregular charges that often led to the same item paying excise duties more than once, and argued that the only profitable excise was the one on beer.17 There were numerous petitions requesting the removal of certain duties on particular goods. The swelling of protests made by soap makers concerning the tax on a firkin of soap led to a significant reduction on the levy per barrel. The petitioners claimed that the high tax had resulted in a surge of illicit soap making and that only the ‘most visible traders’ were targeted by the excise. This compliant could be heard right across the land from a number of other producers such as the starch and wine makers. Also in 1654 the manufacturers of alum and copperas had their taxes slashed by a half, and iron makers similarly saw a reduction in duty. A year earlier the woollen industry successfully had the entire excise repealed—such was the importance and power of the woollen manufacturers.18 The general complaint that most excise revenues were unprofitable was actually not far from the mark during this period, as the following figures supplied by S. E. Fine demonstrate. In 1655, as Ibeson had underlined, beer was by far the most lucrative excise item, followed by goods such as lead, iron, hops, and tin. The rest all made below £1,000 per annum, and some, like spirits, were ridiculously low. For imports paying an excise, large sums of revenue came from wine (p.103) and tobacco followed by linen, grocery, salt, and certain other goods. These low returns partly reflect, as James Scott Wheeler points out, ‘the decentralised nature of English manufacturing and retailing’. One should also add that many of these industries were in their infancy and would have to await the later excise and tariff alliance to be properly nurtured. In 1656 the government started grumbling at the management of the excise farmers. It was felt that if the excise was better organized it would become more lucrative, resulting in a higher rent being charged. Consequently, a new lease appeared in 1657 creating larger and longer lasting farms. Excise farming also became much more of a monopoly, being predominantly run by a small group of London merchants. Richard Best had the lease for Devon and Cornwall and Esan Risby held Dorset, Gloucester, and Somerset. Together they both controlled the lease for the immensely profitable London area, with the rest, as we have seen, leased to Noell.19 However, from this date on, the farms started to get into arrears as political stability began to crumble and trade slumped. Many of the farmers sought reductions on their leases, and by 1659 the figure of arrears had reached £166,000. With political turmoil surrounding the fall of Richard Cromwell (Oliver Page 9 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise Cromwell had died in September 1658), many farmers could not see the point in paying a regime that was on the verge of breaking. Equally, a number of the financiers simply could not pay the money since their farms had been seriously overvalued. In the final days of Richard Cromwell’s short and doomed reign an anonymous commentator penned a tract entitled Dialogue betwixt an Excise Man and Death, which prayed the end of the excise was near: As thou alive were hated, So dead, to doggs thou shall be segregated.20

The Restoration And The Excise Farm In the wake of the Restoration there was a widespread optimism that the unpopular excise would and should be phased out One anonymous MP, reflecting a few years later at another momentous event, claimed: ‘The wisemen of the [Restoration] Parliament laboured all they could to lay aside that which was in the time of civil warr on necessity invented’. There was no ‘absolute necessity’, he concluded, to have kept the excise going after the Restoration since an alternative based on a more appropriate foundation could and should have been found. However, the Civil War had been extremely costly and once the king’s settlement was finalized the excise was retained. Charles II accepted an amount of £100,000 in exchange for the surrendering of the feudal dues that characterized some of the crown’s revenue prior to the Civil War. An excise upon liquors was also (p.104) introduced, of which half was granted to the king for life and the other half as a further substitute for the crown’s former feudal sources of revenue.21 The tax on liquors was passed despite a concerted attempt by the Brewers’ Company of London to prevent it. A common cry descended upon parliament; ‘beer and ale next to bread, are the stay and staff of the poor’. However, the excise on beer and ale had proved by far the most lucrative under the Protectorate and the least subject to foreign competition. Despite such pleas, other new excises appeared, most notably on the consumption of liquid tea (1s. 4d. per gallon), coffee (8d. per gallon), and cocoa (1s. 4d. per gallon). These were specifically aimed at London’s burgeoning ‘coffee house’ society rather than targeting towns and communities elsewhere in the country. Any notion that the excise would be abolished was equally militated against by tracts written by leading commentators including Sir William Petty, who had developed strong views on tax policy and proceeded to make sure his reflections were heard. In his Observations on the London Bills of Mortality published in 1662, he suggested that taxing the people more heavily could reduce the property tax. The herald, genealogist, and registrar of the College of Arms, Gregory King, later expanded such views. His suggestions on increasing public revenue as outlined in Naturall and Political Observations and Conclusions upon the State and Condition of England (1696) and Of the Natural Trade of England (1696–7) Page 10 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise were a strong resource for Charles Davenant in his An Essay Upon the Probable Methods of Making a People Gainers on the Balance of Trade (1699). For all these leading exponents of political arithmetic the aim was to make revenue stable, predictable, and thence calculable. This was the bedrock of credit; this was what made it real.22 These views, however, could not dispel an underlying fear that a weakening of the land tax at the expense of indirect tax could actually strengthen the power and independence of the monarch. For example, over the first two decades of Charles If’s reign, the court favoured the expansion of the excise whenever possible, while parliament ensured it was restricted to as few items as possible. Cecil Chandaman captures the irony: Although the royalist enthusiasm of the Restoration had cooled, the Excise, originally suspect because of its revolutionary origins came to be associated with an imagined threat of royal absolutism’. Nonetheless, opposition to the excise during the Restoration period was much reduced because the tax itself was so much more restricted and concentrated, primarily on beer. Consequently the main wrath came from irate brewers, although, even here, it was somewhat diluted since the large brewers tended to also be excise farmers.23 In general the skills and management of the excise developed during the Protectorate had fallen into disarray during its last years. Early in 1661 there was an attempt to revamp the organization with new appointments made to the (p.105) commissioners, the commissioners for appeals, the auditor of excise, and a number of the sub-commissioners. George Downing, writing from The Hague, noted a clear reduction in the respect shown to him compared to the days when he was a republican ambassador under Cromwell. With the European military successes of that recent era in mind he reflected in 1662; ‘I would to God … something [were] done … for the augmentation of his Majesties Revenue … nothing being more certaine, than that … his Majesty cannot keepe … neither honour nor interest with his neighbours … unless his Majesty have a much greater Revenue’. The problems, however, remained and the excise, along with customs, was once again put out to farm in 1662.24 Once again local leaders were given first chance to take the farms and thus dilute tension between the state and localities. About two-thirds of all the country farms were leased to gentlemen with local connections. Justices were also empowered to negotiate disputes over forfeitures, and, if a solution were not found, to have it referred to quarter sessions. Justices were frequently maltsters and brewers who also collected the excise duties. This combination of executive and judicial functions particularly infuriated those taxed—especially rival maltsters and brewers.25

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The Introduction of the Excise The justices’ power was extended in an Act of 1663 and the farms were renewed in 1665 and 1668. The result was a reduction in the share of the country gentlemen’s farms as the London financiers slowly colonized the country, despite the official aim of trying to keep it in the hands of the local gentry. For the old parliamentarians, having the collection of indirect revenue in private hands provided a check on the expansion of the king’s public servants. At a more general level it had the advantage of hopefully thwarting much of the corruption and incompetence then associated with a centralized state-run administration. Perhaps most importantly, as already noted, it provided the king with a creditraising facility. Things worked fine if trade was buoyant and unimpeded, but as soon as war broke out or some natural disaster descended such as the plague, fire, or famine, farmers were reluctant or unable to meet their obligations.26 There was no shortage of applicants for excise farms. For one thing, more and more of the farmers used the revenue to make loans between collection and audit. In this sense farms were an investment that attracted an array of speculators who saw ‘mowing [taxing] the meadow’ as a worthwhile gamble. By the close of the 1660s numerous local farmers and local merchants had been replaced by city financiers.27 Throughout the 1660s local hostilities to the excise continued. The mayor of Worcester mobilized opposition to the tax on brewers, resulting in a riot (p.106) involving some 200 persons. A similar story could be told in Leeds where the mayor and aldermen also obstructed the excise, and openly sympathized with the techniques of tax evasion adopted by local brewers. In 1670 the farmers in Wales petitioned the Privy Council to provide them with the authority to break the doors of taxed sites. ‘It was said, a “constant practice” in Monmouth and elsewhere, to shut the door on the approach of a farmer, thus preventing the taking of measures and accounts’.28 Braddick provides numerous other examples and argues that such clashes had transmuted into the volatile reaction to an evolving tax state, and represent the boundary between administrative requirements and localized opposition to state expansion and to the nature of this type of tax. Revenue needs meant central government ultimately came down in favour of tax collectors rather than localized JPs. The Privy Council and the Treasury worked hard to put the king’s authority behind the collection of taxation. For example, the council made it crystal clear in 1669 to the JPs of Salisbury what the points of law were. The word of a gauger against the brewer was to be seen as the king’s testimony, while the returns of the gaugers were to be seen as binding. In short, the process of measurement and powers of the excise officer were to be obeyed. Braddick concludes:

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The Introduction of the Excise The significance of a shift away from a demesne state and towards a tax state is illustrated by the fact that both taxes rested on Parliamentary grant, that they were, increasingly, administered by professional tax collectors and that they were a means by which the resources of financiers could be tapped. In this structural change the function between the magistracy and the emerging cadre of professional tax collectors is of great significance. This can be seen in the punishment or dismissals of JPs who obstructed the collection of the excise or hearth tax.29 Between 1665 and 1668 the trustees for the London Brewers’ Company held the lease for the London farm. This was composed of nine men: John Breedon, William Bucknall, George Dashwood, William Dashwood, John Freeman, John Forth, Thomas Forth, Philip Jemmet, and Thomas Grimshaw. To ensure some control remained with the crown, four gaugers were appointed by the king and given the power to survey any of the farmers’ breweries if they suspected any fraudulent activities. In practice, the fact that they had their salaries paid for by the farmers made the check redundant. The disasters of 1666 saw revenue reductions, resulting in a deduction in the farmers’ rent. It seems that just about every lessee claimed heavy defalcations due to losses stemming from the plague and the Great Fire, and compounded by the impact of the Dutch War. Not surprisingly, these defalcations put the farmers out of favour with the Treasury.30 (p.107) With the war against the Dutch in 1666 requiring a further supply of £1,800,000 and the idea of raising more direct taxation looking politically desperate, the court turned to the excise. The cry for a general excise briefly became louder. This was spearheaded by Sir Thomas Clifford and Sir Charles Harbord, but opposition was such that, despite the extremely high prevailing level of the land tax, the necessary money was raised by increasing its extraction. The only small victory came two years later when the Wine Act was introduced, which imposed excise duties on wine and brandy to be paid by the retailer rather than the merchant importer. The same Act also added an additional twelve pence per quart on spirits that were either imported or distilled in England.31 In 1666 four new commissioners were appointed to exercise judicial powers in the London farm. This led to a battle for ultimate control between the old excise commissioners and the new ones. In the nasty power struggle that ensued, the new London commissioners succeeded in taking over the duties of the old commissioners in 1668. This bitter dispute led to significant changes in administration with the establishment of centralized monitoring of both the country regions and London. Two years later tenders were invited to bid for the forthcoming excise farms. The result was a stark reduction in the number of Page 13 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise farmers and a brutal shift away from farms run by the local gentry. Bucknall and his colleagues secured the lucrative London, Middlesex, and Surrey excise farms for three years. In fact by the close of the government tenders, the London interest had brought under control nearly a third of the country excise.32 In 1671 the powerful Bucknall group made further advances in acquiring country farms, and ended up with nearly three-quarters of the total excise in England. The murmuring of unease among the country gentry started to grow and reached a peak after Bucknall’s party temporarily also acquired the customs farm. Despite the ultimate success of the opposition, the evolution of sectional farming in the country had established local, efficient administration, and had substantially increased the revenue generated.33 Meanwhile the government’s attempt to extend the excise after a decade of fierce opposition finally bore fruit. Clifford had sensed a good opportunity to manipulate the Commons, which, at this point, was subject to a strong degree of executive influence. Through his shady management and promiscuous bribes he made a ran on parliament to provide a new supply to clear the king’s debts. This culminated in an act for an additional excise to last for six years commencing in midsummer 1671. The result was a rise of 50 per cent on most existing rates except strong beer and ale (they still rose by a hefty 30 per cent), and 800 per cent on imported cider and perry. This reveals the government’s increasing realization of the power to influence the consumption or prohibition of certain goods, and to target the incidence of indirect tax on certain sections of the population. For (p.108) instance, the fact that the rate on strong beer only rose by 30 per cent while that on small beer increased by 50 per cent, reveals the government’s attempt to cushion its impact on the agricultural sector, since stronger beer used more agricultural produce. An intention to prohibit imported spirits (attached to a bill lost in the prorogation of parliament by the king) had been designed to stimulate its domestic production. In addition, the huge increase of duty on imported cider was clearly meant to prohibit foreign produce and leave its manufacture solely to domestic producers.34 By this time the foundation had been laid for a total excise farm. With the Stop of the Exchequer in 1671 and the Dutch War draining the state’s revenue, the only obvious solution was an advance on the excise and a lease of the whole tax to a single group of financiers. This, it was hoped, would also improve the existing yield. In June 1673 Clifford agreed a new lease for a total farm of the ordinary and additional excise with a new group of financiers. This was spearheaded by George Dashwood, Peter Calverd, Samuel Vincent, and Edmund Bostock, and supported by a large conglomerate of London brewers at a rent of £530,000 per annum. Significantly, Dashwood had been a member of Bucknall’s cartel, while Calverd had been a one-time close associate. Clearly relations had cooled and both had parted company with Bucknall to form a rival group. In 1674 the whole excise administration was further centralized and regularized. Page 14 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise The comptroller now checked the country farmers’ and London farmers’ account books plus vouchers, while all the excise revenue collected was paid into a single fund. Four deputy comptrollers were created to monitor local administration in the country areas, and provide the comptroller with an independent quarterly report of all excise receipts. Chandaman underlines the significance of these developments: ‘For the first time since the adoption of farming in 1662, the government was in a position to know the precise annual value of the tax, and this knowledge was to lie behind all subsequent developments in Excise policy’. Predictability was the key to planning and credibility which were absolutely fundamental, as we have already noted, to later financial developments.35 Much to the annoyance of the local gentry, the excise farm had become a single monopoly run by the above four London-based financiers. The fierce complaints from aggrieved and frequently ousted country farmers stood no chance of making headway against the agreed new sums. Further, for the Treasury to deal with just one body, rather than a number of scattered interests, was easier and provided greater security for loans. For the farmers, enormous profits remained since the rents were still ludicrously lower than the receipts, partly because the crown required the advanced loan so much. Additional sums were also made by the farmers subcontracting parts of the farm out at rents higher than they had paid, while lending capital on the London money market generated a great deal more. Fine estimates that between 1662 and 1683 something like £1,750,000 to (p.109) £2,250,000 was made in profits through these and other practices, most notably the fiddling of their accounts.36 Those in power sensed the large sums of money to be made. Danby, for one, utilized the huge credit potential of the new-look excise farm, and appointed the financier Richard Kent as receiver-general and cashier of excise. Under this scheme Kent was allowed to make significant advances on the credit of running cash. Danby was quickly condemned in parliament and accused of using the money to make parliamentary bribes. Kent’s patent had been used, they claimed, to take revenue from the ‘course of Exchequer’. Kent casually shrugged off such accusations in the calm knowledge that the state was highly indebted to him to the tune of £250,000. The idea, for instance, was for the paymaster of the army, Sir Stephen Fox, to be paid tallies for loans secured by the excise. The receiver was meant to pay these tallies with the money collected from the running cash. However, in practice, Kent did not pay them immediately and instead invested the money with a goldsmith or banker from his own private account for a few days or even weeks. Perversely the king was then forced to borrow from Kent on his private account at a relatively high interest as well as the percentage paid to the farmers. In addition, Fox frequently took time paying soldiers’ wages and, instead, made loans to the king via the army paymaster-general’s private account. The private use of public money was often condemned by parliament, but, ironically, the problem was partly of their own making since they continually refused to give the king an adequate income. In short, the excise receivership Page 15 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise had formally become a credit agency. This constituted the thrust of Danby’s opponents’ attempts to impeach him in 1675. The move failed but it did lead to the introduction of an official appointed with the task of keeping an independent check on the movement of excise revenue. Kent was replaced in 1676 by two of the original commissioners, James and Huntingdon, who carried on the lucrative task of credit dealings.37 It had been hoped, particularly by Danby, that the king under the 1674 scheme would receive regular, specified amounts of the ‘running’ or ‘dayly cash’ towards the rent. However, the farmers were not particularly interested since they could get higher interest rates in the London market than the 6 per cent paid by the king. Danby was furious and summoned the farmers for a meeting in the summer of 1676, and cautioned them that he had ‘heard discourses fly as if they should say the running cash of the excise office was theirs, and their lending it to the King was a courtesy and not a matter of right’. As a result, in 1677, the king attempted to end the Dashwood cabal and signed a new lease with a certain Mr Babox for a rent of £600,000 and a substantial advance. However, within a few weeks Babox failed to finance the large advance and the lease was terminated. In a panic, Danby consulted his advisers and came up with a new plan in which the farmer would pay any surplus above rents and administrative costs to the king. Under this new (p.110) scheme the Dashwood group were recalled to take over. After the Babox fiasco the new Dashwood lease was worked to carefully include the regular payment of the running cash into the revenue.38 Despite increasing opposition from the country, the new centralized excise farm made dramatic increases in generating revenue, which was aided by a surge in trade after the withdrawal of England from the Dutch War. For instance, the revenue was £605,000 between 1674 and 1675, £650,000 in 1675–6, and £710,000 in 1676–7, After deducting roughly £60,000 administrative costs, the farmers were averaging profits of £135,000 as well as their income from gains in interest. The government was itself averaging about £526,000 revenue per year and was now well aware of the total excise being reaped. Indeed, many looked uneasily at the huge amounts of money being made by the farmers and advocated a return to direct collection. Danby very much opposed this suggestion because he valued the regularity and predictability of farming, and its role in sustaining credit-besides which, where would the government get the money to pay the advance on an expiring farm?39 Danby fell from power in March 1679 and was succeeded at the Treasury by a commission led by Lawrence Hyde. Hyde, unlike Danby, was suspicious, critical, and hostile toward farming. Nonetheless, the precarious finances of government meant that little could be done in the first year and the excise continued to operate fairly much as it had been under Hyde’s predecessor. However, in 1680 the Treasury commissioners started voicing their criticisms of the excise. This Page 16 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise was released within the volatile context of the popish plot and Exclusion Crisis, during which parliament obviously put a close to the prospect of any parliamentary supply. The only route left was to improve the existing revenues by terminating the new contract of the farmers after a year and returning the excise to direct control. However, such was the political instability that this plan had to be postponed. Instead new guidelines were imposed that amounted to the government, for the first time, having access to the whole of the net receipts of the excise. The farmers now basically became agents of the government. For the final two years of the lease they had to pay all their annual rent in weekly instalments of £6,600 along with the interest they made on the running cash, while the yearly supplies made on the farm were also to be paid every week in instalments of £1,400.40 The final two years of the farm enjoyed lucrative conditions fuelled by an upswing in trade and the lifting of the prohibition on French goods. However, despite an increase in net yield the conditions were such that a higher figure might have been expected. Further, the country excise, which had consistently risen over the last two decades to occupy something like 70 per cent of the yield, suddenly commenced its first serious fall. The efficiency of the farmers had clearly suffered a severe decline. This was probably, as Chandaman shows, through the (p.111) diminished incentive that accompanied the government’s recent changes to the excise farmers’ profits. This resulted in them cutting costs through administration in order to keep their gains. Within this context the Dashwood group was certainly putting pressure on the crown to make the farm ‘absolute’. The problem now for the government, as Hughes points out, ‘was to determine what kind of trust it [the excise revenue] should be in the future’.41 Hyde and his associates at the Treasury acted swiftly and took the opportunity to return the excise to direct collection. They were further aided by the fact that the debt owed to the farmers was much smaller than at any other stage in the previous decade. Not only that, but the two excise commissioners, Kent (appointed cashier to the customs in 1677) and Duncombe (cashier to the excise since 1680), had become two of the most powerful credit crunchers in the money market. Such a combination was more than enough to raise the money to pay off the farmers and tide over any temporary reduction from excise receipts. In the midsummer of 1683 the excise was back in direct control, which gave the government the chance to reap the full potential revenue from the tax. The local organizational set-up and personnel were retained, and emphasis was intensified on central control.42 The Excise commission consisted of John Friend and Felix Calverd, two of the previous farmers; a goldsmith banker, Nathaniel Hornby; and four of the existing commissioners, Sir Denny Ashburnham, Francis Parry, Robert Huntington, and Charles Davenant, all on a salary of £1,000 per annum. To improve efficiency, especially that of the country excise, structural change was implemented along a Page 17 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise much closer central and local relationship. The new regime was a great success with the yield increasing from an average of £565,000 per annum in 1680–3 to an impressive £725,000 per annum during the period 1686–8. This was due to three separate factors: a trade boom, bountiful harvests, and administrative reforms.43 The huge increase in the king’s revenue bolstered the strength of the crown and enabled Charles II and subsequently James II to function independently of parliament. Its members would never forget this newly found independence and prerogative attack upon their institution. As one MP wrote in 1689: ‘Upon the demise of King Charles what necessity was there to continue the excise to K. James[?] … could any thing under a Popish Prince be a greater security to the Protestant Rights and Liberties than the smallness of the Revenue which had it been kept so or moderately enlarged for a time[—]a short time if the commons could but agree amongst themselves [—]they might have stopped all inversion of property or Danger of Tyranny[?]’.44

(p.112) The Glorious Revolution And The Excise Shortly after the negotiation of William and Mary’s financial settlement, one MP expressed a common fear that the excise was a fiscal mistake, since all the money it raised was used to fund a standing army that was vital to ensure its collection: ‘Now if to Pay our Army we raise money in this Way and should be necessitated as they were to keep up a Standing Army to gather it wee shall be at a time pass, we shall raise money to pay our Armys that they may carry on the war vigorously against our enemies in Ireland and Flanders &c. and instead of any such service for them wee must keep them at home to raise the Excise, wee had so good give no money as give it this way if their will be the effect of it’. Moreover, it was further accused, the excisemen were being used for poll rigging. The same MP cautioned, ‘we find the Excisemen now go a great way in corporations choosing the members of this House by influencing Inns and Alehouses[,] what will they do when they have an. interest in every house’. The anonymous MP was fighting the possibility of an expansion of the excise in the post-Revolution period and concluded with the warning, ‘do what is necessary to carry on the warr but do nothing which may destroy the Constitution. Remember we owe all our Liberty’s to the preserving this house and making its frequent meeting necessary’.45 In the immediate aftermath of the Glorious Revolution the excise did not get oil to a good start, and emerged a shadow of its former robust and reliable revenue gathering. Endemic fraud had become entrenched. For example, the cashier reverted back to his old ways and started handling incoming money; officers in the legal section pocketed fines and charged arbitrary fees; while remittance of revenue from the provinces was taking a much longer time to reach the Exchequer. These were crucial years as the costs of war with France began to really dig deep. Within such a context the excise came under particular scrutiny. Page 18 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise By 1696 it had become apparent that the new administrative set-up had diminished in efficiency, resulting in a decline of one-third in revenue. This, Davenant smirked, was due to ‘changing the former methods and course of management’ that he had been so instrumental in designing and running between 1683 and 1689. He emphasized the axiom they had previously applied, namely of national uniformity of method and allowing only the best officers to be employed. The former excise administration had ‘settled one uniform method throughout the whole Kingdom; taking that form from a pattern which had been made use of with most surveys in the best managed collections’. As a result, Davenant and others fiercely argued for the urgent return to the management style of the 1680s.46 Davenant claimed that each new commission since 1689 had changed the method of keeping stock books and the method of gauging goods, while the commissioners themselves did not regularly inspect the 1,200 excise officers (p. 113) scattered across the land and, even when they did, were ignorant of much of the excise officers’ business. Besides which, he claimed, they were also influenced by their other commercial and political interests. This, of course, he virtuously declared, was all in stark contrast to his career in the excise: ‘These considerations incline such as are conversant in the excise, to think that the great decrease in this branch may rather proceed from quitting the old scheme, rules, and methods of management, than from the additional duties, alterations by the law, quartering of soldiers, or any decay of trade, or want of consumption’. Method, and the implementation of method through administration, was the key. A clear sign of the supposedly appalling management conducted since 1688 was the fact, Davenant concluded, that complaints and lawsuits against the excise had trebled in the last two years, and numbered as many as there had been for the whole of his commission spanning six years.47 The excise commissioners had their own account of the decrease in excise revenue. They claimed that the huge fall since midsummer 1689 was due to the great increases in the duty upon beer and ale, which was beyond a point the trade could handle. As a result, an increase in stock was needed by most brewers that they had to finance either through borrowing money or by simply shortening their trade. Consequently, ‘they must either sell lesse or worse drinke for money, both which lowers the consumption. Besides which the Duty does almost equall the price of malt’. The result of this last point was the increase in home-brewed, untaxed beer and ale. In addition, ‘these great duties doe likewise putt the Brewers upon all sorts of Inventions to defraud the King, and has occasioned the Brewing of much stout, tho nothing neer soe much as is pretended’.48

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The Introduction of the Excise The commissioners also claimed that the ongoing expensive war had caused trade to decay and therefore triggered a reduction in beer and ale consumption. This, they argued, was predictable, ‘for it has been alwaies observ’d that where there is a briske Trade there is a greater consumption of Beer and ale’. The impact of greater taxation on the people was also cited as having a negative effect on the ability to purchase ‘strong drinks even for necessity’. In addition, the consumption of strong beer and ale was hindered by the quartering of soldiers upon the victuallers. This put people off frequenting their usual alehouses and had led to the rapid demise of such places. The commissioners claimed that there were now fewer than 8,800 alehouses, which meant there were far fewer places for people to consume drink. There were also other technical reasons for the fall in duty. For instance, since 1689 a measure of a barrel of ale had increased from thirty-two to thirty-four gallons while the traditional ‘Ale Quart’ had been replaced in (p.114) alehouses by a much smaller ‘Two penny pott’—little more than half the former measure.49 It was for these reasons, the commissioners concluded, that ‘the Excise has been decreasing throughout the whole Kingdome ever since the year 1689’. As for the fall of the London Brewery, it seems they had suffered by the absence of orders over the whole year from their most important customer, the Royal Navy. In addition, the absence of so many sailors meant a great reduction in the consumption of strong beer in and about London, It also seems that the long period of cold weather and shortage of coal had prevented a significant amount of brewing.50 The excise commissioners did admit that since they had moved excise officers from the country into London, ‘as many frauds as have beene discover’d in almost as many years before’ had been detected. This demonstrated that clearly corruption had set in between the London officers and the brewers. The general management of the revenue officers at the London Brewery was subsequently to be tied more strictly to particular divisions and to ‘more exact times, whereby every Wort of every Guile may be gauged two or three times, and concealmts and mixtures the better prevented’. In addition, they had ‘established a greater check than ever yett has been upon both London Supervisors and Gagers which we have good ground to believe have been the reason why some of them have not only assigned this whole Establishment, but obstructed the Execution of it and done what in therein lyes to sinke the Revenue, that thereby they may have a better pretence to blame the Management’. The result was a number of officers being discharged, ‘some whose oppositions to our orders have been very notorious, and whose omissions to charge what they call oversight seems to us to be willfull neglect’.51 By 1696 the excise commissioners’ problems were compounded by the impending Recoinage Act. The Treasury advised them in April ‘that there are great sumes of money due and in arrears to his majste on account of Excise in Page 20 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise the London Brewery which if not collected before the 4th of May whilst the Clipt money may be taken will probably be very difficult to be recovered’. They were told to ensure all the revenue was quickly paid—a task easier said than done. The excise reported to the Treasury in September ‘that the arrears of Excise within their respective collections are much increased and a great part likely to be lost by the Justices of the Peace in those parts refusing to give Judgement against the Brewers and Victuallers that have not paid their dutyes and to grant them warrants for levying thereof. The problem was primarEy to do with soldiers not having been paid and therefore not paying the innkeepers who, in turn, had therefore not paid the country brewers and victuallers. The commissioners concluded, ‘if some course be not taken to pay the soldiers their subsistence[,] your Lordships can expect little of the Duty at present and if the victuallers run or in arrearse tis very doubtful whether twill ever be recovered’.52 (p.115) Nonetheless, Davenant on this occasion was right to blame part of the fall in excise receipts on the commissioners’ management. He was not, however, saying anything that anyone at the Treasury did not already know. Various excommissioners, brewers, and politicians sought to bring back the excise into a farm. It seems that a conspiracy by the commissioners to deliberately mismanage the collection of revenue, in order to persuade the crown to put it back out to farm, was being pursued. Moreover, the commissioners were totally divided and continued throughout the early 1690s to bicker and squabble. This even led to excise officers aligning themselves with particular commissioners and to a significant number of them resigning in 1695. Under increasing pressure William. eventually set up a general inquiry into the state of the excise in 1697. This culminated in radical reform led by the Treasury between 1697 and 1700 of the excise’s process of remittance, enforcement of law, and passage of accounts. A new form of systematic accounting was imposed to prevent the cashier engaging in fraud to hasten remittance. The legal department was rationalized to make it more conducive and efficient in coping with its expanding business.53 During this inquiry two solicitors of the excise were accused of negligence, and an ill-tempered divide among the commissioners spilled over into the full glare of parliament and the crown. It seems there was a split between the more elderly commissioners, enculturated within the earlier world of farming and the younger commissioners who did not agree with their methods. These ex-farmers had been appointed as commissioners by William out of fiscal desperation, and they had subsequently argued aggressively with the new blood brought into the commission in 1694 ‘to correct mismanagement’. Thomas Everard, a well-known mathematician and author of the first authorative excise-gauging manual, had ruffled their feathers, and upset powerful interests, most notably the London Brewery, with his reforming zeal. In fact thirty officers refused to work after their hours were extended by his orders. The Lords of the Treasury quickly sacked them. Another new commissioner, John Danvers, was accused by Sir John Page 21 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise Foche of being a Jacobite—an accusation quietly dismissed by the earl of Sunderland to the king as nonsense. The crown soon took the side of the new appointees. It was also discovered that the receiver of the excise (and the receiver of the customs) had been regularly making money by privately purchasing discounted Exchequer bills and using them to pay tax revenue (they were then received at par by the Receivers as if paid in for taxes). The profit was thus the amount of the discount on the Exchequer bill that was typically between 7 and 9 per cent. As a result Charles Duncombe, the excise receiver-general between 1680 and 1697, was subsequently accused of conducting such practices. However, a Jury—all of whom received a lucrative thank you from Duncombe—quickly cleared him.54 (p.116) This whole scandal concerning the excise erupted against a sensational finding that a massive trade in prohibited textiles had been carried on with France. A group of powerful Huguenot refugees based in London had been conducting a large-scale illicit trade in English wool for French fine Lyons silk.55 After the commotions surrounding the excise between 1695 and 1698, receipts once again started to rise, aided by the introduction of a number of new excises; for example, on leather, glass, and paper. The most important, however, was on malt initially levied at sixpence per bushel for two years commencing in 1697. All these new excised commodities came to an end in 1700, which thus saw the excise yield fall to £768,706 for the period 1700–1 (as opposed to £1,015,954 net for 1699). This led to the last attempt to persuade the government to put the excise back out to farm by the two ageing ex-farmers Felix Calverd and Francis Parry. Their bid was seriously considered but ultimately rejected, and from 1701 the excise receipts began to pick up again, approaching £1,175,473 for the period 1701–2.56 Notes:

(1) B. R. Leftwich, A History of the Excise; with Hints on Investigating Pension Claims (London, 1908), 28; E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 117–18; P. O’Brien and P. Hunt, ‘The Emergence and Consolidation of Excises in the English Fiscal System before the Glorious Revolution’, BTR 1 (1997). 35–58, on 41–6; J. S. Wheeler, The Making of a World Power; War and the Military Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England (Stroud, 1999), 150. For Leveller concerns at parliamentary absolutism see J. Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Instability in European Context (Cambridge, 2000), 271–4. (2) W. D. Hamilton (ed.), Calendar of State Papas, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Charles 1 1641–1643 (London, 1887), 485; J. Bateman, The Excise Officer’s Manual, and Improved Practical Gauging (London, 1846), 274; C. Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship 1603–1763 (London, 1979), 130; W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640–1799:An Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), 52–3; M. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Page 22 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise Administration and Response (Suffolk, 1994), 169; S. Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), ii. 9; M. P. Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy under the Cromwellian Protectorate (Oxford, 1934), 63; H. Atton and H. H. Holland, The King’s Customs, 2 vols. (London, 1908), i. 92-4. (3) Leftwich, History of the Excise, 29–31. For the names of those appointed as Commissioners see A Collection of the Severall Acts, Ordinances, and Orders As well of Parliament As of His Highness The Lord Protector (Now in Force)For the Levying of Monies by Way of Excises and New Impost (London, 1655), 4–5; Wheeler, Making of a World Power, 150. (4) J. P. Cooper, ‘Social and Economic Policies under the Commonwealth’, in G. E. Aylmer (ed.), The Interregnum: The Quest for Settlement 1646–1660 (London, 1972), 121–42, on 123; J. Pink, The Excise Officers and their Duties in an English Market Town (Surbiton, 1995) 2; G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 14. (5) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 175–8 and ‘Popular Politics and Public Policy; The Excise Riot at Smithfield in February 1647 and. its Aftermath’, HJ 34 (1991), 597–626, on 604. Braddick writes: ‘The excise administration saw the creation of a new social role in the localities, that of the neutral, bureaucratic officer applying standard and rationalised rules to his conduct’; see his State Formation in Early Modern England c.1550–1700 (Cambridge, 2000), 261. (6) J. S. Morrill, The Revolt of the Provinces: Conservatives and Radicals in the English Civil War 1630– 1650 (London, 1976; repr. 1980), 65; D. Underdown, Revel, Riot and Rebellion; Popular Politics and Culture in England 1603–1660 (Oxford, 1985; repr. 1987), 149. (7) Braddick, ‘Popular Politics’, 606. (8) Id., Parliamentary Taxation, 179–83. Of all those apprenticed to trades and hung at Tyburn during the following century ‘a disproportionate number had been butchers’; see P. Linebaugh, The London Hanged; Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), 184. (9) Braddick, ‘Popular Politics’, and Parliamentary Taxation, 171. See also Leftwich, History of the Excise, 34–7; Kennedy, English Taxation, 76; Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy, 64. (10) Braddick, ‘Popular Politics’, 610–17, and Parliamentary Taxation, 187–91. (11) S. E. Fine, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643–1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 5–6. See also Hughes, Studies, 122–3. (12) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 170–2. Page 23 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise (13) Leftwich, History of the Excise, 34–7; Kennedy, English Taxation, 76; J. Owens, Plain Papers Relating to the Excise Branch of the Inland Revenue Department from 1621 to 1878 (Linlithgow, 1879), 6. Thomas Scott is quoted in C. Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London, 1972), 199, and the anonymous commentator is quoted in M. J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), 222. (14) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 20–7; Hughes, Studies, 126–8. (15) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 193–4; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 10– 11; Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 130–1; Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy, 65; G. E. Aylmer, The State’s Servants: The Civil Service of the English Republic (London, 1975) 250. Noell also sat on the committee for trade, he farmed the Post Office, and was an army and navy contractor supplying beds and blankets for the Ironsides in Ireland and later in Flanders, while providing saltpetre for the Admiralty. Another sideline for Noell was the transportation of royalist prisoners to the new colony of Jamaica. Here they were sold to planters lor 1,5501b. of sugar. In addition, he was a prolific purchaser of sequestered lands and throughout the 1650s he was the recognized credit agency for all the diplomatic agencies abroad. All their salaries depended on bills of exchange drawn on Noell. Despite his treatment of royalists Charles II rewarded Noell’s financial skills with a knighthood and the farm of the customs on wines, linen, silks, and tobacco. He eventually died during the Great Plague of London; see Hughes, Studies, 132–5. (16) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 173–4 and 193–5; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 29–30; Hughes, Studies, 128. (17) Z.G., Excise Anatomiz’d. Declaring that Unequal Imposition of Excise to be the only cause of the Ruin of Trade, the Universal Impoverishment, and destitute to the Liberties of the whole Nation (London, 1659). James Ibeson is quoted in Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 27–8. (18) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 27–32. (19) Ibid. 33–9; Hughes, Studies, 128–33; Wheeler, Making of a Great Power, 163. (20) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 27–32 and 40–2. (21) Anon, MP, ‘Some considerations about an Excise’, 1689, BL. Harley Papers 1243, fos. 333 and 335. (22) Leftwich, History of the Excise, 38–9; Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship, 229;Kennedy, English Taxation, 77; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 22; Hughes, Studies, 121. Page 24 of 27

 

The Introduction of the Excise (23) C. D. Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1660–1688 (Oxford, 1975), 40; Pine, ’Production and Excise’, 142; O’Brien, and Hunt Hunt‘The Emergence and Consolidation of Excises’, 52. (24) Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 52–3; Fine, ’Production and Excise’, 53. Downing is quoted in Scott, England’s Troubles, 312. (25) Hughes, Studies, 330. (26) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 203 and 211; O’Brien and Hunt Hunt ‘The Emergence and Consolidation of Excises’, 54, (27) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 206–9; Chandaman, The English Public Revenue, 54–6; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 56–7; Hughes, Studies, 128. (28) Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 214–16. (29) Ibid. 219–20. For the hearth tax see Lydia M. Marshall, The Levying of the Hearth Tax, 1662– 1688’, EHR 51 (1936), 628–46. (30) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 63–4 and 102; Hughes, Studies, 147. (31) Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 44. (32) Ibid. 58–61; Hughes, Studies, 148. (33) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 64–5; Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 61–2. (34) Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 46. (35) ibid. 63–4; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 76 and 79–83; Smith, Something to Declare, 23; O’Brien and Hunt ‘The Emergence and Consolidation of Excises’, 56–7. (36) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 83–4 and 106. (37) Ibid. 92–3; Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 65; Hughes, Studies, 150– 1. (38) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 84–91. (39) Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 66. (40) Ibid. 69–70; Hughes, Studies, 153. (41) Chandaraan, English Public Revenue, 70; Hughes, Studies, 154.

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The Introduction of the Excise (42) Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 72; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 94– 5. The use of public money and its role in the development of private banking in the 18th cent. has been stressed by L. S. Pressnell, Country Banking in the Industrial Revolution (Oxford, 1956). (43) Chandaman, English Public Revenue, 73–5. (44) Anon., ‘Some Considerations about an Excise’, fo. 336, (45) Anon., ‘Some Considerations about an Excise’, fos. 334 and 339–40. (46) M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity; London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (London, 1998), 169; Hughes, Studies, 184–5. (47) C. Davenant, Discourses on the Public Revenues, and on the Trade of England in Two Parts (London, 1698), repr. in The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D’Avenant,. ed C. Whitworth, 5 vols. (London, 1771), i. 182–3,188, and 196. (48) Excise to Treasury, 23 May 1695, PRO CUST 48/6. An additional excise had been granted in June 1689 on beer that increased it from 25. 6d. per barrel to 3s. 3d., with an additional 50 pet cent tax on other liquors. All excisable liquors had their duties temporarily doubled between 1690 and 1692, at which point the excise receipts started to drop; see Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 121–2, (49) Excise to Treasury, 23 May 1695, PRO CUST 48/6. (50) Ibid. (51) ibid. (52) Treasury to Excise, 13 Apr. 1696 and Excise to Treasury, 5 and 23 Sept. 1696: PRO GUST 48/6. (53) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 123–5; J. Brewer, ‘The English State and Fiscal Appropriation, 1688– 1789’, P&S 16 (1988), 367. (54) Hughes, Studies, 186–9; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 127. The Whigs had complained far a long time that both the customs and excise revenue departments were full of ‘the most declared Jacobites in the country’. Over the first five years of the post-Glorious Revolution period it seems only a fifth had made the necessary oaths of allegiance. (55) N. Williams, Contraband Cargoes: Seven Centuries of Smuggling (London, 1961), 87–8. (56) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 128–30.

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The Introduction of the Excise

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‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0008

Abstract and Keywords This chapter begins with a discussion of the work of excise officers. It then discusses excise training and method. The first available manual for excise gauging was written by excise commissioner Thomas Everard. He also developed a slide rule based on logarithmic scale to enable officers to solve various gauging problems. Keywords:   excise tax, taxation, excise officer, excise training, Thomas Everard

Management Of The Excise One rather proud and somewhat cranky excise officer declared in 1697: ‘if an Excellent inspection into the general parts of the Mathematicks will create estimation, if an absolute knowledge of Vulgar and Decimal Arithmetick will produce commendation; or, if a great proficiency in Geometry will merit Admiration, our Excise-Man claims them all by Undeniable Prescription’. As well as needing technical ability, a prospective officer required patronage from someone of recognized social authority. Thereafter his career was, at least in theory, subject to merit.1 The actual work of excise officers was specialized, arduous, time-consuming, and dangerous. The excise method was probably initially modelled on the techniques adopted by the great merchant companies. All entrants were required to pass both a written and practical test, and to undergo a closely scrutinized period of training. The prospective candidate had to learn arithmetic, geometry, and bookkeeping, and be competent in the use of intellectual aids such as calculating Page 1 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise tables and slide rules. Prospective excise candidates were required to learn their skills through a period of training with an experienced excise officer who undertook the responsibility for a sum. The apprentice officer was then tested by an excise supervisor for a further fee. As the number of excises continued to expand, the burden of having to gauge an increasingly vast array of diverse goods across an expanding number of places, was diluted by the fact that ‘severall of these Dutys are paid by one and the same Persons, most Vict.ers being Retailers of Sider & Brandy, & the Country Chandlers being generally soapes’.2 In addition to the above technical requirements, the prospective candidate had to ‘have the perfect use of his limbs’ and ‘be brisk and healthy; free from debt; of sober life and conversation, and of the communion of the Church of England’. The ideal person was someone aged between 20 and 30, preferably unmarried, but (p.118) if so, having no more than two children. The appointment of John Scott on 2 August 1703 was typical. After an apprenticeship in York with the excise officer Thomas Archer, ‘severall Gentlemen of the County of York … certified by Mr Thomas Mason’ recommended that he was ready to become an exciseman: he was familiar with the necessary ‘Arithmitick’ and wrote ‘with a good hand’. On being appointed the officer had to also provide a security of £200 rising to £500 if he went on to become a supervisor—or anything from £1,000 to £5,000, subject to receipts, if appointed collector.3 Training and a degree of merit rather than mere connection were novel features in eighteenth-century England. So too was the tool of anonymity. The excise officer was deliberately plucked from areas suitably distant from his round to ensure his face was unknown in his place of business. In other words, his relationship with the local community, at least to begin with, was not based on familiarity but on anonymity. To ensure this process was sustained, after a specified period the officer was duly removed to serve in another district. This was in contrast, for instance, to the collection of the land tax, which was collected by local respected figures. Thus, if, as Steve Shapin has recently maintained, ‘Premodern society looked truth in the face’, it was the case at the excise that so-called truth was coming face to face with strict bookkeeping, internal checking, instrumentation, and anonymity.4 In recasting trust and objectivity in this way, the excise pursued a rigorous method of reflexive endeavour and practice. The whole process involved in the production of a taxed good had to be visible to the excise officer, while the excise officer’s own activities and method had to be visible to his watchful superiors, and indeed to the manufacturer. To ease the volatile relationship between the producer and the excise required the development of new techniques of collection. The general unpopularity of the excise made it vulnerable, and this was surely one factor in the drive towards its particular bureaucratic structure and practices. Theodore Porter’s comments are pertinent here: ‘the drive to Page 2 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise supplant personal judgement by quantitative rales reflects weakness and vulnerability’. However, most important, in the case of the excise, was the fact that such rales enabled regularization across the country and therefore a seeming equity (and attempted to create and sustain a certain quality of product).5 The excise officers were scrutinized in a similar manner to the way they measured and monitored the manufacturers, merchants, and retailers they visited. Reflexivity was a vital component in reinforcing institutional anonymity and appearing objective in the method of revenue collection. The collection and (p.119) receipt of the duties was based on a systematic six-week circuit by the officer, with a regular flow of communication kept between the provinces and London. In addition, the officer kept a ledger and entry book in his local office that recorded his planned and actual work. Wherever he went the officer was armed with journals carefully kept to record his various gauges. On completing his measurements he left minutes and specimen papers with the various subjects of his visits, which included information concerning the state of the manufacturer’s premises and details of the duties owed.6 By 1725 about a third of all government officials were part of the Excise Department. The country was divided into a number of collections; for example, in the 1740s there were fifty and during the 1780s there were fifty-five. The boundaries kept changing because the number and type of excised goods were continually evolving and altering. In 1770 there were fifty-three collections throughout the provinces, in which each area contained a clerk, collector, and a supernumerary (a kind of officer apprentice). Then came about 253 division supervisors, followed by 2,704 officers who actually did the rounds—either on foot or horse (known as ‘foot walkers’ and ‘outriders’ respectively). A typical foot walk was between twelve and sixteen miles while outriders had a much larger area to survey. A further 724 officers and surveyors patrolled London. The Excise Board’s authority was also based in London, and from here its power was diffused into the field through the two supervisory grades of general surveyor and surveyor. Overall discipline was maintained by an inspector-general. The general examiner’s office in London had two permanent officials and twenty-four seconded executive officers who, if successful, would be promoted back into the country as supervisors. This process of apprenticeship ensured a degree of uniform standards and a pool of temporary examiners officiated for supervisors and collectors when ill. In the space of ninety years the number of officers employed in the country excise expanded by a factor of three. In 1694 there were 1,196 employees and by 1783 there were 3,483 officers. Accompanying this, as we shall see in Chapter 10, was also an increase in the violence against excisemen.7

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‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise The implementation of relatively good and regular salaries, a period of apprenticeship, and a policy that incorporated aspects of meritocracy was also joined by another innovation. The excise service was the first to have a form of pension called the ‘Charity Fund’ established in 1686. All executive officers made compulsory contributions and, although this was not quite a full bureaucratic (p.120) superannuation scheme since pensions were only payable where need was proven, in practice they were claimed as a right. A leading player in the original installation of these features during the 1680s had been, as we have seen in prior chapters, Charles Davenant. He had emphasized the need for a centralized body, a clear hierarchy, and standardized methods of gauging characterized by an institutionalized notion of accuracy. This required well-trained officers, sites of manufacture accessible to empirical observation, and reflexive in-house methods. Not one to hold back, Davenant proudly proclaimed: ‘I have given them all one method and ordered them to keep it’. Equally important was creating a geography of administrative divisions that could maximize and, indeed, make possible such lofty objectives. Thus each ride and walk had to be carefully planned by the Board of Excise in terms of size and content and allocating labour to meet the needed requirements. For example, ‘Bad officers’ were ideally sent to ‘Smaller districts’, while officers in general were systematically transferred to different areas to prevent corruption setting in. At the core of the system were the periodic surveys by the commissioners (and later by supervisors and collectors). This, claimed Davenant, was ‘the life of their whole affair’. The knowledge that they might be unexpectedly viewed was a powerful instrument of discipline.8 According to Davenant, through this method of surveillance, they discovered who were lazy or diligent, who deserved promotion and who should be removed. It was the fact that inspections were unexpected and conducted by men who were familiar with all aspects of excise business that gave them such power. In addition, they were all united in their objectives and not, according to Davenant, swayed by either business or political interests—all of which was compensated by a large salary. ‘Their management was uncorrupt; no place was sold, or suffered to be sold under them; by which they could pick and choose the best, and were entirely masters of their inferior officers‘.9 Let us now look a little closer at the kind of practices Davenant so enthused about. Take, for example, the report of one commissioner surveying the southwest of England and south Wales in 1685. This was a particularly tense time under James If’s doomed attempt to impose policies sympathetic to Catholics upon the British Isles. For instance, Edward Hine, an officer in Lyme Regis, had joined the duke of Monmouth on 15 June in his ill-fated invasion, and ‘the town remained unsurvey’d from thence to the 23rd[,] the stock was pretty great in the town when the Rebels came in & little or no breweries while they were there [,] so that there was but little collcd. the book is otherwise in good Page 4 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise order’. George Richmond, another officer, also abandoned his post to join ‘the Rebels among whom he was seen at Taunton, Bridgwater & Glastonbury’. As a result his district remained (p.121) unsurveyed between 15 and 23 June when he was replaced by ‘a methodising officer’ from Wales, a certain Benjamin Price, who ‘seems to know his business well enough which is in good order’.10 Conversely, the excise officer at Honnyton, Abraham Swift, was ‘a very Brisk pretty fellow & was very serviceable to the R. forces[.] [D]uring the Rebellion his town was survey’d But the outride was unsurvy’d for about a fortnight’. Not surprisingly the Monmouth rebellion caused a great deal of confusion and disruption to the excise collection in the surrounding area. In Taunton, for example, although the officer had continued to survey his district, the town’s revenue book had been taken away by rebels with all the records of the month’s charges, while most of the victualling houses had been closed since the soldiers had not paid for what they drank. John Bovet, the officer on the second outride in Taunton, like Richmond above, also joined ‘the Rebels’. He was replaced by an incompetent officer, John Frank, who, although recommended by Sir James Butler, was Very ignorant’. The commissioner ‘was forced to suspend him & supply his place by one Will. Lightfoot’—a ‘very brisk humble fellow’. Also discharged was a. certain Mr Bolster, who, although, good at his work, was ‘a very difficult ill fellow all the gentlemen complaining of him so that I thought fit to discharge him’.11 Frederick Kempsal, based in Painsford, pretended to make gauges and forged his results. ‘He cannot work anything by the pen nor gauge yet has been 3 years & a half in the division[.] I have ordered this man to be suspended’. In Monmouth the outride officer, John Yates, could not be found. The commissioner concluded: ‘I believe he is idling about [—]he is sayd to be an idle fellow’. Similarly, the outride officer in. the Chepstow area was a ‘disaffected’ and ‘idledrunken fellow’. The collector of Wales and East Riding, a Mr Newton, confirmed that Yates and a number of other officers were ‘all idle drunken ignorant fellows’, who spent most of their time ‘idling and debauching so with the Country Gentlemen’, and consequently ‘neglect all their business’ Elsewhere, on the Island of Anglesey in north Wales, six officers complained that they were unable to collect the hearth tax due to ‘great opposition’, and that the constables refused to help them despite having a. general warrant ordering them to assist. The commissioner, however, also received reports that these same officers ‘frightened the people’ with the use of such warrants and. collected the tax through deputies without any commission. They further charged duty ‘on pretence of conceal’d Hearths without any judgement of the Justices’.12 Miles Edgar began his survey in Gloucestershire in 1683. The town’s officer, Mr Cox, did not charge by worts as he was supposed to, since he claimed his district was too large. The town consisted of one common brewer, twenty-two victuallers, and forty miles of riding. The officer for Witny, J. Filkins, could not Page 5 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise divide, knew nothing of the semicircle, and had never charged in worts, while the officer at Stow was deemed ‘a little old’ and had not adjusted yet ‘to the new method’. Edgar explained what he meant: ‘Where the diameters are computed he (p.122) does pretty well but is at a loss where new tubbs are brought … he does not know the [unknown word] of his semicircle well enough to work the diameters by it’. Conversely, the district of Campden offered a great contrast: it was ‘a little scraggy place in comparison of Witny & yet makes as much by having a good office’.13 The officer at Winchcomb, Jeremy Ludlow, ‘seems a tolerable diligent fellow and very willing to learn. He understands his semi circle & enough of his decimals to do his business’. Edgar thought the district of Cheltenham should be reduced from its fifty-mile circumference since it had become too intense an area of trade. It seemed the supervisor at Gloucester, Mr Bartot, could do no wrong: ‘he is an excellent Artist & a most diligent creature’. By contrast Edgar was a little suspicious of the officer Samuel Wilson, who made frequent surveys and charges often in the worts (‘but his charges come near to one another[—]this made me have a jealousy that the officer was negligent’). On inspection of one of the victuallers he found nine gallons concealed and sternly warned Wilson to be more vigilant.14 The officer for the first division at Worcester, Mr Adams, was conversant in the use of Thomas Everard’s sliding rule but was not competent in the new ‘methodized’ approach: he ‘knows not the use of the semicircle but is diligent & a master of figures’. In Titbury, Edgar was greeted by a large angry crowd complaining ‘of the great oppressors they suffer by being taken in the worts’. He concluded, ‘all this clamour is that the cask have been hitherto under gauged & now they think they pay God knows how much more than they ought to pay. Many casks formerly gauged at 56 [gallons] now new gauged hold 64[—]we suffer by the former management’. It seems that a more precise form of calculating the contents of casks, and an improved system for doing so, brought new problems for the excise. This remained a familiar story throughout the eighteenth century. This system of vigilant management became more systematic during the eighteenth century when the supervisor and collector took over responsibility for checking the officer’s activities.15

Excise Training and Method The first widely available manual for excise gauging was written by the excise commissioner, staunch reformer, and well-known mathematician Thomas Everard. He also devised a slide rule based on logarithmic scale to enable officers to solve an array of gauging problems. During the 1690s a system of training new entrants in the art of measurement and excise procedures was established.16 A prospective officer would first have to prove to the officer superintending his (p. 123) training that he was capable of going into various manufacturers and correctly gauging an array of taxed items. The trainee’s results were initially Page 6 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise recorded in a ‘Rough Book’ and periodically tested by the training officer. On passing this stage, he moved on to a ‘Fair Book’ and if he acquitted himself at this point, the officer recommended him to the supervisor who certified him duly instructed and he became known as an ‘Expectant’. He was then appointed as an ‘Assistant’ or ‘Supernumerary’ officer and started, for the first time, to receive an income. There were two types of assistants, one permanent and the other temporary. The former were typically placed in large manufactures or at those premises suspected of fraudulent activity, the latter were used to aid the work of excise officers dealing in seasonally taxed products, or where there was a need for extra help at certain busy times of the year. In 1820 both types of assistants were paid £85 per year.17 There was no shortage of recruits wanting to join the ranks of the excise. From the well-kept records for the early nineteenth century their backgrounds can clearly be discovered. From the sample of entries I looked at for the 1820s, it seems they came from a whole gamut of occupations and social backgrounds. The most common by far were farmers followed by clerks, then came a number of drapers, grocers, cordwainers, gentlemen, butchers, schoolmasters, quay watchmen, printers, tailors, booksellers, stationers, servants, hoop makers, scholars, mariners, accomptants, bakers, millers, sail makers, gatekeepers, boatmen, gardeners, merchants, firemen, fine drawers, hairdressers, masons, hatters, goldsmiths, porters, shipwrights, cabinetmakers, writers, ribbon manufacturers, tobacconists, wheelwrights, commercial businessmen, builders, joiners, watchmakers, carpenters, permit writers, joiners, corn merchants, wool staplers, haberdashers, hop planters, artists, potters, weavers, and lastly men classified as having no trade.18 This sample from such a wide range of backgrounds contained its fair share of political radicals. Indeed, during the late 1790s the commissioners were deeply concerned at the possibility of the excise officers combining for a pay rise. Edward Hughes suggests that this may have been a particularly important factor in the Treasury pressing for the AntiCombination Act of 1799. If the excise came to a halt, Britain’s whole fiscal edifice would collapse.19 On being appointed to the position of an excise officer, the assistant or supernumerary would be assigned a collection. The task of the officers was simply to assess and verify duties payable and not to collect them, although an exception was made for collecting the duty from the huge amounts of beer sold at fairs. After the excise officer had made his measurements the trader was given a voucher stating the amount of duty payable, which he would then present to the collector at the next sitting in the local market town. The office also kept an account of the manufacturers’ stocks and a record of those who had purchased the excised goods. He also drew up an abstract of the total amount of the commodities charged to every trader in his district. These figures, in turn,

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‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise were (p.124) checked by the supervisor along with the officer’s diaries and account books, and then forwarded to the collector of the division.20 As already noted, all officers would, at a certain time, be automatically rotated to new areas. Individuals could also regularly petition the Excise Office for a transfer. Take, for example, Thomas Keech, who was based in Bristol and desperate to get relocated. He claimed that Bristol was ‘rendered so unwholesome by so many manufactories of every description which I really think poisons the air’. Nor did he think much of the Bristol people, whom he labelled ‘unnatural & unfeeling’. In July he claimed he was very ill with ‘a gathering in my throat’ preventing him eating and drinking: ‘this place being so pernicious to my health I have on the 14th June Petitioned (stating that as a reason for the first Division which may become vacant either in Somerset, Wellington, or Exon collections) … I am determined not to remain in Bristol’.21 By April 1817 Keech had his wish and was transferred to Southampton. Again, he was soon unhappy: ‘what a cursed Division I have had here the worst I ever set my foot in, & I believe one of the worst in England’. He claimed he was still ill and had not really been well since his ride in Berkshire. His work dominated his life: ‘I could scarce ever get an hour to sit down in the day nor til late in the evening to do any writing, therefore was most frequently obliged to be up til Midnight, & next morning the Tormentors (or Chandlers) wants their Utensils unlock’d at 4 or 5 O’clock’. Keech had once again had enough of his district and applied for a transfer. The Excise Office duly obliged and he was swiftly sentenced to the second ride in the Barnstaple Collection in Cornwall. Soon after arriving, he gave his early impressions to his brother. It was ‘a very light Ride of Business but a very long one. I have frequently between 30 & 40 Miles a day’. He was unsure his horse, ‘a little black Welsh mare’, was suitable for the task since the roads were so poor.22 After serving three years on a ride the officer was eligible to apply for a ‘foot walk’, which required a favourable report from his collector, followed by another period of training. Foot walks were in cities, towns, and areas where there were numerous producers clustered in the same place. Both riders and foot walkers received the same salary, which in 1820 was £100 with a further £10 after ten years’ service.23 After nine years’ employment, with at least three on a foot walk, an (p.125) officer could apply for a district. Again, as with all prior promotions, he had to have his character scrutinized at the Board of Excise in London. He would then be placed on a list of examiners and when it came to his turn, he was tested to see if he was competent and familiar with the duties of a supervisor by the surveying general examiners. If successful he was sent to the port of London to gain hands-on experience learning the nature of transacting port business, which was followed by a spell studying methods of surveying goods that he was not familiar with. And, after all that, he still had to pass an inquisition from the surveying general examiners. On successfully passing these rigorous hurdles he Page 8 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise was employed to examine the books of other officers seeking promotion, all the time still being scrutinized by the surveying general examiners, He was then employed a month in the Correspondents’ Office and occasionally sent out to officiate for supervisors in the country. On finally being appointed to the position of surveyor he had to provide sureties amounting to £1,000,24 The ordinary excise officer Benjamin Herring no doubt struck a cord with most of his colleagues when he penned his poem, The Poor Exciseman’s Lamentation: I can’t get drunk, or smoke a pipe, kick up a row, or have a fight— As any other person might— for fear of Supervisor. The supervisor had the task of surveying all the officers in each division to make sure they were doing their duty. This was done haphazardly to ensure that the officers had no warning of his impending presence. There were typically between six and twelve officers in any one district. On arriving to a division the supervisor would immediately locate his first victim and secure the officer’s journal and books. Herring, again, captures the scene: And if my fingers Stand a-crook His leering eyes give such a look, And down he sets it in his book, Nor dare I make resistance! The vast archive of the excise is littered with the dismissal of officers due to the observations made in the supervisors’ reports. For example, if we take just one month in 1699, there were no less than six dismissals for false surveying, neglect of duty, and tampering with journals. John Earle, an officer in Bedford, was discharged for making a false entry in his diary; Andrew Wilson, an officer in the county of Cumberland, was discharged for fraud; while Robert Price, an officer in Wales employed to prevent the running of salt, was deemed ‘unformidable’ in his duties, having ‘never made any seizures but one bushel of salt out of a ship tho’ a great deal is run both by sea and land’. He was dismissed and replaced by a preventative officer from Caernarfon. As well as surveying the excise officers, the (p.126) supervisor also had to inspect their horses to ensure the animals were actually capable of transport. And lastly, he was expected to monitor the social statistics of the various officers: their age, size of family, and time spent actually working on excise business.25

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‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise The supervisor was expected to ‘maintain a becoming authority’ over his subordinates, ‘and to correct what appears to be wrong’. One way he did this was to secretly regauge and calculate duties made by the officer at the various sites he surveyed. On ‘these occasions he makes use of a Book called a Check, from which he transfers his surveys into the officers when they meet. He embraces every opportunity of recounting, reweighing and remeasuring goods previously counted, weighed and measured by the officers’. From this he could make a calculated judgement regarding the character and integrity of the officer. One gauger looked fondly back at the excellent advice his instructor had given him during his final day of training in Newark: ‘“Be sure and turn the post”. His meaning was, that I was not to account for surveying a place without first going to it; or in technical terms, not to “stamp” or mute “feigned surveys”; for if ever found guilty of this practice, a discharge from the service would follow. My faithful monitor knew this well: hence his injunction’.26 The supervisor in the district of Richmond, Yorkshire, George Cowperthwaite, rode on average nineteen and a half miles a day and typically inspected four or five premises. The Board was not interested in slips of the pen or minor errors. Rather, ‘Such Mistakes or Blunders, as appear to be the Effect of careless or feigned surveying, &c. he is to give an impartial and full Account, that the whole Truth thereof may plainly appear to the Board’. He recorded his observations in a diary that he sent, along with the officer’s books and ledgers, to the examiners in London. When an officer was found guilty of fraud he was shown a copy of the supervisor’s report, and then expected to give an answer to the charges. The whole system depended upon the vigilance and trustworthiness of the supervisor. As an official remarked in 1780: ‘If the Supervisor conducts himself faithfully and judiciously it is next to impossible that either an Officer or Trader whether connected or unconnected can long carry on a fraud without discovery or detection’. One recent commentator, John Torrance, believes the supervisor’s diary was ‘the key to departmental discipline’ and the cement to the excise system in general.27 Herring trembled at the very sight of the diary: (p.127) That lousy Diary I dread; The sight of it makes me scratch me head; I wish it burnt, and super dead; I then should have some pleasure!28 Dismissals were frequent, devoid of sentiment, and often brutal. Thomas Stone was expelled from his Coventry-based round for ‘being old, feeble[,] decrepit and almost blind[,] wanting capacity[.] The figures of his bookes scratched, altered, and erazed[;] whole wettings and brewerys scratched out and many altered’. Page 10 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise Edney Coleman, an officer in Rochford, was demoted for ‘having several mistakes and omissions in his Bookes, some gauges not cast up, changes not brought forward; gauges out of 4 in malt cast up false, his bookes kept very fowle’. On certain occasions the situation was plain desperate. William Pyewall tried hopelessly to rectify his books while the supervisor, Philip Ryley, was calmly waiting downstairs. The Excise Board recorded, ‘that on the 26th surveying Tamworth Division he [Ryley] found the Officer William Pyewall at home[,] who pretending to go upstairs for his bookes staid there for some time, and was found entering of stock; At 2 houses no stock entered since the 20th, and very probably more had not been stocked since that day … his Dimension booke out of order; Dimensions of several casks taken, but none cast up … the areas of some of his cisterne undergauged; his bookes erazed and figures altered’. Pyewall’s fate was to be cast onto the ever-growing scrap heap of fallen excise officers. Herring dreamt that each supervisor would become A living piece of lumber!, One eye quite blind, the other bad, A trembling hand and brainless head.29 The strict and close monitoring of the excise officers’ books was a constant source of stress and frustration. It was a problem even for respected officers. Take the case of John Cannon, who tried to erase an error in his book with a penknife—a decision that fast became a nightmare. As he relected: when done it did not please me therefore with my knife I endeavoured to amend it but made it much worse and yet not content still went on to right it made it still worse till at last it became shamefully bad for that by scrapping so often with my knife that I made a perfect hole through the leafe. At last I took up a resolution to cover all by burning the same with a coal or Candle in such a manner as it might be took for an accident … yet well know that scratching erasing or altering any figure in stock or gauge was not only notorious but almost unpardonable … And what was worse was by my so often visiting this page I had made the book so pliable that it would open itself at the very page where my folly was done as if it had vowed to be a witness against me to discharge me. (p.128) On this occasion, however, Cannon was lucky. His supervisor held a high opinion of him and persuaded the examiners in London to let him off with just a severe reprimand.30 On another occasion Cannon was acclaimed by the excise and the local bench for his role in uncovering a major malt fraud in High. Wycombe involving the mayor and his brother. In addition, he also caught their uncle using false weights in his tallow candle manufactory. There were often two sides to the excise Page 11 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise officer. It was important for him to ingratiate himself with the local community he worked within. On being transferred to a foot walk in Shepton Mallet in Somerset, Cannon treated his new friends to samples of confiscated illicit goods, and would warn numerous locals in the town of a pending customs search for smuggled items. However, Cannon’s growing debt and practice of not charging duty to those malsters to whom he owed money eventually caught up with him. Relations with his immediate colleagues had gradually soured; they particularly resented his seeming relish and willingness to report any frauds he suspected they might be up to. As a result, one of them had already accused Cannon of being a Jacobite, and eventually got him dismissed on discovering his fraudulent relationship with malsters.31 The case of Cannon merely reveals that the system of vigilance exercised by the commissioners, collectors, and surveyors also depended on the jealous eyes of fellow officers. The level of monitoring did not stop there. For example, if the ordinary excise officer trembled at the site of the surveyor, the surveyor took a gulp on meeting the collector. After serving five years in charge of a district the surveyor was entitled to seek promotion to a collection. On being recommended to the position of collector by a commissioner and having his performance over the course of a year successfully assessed, he was appointed to the post of supernumerary collector. In addition to taking the usual oaths required by law he had to give sureties that amounted in 1820 to £5,000. Then, on a vacancy appearing, he was officially appointed to the post of collector.32 The collector had to adjudicate disputes arising from complaints by the supervisor in his diary against any officers, after which he was to ‘state the truth of the case upon such complaint’ and send his findings to the commissioners. He also had to examine and report to them on the ability and actions of any new officers beginning work in his collection. It was also up to him to place officers in divisions suited to their ability, ‘and to prevent or discover the partiality of his Supervisor’s in misrepresenting the actions or behaviour of their officers[,] by artful Reports either in their favour or to the prejudice[,] which is too frequently done out of spite or to bring about some private ends of (p.129) their own’, warned the Treasury. In addition to the supervisor, the collector also carried out periodic visits to ensure officers were pursuing the correct method of taking duty, and ‘especially where they have cause to suspect any ill practices to be carried on between the Supervisors & Officers which have been frequently discovered by such Collectors surveys’.33 The collector’s major task in the country was to ensure that the revenue was efficiently gathered and then transmitted to London. One of the main problems he faced was the actual delivery of duty payments, since the journey to London was hazardous—full of highwaymen and armed gangs only too happy to retrieve Page 12 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise the manufacturer’s money. Collectors were instructed to ride between dusk and dawn, and from an early period were encouraged to use bills of exchange. During the 1690s it was not uncommon for the Treasury to receive petitions or cases involving excise collectors and stolen revenue. Take, for example, the petition of Henry Willet, an excise collector for some twenty-two years, who had become indebted to the tune of £1,202, It seems £771. was used ‘for paying some ingagemts. who unfortunately had entered into for others and as to the remaining £431 seems greatly surprised and confused as not being able to give any accot. thereof unless the same might happen in his Collection in the late revolution when he was forced to pay his money to divers persons and in divers places in great hurry’. Another collector in the district of north Wales, John Clay, paid his revenue money to ‘Grazers and Dealers in cattle’, who were then meant to pay this money at the London Excise Office after selling their cattle. However, it seems the said graziers and dealers had failed to do so and the Treasury consequently held Clay responsible. In 1705 William Sharrett, the collector on the Isle of Wright, was sentenced to Newgate Prison for escaping with £800 of excise revenue that he used to pay off his debts. In January 1712 he petitioned the Treasury to set him free to enable him to at least try and pay off the said sum. The excise commissioners, in turn, weighed up the case and agreed that he should be released, a decision dully approved by the Treasury in March that year.34 The early use of bills of exchange to forward excise revenue to the Exchequer was a risky business. The case of William Culliford was not unusual. In September 1688 he had received from the collector of excise for Norfolk £100, and he, in turn, drew a bill for the same amount on a certain ‘Charles Thomas at 10 days light payable to Charles Duncombe Esq. then Cashier of Excise’. It soon transpired that Thomas was in fact Culliford’s servant, who ‘did not accept nor was in a capacity to pay the said Bill’. Culliford was an officer in the army and had subsequently been stationed in Ireland. As a result the bill had never been satisfied. The excise, however, were determined to ensure it would be. The commissioners eventually hunted Culliford down, and found out the astonishing news he had been made a pensioner with an annual allowance of £250. Consequently, they demanded that (p.130) £100 be deducted from this sum, a request approved by the Treasury in January 1712.35 Over the course of the eighteenth century the situation greatly improved. By 1780 the excise commissioner and well-known mathematician George L. Scott could confidently tell the commissioners examining the public accounts, ‘he never heard of a Collector being proceeded against for Default of Payment of the Money collected by him’.36 The excise collectors went on ‘rounds’ typically eight times a year, although some would be weekly, and held ‘sitting days’ in the local excise office—usually a market town inn. The innkeeper was called the ‘Office Keeper’ and received a Page 13 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise ‘deputation’ from the commissioners to receive entries and notices issued by excise traders. It was here that the collector needed to be experienced in all the various manufacturing processes concerning the production of excisable commodities. This enabled him to judge the trustworthiness or ability of the officer’s work and to provide another seasoned eye on the activities of the manufacturer— especially, it seems, in the case of the maltster. He also had to try the dimensions of all casks and utensils by regauging them and putting the first two letters of his name to those he examined.37 The collector had an enormous amount of administration, for example, discharging the ledgers, giving receipts at the sittings granting licences; disbursing the supervisors’ and officers’ salaries, allowances, and expenses; checking the officers’ books and comparing them with the surveyors’ report. In addition, he had to check the abstract of the officers’ charges made on those manufacturers and traders he surveyed, and ensure all complaints made against officers were correctly recorded.38 Training excise officers and vigilantly ensuring they stuck to their prescribed method was one thing, but applying the same form of discipline to manufacturers was another. Davenant, for example, had found it necessary to negotiate the accuracy of official gauging procedures with suspicious manufacturers and hostile local officials. Indeed, the whole credibility and future of the excise system of measurement depended on local cooperation—especially with JPs and other officials. Miles Ogborn has recently shown that to achieve the goals of administrative accuracy and uniformity required a rich helping of ‘informal social contact and patronage’.39 In a world defined by robust localism and regional customs, the world particularly outside London had to be carefully managed, the magistrates and their courts had to be gently massaged—all of which meant that to pursue a national policy required careful and ongoing local negotiations. Notes:

(1) E. Foisted, The Excise-Man, Shewing the Excellency of Ms Profession (London, 1697), 15–16. (2) ‘Observations on a Proposall for laying inland Dutys on Tea Coffee & Chocolate to be under the Management of the Commissioners of the Excise’, n.d., probably between 1722 and 1723, CUL Ch(H) 27/32. (3) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’, 1820, PRO OUST 119/344; ‘Excise Board and Secretariat: Minute Books’, 20 May 1703, PRO OUST 47/31. For excise employment and the need for patronage, see C. Brooks, ‘Interest, Patronage and Professionalism: John, 1st Baron Ashburnham, Hastings and the Revenue’,. SH 9 (1987), 51–70.

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‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise (4) S. Shapin, A Social History of Trust: Cirility and Science in SeventeenthCentury England (Chicago, 1994), 410. (5) T. M. Porter, Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, 1995). pp. ix, xi, 194–6, 214, and 221. (6) J.E.D.Binney, British Public Finance and Administration 1774–1792 (Oxford, 1958), 37; J.Torrance, ‘Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation: The Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts 1780–1787’, P 78 (1978), 56– 81, on 61; J.Brewer, ‘The English State and Fiscal Appropriation, 1688– 1789’, P&S 16 (1988), 188–385, on 362–3, and the Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London, 1989), 104–9. (7) Brewer, ‘The English State’, 354–5, and Sinews of Power, 102-4; G.Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, Slate and Society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982), 253 and 256; R.C.Jams, ‘The Paper-Makers and the Excise in the Eighteenth Century’, L, 5th sen, 14 (1959), 100–17, on 105, and ‘Official Trade and Revenue Statistics’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 10 (1964–5), 43–62, on 46; S.E.Line, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643–1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 146. For later figures see E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 266. (8) M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London’s Geographies, 1680–1780 (London, 1998), 178 and 181–3. Davenant is quoted in C.D.Chandaman, The English Public Revenue 1600–1688 (Oxford, 1975). 74– (9) C. Davenant, Discourses on the Public Revenues, and on the Trade of England in Two Parts (London, 1698), repr. in The Political and Commercial Works of that Celebrated Writer Charles D’Avenant,ed. C. Whitworth, 5 vols. (London, 1771), i 177–8. (10) Managm of Excise Officer, 1685, BL Harleian Papers 4077. (11) Ibid. (12) Ibid. (13) Miles Edgar on the Excise, 1683, BL Harleian Papers 5120. For gauging techniques see Ch. 12, below. (14) ibid. (15) Ibid. (16) G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 33; J. Pink, The Excise Officers and their Duties in an English Market Town(Surbiton, 1995), 5 and 11; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 148. Page 15 of 17

 

‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise (17) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’, 1820, PRO OUST 119/344. (18) ‘Entry Papers of Excisemen’, vol. i. 1820–1840, PRO GUST 116. (19) Hughes, Studies, 348. Excise officers eventually received a £15 pay rise in 1811. (20) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’. (21) Thomas Keech to Henry Keech, Bristol, 1816 and 29 July 1816, DCRO D595/1. (22) Thomas Keech to Henry Keech, 25 April and 26 May 1817, DCRO D595/1. (23) This compares with £50 in the 1770s, which was a primary reason why the field officers started a campaign—famous for Thomas Paine’s pamphlet—to increase pay in 1772. The salaries were the only source of income at a time when most people, including customs officers, gained money from other jobs or frequently charged lucrative fees. If the officer apprehended smugglers and illicit goods a good living could be had, e.g. for each smuggler caught he would receive £50. Compensation was also given if officers discovered major activities of fraud or corruption within the service; see Brewer, ‘The English State’, 360–1. The first wage increases came in 1788 but only up to £55–160 for officers, which led to an organized protest in 1796 as well as petitions sent from all corners of the country. Eventually large pay increases came in 1800: assistants gained an additional £15 (total pay £60), gangers £15 (£80), supervisors £20 (£140), and collectors an extra £30. The greater remuneration led to a much larger number of applicants; see fine, ‘Production and Erase’, 159–61. (24) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’. (25) ‘Excise Board and Secretariat: Minute Books’, Feb. 1699, PEO GUST 47/15; B. Herring, The Poor Exciseman’s Lamentation and other Poems (London, 1896), 9-10; C. Leadbetfer, The Royal Gauger; Or, Gauging made Easy, As it is actually practised by the Officers of his Majesty’s Revenue of Excise(London, 1739; 2nd edn. London, 1743), 347. (26) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’; J. Pacy, The Reminiscences of a Gauger: Imperial Taxation, Past and Present, Compared (New yark, 1873), 53–4. (27) Brewer, ‘The English Stale’, 357 and 363–4; Leadbetfer, The Royal Gauger, 348; Torrance, ‘Social Class’, 62–3; W. Hersee, The Spirit of the General Letters and Orders Issued by the … Excise (London, 1829), 278. (28) Herring, The Poor Exciseman’s Lamentation, 10.

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‘His leering eyes gives such a look’: The World of Excise (29) Ibid. 14; ‘Excise Board and Secretariat; Minute Books’, 22 Apr. and 2 June 1703, PRO CUST 47/31. (30) John Cannon is quoted in Brewer, ‘The English State’, 357. (31) J. Money, ‘Teaching in the Market-Place, or “Caesar Adsirni Jam Forte; Pompey Aderat”: The Retailing of Knowledge in Provincial England during the Eighteenth Century’, in J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1994), 335–77, on 352–4. (32) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’. (33) Excise to Treasury, 28 Apr. 1716, PRO CUST 48/11. (34) Excise to Treasury, 8 Mar. 1694; Treasury to Excise, 27 Aug. 1695 and 3 Dec. 1696; Petition to the Treasury, 10 Jan. 1711; Excise to Treasury, 17 Mar. 1711, and earl of Oxford to Excise, 10 July 1711, PRO CUST 48/11. (35) Excise to Treasury, 18 Feb. 1695 and Excise to Treasury, 11 Dec. 1711, PRO CUST 48/6 and 11. (36) ‘A Table for Dividing the Excise Cash’, 24 June 1710, CUL Ch(H);, ‘First Report of the Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts’, 27 Mar. 1780HCSP41 34. (37) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 348. (38) In addition to the excise concerned with inland duties, there were also a significant number of officers employed taking import duties that came under the jurisdiction of the Board of Excise. These consisted of import officers, warehouse keepers, lockers, sample drawers, port gangers, and port surveyors. In 1797 there were 275 excise officers in outports and a further 385 in London; see ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’. (39) Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity, 180.

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Life on the Waterfront

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Life on the Waterfront WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0009

Abstract and Keywords This chapter focuses on how the Customs House along with the Excise Office, the Bank of England, and the Stock Exchange Building lay at the heart of the state's fiscal success. The London Custom House was designed by Christopher Wren and built of brick and stone. It had two stout Tuscan wings designed by Thomas Ripley, while large ionic columns supported its upper storey and overwhelmed its surroundings. Beneath each side was the belly, consisting of large warehouses for the reception of goods, and entrances that led through into the narrow, damp, malodorous streets on the north side. The whole edifice extended 189 feet along the riverfront. Keywords:   taxation, Customs House, public buildings, Christopher Wren, Thomas Ripley

One of the first buildings to catch the eye of a late eighteenth-century sailor as his vessel slowly glided past the Tower of London was the Customs House along Lower Thames Street. This building—along with the Excise Office in Old Jury, the Bank of England just around the corner in Threadneedle Street, and just a few steps away, the newly established Stock Exchange building (1773)—lay at the heart of the state’s fiscal success. The architect and surveyor to the Board of Customs, David Laing, gave his thoughts on the place and character of the London Custom House in 1818: It ‘is not the accommodation of nobility, nor of royalty, nor of a Senate, It is not a palace; it is not the hall of Legislative Assembly; nor of a Bank, a privileged seat of wealth; nor of a National Treasury, understood to be the office for concentration and distribution of the public receipts and expenditures. It is a Page 1 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront national object, in some degree a kind of epitome of all these; but not precisely coincident with either’. The port of London and the Custom House was like no other space; it was the most international and cosmopolitan zone in England. The various interests concerned with trade and revenue had realized long ago that social boundaries, in certain places, were unprofitable. This, of course, was a point verbosely emphasized by numerous eighteenth-century political radicals.1 Accompanying the huge growth in trade during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was an equally rapid expansion in labour and its international movement. As well as the riches of the world and fruits of empire congealing in a port, so too was an ever larger, diverse, and multinational pool of labour. As a recent historian of eighteenth-century London writes: ‘The international character of the London proletariat was one aspect of the international capital that centred on London’. To get Virginian tobacco, Jamaican sugar, or China tea, required the intense extraction of labour at the source of the commodity's production, on route to its destination, and at the space where it was delivered. It often needed the use of foreign crews, frequently employed in defiance of the Navigation Acts, to man the ships. The movement of goods was also accompanied by a flow of radicalism based on shared Atlantic experiences. The arena in which this all collected was a port and ports came no larger than London. It was within this environment of diverse trade, brewing discontent, and (p.134) frequently violent confrontation, that the customs and port excise officers clipped their gauging rods and calculated taxes.2 Customs and excise officers would invariably be found buzzing around diverse casks, hogsheads, and an array of packages clogging the spaces of wharfs along the riverfront. Captains and officers were squashed next to glutmen, weighers, gaugers, and land waiters as they tried to go about their business, while passengers and merchants fought to either board or leave their ship. Wafting through the air would have been a rich smell of tar stemming from the ships gently bobbing in the Thames, combining with the tar and sweat-stained clothes of sailors roving the immediate vicinity. Some of those involved in the struggle to get past stray timber, rope, and ballast strewn along the quay, would have been stressed butchers and brewers trying to help load salted meat and beer onto ships. An array of ‘glutmen’ (extra labourers who helped where needed on the waterside) and servants would be cursing and huffing as they moved the ceaseless flow of goods on and off various vessels. As one moved further away from the waterfront the smell of tar would have been slowly replaced by the stench of horse droppings, human waste, and household rubbish thrown from the windows of nearby dwellings—all of which blocked the elementary drainage that ran down the narrow streets. This was complemented, in one particular spot along the waterfront, by the stench of rotting flesh emanating from the twisted bodies at Execution Dock gently swinging in the light London breeze.

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Life on the Waterfront Rising majestically from the centre of this dense congregation of bodies, smells, death, and commercial wealth was the London Custom House. ‘Of all buildings’, marvelled Laing, ‘a public building of this description, is seen by the greatest number of foreigners; and seen, in the first instance, by such as arrive from distant parts, charged with the care of those numerous and valuable cargoes which every tide bear to anchorage on the bosom of the Thames’. Sprawling outwards from the building, and along the riverfront, was the bustle of merchants, pickpockets, opportunists on the prowl for unguarded merchandise, lighters, carts, and scales operating in the frantic congestion and confusion of waterfront life. The London Custom House—the first one designed by Christopher Wren was irretrievably damaged by fire shortly after the Hanoverian succession—was built of brick and stone. Its two, stout Tuscan wings, designed by Thomas Ripley, extended effortlessly towards the Thames ready to greedily devour the riches of the river. Large Ionic columns supported its upper storey and overwhelmed its (p.135) surroundings. Beneath each side was its belly, consisting of large warehouses for the reception of goods, and entrances that led through into the narrow, damp, malodorous streets on the north side. The whole edifice extended 189 feet along the riverfront. Stretching across most of the Custom House was the 127-foot Long Room. The public entered on the north side near the West End; here they would be swallowed up by its sheer scale and deafened by the symphony of commercial chat and shuffling paper. Their eyes would first be drawn to the raised platform at the far east end where the bench officers and chief officials of the London port would be seated superintending business. Next they would be diverted by the traffic competing to get to the correct counter along the riverside edge of the room, where low wooden divisions delineated different branches of business. Above each office was a sign indicating the table of fees being dealt with (by the early nineteenth century officers had to have the title of their office painted over their chairs). Directly opposite, on the other side of the room, was another series of small counters, tables, and chairs. Here the clerks sat uncomfortably as they dealt with the long queues and frequently angry merchants or their delegates— impatient to settle their accounts and be on their way. Since only three feet was allowed per officer and clerk the business was, at times, unbearable. This was particularly the case during the summer when the hot air of the Custom House hung motionless, absorbing like a sponge all the diverse odours emanating from hot sweaty bodies, soiled clothes, and severe gastric problems resulting from years of poor diet and general abuse. Indeed officials were so alarmed that a minute was passed, based on a proposal by ‘Rev. Dr Hales’, most likely Stephen Hales FRS, pioneer of artificial ventilators and trustee of the colony of Georgia, ordering air trunks to be attached to the ceiling ‘to convey the foul vapour’. In addition, the building itself was deemed unsafe. A report by the surveyor of the buildings, Mr Rice, branded the several timber rooms just above the Long Room Page 3 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront as highly dangerous. They ‘are so full of Books, papers that the weight thereof occasions the Timber of the Floor to bend and even to endanger the building’. As a result of the stench and structural instability another Long Room was built in 1774 to secure and improve the conditions.3 By the close of the eighteenth century, trade had far outstripped the capacity of the Custom House. Merchants were consistently moaning that their business was being thwarted, primarily because of a lack of accommodation for enough Custom House clerks and officers to attend to their paperwork. Moreover the congestion of applicants within the Long Room ‘crossing each other on business, became an additional cause of increased delay, and inconvenience’. Their complaints could only be met if a new Custom House was built, and in 1812 the Treasury agreed to such a project, with actual work starting in October 1813. The situation was made more urgent when on 12 February 1814 at 6.15 p.m. a fire started in one of the offices in the east wing of the old Custom House, next to (p.136) the apartment of the housekeeper Miss Kelly, who was subsequently dragged out naked and in a ‘senseless state from the fright’.4 During the fire, word was quickly spread that barrels of gunpowder were stored in the Armoury of the Custom House. There was a stampede and frantic rash to evacuate the building and near vicinity. At about half-past nine two of the barrels exploded taking a chunk of the building with it and shaking many of the nearby buildings—including the Royal Exchange. Such was the force of the explosion that a bundle of debentures were found in Spital Square—quite a distance from the fire. Windows were smashed in Cannon Street, Eastcheap, and other nearby dwellings. Meanwhile the flames drew huge crowds flocking to experience the intense heat and shear spectacle of the fire, and for many, to revel in the destruction of a prime centre of state power. By ten o’clock the whole of the building and all the adjoining warehouses had been reduced to an irreparable condition, and with it went many of the custom’s records, accounts, and thence history of London’s overseas trade. Customs business was temporarily moved to the Commercial Hall Company’s premises in Mincing Lane at an annual rent of £1,200 until a new building could be built.5 The man put in charge of designing the new Custom House was Laing. Three objectives for the new edifice were agreed upon: to make it fireproof, to centralize the administrative functions of the Customs Department within the building, and, lastly, to provide much more cellar and warehouse space. This last point had been the source of a great deal of frustration: customs had increasingly had to occupy premises located far from the centre of business to store the increase of goods entering the port. The narrow streets that led to the old Custom House and connected with the wharfs were, as already noted, totally inadequate for the volume of commerce. They were so narrow and crooked that contemporaries were surprised anything managed to get shifted. Indeed, the only reason goods did get moved was due to the skill, patience, and labour of the Page 4 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront carters and the discipline of their horses. Laing could not praise them too highly: ‘Nothing but the habit of the carters, formed by daily exercise, with the admirable accuracy and docility, little short of rationality, of the horses, could have accomplished the business’. The building of the new Custom House thus provided the opportunity to improve and redesign the system of roads emanating from the building.6 The new building was erected on land stretching from Billingsgate eastward to where the old Custom House had once stood. It was 488 feet in length and was first opened for business in May 1817. Laing had been keen to induce a sense of awe and confidence in the ‘foreigner’ as soon as he saw the building, that the person was witnessing both the muscle and the wealth of Britain: ‘The first (p. 137) impression received from the official department of mercantile affairs, should not be that of contempt; that arising from a suspicion, or a persuasion of inability to do better, or of excessive economy and parsimony in the nation, of whose concerns it is the index, Neither ought it to be forgot, that the respectability attached to the character of a merchant of London, supposed to attend personally, in transacting his business here, (and not seldom engaged, by occasions arising, to verify this supposition) demands an accommodation becoming the genius of a commercial nation; and far removed from the rudeness of unsettled times, and barbarous ages’. The historical progression to a commercial country would be visibly demonstrated by the iconography adorning the new London Custom House.7 To reinforce notions of British commercial strength, culture, and superiority, the central compartment of the building was externally decorated with powerful symbols. Carved across 130 feet of the building were a series of life-size figures representing, in their traditional dress, those countries Britain did business with. They were all carved in communal groups to demonstrate the sociability of commerce: ‘to shew the intermingling nature of commerce, which promotes universal intercourse, and gives and receives whatever is wanting’. In the centre was a massive time dial, nine foot in diameter, bounded by two reclining figures. The male figure represented Industry and was signified by a sickle held in his hand and a bee-hive at his feet; the other figure was a woman representing Plenty, symbolized by the contents of her cornucopia—the fruits of British industry.8 On the eastern side of this vast inscription, perched over the entrance to the king’s warehouse, was Britannia seated upon her marine car surrounded by symbols representing strength, justice, naval power, and victory. Her shield was embossed with the cross of St George and her right hand was clasped firmly on the spear of defence. Her other hand seductively held an olive branch resting upon a globe—a gesture of her desire to bring peace to the world. The staff entwined by two serpents represented Britain’s commerce, while the cornucopia indicated its results in terms of wealth and plenty. The British lion lay in Page 5 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront readiness in case she needed to unleash her power. To the right of Britannia were the badges of her accompanying cultural success: philosophy, jurisprudence, mathematics, chemistry, and navigation. These were followed by the virtues of charity, hope, faith, temperance, fortitude, and prudence. To her left were the so-called ‘Polite Arts’ in which wisdom and genius were foremost, followed by painting, sculpture, and architecture, and finally astronomy and history. On the western side was an inscription symbolizing the four quarters of the globe: Europe, Asia, Africa, and America all offering their indigenous goods to the British Empire. All these images were intended to be illuminated at night by the installation of gas lighting at an estimated cost of £100,000. The aim of ensuring that the might and power of Britain was always visible was deemed worth the price.9 (p.138) The entrance to the Long Room had two distinct openings situated in the north front to allow people to come in and out in different ways. On either side were grand stairs, lit by long vertical lanterns, taking the merchant or broker to a lobby side. With the experience of the last two Custom Houses in mind, fireproof rooms and robust iron doors moving on wheels were built on both levels. The room itself was probably the largest in Europe at 190 feet long, 66 feet wide, and 55 feet high. It was deliberately kept simple and free of ornament, since this, argued Laing, ‘was not suited to the character of an edifice intended to accommodate the commercial concerns of the Nation’. The hard, plain floor was paved with thick slabs of Scotch stone, and the customs clerks and officers were now housed in wooden enclosures along both sides of the room. In the centre were three round tables where merchants and their servants could sit and wait or prepare their accounts. The whole room was warmed by two air stoves in the form of large antique pedestals containing concealed fireplaces; the heat was diffused when the rising smoke entered and heated the pipes around the room. Here was the manifestation of a civilized and superior world, which separated Britain from most of her trading partners. As the cloth manufacturer William Temple had proudly announced just over fifty years earlier in 1758, ‘’tis commerce and the Arts alone which humanize mankind, make the difference between the Moors on the Niger, and Britons on the banks of the Thames; and which lift brute nature to contemplations of Deity’.10 The new Custom House embodied over a century of struggle accommodating commerce within the natural’ order of British social authority. The building, especially its iconography, was a statue to the new commercial culture that had finally smashed through old civic notions of virtue embedded in land, which, for so long, had looked scornfully upon the rise of the commercial and monied classes. Now at the heart of empire, within the City of London and the nearby waterfront, new edifices had risen symbolizing the confidence of a different world to that of a century ago. Indeed, the implication now was that culture and

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Life on the Waterfront knowledge could not prosper without industry, trade, and revenue—they were all implicitly bound together. As Laing summed up: The prevailing intention of the general allegory is to shew, that commerce, founded on public protection, and guided by rectitude, virtue, and knowledge, produces that opulence which encourages and supports national elegance, and the arts, in their various departments, contributes to furnish fresh materials for the operations and employment of commerce; to the great convenience, emolument, and civilization of all nations throughout the Globe. Unfortunately, the foundations of the building were not sound and the Long Room collapsed along with its carefully decorated façade in 1825. British industriousness, this time, had not been as stalwart as the symbolism had suggested.11

(p.139) Custom House Business The Custom House In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries would typically have been populated with shady stockjobbers, brokers, and opportunist wharfingers and watermen lurking around the desks of the customs officials and clerks. Here they would hustle and interfere with the business of the merchants or their official brokers as they tried to take a slice of the action. They were such a nuisance that a memorial from the commissioners claimed that at ‘diverse times Errors have happened to the Inconvenience and prejudice of his Maty Customes and Ignorant persons who have trusted Such pretended Clerks to pass Entrys for them, have been deceived of their Money mistaken Entrys have passed and some times no Entrys at all and also diverse other private and Sinister designes are there negotiated & transacted by them’. The Treasury subsequently ordered the usher to turn such persons out with physical support from the customs clerks and officers if necessary. The more general duty of the usher was as housekeeper—providing all the necessaries for the Customs House such as candles and stationery, and with the power to administer oaths for a fee.12 On mooring a vessel some distance from the quay, the ship’s master would make his way to the Custom House and submit an. official report of his vessel to two of the bench officers seated at their desks in the Long Room. He would certify the particular details of the master’s entry: the burden of his ship, its cargo, and the marks and contents of each hogshead; the port of loading; the ship’s origin, its owners, and how it was manned. In the case of tobacco, he would have to present a certificate revealing that he had given bond in the plantations to carry his enumerated tobacco to Britain or to some other colony. All these details had to be given under oath. On a busy day a queue of merchants, brokers, and masters would collect around the public entrance, stretching down the middle towards the east end where entries were made before the bench officers. Here Page 7 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront the merchant, or more likely someone he delegated, would go to the relevant desk(s) in the Custom House and conduct his business transactions. The deputy collector along with the deputy comptroller and surveyor collectively wrote: ‘It’s not customary to admit mean persons, only the known servants of the Merchants emply’d by them in making their Entrys & paying their Customs to make Oath— for them & that only to the certificate which the Laws allows of. However, on no account were oaths to be taken from anyone for exports receiving a drawback but the merchant.13 The merchant or delegate brought to the Long Room his bill of lading describing the part of the cargo belonging to him. From this bill the officer made out a warrant containing an entry of all the relevant details and history of the goods. This was ‘the Foundation of the Duties, and is signed by the Merchant’ (p.140) (not the delegate), wrote the commissioners examining the public accounts. From this fundamental document the customs official made six extracts, also called bills, which were forwarded to six further officials. These bills contained details concerning the ship’s name, the master, the port of lading, and any distinguishing features concerning the regulation of duties on the said goods. The warrant and six bills were then all passed to the clerk of the rates who computed the duties, while three receivers made the actual collection of the duties. The receiver-general ‘enters upon the Warrant the Month, and the Number, and puts the same Number upon the Six Bills; He retains one of them, and delivers the other Five, with the Warrant, to the Clerk of the Warrants’. The computation and receipt of the duties were here checked by a clerk of the warrants (or copying clerk of the entries inwards) and two examiners. Once the warrant was reissued and delivered to the land waiter the goods could at last be landed. And finally, after the ship was cleared, the warrant was deposited with the jerquer.14 Not surprisingly there were frequent complaints from merchants concerning the labour of ‘officers below stairs in not attending at the Hours the Law enjoyed’. Such frustration had long plagued customs business. The commissioners reported in 1675: ‘Merchants are hindered in the timely dispatch of the business and several great frauds having been discovered by us to have been of late practised to the great prejudice of His Majesty in the Revenue of customs’.15 Those engaged in the business of exports were attached to the cocket16 office run by the patent’s deputy collector-outwards. Here entries of ships were taken ensuring that the proper bonds were collected, and that export duties were paid. The computed duties and their several branches were entered upon both the warrant and cocket. The collector then compared them together, marked the cocket with his name, and on reviewing the duties signed his name upon the cocket as his receipt. Four copies were then made and passed to the controller, the surveyor, the surveyor-general, and copying clerk outwards; they all then added their initials to the document. The controller next gave it the seal of office along with his signature, where it was eventually passed to the increasingly Page 8 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront frustrated merchant who could, at last, show it to the searcher and be on his way. The commissioners examining the public accounts concluded that these official procedures were frequently a mess due to ‘the Hurry and Multiplicity of the Business’, and allowed plenty of opportunity for fraud along every stage of the paper chain.17 (p.141) The appointment of customs officials was based predominantly on a system of patronage. Perhaps no other state department, with the exception of the Exchequer, was such a favourite for sinecure appointments by state benefactors and royal favourites. The author of The Rules of the Water-side explained the process in 1715: Patent-Places are such as hold their Office by immediate Power from the Crown, but are to be under the Direction of the Commissioners of the Customs; and as their Power is immediately derived from the Crown, the King is apply’d to for Places of this kind, by any of those Persons who have the Honour to be admitted into his Presence, and have Reason to expect a Favour from his Majesty. But the regular way of proceeding to obtain a Patent-Place, is, to apply to the Lord Treasurer, and to get his Favour of Recommendation in one’s Behalf to the King; for as he is the Governor of the Revenue, his Majesty seldom thinks fit to put any Officers therein, but who are by his Advice and Approbation, whether they are proper Persons to serve him. And then, as to the Deputed-Places, they are held by Deputation’s from the Commissioners of the Customs, which are always granted by Virtue of a Warrant from the Treasury, requiring and empowering them to issue forth their Deputation to such a Person for such an Office. Other patent officers included customers, searchers, king’s waiters, and the superior officers in the port of London. Although knowledge of customs work was not considered essential to the patent post, it was increasingly seen as desirable to the appointment of a deputed place.18 A seething anonymous writer in 1733 boiled the problem of customs mayhem and fraud down to this system of patent offices and method of remuneration, ‘the Negligence and corruption of Custom-House Officers … is chiefly owing to the great Patent Offices, held in Trust for Persons who never go near the Custom-House, but leave the Execution of their Duty to Deputies’ with little or no Salaries; which they are obliged for a Maintenance to make-up on Perquisites’.19 The port of London had two patent collectors outwards, and for much of the early eighteenth century these were held by the earl of Manchester, Charles Montagu, and Sir James Montague. Montagu had raised troops to fight in Ireland for William III. For his troubles he had been made ambassadorextraordinary for Venice in 1690, followed by a stint as ambassador to Paris and then later, in 1707, resuming as ambassador to Venice. William, as with all Page 9 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront monarchs, generously rewarded useful loyalty and early on made Montagu hereditary collector of customs for London outwards (there were also two collectors inwards who entered all incoming goods).20 (p.142) The patent office of surveyor was at one time held in trust for two of the sons of the earl of Scarborough, Richard Lumley. This office was meant to keep an account of the duties received and to serve as a check upon the collector, Lumley had been treasurer to Charles II’s queen in 1684, and it was his troop of horse that had captured the bastard son of Charles II, the duke of Monmouth, in 1685. However, he soon became disillusioned with James II’s policies and was one of the signatories to the letter inviting William of Orange to invade. For his troubles he was made a privy councillor in 1689 and an earl a year later. He fought for William in the battle of the Boyne in 1692 after which he retired from active service. As a final set of rewards he was given the patent post of surveyor, made the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in 1716, and vice-treasurer of Ireland a year later.21 Later in the century the customs henchman and reformist commissioner Sir William Musgrave condemned the process of appointing collectors. He sneered that they came ‘from Country Fox-hunters, Bankrupt Merchants, & Officers of the Army & Navy—without the least previous knowledge of the Business of the Revenue and too late in Life to acquire it—so that they are totally unfit to keep good order in the port or to be the representatives of the Board which they are required to be in many respects’. Lower down the scale the customs commissioners did have the chance to exercise their own patronage. The author of The Rules of the Water-side explained: the ‘Gift of an extraordinary Tideman’s Place is entirely in the Commissioners, and dispos’d of by them to Persons recommended by People of Credit and Substance, and such who have either an Acquaintance with the Commissioners, or Reason to expect a Favour from the Board, as in the Case of other Places; and that when a Person can write and read well, it is a happy Circumstance of Recommendation’. Positions were filled via a process of interest and not on the basis of merit or practical skills.22 Musgrave was scathing of the service and mocked: ‘I will not mention the Ability, or how well qualified every Officer is for hesitation, as their Appointments are Favours from their Members, and much more Attention being paid to the Interest as Votes, than to their Abilities and Education for the Duty of their Officers; owing to the Ignorance of some and Inattention of others, the Revenue suffers to a vast amount, and Bribery and corruption is much practis’d from the Collectors down to the Tidemen and Extramen’,23 Customs sinecures were attractive as they paid well and, apart from a minor reshuffling in the 1760s, had the security of tenure for life. In defence of his office as collector outwards, the duke of Manchester resolutely declared in 1783: ‘On this undisputed & uninterrupted Possession I found my Right & if it can be set aside by such Antiquated & Dormant Statutes, will venture to Pronounce that few Properties Page 10 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront (p.143) in the Kingdom can be safe, however Guarded they may appear to the Possessor, by the Sanction of Time & the Protection of Deeds & Settlements’. Despite such traditional arguments, the growing condemnation of ‘Old Corruption’ and the sharp jaws of the new public accounts’ investigations were close on the heels of the sinecurists. The historical sense of the duke’s language was fast loosing credibility within a state cracking under the strains of a huge national debt and brewing political discontent.24

Port Business ‘The sea-ports are the king’s gates which he may open and shut to whom he pleases’, declared the crown in the Court of Exchequer in 1606, The portcullis is the emblem of a crown hovering ominously above a formidable iron gate, adorned with thick, sturdy chains dangling confidently down its sides. This powerful symbol became the official insignia for customs business long before this date. The analogy is a good one since a port was the only legal entry or departure of goods to and from the country, and to get through required the customs to metaphorically raise the iron gate. In theory this bottleneck provided the means to siphon and control the speed and type of good that could enter or leave the country. Land waiters, upon receiving the warrant giving the all clear, would then help supervise the unloading and weighing of the vessel’s cargo. That, at least, was how it was meant to work. In practice things seldom ran smoothly. In May 1688 it was reported that business was being handicapped by the fact that many of the land waiters and searchers were spending far too much time just sitting in taverns and alehouses situated in and around the waterfront, when they should have been working. In 1704 the merchants of London petitioned both the queen and the duke of Marlborough, ‘suggesting that Frenchmen are employed as Landwaiters’ and were letting goods enter the domestic market duty free.25 The organization of the port of London was also clearly ill prepared for the rise in trade. In August 1702 the commissioners vented their frustration at the extent of goods passing through the port without having paid duties. It seems that in an attempt to ease the flow of trade the commissioners had granted permission for (p.144) merchants to discharge their cargoes before they had paid customs. Consequently, ‘some of the said Lighters have often times remained for many months unentered to the great charge and hazard of the Revenue’. The ‘Masters of ships pretending that as soon as the goods are out of their ships they are discharged from their further care thereof; and the Wharfingers alleging that though they are at the keys, they are not under their care; the goods being in the mean time subject to great waste and embezzlement’ Fuming customs commissioners quickly changed their policy, and demanded that in the future vessels would not be allowed to be unloaded before the duty on the goods had been paid.26

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Life on the Waterfront Armed with his pen and book the head land waiter would examine the shipment and make all the necessary allowances for damage, draught, and tare. In the case of tobacco two such men employed at the quay would check the cargo by comparing the marks and numbers of the hogsheads sent on the lighter with those contained in the report of the tide waiter. The purpose of this was simply to ascertain that none of the tobacco had been run. Weighers would then proceed to weigh the goods and, along with the marks and numbers allocated to the commodities, enter them in the land waiter’s blue book. On completing the total discharge of the ship this book would then be sent to the land surveyor to be approved before being deposited with the jerquers. The land waiter had, perhaps, the greatest opportunities to indulge in pilfering or assist others in the task, and was therefore subject to strict regulations enforced by the land surveyors. Like the excise officers, the land surveyors’ books had to be carefully prepared with no erasures and returned to the jerquers at a specified time. Unlike the excise, however, it was not ruthlessly policed.27 The land surveyors were the eyes and ears of the Board and were expected to report regularly to them on the behaviour of the land waiters and any issues that interfered with waterside activities. For example, in 1781 they were told to be vigilant regarding the illegal re-exportation of machines used in the wool trade.28 As well as administering the land waiters, the land surveyors also appointed and managed constables and gaugers at strategic points on the quays. They also supervised the appointers of the weighers and noon tenders (men who relieved watchmen at midday). In addition to these men there were numerous other petty officers who assisted in the unloading, carrying, weighing, and storing of goods, but who mainly came under the jurisdiction of the Weighing Department. Obtaining credible extra weighers and monitoring their work was a particularly difficult task. The land surveyors’ minute book of 1712 records the commissioners’ instructions: That no weigher be employed at the waterside or in any warehouse hut such as are under oath & security for the true and faithful discharge of his Trust. That each Extr. weighers employed at the waterside have a book given him wherein he shall enter—every Day that he work to be signed by one of the land waiters … and at the (p.145) end of the week the Master Weigher is to make out a bill for each man to contain the number of days he hath wrought in that work which is to be signed by the land waiter … [and then] signed by one of the Surveyors. A sample taken from the land surveyors’ minute book of 1713 reveals that the extra weighers were between 38 and 60, years old. Service in such a position ranged from one month to twenty years,29

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Life on the Waterfront The weigher, described Musgrave, ‘is a mere Labourer or porter attending upon the Landwaiters, Searchers, & Coastwaiters—his Duty is to put the weights into one scale—and to place the Goods in the Opposite Scale—and when they are evenly Balanced—He is to call the Weights to his superior Officer—who is to see that the whole is right before he enters it in his Accot’. By the 1780s there were approximately 225 weighers (compared to 25 in 1715) operating in the King’s Warehouse, in the warehouses of the East India Company, and at the three stations on the quays in the import and export business; a further 212 extra weighers were employed when the need arose. In addition to weighing, they also examined packed goods prior to importation or exportation to ensure that the items were what they purported to be. Three gangers measured the liquid commodities and, like the weighers, had their results taken by the land waiters. In addition, a specific group of coal meters were appointed by the Corporation of London for ships carrying coal (and cinder and culm) into London from one of the outports.30 The central officer of the export department was the searcher. This was usually a patent office converted into a sinecure by the employment of a deputy. Along with a fellow colleague the searcher was responsible for certifying the shipping of all goods entitled to a drawback or bounty, in accordance with which debentures were made out for the merchant. This aspect of their work was the most important and sometimes the most problematic. For example, in January 1774 the commissioners were ‘extremely surprised at the frequent instances of erased debentures that have lately come before them’. The searchers assured them that they would ‘severely reprimand their clerks’. The commissioners, in turn, reminded them that certificates or debentures operated like a bill of exchange in favour of the merchant. As such the signature of the commissioner on the certificate was merely a rubber seal for the figures on it. In other words, if ‘the quantity of goods are erroneous the sums cannot possibly be right and that it is a thing altogether unusual for any Publick Office or even for a private merchant to permit erazures in any kind Instrumental upon which the payment of money depends’. The commissioners cautioned the searchers, in no uncertain terms, to get their act together. They further advised, ‘that future errors & inaccuracies might be in a great measure prevented by a proper communication between the Patent & deputed Searchers before the Quantities of goods were inserted in words (p.146) at length in their certificates … the safety of the Revenue and their own Credit so much depends upon the proper execution of this Important Branch of their Duty’. Musgrave pointed out in 1782 that the work was carried out by people poorly paid without any formal check on their actions, and concluded that it was ‘of the greatest Consequence that the searcher shod. be a Man of Skill and Integrity—which will always be problematical at least, so long as the office is considered as a patent sinecure and the person who officiates is selected at the cheapest rate by the principal without any Qualification’.31 Part of the problem stemmed not simply from the Page 13 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront frequently unqualified nature of the person appointed as a patentee, but from the great expansion of ports during the eighteenth century in which even the patentees found they could not be in every port to conduct their business, and therefore had to employ further sub-deputies.32 After the deputy searcher received the cocket from the exporter he would attend the shipping of the cargo and inspect the goods. This was done by comparing the weight, number, or measure with those specified on the cocket. It was quite common to find the searcher burrowing into a package to examine the contents and ensure it was what it purported to be. He would also sometimes weigh the goods to verify that no fraudulent exportation was taking place. Of course, some searchers would do neither. After the ship was loaded the searcher took the cocket to the searcher’s office to be examined; it would then be sent on to Gravesend where another set of searchers would recheck the ship’s cargo prior to beginning its outward voyage.33 It was strongly advised in 1785 that the post of searcher—along with those of controller and customer—should be suppressed, with the commissioners of accounts claiming, it ‘seemed to us to offend against all good order and sound principle’. Indeed, they concluded that the situation was ‘mischievous to the Revenue and dangerous to the Public’. With the outport patentees costing well over a sixth of the total outport expenditure, a significant amount of money was being scandalously lost. Thus the customs system was clogged by redundant posts, with the real work being done by unqualified deputies and sub-deputies. The deputies were paid by their principals either by a specified allowance or a share of the fees.34 When a ship first entered the limits of any port the tide surveyor had to personally ensure that a sufficient number of tidemen were placed on board to prevent any illicit activities. He also had to ‘diligently and carefully’ rummage through the ship’s cargo. Once satisfied he would deliver to the tidemen a blue book describing his examination, and remind them that under no circumstances were they allowed to go into the hold or below decks with a candle unless secured (p.147) in a lantern. Understandably irate London merchants were fuming at a series of ships accidentally destroyed by the actions of intoxicated or careless tidemen roaming their vessels with lit candles. The tidemen or tide waiters were meant to keep a constant watch on the cargo through an agreed rota, and expected to keep detailed accounts of their observations in yet another blue book,35 No merchant vessel—unless hindered by weather—was allowed to take longer than three days to sail down the river to its place of unloading.36 The tideman also had to keep a careful eye out for any false bulkheads or private places used for concealing goods, to search all persons going over the side of the ship, and to prevent any packages or casks being opened on board. Once he had received the certificate giving the all clear, the tideman would then record the Page 14 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront number of lighters that subsequently arrived to collect the cargo. He also made a note of the date, the ship, master’s name, the name of the tidemen accompanying the goods on the lighter, and the time and place the goods were to be discharged. On arrival the note would be given to the awaiting land waiter during the day or the watchmen if at night.37 As with so much of the regulations governing the revenue, there was an enormous amount of rales specifying particular activities that various officers should do, but little in the way of ensuring that they did. The history of the customs is also a history of reams of empty regulations and unrealistic expectations. Robert Bonell complained to Walpole in 1727, ‘’tis found by experience that its out of the Tydesmens power to hinder the running of goods for what can they do in a Large Ship at sea, or in Bad weather where they are often sea sick and not soon up on Deck till they come to Gravesend so that instead of looking out to prevent the Running of Goods get themselves into some warm hole or other, to keep them from the cold and wind’. In addition, most were underpaid, poorly protected, unmotivated, and therefore easily corrupted or evaded by the crew’s tactics.38 Once the ship had declared its cargo all clear, the tide surveyor was expected to return to ensure that this really was the case, ‘to see if there are no goods concealed in any secret places’. If he was satisfied he discharged the tidemen. The next day he gave his clearing bill to the tide surveyor’s office, while his book was passed to the jerquer to enable its contents to be compared with the master’s report and the land waiter’s book.39 The tidemen were not allowed to leave a ship (p.148) once they had been stationed on it, and their life on board was not made easy by the master and crew. Most masters resented their presence and made their stay as unpleasant as possible—providing them with poor accommodation and frequently supplying them with minimal or even rotten food. It had been decided in 1687 to appoint boats to escort those ships carrying cargoes subject to high duty, along the Thames. These boats were crewed by watermen who were instructed ‘not upon any pretence whatsoever presume to go on Board Ships’. And if they needed to get provisions from shore they were to first inform the tideman planted on board the cargo-carrying ship. He, in turn, would make a note of it in his book recording the time of departure and the waterman’s return.40 As for the tidemen, the commissioners were concerned in March 1703 that they ‘more frequently than heretofore take the liberty of absenteeing themselves from their duty’. The commissioners sternly warned them that they were strictly forbidden to ‘go off, or be absent from his duty without the leave of one of the Surveyors or Inspectors of the River in writing, expressing the Time and the Occasion of such their absence’. If they did not they would be instantly dismissed. Despite such threats, the surveyor of the searchers, a Mr Canby, reported nonchalantly in November 1716 that tidemen still slipped off ships with Page 15 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront the excuse of requiring provisions but really to land duty-free goods. For the uncorrupted and diligent tidemen, it was important that they were positioned in the right part of the vessel. The most popular means of running goods was through the porto of the gunroom.41 The proof of the ineffectual nature of tidemen was in the results: ‘That seldom or ever Tydesmen made any seizures or any remarkable prevention between Deal & Gravesend notwithstanding great quantitys of Goods have been Runn from Ships up to Gravesend’.42 Another concern for the commissioners was the fact that tide surveyors would frequently get tidemen to do their duties. The commissioners angrily told them in November 1703 that they were strictly not allowed to carry out this ‘unlawful practice’, and threatened, ‘if any Tidesurveyor shall act contrary hereunto, the Inspector of the river present at the Board are directed to give notice to the Commissioners’ The commissioners were annoyed, but not surprised to hear, ‘that it is a frequent practice for the Tidesurveyors or their Watchmen to accept of presents from Masters in the River, of Bottles and Flasks of wine, Brandy & other Liquors, during the time of such ships working, or at their clearing’. They, of course, forbid such practices and once again threatened that anyone caught accepting such gifts would be dismissed. This, however, was a world unto itself and for all the commissioners’ hyperbole of scowling threats, the customs men who actually worked the waterfront simply carried on their normal day-to-day (p.149) activities and collected their pilfered goods, customary perks, fees, gratuities, and other rewards of the job.43 Despite their frequent participation in illicit activities, the tide surveyors, tidemen, and boatmen were still the frontline defence against waterfront illicit trade. For example, on arriving, East Indian vessels loaded with calico Muslim cloth would often be illegally boarded by skilled textile workers, who would proceed to make various items—such as handkerchiefs, shirts, and other garments—out of the cloth and illegally ran the manufactured goods to shore. The commissioners advised that all East Indian cargo should be thoroughly checked on board the vessel, with an ‘account of the Quantity and Quality of such goods that are contained in each chest, which will be a means to prevent in some measure those corrupt practices which have lately been laid before your Honours’. The tide surveyors were also expected to keep their eyes open for suspicious activities. For instance, in December 1716, the unpopular George I was returning from a long trip to Hanover, and they were advised—along with the inspectors of the river and the waterguard—’to take care more than ordinary at this juncture to board all suspicious vessels and boats to prevent the running any goods on the arrival of the fleet’.44 With the great enlargement in trade and the increasing congestion of the Thames, those concerned with surveying the general activities of the port were increasingly worried at the poor availability and geography of labour. For example, by 1741 the inspectors of the river were suitably alarmed to send a Page 16 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront memorandum to the commissioners regarding the lack of staff at times of extreme business. They wrote of the great Inconveniences that arise from members of the Tidemen, Watermen, and other River officers, living at the remotest parts of the town; 8c some of them as far as Hammersmith, Fulham, Lambeth, and other distant places, whereby the service frequently suffers by their not being within Call, when gluts of shipping come in; so that Extramen are obliged to be imployed in their rooms, which puts the Revenue a greater Hazard and unnecessary charge. Besides this, they claimed, the commissioners had already ruled that established tidemen and watermen should not reside further than a mile and a half from the Custom House—yet another rule that was totally unrealistic and generally ignored.45 Thomas Philpot had worked as a tideman. for years before he was eventually caught forging documents and was pilloried for perjury. Some tidemen, as was common for the age, had more than one job—sometimes legal and sometimes not. William Blackshaw was employed as a tideman and a ‘cutter’ in the Victualling Office; Richard Cramp was twice imprisoned at Bridewell and once in (p.150) Newgate for burgling warehouses along the waterfront, A tideman called Shipley and a lumper’ called Phiilpot built up a very lucrative business stealing from the hundreds of vessels seductively lying in the Thames, They would board a ship and persuade the commander to discharge his own men and leave the lumping of his ship to them. They would then ‘bring their thieving gang to work the ship out, and what they pilfer, the Tideman shares with them’.46 In general the tidemen and watermen were considered a particularly disobedient and problematic group. The commissioners reported in August 1719 that frequent complaints had been made of their ‘rude and unmannerly behaviour’ towards ‘merchants, masters of ships and others; and that the officers are often in Drink, to the reproach to the service’. With all their usual gusto and sterness the commissioners issued yet more threats that simply wafted away into the Thames air. It was not until Walpole during the 1720s that the waterfront’s form of life was aggressively, but not successfully, challenged. Much of the problem, as Musgrave later recognized, was the fact that they were so poorly paid and offered no chance for promotion. He recognized that expense prohibited charging the former but thought the latter could be altered. Meritocracy could save valuable Treasury money. It ‘wod. be a great encouragement for them to resist corruption, if they were sure that their honesty & diligence wod. be rewarded with preferment— Therefore if it was made a Rule to promote the most deserving Tidemen to be Tidesurveyors as vacancies happened—it wod. tend to improve & secure the Revenue more than to double the Tidemen’s salaries wo. do—which the revenue cod. not afford’. As Page 17 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront for boatmen, Musgrave was deeply concerned, ‘too many of them have of late years being recommended by the Members of Parliament when they were become Superannuated & chargeable to the parish—whereby their own and the Lives of all others in the Boat are in great hazard & some melancholy accidents have actually happened’. It was resolved that no tideman or boatman who was over 50 should be appointed.47 After all the necessary checks and measurements had been made, the goods were then guarded against pilfering by watchmen. In 1725 an appointer of watchmen was established whose task was to accompany the various watchmen to their positions on the quays, and then return later to check they were still at work. They were again later observed by the tide surveyors and river inspectors who made periodical rounds throughout the night. The watchmen were relieved for two hours at noon by noon tenders. All these positions, along with those of the land waiters, land surveyors, and weigher, were old and had been created long before the eighteenth century. All of them, with the possible exception of the watchmen, took fees or gratuities—some authorized and some not. The land surveyor received a salary and fees; the land waiters had a small salary and fees from the merchant (subject to the number and value of the ships to which they (p.151) were appointed); the deputy king’s waiters only received fees and gratuities; weighers received a salary, fees, and gratuities; both the watchmen and the gangers earned a salary—although the latter also gained gratuities working on the lawful quays. As we shall see in Chapter 9 the extent and operation of fees demanded by many of these officers represented one of the key designated areas for reform during the eighteenth century.48

The Outports According to the eighteenth-century legal authority William Blackstone, ‘it hath always been held that the king was lord of the whole shore’ and it was therefore down to the monarch to designate ports. In fact it was in 1203 that such places were made subject to the crown, as opposed to the local sheriff and the machinery of the shire. Once appointed, the royal seal was supplied along with the king’s beam and official weights. These items were the necessary requirements for dealing with customs paying merchandise. To load a vessel or unload it without these facilities was a felony, which from the fifteenth century carried a punishment of imprisonment of up to three years. By the Elizabethan period there was a hierarchy of ports and dependent ports (later known, respectively, as ‘head port’ and ‘member port’). The official patent officers were based in the former, while their deputies operated in the latter. This frequently led to tension, as for example, when the head port of Chester declined in significance and Liverpool, one of its dependent members, rose to become second only to London. Despite this change in geographical importance, Chester continued to nominate and be in charge of the principal officers at Liverpool. This led to in-house customs hostility all around the coastline as the commercial geography of trade continued to increase and change, creating new boundaries. Page 18 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront Such a switch in fortune led to some ports, like Chester, spending more on staff salaries than they collected in customs revenue. Consequently arrangements had to be made for them to borrow money, often from a neighbouring port, to pay their bills.49 The revenue contributed by the outports gained considerably in importance during the eighteenth century. Between 1771 and 1780 the average gross receipt at Bristol was £252,630. 16s., at Liverpool £239,879, at Hull £88,706. 12s., at Whitehaven £85,746. 18s., and at Lynn £54,203. 14s. Although the statistics complied by the inspector-general of imports and exports are unreliable they do, at least, provide some form of indication of the scale in the increase of trade. (p.152) For instance, the value of exports in the outports in 1750 was £4,283,862, 8s, 11d. and in 1798 it was £13,920,316. 12s. 4d., while the value of imports over the same period grew from £2,231,475. 7s. 9d. to £7,739,135. 5s. 11d. Bristol and Liverpool were the only outports that could handle bulk cargo, with the latter overtaking Bristol during the nineteenth century to become the largest outport in England.50 An outport was characterized by the appointment of three patent officers: the customer, the comptroller, and the searcher. It had authority over all the member ports and creeks that fell under its jurisdiction, frequently covering hundreds of miles. In practice guarding such a vast coastline against the illegal landing of clandestine goods was impossible. The infinite number of possible hiding places along the coastline coupled with the numerous island ports and nearby Continental ports provided the smuggler with ideal bases in which to run goods. Another problem was the distance of some outports to the centre of customs control in London. All the revenue generated at the port had to be remitted to London and this obviously entailed substantial danger. Like the excise, the most popular method was to pay cash to a leading merchant or ‘substantial person’ in exchange for a bill, which would then be sent to the receiver-general in London who could cash it in with the merchant’s London correspondent.51 In terms of the arrangement of outport customs business the model was the port of London. Henry Crouch had written his Complete View of the British Customs in 1724 partly as an attempt to regularize port practices with London as the standard. Officers surveying the outports were also officially told to regularize their method: ‘we recommend the bringing the practice in such Ports, to as near a conformity with that of the Port of London as the Nature of the thing will admit*. Despite this official policy of uniformity it remained a distant reality. One surveyor-general in the early nineteenth century moaned that a ‘variety of practice’ was still the norm in the country’s various outports, and again Page 19 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront underlined the need to make the port of London the standard for all port practices.52 The customer or comptroller was instructed to make unexpected surveys of the quays and observe the manner in which the landing surveyors and landing waiters conducted their duties. The commissioners also relied on the personnel reports made by the surveyor-general to assess the performance of the customs staff. He was expected to ascertain ‘by frequent personal inspection, not only the attendance of all Waterside officers … but the manner in which their business is performed; to exercise an occasional check upon the Accounts taken by the Landing Waiters and other officers, and to make themselves acquainted with (p. 153) the conduct and character of every officer, in order to enable them to inform the Board more particularly of those who distinguish themselves by superior zeal and ability, steadiness and attention’ or the opposite. By the 1830s aspects of Mus-grave’s dream of implementing an element of meritocracy into the customs administration had been realized.53 Notes:

(1) D. Laing, Plans, Elevations, and Sections, of Buildings Public and Private, executed in Various Parts of England, etc. including the New Custom-House (London, 1818), p. ii; S. Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain: From the Industrial Revolution to World War One (Cambridge, 1992), 11 and 29–31. (2) P. Linebaugh, The London flanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), 170; M. Rediker and F. Linehaugh, ‘The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century’, in R. Sakolsky and J. Koehnline (eds.), Gone to Croatan: Origins of North American Dropout Culture(New York, 1993), 129–60, and esp. The ManyHeaded Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic(Boston, 2000), for the classic statement of this perspective that pays specific attention to the transmission of English plebeian culture, see A. F. Young, ‘English Plebeian Culture and Eighteenth-Century American Radicalism’, in M. C. Jacob and J. R. Jacob (eds.), The Origins of AngloAmerican Radicalism (Princeton, 1991), 185–112. (3) ‘Port of London Searchers Minute Book 1671–1781’, 29 July 1773. PRO CUST 102/197. (4) My account of the Custom House ire is taken from a contemporary newspaper report attached to Laing’s Plans, Elevations, and Sections in the possession of NMGM HM Customs and Excise Museum. (5) Ibid., p. xi; W. Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts from the Minutes and Orders Issued by the Commissioners of the Customs for the Instruction and Government of their Officers’, 1814–22,1 Apr. 1814, PRO CUST 29/7.

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Life on the Waterfront (6) Laing, Plans, 2–3. (7) Ibid., p. ix (8) Ibid, 10 and 29–30. (9) Ibid. 28–9: Musgrave, Notes and Extracts’, 1 May 1817, PRO CUST 29/7. (10) Laing, Plans, 9, 12, and 27; W. Temple, A Vindication of Commerce and the Arts(London, 1758). (11) Laing, Plans, 29. For the construction and subsequent scandal surrounding Laing’s Custom House see R. C. Jarvis, ‘Laing’s Custom House, 1813–1827’, TLMAS 20 (1961), 198–213, and J. M. Crook, ‘The Customs House Scandal’, AH 6 (1963), 91–102. (12) E. Hoon, The Organization of the English Customs System 1696–1786 (Newton Abbot, 1968), 129–30; anon., The Rules of the Waterside; Or, the General Practice of the Customs (London, 1715), 84. (13) Custom House to Treasury, 23 Jan. 1732/3. CUL C(h)H 44/39. (14) ‘Thirteenth Report of the Commissioners Examining the Public Accounts’ (1785), HCSP 44. 16. (15) Ibid, is; ‘Port of London Searchers Minute Book’, 3 Feb, 1675. (16) Originally a cocket or ‘Cocquct’ was a certificate, stamped by the royal seal, specifying the nature and quantity of the cargo a ship carried. It was divided into two halves, one half remained in the custody of the collector and the other in the hands of the comptroller. Any commercial document needed to be stamped by both sides of the seal. It was primarily a requirement for those cargoes with prohibited items for exportation or goods heavily taxed. For commodities of low value such as slate or stone travelling short distances, something called a ‘transire’ was sufficient. The level of implementation of these practices varied from place to place and over time. Medieval devices like the cockuet gradually came to be transformed into more recognizable accounting techniques during the 18th cent. (17) ‘Thirteenth Report’, 17–19. (18) Anon., The Rules of the Water-side, 89–91. Positions within the English customs, like most medieval institutions, were pieces of property to be exchanged or in certain cases bought and passed on within the family, This was a typical feature throughout feudal Europe.

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Life on the Waterfront (19) Anon., A Review of the Excise-Scheme; In Answer to a Pamphlet, intitled The Rise and Fall of the projected Excise, Impartially Considered with some Proper Hints to the Electors of Great Britain (London, 1733), 12; anon., The Budget Opened or, an Answer to a Pamphlet intitled, A Letter from a Member of Parliament to his Friends in the Country, concerning the Duties on WINE and TOBACCO (London, 1733), 14–15. (20) ‘Thirteenth Report’, 4; E. A. Carson, The Ancient and Rightful Customs: A History of the English Customs Service (London, 1972), 51; DNBentry for Charles Montagu. (21) Carson, Ancient and Rightful Customs, 51; DNB entry for Richard Lumley. (22) Anon., The Rules of the Water-side,The anonymous commentator and Musgrave are quoted in Hoon, Organization of the English Customs, 204–5; Leftwich, ‘The Customs Revenue in England’, 200. (23) ‘Abuses in the Revenue Departm1. of Customs’ by Mr Lisle, 31 July 1782, in A. L. Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests the Sheriffs and Smuggling(London, 1928), 246. (24) M. J. Braddick, The Nerves of State: Taxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1741 (Manchester, 1996), 59; W. R. Ward, ‘Some Eighteenth Century Civil Servants: The English Revenue Commissioners, 1754–98’, EHR 70(1955), 25–54, on 40; Hoon, English Customs, 120, For the place of the deputy sec N. Chester, The English Administrative System 1780–1870 (Oxford, 1981), 17–18. For William Musgrave’s comments see his ‘A List of the Officers in the Customs’, 7 Aug, 1782, and for his blunt and influential suggestions for customs reform see his ‘A Flan for Vacating certain unwarrantable Grants, and for abolishing Various Obsolete and Useless Offices in the Customs’, 20 Nov. 1782, in Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents, 250 and 268–80. (25) ‘Port of London Searchers Minute Hook’, 26 May 1688; Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 10 Feb. 1704, PRO CUST 29/2. Complaints like this were reported well into the 19th cent.; see e.g. the various entries in ‘Minute Book of Tide Surveyors’, 23 July 1822 to 11 Feb. 1832, PRO CUST 102/171. (26) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors at the Port of London’, 31 Aug. 1702, PRO CUST 102/162. (27) Ibid., 23 Oct. 1723; anon., Rules of the Water-side, 86–7; Hoon, English Customs, 141–2 and 252–4. (28) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors at the Port of London’, 28 Feb. 1781. (29) ‘Landing Surveyors Minute Book’, 9 Sept. 1712, 26 fan. 1713, and 27 Mar. to July 1714, PRO CUST 102/66. Page 22 of 24

 

Life on the Waterfront (30) Musgrave, ‘A List of the Officers’, 253; Hoon, English Customs, 143 and 150. (31) ‘Port of London Searcher’s Minute Book’, 29 Jan. 1774; Musgrave, ‘A List ofthe Officers’, 252. (32) Hoon, English Customs, 10–1.8. (33) Anon., Rules of the Waterside,85–6; English Customs, 145–8 and 257–9; H. Crouch, A Complete View of the British Customs(London, 1724; 3rd edn. London, 1738), 6–7. (34) Hoon, English Customs, 19, 25, 98–100, and 106–7. (35) ’Papers Relating to Trade’, Custom House, 27 Nov. 1718, BL Add, MS 18903, fo. 111; W. Hunter, The Tideman’s and Preventative Officer’s PocketBook, Explaining the General Nature of Importation and Exportation, so far as Concerns them in the Execution of the Water Grand Duty (London, 1765; 2nd edn., 1771), 9–10; Board of Customs to the Weymouth Collector, 11 Dec. 1718, WCH. (36) ‘The Remarks on ye Practice of the Comrs. of ye Customs & are Examined’, n.d., probably 1714, BL Add. MS 18903, fo. 40; Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 11 Aug. 1749, PRO GUST 29/1. (37) Hunter, Tideman’s and Preventative Officer’s, 10–11; Musgrave, ‘A List of the Officers’, 254; Crouch, Complete View, 5. (38) ‘To the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole from Robert Bonell’, 29 Feb. 1727, CUL Ch(H) 41/39/2. (39) Hunter, Tideman’s and Preventative Officer’s, 11; Crouch, Complete Guide, 5. (40) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors’, 9 June 1687; Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 11 Aug. 1749, PRO CUST 29/1. In 1787 some seventy-six tidemen were suspended at one time for frauds and for being absent from their ships. (41) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors’, 1 Mar. 1703,10 Nov. 1708, and 22 Nov. 1716. (42) Robert Bonell to Robert Walpole, 29 Feb. 1727, CUL Ch(H) 41/39/2. (43) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors’, 16 Nov. 1703 and 4 Apr, 1717; ‘Papers Relating to Trade etc.’, Customs House, 27 Nov, 1718, BL Add.. MS 18903, fo. 112. (44) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors’, 18 Aug. 1711 and 13 Dec. 1716.

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Life on the Waterfront (45) Ibid., 16 Mar. 1741. (46) ’Orders to the Tide Surveyors’, 9 May 1717. (47) Ibid., 29 Aug. 1719; Musgrave, ‘A List of Officers’, 254. For later examples see ‘Minute Book of Tide Surveyors 23 July 1822–11 Feb, 1832’, PEO CUST 102/171. (48) Anon., Rules of the Waterside, 86; Hoon, English Customs, 144–5. (49) R. C. Jarvis, ‘The Appointment of Ports’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 11 (1959), 455–66, and ‘The Head Port of Chester and Liverpool its Creek and Member’, THSLC 102 (1950), 69–84. The problematic definition of a port and its jurisdiction is discussed in J. H. Andrews, ‘Two Problems in the Interpretation of the Port Books’, EcHR 9 (1956–7), 119–22. For Chester and staff salaries see Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 24 NOY. 1727, PRO CUST 29/1. (50) Hoon, English Customs, 192–3. (51) ‘The Second Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’ (1781), HCSP 41. 44. (52) J. Smyth, The Practice of the Customs in the Entry, Examination, and Delivery of Goods and Merchandise (3rd edn., London, 1821), pp. vi and xi. (53) ‘Tide Surveyors Minute Book, 23 July-11 February 1823’, 11 July 1823, PRO CUST 102/171.

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Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0010

Abstract and Keywords This chapter begins with a discussion of pilfering and perquisites, which were part of an alternative economy that was vast and absorbed much of the working poor. This common economy created prospects for linking hatred of the state and radical politics, but it also offered the opportunities poor man or woman agency as he or she sought chances to line their pockets. The chapter then discusses custom fees and remuneration. Keywords:   pilferage, poor, common economy, custom fees, remuneration

Pilfering In and around the quays and wharfs that scarred the Thames from London Bridge to Limehouse, a world of customary practices, straddling a grey line between perquisites and theft, had become embedded in waterfront life. On some days the river was so clogged with vessels that even the dirty water of the Thames vanished. In such congestion there was ample opportunity to take a piece of the wealth sucked up the river from Gravesend. The space of a ship and port was thick with conventions and customs that defined and informed the relationship between the merchants, the state, and waterfront labour. The world of pilfering and perquisites was part of an alternative economy that was vast and absorbed much of the working poor. This common economy certainly created prospects for linking hatred of the state and radical politics as Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have so well described, but it also offered the opportunistic poor man or woman agency as he or she sought chances to line their pockets. There were numerous chances to exploit Page 1 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration the huge gaps in the workings of the fiscal state. The common economy, as we shall see below and in the following chapters, was vast, entrepreneurial, and as commercial as the legal economy. The lessons of commerce and capitalism were learned in the common as well as the licit economy.1 A group of constables and street keepers was established in 1711 to patrol the dock quays and prevent pilfering, but their impact was negligible if any. At one level, as Linebaugh and Peter D’Sena have shown, pilfering had become an important form of currency for the ‘river people’. They needed an item of exchange that was independent of scarce state-defined money. A House of Commons committee claimed in 1728 that the pilfering of tobacco (gold dust) or, as it was referred to by contemporaries, ‘socking’ had greatly increased. It was a nebulous world in which the line between legitimacy and theft was an ambiguous one, partly because notions of property and remuneration had not become rooted to the degree they would by the second half of the eighteenth century. Above all (p.155) labourers were paid such a negligible amount that they relied upon perquisites for a living. The waterfront was also a world swarming with government informers. Thomas Pearce, a tidesman, was one such person. He enabled the successful prosecution of several of the Tidesmen and some Lightermen, Porters, and others for stealing and running tobacco’ in 1729, Thanks to his e¥idence sixteen men were placed in the docks at the Old Bailey. Of these men four were acquitted, four were logged, and the rest were transported to North American plantations. Overall Walpole’s fanatical penetration of the customs and the waterfront in general resulted in the expulsion of some 150 revenue employees.2 Despite such attacks on the way of life surrounding port work it continued to flourish. The excise commissioners glumly wrote in 1783 that as soon as a new ship took moorings in the Thames, ‘the places near which they lye, are crowded with Smugglers of every Description, as people resorting to a Fair, and the River is covered with Boats day & night watching the Opportunity to convey Goods out of every port-hole of the Ship’. What really annoyed them was the implicit collusion of the revenue officers in such activities. This ‘species of unlawful traffick, is encouraged and protected to a great degree by the connivance and corrupt practices of the lower class of Officers belonging to both Customs and Excise, whom, no consideration of Duty or Conscience, or fear of discharge, can controul or restrain’.3 Once the master of the vessel went ashore during the time of unloading, the pilferers would seize their opportunity, packing their pockets and specially constructed underwear with generous amounts of tobacco, tea, sugar, or whatever the cargo happened to be. The lumpers’—those that unloaded the vessel— would, in addition to filling the pockets of their large canvas trousers with sugar, also carry sacks ashore when they went for their breakfast, dinner, or supper. The lightermen, those men working on lighters, would deliberately Page 2 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration fail to reach the quay on a particular tide and moor their vessel to enable some of the sugar to be smuggled ashore. Similarly, the cooper on board the vessel repairing casks took as much sugar as he could, often by sending his bag to shore pretending to need more nails. The customs officers on board the ship knew of these practices but seldom interfered, as they too often received a share of the proceeds. One historian has described the view of the Thames during this period as a place of ‘congestion and chaos: by its side piracy and pillage’. Well, it may have increasingly appeared so to many of the mercantile classes, but for those who (p.156) worked on the river it was an ordered and understandable world. Walpole, as we have seen, tried unsuccessfully to destroy this culture during the 1720s and 1730s. One of his final attempts was introduced in an Act of 1736 ‘for indemnifying persons who have been guilty of offences against the laws for securing the revenues of Customs and Excise and for enforcing those laws in future’. Even Walpole’s usually loyal friend, Lord Hardwicke who was the Lord Chancellor, voted against it for being ‘one of the most severe and dangerous Bills that was ever passed by a British legislature’. The Bill gave one justice the power to arrest three or more armed people looking suspicious without bail or mainprise. For some this was a useful measure. In 1742 the Sussex Lent assizes indicted eighty-two people under the Act with many of them subsequently transported. One peer looked on in horror and declared: ‘It had created a new kind of felony without limitation of time or place, upon principles unknown to our law’. For another commentator it demonstrated ‘how fast we improve in rendering our laws, sever, arbitrary and dangerous’.4 By the mid-eighteenth century the growing commercial and middling ranks were becoming increasingly agitated by the embedded port culture, and condemned the activities of the ‘water people’ as an abuse of their property. In 1750 a committee of London merchants bandied together ‘to unite in their endeavours to put a stop to [theft on the river]… by bringing some of the principals and their accessories to justice’. The law had recently made theft on the river a capital offence and these merchants were keen to see it put into practice. Those convicted, however, were frequently offered mercy in exchange for information about other offenders. As we shall see, it was precisely at this juncture—where social custom met the imperatives of an emerging political economy spearheaded by an expanding mercantile body—that the road to establishing the Thames police to defend property got under way. The founding of port police forces was also assisted by the advent of new port architecture characterized by enclosed docks, surrounded by formidable high walls. Here the combined factors of protecting property and revenue were becoming chiselled into both the geography of the social sphere and the shape of the material realm.5

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Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration D’Sena has shown that it was the system of labour that was primarily responsible for the port culture of perquisites. Merchants paid those that leased or owned wharves to organize the loading or unloading of their goods. They could also be called upon to deal with the weighing, storage, and transportation of their goods. The wharfingers, in turn, used small gangs of porters to help carry out particular activities they were charged with. These men gained a valuable skill that not only enabled them to do the physical tasks, but also taught them to predict the movement of customs officials and their habits. In short, they gained expert knowledge of the local area they worked in and exploited it.6 (p.157) However, it was far more the casual and seasonal labourers, as opposed to the porters, who relied on perks for their livelihood. They were hardly paid any money and what they did receive was often payment in kind— material goods either given by the employer or taken during the labour process. It was also a well-known and accepted practice that the established gaugers or coopers subcontracted work out to casual labour, and paid them with tobacco and/or sugar. This practice frequently became ambiguous; what one section of life viewed as a legitimate perk was sometimes viewed as theft by social authority. In court the most successful argument adopted by the defendants was to claim that the goods taken were in some way unmarketable—that they were dirty or damaged. The argument that a commodity was without value had a great deal of credibility considering the trials it had to endure before even reaching the port. Once unloaded within the congested bustle of a port, there was ample opportunity for leakage from broken hogsheads and casks. As one warehouse labourer told the court in 1757 after being asked what a perquisite was: ‘It is the sugar that runs in the buildings’. He claimed it was not difficult for the trained eye to distinguish damaged sugar, known as ‘sweepings’, from pure sugar. The former was frequently much browner than the latter. It was in this hazy environment that the battleground over perks was typically fought.7 By 1798 the customs commissioners had had enough and stated that anyone pursuing the practice of sweepings would be instantly dismissed. Copies of the minute were to be printed with a copy given to every locker in the customs service. Copies were also to be pasted and fixed ‘in the most public places and passageways in and about the Custom-House, the Weighers-room, at Globe-yard, and in the different Warehouses and this Resolution is likewise to be added to the printed Instructions delivered to the Weighers in future’. This time the commissioners were more resolute and prepared to act upon their threats.8

Custom Fees and Remuneration The first line in the fight against the common economy was also, perhaps, the most infected with illicit practices and distrust. Unlike the recently established excise, customs had no clear and adequate pay structure or hierarchical job mobility. It was plagued by drunkenness, fighting, and high-ranking fraud.

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Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration For one customs employee time was running out; ‘Gentlemen, I am heartily sorry that I am once more forced to beg you would forgive me once more and I will never again abuse Mr. Wilcock, my Surveyor or give him any abusive language if you will please forgive me this time I shall take particular care to behave as a good and diligent officer always to observe my superior officers’ (p.158) commands and to avoid unbecoming language’ Customs men frequently got injured or neglected their duty due to the over-consumption of liquor or simply through the frustration and danger of waterfront life. Tempers were short and language was rude. The free-flying fist or scabrous tongue of many working on the waterfront often got them into trouble.9 During the Protectorate the behaviour and sensibilities of customs officers notoriously incensed parliament. In 1654 an ordinance was passed empowering ‘the Commissioners of the Customs and others for the better suppression of Drunkenness and profane Swearing in persons employed under them’. It seems that an embedded culture of drunkenness had become epidemic both upon the River Thames and along ‘Thames Street and other Streets and Lanes adjacent within the City of London’. This was not good for parliament’s much-needed revenue or the eyes of God. Most of the port of London’s labour was reported to be staggering aimlessly around ‘Cursing and Swearing, to the great dishonor of God’. In an act of desperation the customs commissioners were given the powers of JPs to apprehend the leading offenders.10 Bad language and drunkenness, however, were the least of the problems plaguing the customs. Far worse, for contemporaries, was the cancerous corruption that seemed to run rampant through the customs. One commentator estimated in January 1665 ‘The great and very many Frauds and Deceits used in deceiving the King in his Customes almost as much as two parties in three’. He advised that a more accurate and thorough system of monitoring and keeping records should be introduced, ‘By an Exact and true entry to be made as to quality, quantity and true value of all Goods Exported and Imported, with the names of the right owner under the head of the Merchant or Exporter and Importer’.—all of which should still, if required, be taken upon oath.11 Numerous examples of bookkeeping frauds can be found in the vast customs archive. The following, taken from 1710, is not untypical. An elaborate fraud had taken place concerning the fiddling of accounts in certain outports, orchestrated by Daniel Richardson, a clerk in the controller-general’s office and the secretary of the office, James Mattison. Those involved outside London were the collector of Padstow, John Bligh; the collector at Ipswich, John Knockstone; and the collector at Lynn, John Kent. It seems the various collectors had falsified their accounts: ‘Kent came to London and at ye King’s Head Tavern it was agreed that false articles in his accounts amounting to £600 shd. be sent up by Kent to Richardson … to which Mr Matthison’s Secretary’s Clerk forged the Hands of ye Commissrs. for allowance & gave it Richardson on who entered it to Kent’s credit Page 5 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration in ye Compt. Genels. Books in Xmas 1706 for which Kent pd. Richardson £300 which was divided betwixt him and Matthison’.12 (p.159) Another problem concerned customs employees aiding their relatives involved in illicit trade, or having conflicting interests through work in other domains. An order in council in 1714 reported: ‘Can any one believe that a Collr, or other officer, unless he has more integrity than wt is usual in the Age, will detect his Brother, Uncle, or other Relation of any fraud committed to the prejudice of the Revenue, (at least I’ve never heard one instance of it,) On the contrary is it not rather to share the profit of such fraudulent Trade?’ The commissioners tried, in vain, to be strict at enforcing the rule preventing customs officers to engage in other jobs. Many officers were also found working in other occupations, for example as bakers, apothecaries, grocers, linen retailers, or keeping a public house. One way in which customs employees tried to avoid detection was to place the business in the hands of a close friend or relation. The extent of double or triple occupations among the customs staff was such that the authorities could only manage to scratch the surface.13 It should be underlined that there were no adequate royal funds or parliamentary civil list to maintain the customs service; instead it primarily existed and functioned through its own fees on passing traffic. Thence developed a confusing and ad hoc system of customs procedures defined by fee-taking. One anonymous writer in 1715 angrily accused the ‘Gentlemen of the Custom-house’ of deliberately confusing the system to aid their own ends. They did this, he argued, by not communicating their knowledge; ‘they are ill-natur’d, and prize their knowledge (which, alas! is but mechanical) at so dear a Rate, that they think it too valuable to be communicated’. The distressed commentator concluded, the customs men ‘are either so desirous of getting Money, or Stand so much in Need of it, that they will be apt to impose upon the Merchants, if they have not a better Justification for themselves, in Relation to what is due from them for Fees, than the Officers words, or the Merchants Memories will be, except such as have had a long Experience’.14 Indeed, such was the dense and confusing web of levies that it was not unusual to find ten or more separate rates legally chargeable on one commodity. The majority of merchants were either ignorant of this fiscal maze and the array of paper procedures that went with it, or even if they were not, knew they would not have their goods passed without rewarding the relevant officer. As such most of them had to employ customs officers to make the necessary entries for them— a lucrative and easily abused source of income for the poorly paid customs man. Before being admitted into the customs service the prospective candidate had to give security for the execution of his duty, and take an oath promising not to accept anything other than emoluments he was entitled to. These had first been defined in the Commons in 1662 and revised with additional perks in 1715. Page 6 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration Emoluments could come from at least five different sources: a salary directly (p. 160) from customs, an additional allowance due to the insufficiency of the salary, a stipend from the ‘patent officer’, rewards from seizures, and crucially, the controversial fees payable by merchants. The fifteenth report of the commissioners of public accounts stated in 1787 that Robert Foxcroft, the deputy customer at Lancaster, received £10 from the crown and £50 from his patent principal, and an additional £12 from fees; while James Smethurst, the deputy searcher, received no salary from the crown but £30 from his patent principal and over £20 in fees.15 Although fee-taking had long existed, it started to become a particularly volatile issue at the turn of the seventeenth century. The commissioners complained in November 1703 that they had been ‘daily solicited with complaints of great extortions & extractions pretending to employment in the customs upon merchants for passing their Debentures & certificates for allowance of Danger & over entries’. Many of these officers, the commissioner claimed, ‘have no right by law to take Fees—as by others who having a right to take fees—Do exact more than by Law they ought’. The usher of the London Custom House at the time, Matthew Cumberstone, was instructed to ‘consult the principal & other officers of this Port who have a right by law to take fees & exhibit to us forthwith a table in writing under their hands of the fees claimed by each respective officer’.16 Tables of fees were eventually pasted to the walls in several custom houses from 1716 but to little avail. Numerous other fees had been passed by parliament to certain officers and ports for specific services, while others had become established through custom between officers and merchants. Since, as we have seen, many officers, especially at the lower end of the hierarchy, received next to no salary they relied totally on the fee system. Merchants frequently found themselves paying extra amounts at various stages of the commodity’s journey in or out of port. Fees were increasingly seen as simply another form of taxation. The speed of a commodity’s journey was at the mercy of the fee-taking officer, which was frequently dependent on the ease with which the merchant departed with his money. In addition, the amount made could vary among officers of the same rank, while some of those employed in subordinate positions often made more than their superiors.17 Fees were, not surprisingly, probably the single most controversial element in the relationship between merchants and officers. The problem remained a capricious issue throughout the century. In 1724 a merchant, James Brown, complained about exorbitant fees charged by searchers. The commissioners investigated the matter by interviewing some of the patent searchers’ deputies (p.161) in June 1725. It seems they would not pass Brown’s cargo of 900 casks of wheatflour unless he paid a fee of £7. 10s. od. The commissioners were unimpressed with any of the searchers’ explanations, and ‘advised them to pass Page 7 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration the merchants debenture & that if the fees were due they might recover them of the merchant’, but only if they were substantially decreased and approved by the commissioners.18 Numerous customs officials looked gravely upon the business of fee-taking, claiming that by mid-century it had become a dangerous practice and detrimental to the revenue of the state. Commissioner Hooper declared in 1756, ‘these officers of the Revenue get more by these Clients (for That is the Longroom phrase) than by the Crown. This is notorious; and ‘tis believed that when by a promotion to the rank of a Bench-Officer one of these Agents is disabled from acting as such (openly & directly) He retains a large share of the Profits by recommending & turning over his Clients to one of his Clerks … The profits of some of these Agents are supposed to amount to £700, or £800 a year’. Hooper finished by warning, ‘this general & accustom’d practice cannot Change the Nature of the thing itself, nor confute what both Reason & Scripture say about serving two Masters. The Board of Customs therefore regret this practice, and keep a jealous Eye upon it, tho’ ‘tis out of their reach to suppress; and will no doubt continue as long as the various Duties on the same Goods remain unconsolidated. Such consolidation has been for some time talk’d of as a desirable thing. It would certainly increase the Revenue, & be at the same time an ease to Trade’. However, consolidation remained a few years off and the problem continued unabated.19 The issue again came to a head in August 1775 after parliament agreed a new table of fees. Now neither deputy searchers nor surveyors were mentioned as being entitled to any fees whatsoever—including the lucrative five shillings for clearing ships. Not surprisingly in a memorial to the commissioners, the searchers voiced their displeasure at the new fees, ’it being only a Voluntary gratification of the merchants in consideration & for visiting stores & goods by sufferance and such other matters as so frequently occur, and purely to expedite the voyage at the request of and for the service of the merchants’. The commissioners were again unimpressed and underlined that they were not legally entitled to any fee, while the Surveyors were reminded that they were employed to prevent the illegal shipping or relanding of goods entered outwards and were certainly not examining officers. As such they were not entitled to any fee: ‘he is forbidden to demand or receive any recompense whatsoever’, the commissioners sternly cautioned.20 A similar problem surrounded the grey area of gratuities, in fact the word ‘fees’ was often used as an umbrella that also included gratuities, allowances, and (p. 162) perquisites. If work was carried out beyond its proper domain, outside the legal hours of work, or upon the sufferance quays, then gratuities and not fees made the payment. In short, fees were charged during legal periods of business,

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Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration while gratuities sanctioned by statutes passed during the reign of William and Mary were charged for extra duty.21 Fees were also inconsistent and varied from port to port as well as in time. The commissioners examining the public accounts in the 1780s found that the table of fees fixed at the head port was different from the various member and creek ports: ‘At the Out Ports, in like Manner as in the Port of London, the Recompenses made by the Merchants to the Officers, for extraordinary Work, are frequently, by Agent or Custom, brought to a kind of Rate, fixing the sum for the service required; but the Entry thereof in any of these Tables is very rare’. When the fees were not fixed, tensions and disputes frequently flared up. Those merchants or their brokers who were not conversant with changes in the custom rates were particularly vulnerable to high fees. The justification and explanation for fees also varied from port to port: ‘The Expressions used to describe the Business for which the Fee is payable to the officer, are frequently so dissimilar and irreconcilable at different Ports, as to render it a Matter of Difficulty, and in some Cases of Impossibility, to obtain a Ground for clear and certain Comparison’. Where comparisons were possible the charge greatly differed, as did the categorizing of officers taking tees. Crucially, however, the commissioners did acknowledge that under the prevailing system they were frequently a necessary form of remuneration, since ‘Some of the Officers have no salaries: Many have Salaries so small as not to afford common support’. A commentator in August 1782 also recommended the government ‘to put all the Officers on a Genteel footing for the Credit of the Nation & give them decent salaries and not suffer them to take fees to be paid by the Merchant which is disgraceful!’ William Musgrave similarly suggested in the same year the implementation of increased salaries to replace all fees through a new tax on shipping.22 Prior to becoming a Scottish customs commissioner, Adam Smith also pointed out the obvious: ‘the perquisites of the customhouse officers are everywhere much greater than their salaries’. He then compared it unfavourably to the excise: ‘The officers of excise receive few or no perquisites; and the administration of that branch of the revenue being of more recent establishment, is in general less corrupted than that of the customs, into which length of time has introduced and authorized many abuses’.23 A committee investigating illicit practices connected (p.163) with the customs, similarly condemned the fraudulent activities of many ‘inferior Revenue Officers’: Those Collusions operate with regard to the running of Goods in remote Parts of the Coast, and in Port; and occasionally to the Allowances made upon the Quays at the Time of the Discharge, in Weight, Gauge, and Measure; and also in the whole Business of Seizures, clandestine compositions, connivances, and other Practices, in the internal Management:—From the Infirmity of Human Nature, it is impossible to Page 9 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration suppose that such Collusions can he totally prevented:—but the Scotch Commissioners of the Customs are of Opinion that much Benefit in this Particular would result from a total Abolition of Fees, Gratuities, and Rewards, of every Denomination, and from an Increase in the Salaries, which in many Instances are inadequate to the Maintenance of the Officers.24 The issue of wages was a product of a larger debate, A major issue that the commissioners examining the public accounts had to confront was the growing concern at large, concerning the clash of public and private interest. It was increasingly being argued that state employees should be seen as public servants and thence their remuneration should be based ‘upon the purest Foundation. The Practice of allowing the Officer to be paid by the Merchant, for the Performance of Official Business, appears to be repugnant to that Maxim’, The commissioners warned: ‘Habits of pecuniary Obligation or Exchange of private interest, ought not to mingle with the execution of such Public Duty’. Therefore they also recommended the total banishment of fees and gratuities: ‘We have proposed that a fixed Annual Salary should become the sole Reward to the Officer of the Customs for executing the Duty of his Office’.25 Much of the impetus for further reform came after the merchants of London finally Joined forces, and declared their united wish for all fees to be abolished in 1788. A Bill was subsequently proposed but after much bickering was abandoned. Nonetheless the momentum was now in full swing and a reform of sorts was clearly in motion. By 1797 the commissioners on the select committee on finance could claim that a fixed salary had successfully replaced some of the customs fees and gratuities—but a general sweep had yet to be achieved. The Committee suggested that the remuneration for fees could be replaced by the addition of a small duty on certain items, which could be added to their salaries. Towards the close of the Napoleonic Wars the fight against fees was taking a stronger turn. In 1812 parliamentary funds took over its management and all traditional fees were banned in 1815. The government’s determination to enforce this measure can be seen in the dismissal of seventy-eight officers in London in 1819 for continuing to take fees. These men generally came from the lower reaches of the customs hierarchy, and consisted of seventeen tide surveyors, twenty-one acting tide surveyors, and forty watermen. Despite such determined enforcement the commissioners examining the customs and excise departments in 1820 were still (p.164) unsure that the ban on fees would last: ‘nothing but constant vigilance could afford a reasonable chance of preventing the return of the former practice. We believe, from evidence which we have received, that in some of the Outports, Fees are almost as regularly paid to particular officers as they were previous to abolition’.26

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Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration Another source of contention was the officer’s hours of work, originally established in the seventeenth century at a time when trade was still relatively light. Despite its subsequent rapid growth, the hours remained the same for the following 150 years. Bankers in the Long Room worked from nine until midday, and the jerquers worked until 4 p.m. In practice most of the officers were not in their seats much before eleven in the morning, although for those labouring on the quays the hours were, of course, much longer. Nonetheless, the searchers, for example, had very long midday recesses, with the waterside business being brought to a standstill between one and three-thirty in the afternoon. In addition, all customs holidays were forty-five days per year, which at times brought work to a close in the Long Room. The delay in loading and unloading of ships also facilitated pilfering and smuggling.27 The select committee on finance reported in 1797 that nothing had been done to reduce the number of holidays and this was despite a new doubling of trade. They proposed that the holidays should be reduced from forty-five days to eleven and possibly less. They also advised that the number of working hours be increased to four hours in the morning at the Custom House, and called for the abolition of the searchers’ long lunch breaks. They recommended an increase in their salaries as compensation.28 Notes:

(1) P. Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991); P. linebaugh and M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra; Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000). (2) Linebaugh, London Hanged, 175–80; W. Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts from the Minutes and Orders Issued by the Commissioners of the Customs for the Instruction and Government of their Officers, 1696–1758’, 11 Jan. 1711, PRO OUST 29/1. For early problems involving debentures see the ‘Port of London Searchers Minute Book 1671–1781’, 2 July 1683 and 7 Mar. 1684, PRO CUST 102/197; E. Hoon, The Organisation of the English Customs System 1696–1786 (Newton Abbot, 1968), 124–5; P. D’Sena, ‘Perquisites and Casual Labour on the London Wharfside in the Eighteenth Century’, LJ 14 (1989), 130–47, on 139–40. For informers during this period see J. Warner and F. Ivis, ‘Informers and Their Social Networks in Eighteenth-Century London’, SSH 25 (2001), 563–87. (3) ‘Report of the Excise Commissioners on Smuggling’, 15 Feb. 1783, in A. L. Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests, the Sheriffs and Smuggling (London, 1928), 316. (4) E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 327–8.

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Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration (5) D‘Sena, ‘Perquisites’; Linebaugh, London Hanged, ch. 5. The London merchants are quoted in J. M. Beattie, Crime and the Courts in England 1660– 1800 (Princeton, 1986), 543. (6) D‘Sena, ‘Perquisites’, 132. (7) Ibid. 133–9. (8) ‘The Return of the Solicitor for Bonds and Criminal Prosecutions with an Account of Frauds relating to the Importation and Exportation of Tobacco’, n.d., CUL Ch(H) 41/18/3; ‘London Waiters Minute Book’, Feb. 1794 to Aug. 1804,19 Jan. and 18 Sept. 1798, PRO CUST 102/174. (9) Mr Wilcock is quoted in Hoon, English Customs, 230. (10) H. Atton and H. H. Holland, The King’s Customs, 2 vols. (London, 1908), i, 96–8. (11) Fab. Philips, ‘An Expedient or Way to Prevent the Many Frauds and Deceits in deceiving the King of his Customes’, 30 Jan. 1665, BL Harley Papers 6272. (12) 19 Feb. 1710, PRO CUST 41/1. (13) Hoon, English Customs, 207–9. (14) Anon, The Rules of the Water-sick; Or, the General Practice of the Customs (London, 1715), pp. iv and vii–viii. For an extensive list of these fees in 171s see ibid. 95–101. (15) R. C. Jarvis, ‘Some Records of the Port of Lancaster’, THSLC 58 (1950), 117– 58. on 122–4 and 138–45. (16) ‘Port of London Searcher’s Minute Book 1671–1781’, 4 Nov. 1703, PRO CUST 102/197; Sir William Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts from the Minutes and Orders Issued by the Commissioners of the Customs for the Instruction and Government of their Officers’, 1696–1758, A-L, 2 June 1710 and 4 Oct. 1717, PRO CUST 29/1. (17) Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 3 Mar. 1725; Hoon, English Customs, 212– 13; N. Chester, The English Administrative System 1780–1870 (Oxford, 1981), 63–4. The only fees charged by the excise were by the cashier of the excise; see Excise to Treasury, 6 Oct. 1716, PRO CUST 48/11. (18) ‘Port of London Searcher’s Minute Book 1671–1781’, 3 July 1724 and 9 June 1725, PRO CUST 102/197. (19) Hooper is quoted in Hoon, English Customs, 249; Chester, English Administrative System, 144–5. Page 12 of 13

 

Pilfering, Customs Fees, and Remuneration (20) ‘Port of London Searcher’s Minute Book 1671–1781’, 17 Aug. 1775. (21) Chester, English Administrative System, 137–40; Hoon, English Customs, 214–15. (22) ‘Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners Examining the Public Accounts’ (1787), inHCSP 45. 48,63, and 65; ‘Plan of reform in the customs’, Aug. 1782, and W. Musgrave, ‘A Plan for … abolishing various obsolete and Useless Offices in the Customs’, both in Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents, 250 and 276. (23) A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London, 1776; repr, Indianapolis, 1981), ii. 897. For Smith and the revision of customs fees in Scotland see I. S. loss, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1995), 331–3. (24) ‘The Third Report of the Committee Investigating Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP, 38.13. (25) ‘Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners’, 68. (26) ‘fourth Report from the Select Committee on finance’ (1797), HCSP, 107. 204–5 and 212; Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 28 July 1815 and 8–11 Mar. 1819, PRO CUST 29/7; House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, ‘third Report of the Commons Appointed to Inquire into the Departments of the Customs and Excise’ (1820), vi. 20. (27) Fifteenth Report of the Commissioners’, 72; Hoon, English Customs, 222–3. (28) ‘Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Finance’, 206.

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Smuggling

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Smuggling WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0011

Abstract and Keywords This chapter discusses the problem of smuggling. The authorities recognized that punishment and the use of arms needed to be accompanied by a more constructive policy. Not only were new and old domestic Industries protected, but they also had to be as good as foreign equivalents to help stem smuggling. Excise stipulations were an important tool in nurturing quality improvements within Britain's backward industries. Keywords:   smuggling, excise, industrial policy, commercial policy, free trade

For Adam Smith smuggling was not a crime of ‘natural justice’. A person who violated smuggling laws was frequently someone who ‘would have been, in every respect, an excellent citizen, had not the laws of his country made that a crime which nature never meant to be so’. These sentiments, however, would not have been of much comfort for the large numbers of smugglers decaying in the gaols littered around the country and awaiting either the noose, impressment into the Royal Navy, or transportation to North America, Nor was it a pleasant experience for the revenue officer who fell into the hands of the smuggler. While it was true that many officers were deeply emersed in the pilfering and smuggling activities taking place on the waterside, it was also the case that numerous other officers were forcibly imprisoned, beaten, and murdered by the more organized groups of smugglers. In 1721 a customs officer was captured by brandy smugglers and forced to drink as much of the liquid as it took before becoming unconscious. They then inserted a funnel into his mouth and poured a further ‘two quarts and a pint’ down. The officer was then tied to a horse and set loose. In another case the crew of a navy cutter were ambushed, resulting in one Page 1 of 22

 

Smuggling of the officers being ‘carried to a Pond’ and thrown to the ground. Here they ‘stamped on him dragged him through and very nearly drowned him, after which they beat and made him run the Gauntlet from the North to the South end of the Town’. Between 1723 and 1730 more than 250 officers had been physically injured and at least six murdered. Like the state, smugglers had their own system of terror.1 Anti-smuggling legislation, claimed Smith, was farcical: ‘To pretend to have any scruple about buying smuggled goods, though a manifest encouragement to the violation of the revenue laws, and to the perjury which almost always attends it, would in most countries be regarded as one of those pedantic pieces of hypocrisy which, instead of gaining credit with any body, serve only to expose the person who practise them, to the suspicion of being a greater knave than most of his neighbours’. Smith was not being controversial when he claimed that the smuggler believed he was pursuing an innocent trade supported by the greater public (‘he is frequently disposed to defend with violence, what he has been accustomed to regard as his just property’). In practice, however, Smith as a Scottish customs commissioner was a stickler for following and enforcing customs regulations and laws.2 (p.166) As far as the excise commissioners in 1783 were concerned, there were only two or three solutions to stemming the tide of smuggling and pilfering. First, ‘The total Abolition of those Duties or even any Reduction that could have the effect to remove the Temptation’, although they acknowledged that such a policy ‘in the present situation of this Kingdom, is inadmissible, unless the Revenue could be compensated, in some other Shape’. Secondly, they vaguely suggested the possibility of some form of tax on the general consumption of families or individuals, but did not pursue the matter with any conviction or vigour. Instead they fell back on traditional solutions and suggested the best way to reduce smuggling would be to increase the level of deterrent. They wanted to see a determined enforcement of the brutal Smugglers Act of 1746. This notorious piece of legislation had made all offences formerly punishable by transportation now a felony, without the benelt of clergy. The commissioners falsely claimed that during the short period it was rigorously enforced it saw ‘the total suppression of smuggling’.3 Despite the frequent resort to brute force, it had long been recognized that punishment and the use of arms needed to also be accompanied by a more constructive policy. After receiving a memorial about contraband trade between France and England from a person called Isaac Robin in 1719, the government concluded: ‘The true remedy against these evils, is to encourage the Manufactures already established, and establish those that are wanting in this kingdom of which now come from France at no considerable rates’. This, as we have seen, became fairly much the central axiom of a loose eighteenth-century industrial policy. Here was another dimension. Not only were new and old Page 2 of 22

 

Smuggling domestic industries protected but they also had to be as good as foreign equivalents to help stem smuggling. Excise stipulations, as already argued, were an. important tool in nurturing quality improvements within Britain’s backward industries.4

Free Trade In Wool Tin from Devon and Cornwall was one of the earliest goods to be illegally exported, but this was soon eclipsed during the seventeenth century by the rampant illicit trading of wool—a practice known by contemporaries as ‘owling’ (because the smugglers conducted their business at night like owls and used the hoot of the bird as a means of communication). The ‘owlers’ concentrated their (p.167) activities in Kent and Sussex, and were frequently engaged in angry and bloody encounters with revenue officers throughout the century.5 In 1656 William Carter, an agent of the woollen manufacturers licensed with powers to arrest smugglers in Kent and Sussex, complained that these men had become so strong that no one dared challenge them. Free trade in wool became a capital offence at the Restoration but to little effect. This was for the simple reason that the wool smugglers, such as the notorious Romney Marsh men, were well armed and powerful enough to resist capture. Gangs of at least ten to twenty people would load wool during the night onto French shallops destined for Calais. Meanwhile large groups of Frenchmen would safely work with the Walloon wool combers in Canterbury knowing that escape to France was only a few miles away. Besides which, the free trade in wool was practised by normal everyday folk and penetrated deep within the very establishments set up to enforce the law. As a certain Joseph Trevers observed in 1675: ‘It is well known that the smugglers are not of the meanest persons in the places where they dwell, but oftentimes have great interests with the magistrates … The smugglers are not only well aquainted with some attorneys and clerks, but they make good interest with the undersheriffs, in the countries where they drive their trade; and these have strange tricks and delays in their returns, in which cases some of them will take part with their offenders instead of executing the law against them’. Sir Thomas Hardress, ‘the smugglers’ friend’, successfully defended numerous wealthy smugglers at the Exchequer Court, and became MP for Canterbury in 1679.6 In 1692 a sympathetic court cleared the mayor of Hythe, Julius Deeds, after he had organized a gang to help retrieve sixteen bags of wool seized by revenue officers. The result had been a pitched battle between Deeds’s gang and revenue men culminating in the injuries of various officers. The owling trade reached a new peak in 1698 with the main centres being Folkestone, Lydd, Rye, and Romney. The Wool Act of 1698 legislated that all owners of wool within ten miles of the Kent and Sussex coast must give a record of the number of fleeces and the location of their storage, while no one could sell wool unless they were Page 3 of 22

 

Smuggling registered at the Custom House. In effect this was an attempt to locate and identify all owlers, and ban the transport of wool along the Kent and Sussex coast. The waterguard was reactivated and a division of seventeen land carriage men were appointed to search inns and warehouses in and around London.7 (p.168) The 1698 Act was very probably a reaction to the startling discovery that huge quantities of English wool were being illicitly traded for banned French fine Lyons silk. A powerful group of London-based French Huguenot refugees had financed the operations. They were subsequently fined £80,000 but managed to pay the sum within a matter of hours. The leader of this Huguenot smuggling trade was Étienne Seignoret who had earlier subscribed £2,950 to the new Bank of England in 1694. Despite the above scandal he later went on to invest a further £6,800 of capital in the Bank in 1709, as well as £14,187 of East India Company stock the same year. Although a fervent Protestant and staunch supporter of the Glorious Revolution, ‘the profit motive’, as François Crouzet comments, ‘prevailed over hatred of Louis XIV and of France, at least in some cases’.8 During the relentless wars under William III and then Anne, the illicit export of wool greatly increased. This was also accompanied by a large correspondence with the enemy. The issue had now become not one of simply defending the state’s revenue but also of protecting it from possible Jacobite invasion funded from France. All communication with the court at Saint-Germain had to be stifled. The customs cutters proved hopelessly inadequate against French privateers and had to be taken out of service. A government inquiry was set up in 1690 to investigate the extent of the problem, resulting in the establishment of eight riding officers ‘to prevent the carrying of wool to France and bringing over uncustomed and prohibited goods by the French privateers’, although the commissioners later admitted that the riding officers (also called preventative officers) had been established ‘as much to prevent the going and coming of passengers intelligence and correspondence with France, as the hindrance of the owling and smuggling trade’. With the local population so absorbed and reliant on the owling trade the riding officers had little impact. Nonetheless, although originally considered a wartime measure they became a permanent branch of the service in 1713.9 Such was the problem of French ships hovering off the coast trading with owlers that an official complaint from the Treasury to the French court was considered. The Lords also received a report claiming four or five smuggling vessels were constantly lurking off the Suffolk coast: ‘That the smugglers out of the country go down to ye seaside in a body very often to the number of 100 men with horses and that they make a practise of exporting the wool & coin of ye Kingdom’. Business was being done with French and Dutch vessels typically lying at Sisewell Bay, Midsummer Haven, and around the nearby coast. The vessels were well armed and well manned. Legally, anyone caught participating Page 4 of 22

 

Smuggling in the illicit trade could be transported to North America, while the master of any vessels involved could be imprisoned for at least six months.10

(p.169) Riding Officers In requesting a riding officer to be stationed at Sherbourne to help stem the huge running of goods to Bristol and other large towns, the Weymouth collector described the kind of person he wanted as ‘a resolute honest fellow’ who ‘knows the roads and byways from the sea to that place and to continue him only from year to year to see if the service he performes be adequate to the charge of his sallarie for himself and horse. On this occasion the collector had in mind a particular person already connected to the customs service. As the situation deteriorated, the collector reported an increase in smuggling gangs of between twenty and forty members. He desperately requested an additional three riding officers who were ‘hardy, unmarryed and are well aquainted with the country. See that they may not have the clogg of a family and may be capable from their acquaintance to cultivate a friendship with the country people to have their assistance on occasion without which the service will not be soe well performed’.11 The number of riding officers soon grew to some fifty or more guarding the shoreline from the Isle of Sheppey to Ensworth near Chichester. They never gained a particularly fearsome reputation, and, by the 1780s were considered by many as redundant. The customs commissioner William Musgrave described them as an inefficient luxury: ‘The Riding Officers (especially in Kent & Sussex) have much larger Salaries in proportion to their rank than any officers in the Customs but they are not sufficiently numerous nor resolute to resist the large Bodies of armed Smugglers that infest the Country. He further mocked: ‘Nor cod. they be encreased so as to render effectual service unless one half of the Inhabitants cod. be hired to watch the other’. Not only that but apothecaries, brewers, and other tradesmen with conflicting interests had been appointed to the position. These men, Musgrave claimed, ‘never ride but when their own occupations require it and fabricate Journals for the rest of the time. And it is generally reported that many of them are the relation of—& even that some of them are the Agents & Collectors for the Smugglers’.12 The supervisor of the riding officers was considered the least reliable of all the revenue employees at this rank. In 1736 the Weymouth collector complained about his local supervisor: ‘That notwithstanding your reported orders strictly enjoyning the Supervisor to keep exact journalls and to be concise in setting forth how each days duty was performed, with such other observations as may be useful for the same, we think Mr Henry [Robert Henry] has not been so regular as he ought’. In addition, ‘the Supervisor was injoyned frequently to visit the riding officers by night in order to keep them to a strict duty which is not complyed with as it ought. And contrary to your repeated orders the said Henry has given too much liberty to the officers under his inspection by permitting Page 5 of 22

 

Smuggling them to goe out of their districts without leave first had and obtained’. By contrast, Abraham Pike, (p.170) supervisor of riding officers in 1803 in the district of Southampton, kept a thorough journal. It was headed in printed type ‘TRANSACTIONS AND OBSERVATIONS’ followed by the following details on alternate pages: first, what officers he met and where; any information concerning ran goods; what methods he took to prevent such practices; what seizures he had made; what ships he had observed and the direction they were sailing; what notice concerning such ships he gave the next officer; what signals he observed from the commander of the cutter; and a record of all his observations during the day or night. Pike rode between one and forty-nine miles a day, and the commissioners regularly checked his journal.13

Free Trade In Tobacco Other commodities soon eclipsed the problem of illegally exporting wool. Take the case of tobacco. To begin with, it was only lightly taxed after Sir Walter Raleigh had first exhaled the addictive delight to a curious Elizabethan court. However, by the late seventeenth century it had become one of the most highly taxed items, and by the eighteenth century one of the most popular in the common economy. Great tobacco frauds were reported in 1675. The London searchers were advised ‘to be very careful in the examining of them [certificates for tobacco] & to see that stalks or unsound tobacco be not shipped off instead of merchantable tobacco and that the casks be duly weighed & that they do see them not only just into Lighters & Boats but that they daily visit the ship in turn that the said tobacco be not landed again’.14 Bulk tobacco was carried loose in rolls rather than securely packed in hogsheads, which made it easy to pilfer and smuggle. A merchant’s and shipowner’s petition of 1689 argued, ‘every sailor and woman and little inconsiderable person … [did] squeeze over by little design part of the duties if not wholly run it, and then carry it from ship to shop and sel it easy and low rates’. Tobacco could be damaged by water, dehydration, and storage faults—all of which could be prevented if they were put in hogsheads. Further, this form of proto-containerization would speed up the efficiency and therefore speed of unloading time. Above all, as Linebaugh points out: ‘These advantages to turnaround time and inventory preservation were secondary to the main purpose, however, which was to remove what they were careful not to call theft, but “a presumptive Custom” or an “accustomed privilege” of taking tobacco. The 1699 Bulk Tobacco Act attempted to put an end to this. It legislated that bulk tobacco would have to be stored in a (p.171) hogshead, chest, or case fixed at 224 lb net with smaller packages being forfeitable. The stakes now became higher. Smuggling became far more organized, run by fewer and more ruthless men with small armies to back their activities. They also knew how to play the law with leading attorneys hired to defend their interests in court. Eighteenthcentury smuggling had entered its heyday.15

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Smuggling Prior to 1713, tobacco deemed to be damaged was branded unit for the home market. However, no provision was made to destroy the damaged tobacco and merchants would therefore bribe customs officers to declare their perfectly good tobacco as damaged and thence import it duty-free. This practice was defeated by legislation in 1713, which enforced the destruction of damaged leaf by burning it. During the 1760s the task of taking the damaged tobacco from the quays to be burnt was the duty of a single elderly woman. In a world where everything had value and was recyclable the ashes would be sold to manufacturers of soap.16 Also under the statute of 1713 tobacco could not claim drawback on reexportation unless it was purchased in hogsheads of 300 lb or more (except in cut or rolled tobacco), while stalks or stems when torn from the rest of the leaf and exported separately were refused drawback. Leaves of walnut trees, hops, and sycamore were strictly prohibited if exported under pretence of being tobacco in order to obtain drawback, although such techniques of adulteration, continued to flourish. The Opinions of the Custom Counsel reported in May 1704 that a merchant, Thomas Bryan, made a false oath concerning his shipment of tobacco, and ‘upon ye officrs. examining them [bags of tobacco] on Board found ye full of Oakham & such sort of Trash only a little Tobacco’. Walpole later made a note of such practices in his calculations for the doomed excise scheme on wine and tobacco in 1733.17 The collector at Liverpool told the customs commissioners in 1724 that the revenue was losing some £10,000 per annum through the shipment of tobacco stalks rolled up in a large twist and thinly covered over with tobacco, with most of the roll filled with sand, dirt, and rubbish. In an attempt to compensate for the mixture of ‘syrups and other materials that are used in the making of tobacco into Roll’, which substantially increased the weight of tobacco on re-exportation (and thus more drawback), the commissioners advised that one-tenth be deducted from the weight. This was amended, however, in November 1734 ‘for the encouragement of trade’. Tobacco duty could also be avoided by simply not entering it. For example, the collector at Alloa found in one of the cellars under his collection, (p.172) 126 hogsheads each at 700 lb amounting to 88,200 lb of tobacco. They only had credit for 72,405 lb, leaving a balance of 15,795 lb unaccounted for.18 The collector for London and the western ports, the solicitor of the north ports, and the solicitor for bonds and criminal prosecutions gave their conclusions concerning fraud in a report to the House of Commons. They claimed the commissioners had on a number of occasions sent orders to the land surveyors to ‘be very strict and watchful over the Land Waiters by examining the Scales Inspecting their Book and Reweighing the hogsheads of Tobacco. In 1728 they uncovered a fraudulent activity practised by tidesmen, watchmen, and weighers who worked with masters, mates, and mariners, along with lightermen and Page 7 of 22

 

Smuggling porters employed by the tobacco merchants. As a result 150 tidesmen and ‘other inferior officers’ were dismissed. A number of others were prosecuted, including six who were convicted ‘and ordered to be transported and three to be publikly whip’d’. In addition about twenty tons of tobacco was seized.19 The 1733 House of Commons report on customs frauds concluded: ‘The principal Fraud committed at Importation is the setting down in the Land waiters Book, by which the Duty is computed and paid, less Weights than the several Hogsheads imported do really weigh. This arises by the Connivance, or corruption, of the officers, and which it has hitherto been possible to put a Stop to, altho’ every Officer has been dismissed, and never restored, when any Discovery has been made’. The rewards were simply too high and easy for the poorly paid customs officer to refuse. Walpole recorded in his notes for the 1733 excise scheme: ‘No sooner comes News of the Arrival of a ship belonging to a Mercht. in the secret, but he applies to one or more of such Waiters, in order to get ‘em apprehended on such ship; In case they happen to be fully employ’d at that juncture, then he sends down to delay the ship’s coming up for 2 or 3 Days; and when Reported, he defends Keying of her, til all things are ready for his Purpose.’20 The deliberate lowering of weights could be achieved in a number of ways. The land waiters, for example, could note the true weights of the hogsheads when they were being weighed on loose sheets of paper and, after showing the surveyors, enter a short weight in the official book. Alternatively a weigher could call out short weights to the land waiters (a process known as ‘hickory puckery’). It was also common practice, as already noted, to add stones, lead, dirt, rubbish, and sand to tobacco being exported to enable more drawback to be claimed (a process (p.173) known as ‘puckery hickory’). The House of Commons committee enquiry into frauds and abuses in the customs gave numerous examples of such cases in their report of 1733. Two or three of the hogsheads were randomly weighed, and if these agreed with the cocket it was judged that all of them would. To ensure success the exporter would frequently bribe the searcher to ensure he weighed the right hogsheads. After debentures had been obtained (this was the instrument that enabled the merchant to re-claim his import duties), the tobacco was often illegally relanded and sold for home consumption.21 The above House of Commons committee documented this practice in detail. They underlined ‘the unaccountable Difference in the weight of the hogsheads there [Virginia and Maryland], and at the Scale in England’, One example, of many, was the following involving the tobacco merchant, John Midford, who in June 1727 imported 301 hogsheads of tobacco from Virginia. The weight taken in the landwaiters’ book from which the duty was charged amounted to 199, 257 lb. However, ‘The true Weights, taken by the husband (who was Midford’s son) on loose Slips of Paper, pasted into his private Book, and which are confirmed by the Accounts of Sales between him and the Planter, as appears by Midford’s Page 8 of 22

 

Smuggling Books, now in Possession of the Crown, and which have been produced to your Committee, are 230,150 lb. wt.’. This made a difference of 30,893 lb weight the duty of which, of course, was lost to the crown. An agreement was made between certain traders and land waiters for a specific cut of the money saved in not paying the duty—sometimes as much as 50 per cent.22 A government report dated 1734 recommended that ‘the Landwaiters be ordered for the future [,] if they are not already[,] not to set down the weight and measure of any Goods, on loose papers, before they have made an Entry of them in their Books’. The land and tide surveyors were also warned to return a diary of all their observations to the Board to enable the customs commissioners to be aware of their proceedings.23 Detecting false records was notoriously difficult. The only reason Midfords were found out in 1727 was because he died and owed the crown £17,000 worth of bonds. A small blue book was subsequently discovered in his counting house, which revealed that the land waiters had underweighed his tobacco by an amount (p.174) of 275 hundredweight, A merchant, like Midford, would first greet the ship at the waterside or send someone he trusted. He would then write in his waterside book, ‘the true weights at the Scale as they are Call’d at by the weigher, which Book going afterwards into his counting-house (& he keeping an acct., with the custom-house himself) prevents even his own servts., knowing any thing of the Advantage gained’. Meanwhile the waiters, after having recorded the weight on loose slips of paper, entered ‘considerably short’ weights in their books—ranging from a half to one-fifth less. The merchant rewarded the waiter with a gratuity of a half to a third of the customs. The surplus tobacco was subsequently Vended at a low Price for Home-Consumption, very much to the Prejudice of the sweet scented Traders.24 The writer of this report suggested to Walpole that the only way to defeat such ‘artful, safe, uninterrupted’ practices would be to discover who the guilty waiters were, by sending details of the sales to the planters, and by looking closely at the ship’s manifests from the plantations. Waiters should also be rotated from quay to quay to prevent fraudulent relations taking root and be suspended if they recorded weights on loose bits of paper. However, it would take a far more radical and concerted plan to defeat such lucrative and entrenched practices. Merchants frequently had deputy searchers in their payroll, ‘so that few or no Hhds. are weighed; and when any one, he hath private Notice what Numbers to pitch upon, to prevent any Inconveniency or Discovery arising therefrom’.25 Walpole was sent detailed information concerning the free port of Dunkirk from someone purporting to have lived there for a number of years. The port ‘serves as a convenient storehouse wherein goods of different kinds are deposited, particularly those from Great Britain, the least perishable, & the most intitled to large Drawbacks, they lyeing there conveniently at hand for several foreign Page 9 of 22

 

Smuggling markets or Ready to be reimported into Great Britain clandestinely, as opportunity offers amongst the rest. Tobacco is the most considerable, this only, employing a very large number of people in the Towne’. From here it went not only to Britain but most countries on the Continent. He estimated that eight or nine sloops or other vessels from 30 to 60 tons went from Dunkirk to Ireland three or four times a year. On a normal trip they took a cargo of thirty to fifty hogsheads and repacked the tobacco into ‘Bales’ of about 100 lb weight. ‘I am very well informed they first proceed for the English coast, and as opportunity offers Ireland, & sell, as much as they can, if they don’t do their business (as they term it) on the English coast, they then proceed for Bantrey Bay, or Bear Avon, on the coast of Ireland, where they have their people ready on the least sign all come in numerous Bodeys to their assistance’. Apparently they could unload a cargo of fifty hogsheads in twenty-four hours. If a man-of-war was chasing them they would leave their goods on Dorses Island.26 (p.175) The third main area of tobacco smuggling emanated from Scotland. As we have seen English tobacco merchants, such as Micajah Perry, had condemned the high level of imports into Glasgow from the Chesapeake since the Act of Union in 1707. First, a tobacco shipment to Scottish ports avoided the difficult waters of the English Channel and thereby saved about two weeks on its journey. The sparsely populated Scottish coastline was even more difficult to police than the English coast, and thus was a perfect area for the smuggler to land contraband goods at leisure. Above all an alliance of fraud between merchants and customs officers had become almost systematic in the activities of the port of Glasgow—an accusation fiercely denied by the collector and comptroller of the local customs house. Walpole, however, was unimpressed, and the Scottish customs service was brought under the direct supervision of London in 1722. This substantially reduced the problem and, although it picked up again in the 1730s and 1740s, the Scottish import gradually withered from around the mid-century.27 In March 1770 the commissioners complained that fraudulent dealers had developed techniques of adulteration and tax evasion that searchers simply could not detect. They ‘must necessarily be incompetent Judges of the said manufactures and therefore that the Revenueman is insufficiently protected in this branch of trade’. As a result, an inspector of manufactured tobacco for exportation was appointed later that year. The position was established due to the work of an ordinary weigher and locker, Thomas Stone, who had dazzled the Board with his in-depth knowledge concerning the intricacies of the tobacco trade and his ability to detect fraud. He inspected all seized tobacco before it was sent to the tobacco burning ground, and operated as a kind of general supervisor of the tobacco business along the quays. Stone would accompany a searcher assigned to examine ‘every species of manufactured Tobacco to be exported’. He also inspected all manufactured tobacco destined for the home

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Smuggling market, and was required to keep a note of his observations in a book that he deposited daily with the office of the registrar-general of Tobacco.28 Tobacco relanding seems to have declined during the American War of Independence, but once again resumed fertile levels after 1782. The pilfering of good tobacco was a particular problem, which by 1786 was so serious that the kings victualling wharf had to be taken over for its warehouses. The problem was compounded by the size of the gangs involved, with the Board of Commissioners at a loss what to do: ‘Repeated representations have been made to this Board of the enormous thefts and outrages committed on the Quays, whereby the Merchants are now afraid to strip in order to be weighed notwithstanding the (p.176) protection afforded by the Constables who are paid by this Revenue, as the Thieves assemble in such large bodies, and are grown so audacious, that they are neither to be intimidated nor restrained’. The port was verging on the totaly ungovernable. This resulted in a number of new regulations designed to combat the rise in pilfering culminating in the excising and warehousing of tobacco in 1789.29 Despite these measures tobacco smuggling continued to prosper throughout the nineteenth century. A substantial amount of tobacco was ran ashore by the crew that manned the packets and cargo boats operating between London and the European continent. Most of it was taken to experienced receivers with, perhaps, the most notorious being ‘Mother’ Gregson. Equipped with a tobaccodealers licence and the owner of a chandlers shop in Barking Churchyard, she employed a small army of boys under the age of 16 to run her tobacco—because of their age they were all immune from prosecution. They were collectively known locally as ‘Mother Gregson’s gang’. One employee from the waterside police estimated that the 210 people convicted of illicitly moving tobacco in this way were only the tip of the iceberg. He claimed that for every one caught, another ninety-nine escaped detection.30

Free Trade In Tea Tea was one of the most widely and profitably smuggled goods in the eighteenth century. Its high duty coupled with its elevated value in proportion to its bulk made it a favourite with free traders. It was reported in 1732 that great quantities of tea were landed along the coasts of Sussex, Kent, Essex, and Suffolk. The dragoons stationed in Sussex claimed ‘that the smugglers continue to run great Quantitys of Goods by force, and that it is not in their power to prevent it without further assistance’. The East India merchants concluded that at least half of all domestically consumed tea was illicit: ‘This Evil is become so great and so diffuse, that it is conceived not the Civil Power, nor even such Military Force as the administration would choose to employ on such an occasion will be sufficient to suppress it’. Only a reduction in duties, they concluded, would remedy the situation. It was also the case that the success of tea smuggling during the century affected the free trade of other commodities, Page 11 of 22

 

Smuggling for example bulky goods, such as brandy, often employed as ballast in ships mainly used for the rich traffic in tea.31 The incentive to illicitly reland exported tea depended on whether the drawback of the import duty was allowed. Between 1745 and 1767 there was no (p.177) drawback, hence it is probable that all tea exported during this period arrived at its place of destination. Not surprisingly, then, on the resumption of drawbacks, the exports to Ireland rose from just over 50 per cent between 1755 and 1764, to 71 per cent between 1768 and 1777. Neither the drawback nor the bonded security (worth double the value of the tea) was released until a certificate of landing at the proclaimed destination was secured. Obviously this practice was only made possible by the difference between British and Irish duties upon tea. A report in 1783 observed: ‘It is therefore an Object of Lucrative Trade for the Irish Vendor of Tea to purchase it, and to pay the full Irish Duties; after which he can chuse his Opportunity of loading it aboard small Vessels, and transmitting it to the coasts of Scotland and Wales’.32 The most important route and method of smuggling tax-free tea into Britain was from the Continent—especially France, Holland, Sweden, and Denmark, and occasionally Portugal and Spain. With the exception of Holland, most of these countries depended on the smuggling trade to dispose of their imported tea, which, unlike tea in Britain, was not weighed down with import taxes. The problem was made worse by the fact that Continental traders also had larger ships and comparatively low freight and other charges. Indeed such was the importance of the British market for Continental tea traders that something like one-half of all their tea cargo was targeted to the British shores.33 Tea stemming from Sweden and Denmark came to the west and east coast of Scotland, and to Ireland during the shipping season, while in the winter months it came via Dunkirk, Ostend, and Flushing. In the 1760s Roscoff in France became one of the major ports from which tea was sent to England. In addition, other prominent nodes for smuggling into Britain were the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man since neither came under the British customs regulations. Prior to this period relatively small-scale local importers had dominated smuggling. They would bring their tea via sloops down to wherries or large rowboats that could only carry a maximum of about sixty chests of tea. They were normally unarmed and relied on their ability not to be detected, which depended on good relations with the locals. Inland shipments were frequently bought by several purchasers who gave their money and orders to the boat’s captain. He would then sail to Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, or simply hover off the coast ready to collect the tea. If he had a large enough boat and was familiar with the trading connections on the Continent, the captain would sail directly to Europe to get his illicit supply.34

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Smuggling (p.178) On landing, the tea would be traded by local retailers who operated within a limited market. Prior to the 1770s an ‘extensive dealer’ in Scotland would typically have ordered something like ten chests of Congou tea at a value of £130, while in the south of England a very small dealer could obtain his supply from a hawker, who sold it by the dollop of two and a half pounds. By purchasing his tea from the smuggler, the provincial shopkeeper could undersell the highly taxed tea of the fair trader in his area. It was a diffuse and informal network. Illicit trade pursued in this manner introduced people in remote areas to the fashionable world of tea drinking, and in this way the market for tea was extended.35 The centre and point of distribution for the legal trade of tea was London. Here the wholesalers purchased their item from the East India Company auctions. Tea was sold ‘by the candle: once an inch of the wax had burnt away the hammer fell. During Walpole’s era in power the consumption of tea was aided by shifting it to a system of bonded warehouses where it only paid an excise duty of four shillings per pound if subsequently taken out for domestic use. But the real impetus came under Henry Pelham when he slashed the tax in 1745 to one shilling per pound with an additional 25 per cent ad valorem duty if the auction price exceeded four shillings. This latter factor was simply a device to ensure that prices remained stable. It had the impact of increasing the amount of tea moved from warehouses into the domestic market from a prior figure of 800,000 lb to 2,500,000 lb between 1745 and 1750. This is not to suggest that the market had substantially grown but, rather, that the smuggler’s slice had been significantly eroded. It seems that in the three years prior to this reform smuggling had reached a peak of something like three times the sales of legal tea. The reduction of duties increased the legal sale of tea from 730,729 lb in 1745 to 2,358,589 lb in 1746, which gives an idea of how large the black market was for this commodity.36 In the twenty or so years following the 1745 tax reform, the legal trade does not seem to have suffered too much from illicit competition. However, the end of the Seven Years War (1756–63) represents a turning point in the fortunes of both the legal and black trade in tea. With the return of peace there was a sudden and rapid rise in the activities of European trade. Within less than a decade, trade with China had almost doubled, and the bulk of this expansion was primarily targeted at Britain—radically raising the quantities of tea available to smuggle. The balance of trade now, once again, greatly favoured the free traders. The London wholesalers fought back by lowering the bid-up prices at the company’s auctions, and putting intense pressure on parliament to reduce the duties. This finally resulted in the government legislating in 1767 to reduce the one-shilling charge on most of the different types of tea over a period of five years and, in return, for the company to reimburse the government if the revenue dropped. The experiment initially proved a success with sales soaring—especially for the most popular (p.179) teas—although profits for the company fell to a minimum. Page 13 of 22

 

Smuggling London wholesalers could now think about underselling tax-free European tea and threatening the smugglers’ livelihoods.37 However, the situation once again turned sour for the legal dealer. In 1770 a speculative wave hit the London commodity exchange in which the price of the popular Bohea tea dramatically rose. The result was once again to put tea beyond a competitive point for the fair trader, thus releasing the activity of the smuggler. The speculators had succeeded in defeating the government’s fiveyear plan with not a little help from the stock exchange. The revision of the duties had therefore proved a failure. The company also had to reimburse the government for lost revenue. Its problems were further compounded by a growing stock of unsold tea that lay in its warehouses, with London wholesalers not willing to purchase tea at the prevailing market price. For example, the company sold very little of the more expensive and better quality Congou tea since it cost twice as much as Bohea tea from China. There was clearly a good opportunity here for the selling of illicit Congou and within a decade it had become one of the most popular black teas in Britain. British taste in tea was thus upgraded by the failure of the governments five-year experiment. In 1772 the one-shilling duty was reintroduced, representing a second phase in the competition between legal and illicit tea. The fair trader had the advantage of controlling the major lines of distribution and knowledge of tea blends, but still desperately needed stricter laws and effective enforcement.38 Large well-armed smuggling vessels now appeared along the British coast, as opposed to the traditional small, unarmed boats. Some of the ships were as massive as 230–300 tons, with twenty to twenty-four guns and carrying fifty to eighty men. It was estimated that there were some 250 vessels regularly involved in the illicit trade of tea. Accompanying this rapid growth was also a more efficient organization and distribution of tea. Already during the 1760s along the Scottish east coast orders from two or three hundred shopkeepers were collected and sent to a factor or merchant at one of the smuggling ports on the Continent. The merchant would then purchase the tea and pocket 2 per cent commission plus freight charges for shipping it. The packages of tea were all provided with their own invoices, marks, and numbers and finally delivered to the intended destination.39 By the 1770s the illicit tea trade had reached an unprecedented level of organization. It now had large-scale importers and wholesale distributors whose operations soon expanded in the direction of monopoly, enabling them to import and distribute far larger quantities of smuggled tea than was previously possible. These distributors were based in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and London. Each had its own distinct structure. In London there were well-established facilities for credit and for the sale and distribution of tea. Here the organization followed the (p.180) pattern of the legal trade and remained in the hands of wealthy entrepreneurs, while in Scotland it swayed toward combination such as Page 14 of 22

 

Smuggling the three companies that operated and dominated the west coast. They stored their contraband tea in large farms that were enclosed by high walls and gates (much like bonded warehouses), within which cleverly designed concealments were built—some of which were under land planted with corn. The second report of the committee investigating illicit practices in the early 1780s usefully summarized the situation: ‘Trade upon the West Coast is carried on chiefly by Companies systematically established, and which appear to be as well known and openly avowed as the regular Trading Companies of the Kingdom;—that the similar Practices which prevail upon the South East Coast of Scotland, from St. Abb’s Head to Tarbatress, are conducted rather by Individuals, than by associated Partnerships;—and that the Goods thus introduced upon the South East Coast consist chiefly of Tea, Brandy, Geneva, Rum, and Wine, and are brought from Gotteburgh, Ostend, Flushing, Dunkirk, &c’.40 Organization on the east coast was dominated by the ‘most decent and responsible’ dealers. Shopkeepers in the large inland towns had shares in the associations and a close-knit network of trade was conducted between the wholesalers and their correspondents. This enabled access to both sufficient capital and personnel. The new cartels also frequently insured their substantial vessels and obtained good credit facilities from European companies and merchants. Since large-scale smuggling tended to be seasonal it was much higher in the summer months. It was therefore during this period that debts were settled and preparations made for the new season. The rhythm of the smuggling season fitted in with the China trade, while the long winter nights aided the secret movement of goods. Most ships from China arrived in July and August with the sales made the following month.41 Despite this high level of organization, the strict laws that regulated the sale and movement of tea, combined with their enforcement by the excise officers, meant that the smugglers’ offshore hardware and organization had to be equalled inshore. This required a significant number of dealers who were capable of evading domestic safeguards. The result was the development and use of largescale wholesale dealers who tapped into and distributed illicit tea along established legal channels. This was a shift from the traditional and still dominant utilization of local and personal distribution of duty-free goods. The objective was to feed the illicit tea into the legal distributing channels emanating from London. To do this the tax-free tea had to be moved under legal cover into and out of the City, otherwise the smugglers would have needed a substantial army to safely transport the tea into the shops of the provincial retailers.42 (p.181) By law all tea of six pounds or over had to carry an excise permit stating its quantity, type, origin, and destination. The quantity of tea was registered at the local excise office where a record was kept of the amount of tea

Page 15 of 22

 

Smuggling credited to the dealer. This whole process, as the 1783 House of Commons committee on illicit practices explained, was easily abused: Many of those Permits are forged and counterfeit; others are fraudulently obtained by the Retail Traders, who conceal the Vend of their teas, and require Permits for the Removal of what has in fact been, or will be, sold by Retail, though it appears upon the Book to be still credited as stock in Hand: The Permits thus obtained are sent to the illicit Dealer, without any Tea, and he immediately has Credit with the Revenue Officers for the Quantity named; By these Means, which are equally practised in regard to Spirits, the Goods clandestinely landed are introduced into the stocks of Dealers in Tea and Spirits, who have made Entry upon the Coast of Places convenient for this Traffic, The Spirits thus introduced into Dealers Stocks are forwarded by regular Permits to the Metropolis; and the Tea, which cannot legally be brought into London, even with Permits, is carried into obscure Places, just without the Limits of the Bilk of Mortality (which Places are entered for the Purpose) and from, thence it is afterwards conveyed into the Metropolis, either in Packages under six Pounds, or by Means which elude all Probability of Detection.43 Elsewhere, most notably Scotland, tax-free tea was transferred to the wholesaler’s shop with ease. From the coast it would be sent to distribution centres accompanied by gangs of between thirty and fifty men. The Scottish wholesaler would then try to enter the legal channels of distribution. For example, he could try to obtain excise permits by purchasing a legal stock of seized tea at a customs sale either in Scotland or London. Quite quickly the illicit trade came to establish a monopoly over various regional markets. Further, the Scottish dealers, as well as controlling their own country, also began to conquer the English market. According to excise figures for the year ending 30 June 1776, the total amount of tea sent by permit from England to Scotland was 71,7541b, while 180,9781b was transferred by permit from Scotland to England. The result was a decreasing value of trade and market for the fair-trade wholesalers. Similarly, the price of tea sold at auctions was forced to remain low, reducing the East India Company’s profits. To compete, the London wholesaler had to reduce his mark-up to almost impossible levels. This, in turn, forced more shopkeepers to deal with the free trader.44 The London dealers decided to fight back and they formed an association to protect their trade, Increased pressure was put on the directors of the East India Company to use their influence on government to take assertive action. This alliance was to prove the final blow necessary to suppress eighteenth-century free trade in tea. In September 1784 the tea duties were substantially reduced with a (p.182) window tax. introduced to cover the shortfall. Following this move the sales of the East India Company doubled and soon trebled, while the imports of tea by the European companies showed a comparative decline. Legal tea imports went up from 5,857,000 lb in 1783 to 16,307,000 lb in 1785. Tea Page 16 of 22

 

Smuggling duty also still managed a significant income of £340,000 (it was formerly £700,000). With the Commutation Act of 1784 smuggled tea was radically reduced—at least till duties were once again radically increased during the Napoleonic Wars. Mui and Mui claim that, prior to this point, the smuggler was an important factor in the general commercial expansion of Britain. The smuggler reached areas the legal trade did not, and therefore developed credit facilities and elaborate transport systems that helped integrate the economy and shape consumer habits. In this way smugglers also supplied a large number of remote communities and retailers at cheaper prices than the legal supplier. Such was their success that the powerful interests of the government, the East India Company, and the London wholesalers had been, compelled to act. Prior to the Commutation Act, as Mui and Mui also point out, what seemed to be a system of illicit trade characterized by fraud and evasion ‘might also be regarded as innovations promoting the international and domestic trade of the kingdom, which, in turn, contributed to the growth of the British economy in the latter part of the eighteenth century’.45 The final chapter came over discussions concerning the East India Company during the early nineteenth century. Not only was the incidence of duty on tea once again at astronomical levels, but, as had been the case throughout the eighteenth century, the market price was extremely high due to the East India Company monopoly. Both these factors fuelled smuggling, although it should also be underlined that the monopoly helped to stabilize the flow of revenue since the officers only had to deal with one organization. Consequently, the government was worried that it would lose a great deal of money when the East India Company lost its monopoly in 1833. It made collecting revenue both more awkward, and less lucrative since the market price for tea had been so inflated. As a result in 1834 the legislation changed, and different levels of tax. on different types of tea were introduced. For example, the lowest grade, Bohea, paid

d. and the array of high-quality teas paid 3 s. per pound. The system

proved unworkable and bore heavily on the lower grades of tea and therefore the burden was heaviest on the lower ranks. The Act was repealed and all teas were subsequently charged at a flat rate of 2 s. and 1 d. per pound, which increased to 25.

d. in 1840. The repeal of the East India Company monopoly

had, in this case, increased taxation and made tea more expensive than it had ever been—charged at a staggering rate of 350 per cent of its value. Not surprisingly legal consumption actually fell between 1836 and 1843. This contrasts with coffee which, after having its duty lowered in 1821 by a shilling a pound, increased its legal consumption (p.183) by 500 per cent, while cocoa expanded by 1,000 per cent after its duty was reduced by 2d. per pound. However, unlike coffee and cocoa, tea had become a crucial part of the working person’s diet. As a medical witness told a House of Commons committee in 1847, ‘I think the manufactory populations cannot do without it’.46

Page 17 of 22

 

Smuggling Notes:

(1) These two cases are described in E. Hoon, The Organization of the English Customs System 1696– 1786 (Newton Abbot, 1968), 232. (2) A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London, 1776; repr. Indianopolis, 1981), ii. 898. For Smith and his views on smuggling, see I. S. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1995), 319–22, For Smith as a customs commissioner, see W. F. Shughart II and R. D. Tollison, ‘Adam Smith in the Custom House’, JPE 93 (1985), 740–59, Smuggling as an acceptable ‘social crime’ is discussed in J. G. Rule, ‘Social Crime in the Rural South in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, SH 1 (1979), 135–53. (3) ‘Report of the Excise Commissioners on Smuggling’, 15 Feb. 1783, in A. L. Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests, the Sheriffs and Smuggling (London, 1928), 317–19. The benelt of clergy was an old piece of legislation, which simply meant that if you could reiterate Psalm 51 to prove your literacy, you would be saved from the gallows. (4) I. Robin, ‘Second Memorial about Contraband Trade between France and England—Presented to the Ministry’, n.d. possibly 1719, CULCh(H) 41/1 and 3. (5) G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 40; M. Brentnall, The Cinque Ports and Romney Marsh(London, 1972), 80–1. For tin see W. Petty, A Treatise of Taxes and Contributions(London, 1662), 55; G. D. Ramsay, ‘The Smugglers Trade: A Neglected Aspect of English Commercial Development’, TRHS, 5th ser., 2 (1952), 131–57, on 151–3. (6) N. Williams, Contraband Cargoes: Seven Centuries of Smuggling(London, 1961}, 72–80; P Muskett, ‘Military Operations Against Smuggling in Kent and Sussex, 1698–1750’, JSAHR 52 (1974), 89–110, on 90 and 94. Joseph Trevers is quoted in Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents, 23. (7) Smith, Something to Declare, 42; Leftwich, ‘The Customs Revenue in England’, 198–9. It was not just the French who exploited demographic links; nearly all smuggling had some form of material or political bond. e.g., the Scottish were ruthless in exploiting their ties with the Scottish tobacco planters in Virginia and Maryland who had been transported there by Cromwell after the battles of Dunbar and Worcester; see Williams, Contraband Cargoes, 91–2. (8) Williams, Contraband Cargoes, 87–8; F. Crouzet, Britain, France and International Commerce: From Louis XIV to Victoria (Aldershot, 1996), 239 and 261. (9) Muskett, ‘Military Operations’, 92. (10) ‘Papers Relating to Trade etc’., n.d., probably 1710s, BL Add Ms 18903, fos. 144–5. Page 18 of 22

 

Smuggling (11) Weymouth Collector to Board of Customs, 28 Sept. 1717, WCH. (12) W. Musgrave, ‘A List of the Officers in the Customs’, 7 Aug. 1782, in Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents, 255. (13) ‘Journal of Abraham Pike’, Southampton district, 1803 and 1804, DCRO NS 282; Weymouth Collector to the Board of Customs, 19 June 1736, WCH. (14) ‘Port of London Searcher’s Minute Book’, 3 Feb. 1675. Alfred Rive claims that nearly all the smuggling in tobacco during this period was carried out in collusion with customs officers; see his ‘A Brief History of Regulation and Taxation of Tobacco in England’, WMQ, 2nd ser., 9 (1929) 73–87, on 81. See also the comments in ‘Port of London Searcher’s Minute Book’, 11 Sept. 1682, 2 Mar. 1713, and 29 Apr. 1719. (15) Linehaugh, London Hanged, 160–1. Such a policy and subsequent legislation was not uncommon under William and Mary. e.g. ‘For preventg. of Frauds frequently used in importg. of strong waters spirits aqua vita or brandy in such qties whereby ye same is more easily convey’d away without payment of ye duties’, it was ordained that they had to come in vessels that could contain at least sixty gallons; see ‘The Opinions of the Customs Counsel’, 16 Oct. 1707, PRO CUST 41/1. (16) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors at the Port of London, 1687–1791’, 2 July 1715, PRO CUST 102/162; R. C. Nash, ‘The Fnglish and Scottish Tobacco Trades in the Seventeenth and F.ighteenth Centuries: Legal and Illegal Trade’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 35 (1982), 354–72, on 355–7; Hoon, English Customs, 127. (17) ‘The Opinions of the Customs Counsel’, 10 May 1704, PRO CUST 41/1; ‘Notes and Calculations for the Excise Scheme 1732–1733’, CUL Ch(H) 43/10/3. (18) ‘The Port of London Searchers’ Minute Book’, 14 Jan, 1686 and 28 Nov. 1734; E. A. Carson, The Ancient and Rightful Customs: A History of the English Customs Service (London, 1972), 109. (19) ‘A Particular Account of the Frauds which have come to our Knowledge relating to the Importation & Exportation &c, Landing Reshipping and Running of Wines and Tobacco since Christinas 1723’, n.d. probably 1733, CUL Ch(H) 29/35/1. (20) ‘The Report, with the Appendix, from the Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Enquire into the Frauds and Abuses in the Customs’ (1733), HCSP 12. 6,10,30–4, and 40–1; Nash, ‘The English and Scottish Tobacco Trades’, 358–9; ‘Frauds in the Imports, 1732–1733’, CUL Ch(H) 43/11/6. The problem of false weighing or gauging of any commodity was vast and not just confined to the main ports. See e.g. the problem of false cask gauging in

Page 19 of 22

 

Smuggling Margate, which was no longer a legal quay, in the late 1720s and early 1730s; London Custom House, 12 Jan. 1731, CUL Ch(H) 44/34. (21) Anon. letter to Robert Walpole, n.d., probably 1733, CUL Ch(H) 41/34; Linehaugh, London Hanged, 155; D’Sena, ‘Perquisites’, 136. Stricter instructions were given in 1726 to record, rotate, and mix all the weighers at regular intervals but obviously to little effect; see Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 2 Apr. 1726, PRO GUST 29/2. (22) ‘Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Frauds and Abuses in the Customs’, 6–8. (23) ‘Port of London Searchers Minute Book’, 31 Aug. 1685, 24 Feb. and 21 Mar. 1733, 14 Feb. 1752; ‘A Proposal to prevent the frauds and abuses in His Majesty’s Customs, and the Promiscuous practice of running of wool from Great Britain and Ireland to parts Beyond the Sea’, 2 July 1734, CUL. Ch(H) 41/21. Adam Smith particularly disliked drawbacks and bounties, claiming they ‘have given occasion to many frauds, and to a species of smuggling more destructive or the publiek revenue than any other’. They also made it appear that Britain exported more than it imported, ‘to the unspeakable comlort of those politicians who measure the national prosperity by what they call the balance of trade’. Following Walpole and numerous others earlier in the century, Smith advocated, partly as a solution to drawbacks, that a system of bonded warehouses should be greatly extended to all sorts of goods (but not perishable and valuable commodities, which should only be entrusted to the merchants own warehouse), see Smith, Wealth of Nations, vol. i, chs. 4 and 5 and ii. 882. (24) ‘The Return of the Solicitor for Bonds and Criminal Prosecutions with an Account of Frauds Relating to the Importation and Exportation of Tobacco’, n.d., probably 1733, and ‘Frauds in the Weights, 1732–1733’, CUT Ch(H) 41/18/3 and 43/11/6. (25) ‘Frauds in the Imports, 1732–1733’, CUL Ch(H) 43/11/6. (26) Anon, letter to Robert Walpole, n.d., probably 1732 or 1733, CUL Ch(H) 41/34. (27) ‘Copy of a Letter of the Merchants of Bristol, about Frauds in the Customs in Tobacco’, 4 Apr. 1721, in ‘Report of the House of Commons Committee Enquiry into Frauds and Abuses in the Customs’, 49–50; J. E. Williams, ‘Whitehaven in the Eighteenth Century’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 8 (1955–6), 393–404, on 401; Nash, ‘The English and Scottish Tobacco Trades’, 364–5. For details of fraud in Glasgow by the collector and comptroller see ‘Copy of a Memorial by the Collector and Comptroller of Customs House at Glasgow to the Lord Commissioners’, 26 Dec. 1722, CUL Ch(H) 44/16.

Page 20 of 22

 

Smuggling (28) ‘Port of London Searchers Minute Book’, 29 Mar. 1770; Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 29 Nov. 1770, PRO CUST 29/2. See also Hoon, English Customs, 154–5. (29) Stiles is quoted in Hoon, English Customs, 155; Nash, ‘The English and Scottish Tobacco Trades’, 366–7. (30) T. Quinn, Smugglers’ Tales (Newton Abbot, 1999), 111. (31) ‘Papers Relating to Trade etc’., n.d., probably 1710s, BL Add MS 18903, fo. 96; Board of Customs to Treasury, 2 Oct. 1733, and The United Company of Merchants of England trading to the East Indies, 14 Dec. 1733, CUL Ch(H) 41/20 and 27/23/1. (32) ‘The First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1783), in HCSP 38. 11; H. Mui and L. Mui, ‘Smuggling and the British ‘lea ‘trade before 1784’, AHR 74 (1968), 44–73, on 45–7—the following few paragraphs are particularly indebted to this essay. (33) D. Forrest, Tea for the British: The Social and Economic History of a Famous Trade ( London, 1973), 69; Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 48. (34) Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 50; ‘An Account of frauds with the [unknown word], an inhabitant of Guernsey, will depose upon oath, before the committee, to be practical in the Islands of Guernsey and Jersey’, n.d., probably early 1730s, CUL. Ch(H) 27/30/1. (35) Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 51. (36) W. A. Cole, ‘Trends in Eighteenth-Century Smuggling’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 10 (1958), 124–5; Forrest, Tea for the British, 37 and 53–4. (37) Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 53–4. (38) Ibid. 55–6. (39) Ibid. 56–8; Forrest, Tea for the British 69. (40) Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 59; ‘The Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38. 4. (41) Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 60–1. (42) Ibid. 61–2.

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Smuggling (43) ‘The First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’, 12. Permit abuse was widespread in numerous other commodities, see ‘The Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in. Defrauding the Revenue’, 9. (44) Mui, and Mui‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 63–70; Forrest Tea far the British 70. (45) Mui, and Mui ‘Smuggling and the British Tea Trade’, 63–73; Forrest, Tea for the British 70; J. Burnett, ‘The History of Food Adulteration in Great Britain, in the Nineteenth Century, with special reference to Bread, Tea and Beer’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1958), 205–8. (46) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 209–11.

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0012

Abstract and Keywords This chapter shows that the evolving English state was ill equipped to combat the dramatic rise in illicit trade that erupted onto the scene in the early 18th century. Seamen with customs commissions were encouraged to tackle smugglers by being offered one-half of the produce of the seizure at the subsequent customs sale. In 1821, a battle with the waterguard involving 250 smugglers took place. Although the combined force of the waterguard, riding officers, cruisers, and coastal blockade took its toll on smugglers, it was also costing too much money and blood. A committee set up to investigate the prevailing system concluded that it suffered from a lack of central control. The result was the assimilation of the waterguard back into customs. The term ‘Coast Guard’ was coined to describe the new amalgamation of representative forces. Keywords:   smuggling, crime, anti-smuggling, revenue cruisers, Board of Customs, Coast Guard

The evolving English state was ill equipped to combat the dramatic increase of illicit trade that erupted onto the scene in the early eighteenth century. As we saw in Chapter 10, the Board of Customs had a measly group of ineffectual riding officers and a negligible fleet of cruisers policing the long English coastline. Smugglers used all types of purpose-built boats, from wherries and pinnacles to barges and galleys, the latter two sometimes equipped by six to twelve oars. Smuggling had greatly benefited from innovations in boat design with, most notably, the introduction of the ‘fore and aft’ rigging vastly improving sailing techniques. Vessels involved in the common economy were much more sensitive to wind and more flexible in manoeuvring than the larger cumbersome Page 1 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment state cruisers. Importantly, they could glide into any creek, deposit their illicit cargo, and swiftly depart, irrespective of the direction of the wind. In this sense smugglers were at the vanguard of sailing technology. These vessels were purposely built to be fast with a shallow draught to enable them to come really close to shore. Unlike the smuggling armada, the revenue-cruisers (also known as sloops and smacks) were officially instructed to be kept out at sea the whole year regardless of the weather. As such they were constructed from the most robust materials, making them high-quality vessels but rather slow and awkward. Not surprisingly the waterguard service afloat had immense difficulty challenging a smuggling cutter. The collector at Whitehaven reported in 1731 that when they had used open boats, they had been at a severe disadvantage because the smugglers’ wherry had ‘good oars which draw little water, thrust into any place, over any bank, and can easily, if it do not blow, out-row the cruiser which is built for sailing and rather too heavy to be managed by oars with any success’ Parliament tried to combat the problem by introducing regulations designed to limit the size of all vessels and the packets they carried. This, in turn, made it illegal for a ship to be fitted with a bowsprit more than two-thirds its length. Since March 1722, any vessel found with more than four oars within the counties of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Essex, or inside the limits of the port of London, Sandwich, or Ipswich (including the creeks belonging to them), could be seized by an officer of the customs. The owner would both lose the vessel and pay a fine of £40.1 (p.185) It was also illegal after 1722 for any vessel passing within twenty miles of the coast loaded with foreign goods, to land without due entry and payment of duties. If the crew were seen carrying arms, wearing masks or a disguise, they were to be treated as ‘Runners of foreign goods’. If found guilty they would be transported for seven years to one of His Majesty’s plantations in North America, If they returned before their sentence was completed they would be hung. To encourage everyday folk to report any illicit trade, the customs commissioners decided that the informer should be eligible for a third of the revenue officers’ share of the reward.2 To encourage seamen with customs commissions to tackle smugglers, they received one-half of the produce of the seizure at the subsequent customs sale. This inspired numerous private ventures to it out craft against the smugglers without any expense to the revenue. All the Board of Customs had to do was grant a customs commission to the captain, leading at one point to quite a fleet of such vessels patrolling the south coast. The quality and impact of the sloops and smacks varied according to the coastal district. In 1734, for example, the customs commissioners complained to the Weymouth collector that the various crews employed were far too prone to ‘mutiny & disobey their orders’. They advised the customer, ‘when any of the mariners will not do their duty & are Page 2 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment discharged for that reason, you take care to give notice thereof to the commander of the next Man of War & use your endeavours that they be impressed’.3 William Musgrave felt that the Board of Customs should concentrate its antismuggling policy on its fleet of cruisers, instead of the rather ineffective riding officers. His view was widely held and the Board had been working hard to make improvements in the design of their anti-smuggling vessels as well as expanding their fleet. One problem had been getting a skilled and motivated crew. Musgrave reported: ‘Formerly the crews were paid certain salaries whether they made any seizures or not—and it was discovered that these like the other places in the Customs were beginning to be considered as pensions for old decayed Borough Voters—The Commissioners therefore resolved that they wod. employ no new Cruisers—unless the Commander wod. contract that all Expenses Shod. first be paid out of the produce of the Seizures—and the neat remainder be divided equally between the Crown and the Crew—but if the Seizures sho1. fall short then the loss to be equally born by the Crown & the Commander’. This, Musgrave concluded, had ‘proved a strong incentive to activity in the crew and the Number of Cruisers have been doubled since these terms have been settled’.4 (p.186) In 1783 the Board of Customs still despaired at the superior ingenuity of the smugglers: ‘former Boards have observed, as this has done, that the transactions of the Smugglers are constantly, and almost daily varying, and that as fast as exertions are used to stop the evil in one place or mode, it shews itself in some other’. The smugglers knew the shores they operated along so well that they could apply this local knowledge to make small but effective technological changes to the design of their boats. In short, their vessels were all different and custom-made to meet the particular geography of the coastline they operated along.5 William Pitt asked the Board of Excise to estimate the size of the smuggling leet. They concluded there were at least 250 vessels of twenty tons or more operating along the coast, and countless purpose-built rowing boats operating close to the shores. They reported that some of these vessels, especially around the coast of Sussex, Norfolk, Yorkshire, and Wales, were ‘of considerable Size and Strength and of Warlike Equipment, being from 100 to 180 Tons Burthen carrying 10 to 60 Men well supplied with small Arms, and in some Instances mounting carriage Guns’. There were also vessels between 150 and 200 tons armed with sixteen to eighteen guns running brandy and tea off the north-west coast of Ireland—many owned and operated by a certain Mr Rush living in Ireland. Similarly, in the north-west some smuggling vessels were also 150–200 tons operated by crews of thirty to forty men and boys, while in Devon a fleet of twenty-five armed vessels of up to 100 tons each carried brandy and tea to Exeter. It was estimated that between 1779 and 1782 1,248,000 gallons of brandy and 806,400 lb of tea were Page 3 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment delivered to Exeter, amounting to 90 per cent of the quantity of those items consumed there. In 1783 the excise increased its estimation of the size of some smuggling vessels to a massive 350 tons burden.6 The number of customs cruisers between 1763 and 1783 increased from twentytwo to forty-two, each with a crew of between fourteen and thirty. The committee investigating illicit practices in 1784 suggested that all cutters, sloops, luggers, shallops, schooners, or vessels of any other description should be seized if the bottoms were Clincher-work built, and not employed in His Majesty’s Service, or under the Admiralty of any Foreign State, found hovering within Four Leagues of the coast, even though they shall exceed Two hundred Tons, or which shall have on board any Carriage or Swivel Guns, or other Arms or Ammunition whatever; to be exported or carried Coastwise as Merchandize, or put on board for the Use and Defence of such Vessels, by virtue of regular Licenses to be given under proper Restrictions, but without Expense to the fair Trader. (p.187) The committee advised that a system of policing the design of vessels should be established, with the objective of providing a list of features that characterized smuggling vessels. They further added, ‘in order to enable the Revenue Cruisers to carry the Hovering Acts into effectual Execution, it is suggested, That they shall be authorised to fire into any vessel which shall refuse to bring-too, such Vessel then being, or having been discovered to have been, hovering or at Anchor within Four Leagues of the Coast’.7 The entrepreneurial spirit was rife among the impolite and commercial traders of the common economy. Just about every conceivable part of a smuggling vessel was used to conceal goods. Thick wooden beams in dingy cabins were often hollowed out; there were lockers craftily concealed beneath bed places, while the whole of the bulkhead could be brought forward by two or three feet to create a hidden space. In a ‘Welf vessel it was not uncommon to find the actual well not agreeing with the description in the licence. This would result in the officer letting out all the water and boring a hole to see if any spirits had been concealed in the bulk. For those vessels carrying ballast or coals it was advised that they be shovelled about to enable an officer to bore each side of the kelson (a longitudinal beam fastened to the keel of a vessel to give it strength) to ascertain whether it had a false bottom. Those vessels smuggling spirits frequently covered the part of the ship concealing the drink with coal tar to overcome the distinctive smell. Goods were also carefully hidden in the sails of ships that were neatly folded up on entering the port.8 Beneath the master’s berth of a ship called the Independence was a large chest, which, on pulling away, was found to be covering a ‘small door’. On opening this Page 4 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment door, an ‘empty Butter cask, an empty tea chest, and several Articles of Lumber’ were found. Again, on pulling away the lumber, some kegs of brandy were spotted—’having been stored quite close to the fore and afore Bulk Heads;— And the said vessel having also two Places of concealment in the cabin, the entrances to which represented false Panels over the Berths, discovering, on removal, cavities above the whole ceiling, one of which was full of manufactured Tobacco and Segars’. The ship was a carefully constructed labyrinth of concealed places specifically designed for smuggling lucrative goods.9 Not only were ships good at hiding commodities, but their array of exits was ideal for offloading duty-free items. One commentator reported in the early 1730s (p.188) Often the owners of these vessels carried out their goods in front of customs officers. The running of the items was always done prior to the master of the vessel entering the nature of his cargo at the Customs House.10 That very great and considerable Quantities of uncustomed and Prohibited Goods, wares, and Merchandize, in Bales, Chests, Trunks, Boxes, Casks and other Packages stored in the cabins, Gun loom, Bread Room, Lazaretta, Between Decks and in false Bulkheads, as well as in the Hold of almost all ships and vessels arriving from ports beyond the seas, are clandestinely Run on shore, without payment of Duties, by being secretly conveyed out of the Cabin Windows, Head Doors, Port holes, and other places, into Boats and Wherrys continually waiting for that purpose, which the offices of the Customs cannot possibly prevent. Another problem were the sloops coming over from Holland carrying passengers, As soon as they arrived they were surrounded by boats that proceeded to take the vessel’s illicit cargo and run it to shore. Guard-boats, run by two men hired from the customs and a number of preventative officers, were subsequently instructed to intercept the said vessels, and ‘if they see cause to rummage them in the manner as they are rummaged by the Tide Surveyors’. Not surprisingly the relationship between the two guard-boats and the tide surveyors became a tense one. In fact the latter frequently complained that the guardboats interfered unnecessarily and hampered their work. The jealousy, of course, was aroused by lucrative bounties to be made from the proceeds of captured illicit goods. In March 1735 the commissioners complained of ‘great quantities of new clothes’ being imported illegally from France, Holland, and Flanders. The garments were ‘either passed by the officers amongst passengers baggage, or, are privately landed & conveyed away without examination’. Once again the commissioners attempted to get the tide surveyors and inspectors of the river to be more vigilant in their rummaging of ships stemming from these origins.11 Typically if the smuggler found himself discovered and his goods likely to be seized, he would simply throw out his cargo into the sea and collect it later: ‘all his casks being tied together, & riding by an anchor & Buoy; he brings his vessel

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment ashore empty, & lifts his brandy in the night time, in order to convey it to a place of safety’.12 The smuggler was, on the whole, far more adept and clever at devising new methods of running goods than the revenue officers were at discovering them. Take, for example, the method practised by some free traders of floating tubs filled with illicit goods down a river. A line to a float would suspend the tubs, while a carefully weighted bag of ballast would be tied to the base of the tub to ensure the loat was just above the cork. The tubs were released with the flood tide at the mouth of the river, and would be intercepted by strategically placed persons along the river’s course. The local knowledge of both the movement of the tide and the geography of the river made it very hard for the officers to catch them.13 (p.189) Another popular technique was to fasten a number of tubs to a twoinch hawser, with pieces of cast iron each weighing 8 lb fastened to the slings of the tubs to submerge them. They would then be tied to a length of line attached to a loating mark just under the water, which was attached to another iron weight sunken to the bottom of the sea or riverbed. This, in turn, hid a piece of line fixed to it which ran to a loating mark with a blue lag attached to it just situated above the surface of the water. The lag could be seen during an eddy tide but not in the midst of a full strength tide. The aim of this scheme was to conceal the goods during their journey through the better-guarded parts of the harbour, particularly those places in the straight of the tide, until further up the harbour where the items could be retrieved. Cargoes could simply be sunk and retrieved later by a device known as a ‘creeper’. This was a set of weighty iron drags with spikes that crept along the seabed till it found and gripped the roped tubs. Then a special pair of tongs attached to a long pole was used to pull them up.14 All sorts of devices were invented for smuggling dry goods. For instance, a cape was made for running tea in compartments hanging from the shoulder and concealed by a long coat. Other techniques included garments with pouches symmetrically sewn around them to conceal items like tea and lace: these ranged from a body wrap with six pockets to a thigh and shin piece. It was not uncommon to have custom-made waistcoats carefully divided into narrow rows stuffed with tea or strong calico trousers also designed to conceal tea.15 Sometimes smuggled goods were disguised as legal items. A French vessel was reported in June 1823 carrying what appeared to be a cargo of apples and walnuts. On closer inspection, however, they were found to be boxes disguised as apples concealing a large quantity of lace. In March 1825 the waterside officers in London found copper cans described as containing orange flower water, but in fact holding Valuable Essential Oils, there being a Tube in the centre of the can containing the Orange Flower water, and the other part of the Page 6 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment can containing the Oils’. Similarly a seemingly legal trade in sandstone blocks during the 1820s was used to smuggle brandy by hollowing them out.16 There were also specially constructed boats made for ‘towing under the surface of the water so as to escape detection on entering harbours’. For example, a flatbottomed boat, sixteen foot by four foot, was found washed ashore off the coast of Bognor in Sussex. Its sides were made of three wide deal planks, and because there were no thwarts, it could be broken up and disposed of after landing. This disposable boat was designed merely for one trip and was therefore not even corked. A net was simply tied from gunnel to gunnel to secure the tubs in the boat.17

(p.190) Smuggling Gangs Anp Jacobitism The size and number of large armed gangs grew In numbers, efficiency, and violence during the 1710s. These were tense times for the surveyor-general of the riding officers not merely for economic concerns but also for political threats. Wool smugglers not only exchanged wool with French vessels for brandy, silks, and other prohibited and uncustomed goods, but also illicit information. The surveyor-general warned, ‘he has reason to believe they [a gang of smugglers at Mansfield] were made use of during the late rebellion to dispense the Pretender’s declarations and other traitorous and seditious papers, for that they publicly drink the Pretender’s health’18 During the period that followed the Hanoverian succession, anything that could be vaguely smeared with the label of Jacobite was guaranteed to put the authorities into a panicky spin. In April 1719 customs officers targeted Lulworth and investigated various dwellings for smuggled items: ‘we have from Monday last searched Lulworth Castle belonging to Mr Wold, a Roman Catholick & many other suspected houses’. The nearby area of Blackmore was a notorious landing for smuggled items and was deemed ‘the most disaffected part of the country abounding with a great number of dangerous rogues, two whereof we hear were Thursday last committed for declaring themselves for the Pretender, & consequently a place very fit to be searched’.19 The work of Paul Monod has revealed the close collusion of smuggling and Jacobitism in south-east England post-1688–9. England’s centres of illicit trade were often situated in areas full of Jacobite gentry. The trade routes of the alternative economy provided ideal transport for Jacobite agents and the flow of information to aid French intelligence. Young Irish immigrants in London were also recruited and smuggled out of the country via safe houses in Kent and Essex to serve the Pretender. Smuggling routes were often used to supply troops involved in the Scottish rebellion of 1715–16. After 1714 the link between smuggling and Jacobitism grew even stronger as much of the London population became disillusioned with the new Hanoverian king.20

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment The situation seemed, at times, little short of civil war. A gang of 200 armed smugglers had a serious clash with riding officers in 1720, while an officer was killed in a battle at Langley Bridge near Eastbourne. Such incidents were not uncommon occurrences throughout the eighteenth century. The Weymouth collector reported a huge rise in the size of gangs operating in his area, from 20– 40 in 1717 to 60–100 in 1718. ‘They come very often in gangs of 60 to 100 men to the shoar in disguise armed with swords, pistolls, blunderbusses, carbines & quarter staffs & not only carry off with the goods they land in defiance of the (p. 191) officers but beat, knockdown & abuse whoever they meet in their way’. The worried collector claimed that travelling by night near the coast had become extremely dangerous. He concluded, ‘if an effectual law be not speedily passed, nothing but a military force can support the officers in the due discharge of their dutyes’. This was a typical picture throughout many coastal stretches of England.21 In 1727 it was reported that large gangs were smuggling significant quantities of wine along the coast of Wales, especially at Aberystwyth in Cardiganshire. Much of it came from France via Ireland and the Isle of Man, and from here was run into parts of Wales, Shropshire, Cheshire, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire. A number of customs officers tried to board such vessels, ‘but in the night time great gangs of smugglers to the Number of forty or fifty in a body came on board such vessels and locked up the officers in the ship’s cabin and then unloaded the ship, and immediately carried the goods up into the Country, fifty or sixty Horses attending on the shoar for that purpose’. If any of the officers tried to prevent them ‘they were beat and abused in a most barbarous & cruel manner’. The commissioners did what they always did in such situations and applied for soldiers to be stationed there.22 The year 1733 was a particularly bad one to be a revenue officer, with numerous reports of customs and excise men being assaulted. This was, no doubt, a result of the extraordinary reaction and publicity surrounding Walpole’s doomed excise scheme of that year. In June 1734 the officers of Yarmouth reported that at least 20,000 lb weight of tea had been run over the last month. Gangs up to sixty strong worked relentlessly along much of the coast. They ‘have all the assistance the country can give them and are very audacious declaring in Publick they are under no fears from the Officers or Civil Power’.23 By the 1740s the situation had, if anything, further deteriorated. In Kent alone there were thirty-nine dragoons and nine companies of infantry stationed within the county. John Collier, the surveyor-general of the Kent riding officers, wanted this number to double. In fact he later claimed that 200 dragoons were needed. Similar requests were coming in from all areas across the southern coast. Kent and Sussex had gangs of well-armed smugglers ranging from anything up to 500 men. The most infamous was the Hawkhurst gang led by Arthur Gray and William Kingsmill. Their activities covered the southern coastline from Deal to Page 8 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment Portsmouth. Hawkhurst was ideally situated near the main roads to London from Hastings and Rye. The revenue officers were both outnumbered by smugglers and frequently in complicity with them, while as we have seen the revenue vessels were relatively ineffectual. Again, it was not uncommon to find the dragoons and their officers generally uninterested in suppressing illicit activities, and frequently in (p.192) collusion with the smugglers. In an attempt to motivate them they were given a generous cut in any seizure.24 By the critical years of the early 1740s the Jacobite-based smuggling matrix was perceived to be a major threat to both the economy and national security. One riding officer reported in May 1744: ‘The Transports and one Betts of Rye have leave from the French King, to go out and in, at any of the Harbours and Ports in France… the Land Smugglers [the Hawkhurst gang] have been so Impudent, as to Publikly Drink the Pretender, and his son’s health, with success to their Arms, And Confusion to his Majesty King George’. However, the failure of the 1745 rebellion and the reduction of tea duties eroded the clutch of the smuggling gangs. By 1749 many—including the Hawkhurst men—had severed the collusion between smuggling and Jacobitism.25 The south-coast smuggling gangs often consisted of people from similar working backgrounds. For example, the Groombridge gang was predominantly composed of labourers and rural craftsmen, while the majority of leading East Kent smugglers were seamen. In 1745 Admiral Vernon particularly condemned the smuggling activities of Deal: ‘Honest industrious fishermen’, he solemnly reported, had become ‘lazy and profligate smugglers’. Not only that but they sold information to the French. These were not good patriots. Smuggling was also particularly dense in south-east England due to deindustrialization and the switch to a predominantly agricultural economy. Fog’s Weekly journal reported in September 1733 that farmers found it impossible to hire casual help at harvest time because they could not compete with the lucrative earnings from illicit activities. The local labourers received ten to fifteen shillings for a night’s work assisting smugglers, as well as receiving free tea and gin. This has to be seen against an average weekly wage for an agricultural labourer of eight to ten shillings. Of those prosecuted under the duke of Richmond’s campaign, ‘Twelve of the twenty-eight convicted were labourers. Three were artisans, two were colt-breakers, and the rest were either “bred to no business” or identified simply as smugglers’.26 In Scotland large gangs also occupied much of the coastline with numerous vessels roaming the vicinity. Their cargoes of ilicit goods were ‘either lodged in subterraneous Repositories, or escorted by armed Parties of Men and Horses into the interior Parts of the Kingdom’. The frequently lone riding officer could only view from a distance as the luggers, wherries, and long rowboats packed to the brim with duty-free goods were greeted by a small army of men and women. These rowboats were sometimes forty feet long with twelve or fourteen oars (p. Page 9 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment 193) carrying a cargo of tea, spirits, and tobacco originating from Ireland and the Isle of Man. A government committee advised that a law should be passed that forfeited rowing boats exceeding thirty feet in length. This was soon enacted in an Act passed in 1784, which prohibited the use of clench-built, multioared galleys. The excise commissioners estimated that in some of the districts as many as 500–1,000 men (and a similar army of horses) were assembled on extraordinary occasions involving large imports. The number depended on the quantity of goods being run and the estimated extent of resistance. In general, they concluded, it was ‘greatly beyond any thing that can be brought to oppose them’. Here the goods would be distributed around the country by groups of between ten and twenty, ‘riding even in the Day time, with Impunity and seemingly without Apprehension of Obstruction’.27

Attacks On Revenue Officers According to one excise employee relecting on his life’s work, ‘Taking the life of a Gauger was considered by most of these lawless fellows [smugglers] a venial offence’. He recounted a story in which a ‘notorious smuggler’ was dying and seeking comfort from his church. ‘He was reminded that his whole life had never done a good deed to entitle him to the church’s consolation. The smuggler having meditated for a few moments, his face suddenly brightened up, and in evident earnestness he declared he had once done one good deed in his life—he had shot a Ganger’. Among the delights often awaiting an officer were ‘large loaded whips, having Hammers & Sharp Hooks at the Ends, and one or more with Hangers, swords, daggers, bluderpusses, and sometimes cannons’. An equal reception, of course, often greeted the smuggler. Attacks on revenue officers had a long history, but really started to become a problem in the second half of the seventeenth century. The Treasury began to receive numerous complaints that excise collectors employed in the great farms were being impeded in their duty. It was reported in 1670 that ‘several of the officials employed in the management of the Receipt of the Revenue of Excise in the sd. city [Durham] & county of Durham have lately been violently Assaulted & beaten & one of them put in hazard of his life’. A year later in Chester the sub-farmer complained that the brewers had ‘trumped up a charge against the farmer’s clerk and receiver and locked him up for a day to get him out of the way’. In addition, they ‘did several times violently assault and abuse’ the farmer’s gauger, and spoke Very contemptibly’ of the Lords of the Treasury.28 (p.194) Attacking and obstructing revenue officers was not especially geographically based. As we have seen, the excise officer in particular represented the visible manifestation of an expanding, greedy, and interfering state. In June 1668 two sub-collectors in Somerset were verbally and physically abused. A year later in Nottingham, the excise officer Thomas Page was assaulted and beaten up by a gang led by Samuel Riley, a local silk-stocking weaver. As the excise expanded so too did the number of attacks on its staff. Thomas Wylde, an excise officer in the county of Wiltshire, was murdered in Page 10 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment 1731; Samuel Alexander, a watchman at St Giles’s Cripplegate in Middlesex, was beaten to death after helping to apprehend a man and a woman carrying illicit tea. John Smith, an. excise officer, died in 1768 from a gun wound, as did Mr Dighton, a supervisor in Halifax, a year later. The experience of Thomas Davies, a young officer, was not unusual. While riding home from duty in October 1776 he encountered seven or eight smugglers carrying goods. Three of them proceeded to run after him while hurling rocks. Eventually one of them hit his head and Davies fell from his horse. As he tried to gather himself from the floor he was once again pelted with rocks and lashed by long whips. Finally they found a 50 lb boulder and dropped it upon his back and left him for dead. John Hurley, a riding officer at Branscombe, died in suspicious circumstances from a fall over a white cliff near Seaton. It was suspected that Hurley had come across a large number of women, predominantly the wives of smugglers, who were making bonfires to act as a signal to incoming smuggling boats—a process termed ‘flashing off the lugger’. The coroner examined the women who all claimed, under oath, that Hurley ‘accidentally fell over in running from one fire to another to put them out’. The jury passed a verdict of accidental death.29 One of the most notorious episodes was the torture and murder of a riding officer, William Galley, and an informer, Daniel Chater, by a gang of Sussex smugglers in February 1748. This event led to the duke of Richmond launching a concerted campaign against smuggling in Sussex. The episode began when an illicit cargo of tea was captured and placed in the Custom House at Poole, only to be recovered by the Hawkhurst smugglers after raiding the building. Having retrieved their tea they celebrated by having breakfast in a small village in Hampshire called Fordingbridge. Among those to meet the triumphant smugglers was a shoemaker, Chater, who had worked with one of the gang in the past. As one smuggler passed Chater, he grinned and threw him a bag of tea. Unfortunately it became a celebrated incident that led to Chater’s apprehension by customs officers. As he was being taken to Stanstead near Chichester by Galley to be examined, their whereabouts were discovered at a public house where they had stopped for lunch. Some local smugglers forcibly took a letter from Galley revealing Chater’s devastating evidence. He had turned informer. Later (p.195) that day smugglers connected with the earlier Poole raid arrived. Cal Winslow, drawing upon contemporary accounts, describes what happened next: ‘Galley and Chater were both tied to their horses. Galley “rode with his head under the belly [of the horse]… wounded, bruised, and hurt”, with Jackson another member of the gang, “all the time squeezing his private parts”. Then, after having “cut off his nose and privities, [and] broke every joint in him”, the smugglers decided he was dead. They threw Galley into a hole and buried him near Rake, in Sussex. Chater suffered much the same’. The violent fate of Chater was not uncommon for informers caught by smugglers.30

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment The duke of Richmond set out to make an. example of these smugglers, in conjunction with the formation of a special commission established with the government’s backing. Public posters were distributed by revenue officers relating to Chater’s and Galley’s murderers, as well as other wanted figures. The Weymouth collector reported that the ‘said advertisements have been by us made as publick as possible by affixing them in the most noted places as well, as given them to all the officers belonging to this port’. Eventually seven of the smuggling gang were caught and indicted at Chichester. The aim was to prosecute this first group as quickly as possible, in order to make the special commission look, effective, and to intimidate other smugglers by making examples of them. The duke’s campaign, however, was a desperate gesture within the desert of eighteenth-century smuggling. The terrain of the common economy was covered with obstacles—not least being the numerous corrupt revenue officers. Indeed, a significant number were smugglers or at least were in coalition with them. This is not surprising in a district like Sussex or Kent where the tentacles of the illicit trade slithered into every community and household. As Wilmslow puts it, ‘where smuggling was so common and involved so many people, the Customs officers had. to come to terms with their neighbours or move out. The honest revenue man could scarcely find a place to live along the Sussex coast’.31 The excise commissioners in 1783 gave a long, sombre list of recent attacks on revenue officers. On 7 January several excise officers and some dragoons attempted to seize a cargo of illicit goods from 50–60 smugglers. The result was a. bloodbath in which two dragoons were killed and several others wounded. A month prior to this incident a company of excise officers and dragoons seized eighteen bags of tea, but. were soon after ambushed ‘by a very powerful Gang of smugglers’, resulting in the supervisor loosing one of his eyes and the tea returning to the free traders. Two years earlier in November 1781, ‘the Supervisor of Saxmundham District, assisted by a. party of the Suffolk Militia, having made Seizure of a considerable Quay of Rum, Tea & Spirits, were attacked by a large Gang of Smugglers armed with loaded whips and Bludgeons; and beat in a most (p.196) cruel Manner, the Supervisor in particular whose Arm was fractured in two Places; & the Goods afterwards rescued’. Meanwhile in the Salisbury collection a gang of 80-100 smugglers retrieved seized goods, ‘leaving two of the officers weltering in their Blood’. The experience, not surprisingly, had left the two officers so scarred that on physical recovery they were too afraid to go into town and conduct their surveys. Elsewhere in the Reading collection: ‘Our Officers were removing 61 Bags of Tea, which they had seized, to a Place of security, they were pursued by twelve Men with Blackened Faces, who beat two of the Officers very cruelly, and dangerously wounded the other; after which they rescued and carried off the Tea’.32

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment The waterguard cutters were particularly disliked among the smuggling community. One of these vessels successfully chased a smuggling galley onto the Deal beach in August 1771, but, as soon as two of the revenue men went on shore to examine the vessel, ‘they were respectively Stonned, Beat, Bruised and much hurt by the people on Shore’. The rest of the crew on the cruiser came ashore to help, but were greeted ‘by the Mob with Cricket bats, Stones and Staves’, while a further three men were abducted away. According to the commander of the cutter, The Nimble, it was not infrequent for smugglers to fire upon the revenue boats. Meanwhile, in Deal, shore-based artillery was used to defend smuggling runs. These carriage guns were strategically placed in the avenues and streets of the town within easy range of the beach. The parliamentary report of 1783 investigating illicit activities highlighted Deal as an ‘emporium’ of duty-free goods, with the whole of its population, including the mayor, seemingly aiding smugglers with their work. In April 1784 a number of lives were lost when a galley and two other boats from the The Nimble encountered a large lugger near the Deal coast. The crew of the lugger opened fire with musquetoons and blunderbusses. The air became rich with the smell of gunpowder and the sound of men shouting and screaming. The revenue vessels eventually reached their target and attempted to board. In the violent frenzy that followed, two smugglers and one revenue officer were killed, and a further two were so badly injured that the captain of the revenue cruiser did not expect them to live. The lugger had a cargo of 419 casks of Geneva and Brandy. The revenue commissioners awarded Captain Bray and his men £200.33 Events in Deal seem to have reached a climax the following year. During an extremely frosty January the government received information that Deal-based smugglers had drawn in a large number of their vessels into the various creeks and harbours around the coast. The government sensed an opportunity and mobilized its spies to monitor the smugglers’ movements. On receiving the news that almost all of the craft used in illicit activities had been laid up, a number of well-armed cutters were quickly deployed and successfully captured the whole of the ‘smuggling navy’.34 (p.197) The victory, however, was short-lived and by the turn, of the century the Deal inhabitants were up to their old habits. In 1805 a customs officer got wind of goods concealed in a number of warehouses in the town. He was subsequently given authority to test his suspicions and promptly turned up with a gang of officers to assist him. After an. attempt was made to examine the warehouse of a certain William Spencer, a large ‘mob of two hundred persons’ collected around the said warehouse and prevented them from carrying out their duty. In fact, they went further, and brought out ‘a twelve pound carronade—you may easily suppose this had the effect to disperse the officers of the customs they not being able to stand against this army with cannons’.

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment The officers quickly dispersed and went in search of ‘proper assistance’, which came in the shape of the first regiment of guards based a mile away. This had the appropriate impact and the defendant gave the warehouse key to the officers. Inside they found beneath the floor, ‘a subterraneous cavity where the goods in question were deposited—they are six half ankers of Brandy[,] two half ankers of Rum and nine half ankers of Geneva [—] the whole quantity of spirits contained in these vessels is sixty gallons and the value of them will appear to be £54’ Lord Chief Baron McCloud in his summing-up of the case was in no mood to forgive. ‘Now with respect to the conduct of the Defendant it is said he had merit in opening the door. No certainly he had no merit when by his conduct he had made it necessary to call in the Military[,] it is a shocking and disgusting thing to the people of this country to hear of the Military being brought in such cases… this is one of these cases in which when I was in the situation of attorney General I would not have forgiven a drop or a penny’. Spencer and a number of other men were all found guilty and fined the value of their smuggled goods.35

Smuggling And The Isle Of Man The various islands that lie off the British coast were a particular source of vexation for successive governments. In 1718 the customs commissioners reported that Guernsey and Jersey were major magazines for foreign goods illegally smuggled into the country. They ‘proposed that such a number of officers of the customs might be settled in those Islands with proper powers and Instructions’ to suppress the trade. The island that caused the most annoyance was the independent kingdom of the Isle of Man lying off the north-west coast of England. In 1725 it was ordained that no tobacco, wine, brandy, East Indian, or other goods whatsoever were to be allowed to be brought from the Isle of Man into Britain or Ireland unless they had been manufactured or grown on that (p. 198) island. Anybody involved in any aspect of this illegal trade would face six months’ imprisonment or forfeit £100 at the discretion of the court?6 Such threats, however, made no impact on the illicit trade between Britain and the Isle of Man. The collector at Whitehaven reported in May 1730 that the crew of a cruiser he had sent to assist officers at Carlisle in seizing two wherries were attacked at the Scottish border in Annan by free traders. He claimed that the smugglers ‘beat them most unmercifully and after giving them several wounds, left them for dead and carryed away their arms’. The collectors at Liverpool and Chester claimed in September 1735 that 500 tons of brandy, 1,000 tons of wine, 130 tons of tea, 25 tons of coffee, 500 tons of rum, £20,000 of cambrics and lawns, and £60,000 worth of silks had been run into Britain and Ireland, with a further 120 tons of tobacco having been smuggled into Ireland from Britain. Mr Sydebottom, an officer based on the island, reported in the autumn of 1745 that a number of Dutch and Swedish vessels had arrived from France carrying cargoes of brandy and rum from Barbados. In March 1748 he also reported that Page 14 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment 40–50 tons of brandy had been shipped to Scotland in one week, with a further 100 tons about to depart. As well as the impact of smuggled goods on lost revenue, it also made a dent on the supply of specie. A large amount of coin was drained from Britain into France through the payment of smuggled goods particularly via this island.37 Malachy Postlethwayt claimed that the island was crippling the British economy. High-duty goods were stored in warehouses and afterwards put into smaller packages to be smuggled into Britain and Ireland. A fleet of smugglers’ boats would frequently leave Pile town and supply the east and north parts of Ireland, and the Highlands and west of Scotland. Other places to receive illicit goods from the island were Wales, Cheshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, and all the country on each side of Salway Firth. The chief trade was up the river at Boulness and into the Scottish borders. The cargoes consisted mainly of brandy, rum, tea, and silks. They were then taken out of Scotland into England by horseback in the night accompanied by a guard of some fifteen to twenty armed men.38 The central problem for the British government was a constitutional one. The Isle of Man was not part of the crown’s realm and therefore lay outside the fiscal kingdom. As a legal authority in the customs concluded in August 1727: ‘I am of opinion that no officer of the Customs can by virtue of any Deputation from the (p.199) Commissioners of the Customs in Great Britain make a seizure in the Isle of Man, Because as I take it, their commission does not extend to that Island’. The insular rates of duty upon goods imported into the island were substantially lower than the corresponding imperial ones of the mainland,39 The role of the customs officials was thus restricted to spying and notifying the mainland ports when goods were being shifted that looked suspicious. As already noted, this was hardly ever effective and the islanders always refused them access to the customs books. Indeed such was the situation that a rather shaken commander of a customs cruiser, Captain Richmond, reported on his return from the island in the summer of 1726, that whenever they went ashore they had ‘to goe armed as if in an enemies country’.40 Richmond was also personally threatened with imprisonment on the island if he decided to search any of the vessels moored in the Manx port. This actually happened some years later to the crew of another customs cruiser, The Sincerity, when it got ready to give chase to a boat called The Hope bound for the island from Rotterdam with a full cargo of East India goods. The deputy governors and two of the insular customs officials gathered ‘Several Hundreds of Men, who under such pretended Orders did, in a riotous and tumultuous Manner, assemble themselves, armed with Fire-Arms, Swords, Bludgeons & Stones, and endeavoured by force to stop him from proceeding with the said cruiser in pursuit’. Four of His Majesty’s customs men were imprisoned for three Page 15 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment months while an armed boat belonging to the cruiser was confiscated. The collector at Liverpool was powerless: ‘Its pity but some method could be to set the poor fellows at Liberty, otherwise they will perish’. He went on to describe the island as ‘not a place fit for a Christian to be confined in’.41 Smuggling from the island had now reached grave proportions, being estimated as high as £333,000 per annum in lost revenue.42 In 1759 the Lords of the Treasury directed the customs commissioners ‘to propose a Plan for the Prevention of Smuggling in the Island’. Certain inquiries were made to try and ascertain what exactly was being imported into the island, what duties they paid, what revenue they made, and the income that was generated from the rents arising from the land. According to one source the rent roll of the island came to £1,900 per year and the revenue from insular customs to a meagre £6,000. All of this was coupled with the third of a million pounds lost each year to the crown. The government issued an order in council directing the Admiralty to station ships and cutters in the harbours and along the coasts of the island. Simultaneously a Bill was introduced ‘to remedy the mischief’s’ resulting from Manx smuggling. The pressure was too much for the duke of Athol (who had inherited the island in 1736 from the earl of Derby) and he reluctantly offered to sell the island to the (p.200) crown at a price of £70,000, The offer was accepted and ratified by an Act of Parliament in 1765, and the sovereignty of the Isle of Man was revested in the crown. The government took immediate measures to prevent foreign cargoes landing there, and on the whole managed to suppress the once-lucrative free trade of the island. However, the smuggling was simply diverted to other areas, most notably the Channel Islands, with vessels now fitted out from Ireland.43

The Sinews Of Illicit Trade The sinews of illicit trade left no stone unturned. Consider the following case involving the turnkey of Fleet Prison, Thomas Groves. The crown’s attorney, a Mr Wilson, claimed that Groves’s illicit dealings were ‘one of the most dangerous attempts at smuggling that can possibly be devised’. So what was it that caused Mr Wilson to tremble with such horror? During Groves’s time as turnkey a large amount of tea was smuggled into the prison under his ‘favour and protection’. It was then carried out by people visiting the detained debtors, and subsequently ‘transmitted to all parts of the Town’ Excise officers found out about the practice and made ‘a very considerable seizure of tea’. The rules of the prison stated that its gates were to be shut at 10.00 p.m. with prisoners told to retire at this time to their respective apartments. Groves was not only the turnkey but also the chamberlain, and therefore his duty also included the allocation of prisoners to particular rooms. ‘It so happens that among the unfortunate persons confined in the Fleet there were some who we have great reason to suspect were more dishonest than unfortunate[,] and found an advantage by so taking themselves to the Fleet prison carrying on their Page 16 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment business there[,] living at a considerable degree of extravagance and at the same time not answering their creditors for their fair debts’. Wilson concluded, ‘there cannot be a more complicated scene of iniquity than this species of smuggling carried on within the walls of a prison’.44 The revenue bodies had encouraged informers since at least the sixteenth century. The Board of Customs wrote in November 1717: ‘If due Encouragement were given to such persons who shall be willing to discover the Running of Goods as well with regard to the benefit they shall receive by such discovery, as to their being well assured that their Names shall be Concealed’. The officers paid informers from their share in the reward of successfully prosecuted seized goods. However, it does not seem that illicit trade suffered too much through this relationship since smugglers were frequently a loyal and tightly bound community. Part of the problem was also that Juries and justices were often sympathetic to the smuggler; or suspicious of the seizing officer’s credibility; or (p.201) privately intimidated by threats of violence if they found them or their friends guilty.45 Nonetheless local relationships with informers could pay dividends and were clearly considered an important part of customs work. The Weymouth collector, for example, was asked by the Board of Customs to be more explicit regarding the information he sent them from his informer. He, in turn, replied, ‘I have accordingly consulted my informer who says he is not well acquainted in London but that after he came from Knightsbridge to Charring Cross he did not keep straight to the road but turned to the left hand and left the goods at the sign of the Bell a grocers shopp & one Mr Rawlings keeps the same—that this shopp is a magazine for receiving of runned goods’.46 Information was one thing; the will and power to act upon such information was another. Situated about nine miles from Helstone in Cornwall is a small harbour, which like so many coves along the English coast became the home of a thriving smuggling community. The Carter brothers operated their smuggling fleet from this picturesque bay, and had built a battery with several cannons mounted on carriages pointing out to sea. The public purpose for such an arsenal was simply as a means of defence against possible foreign invasion, but, of course, everyone knew that its real reason was to ensure revenue officials left them in peace. Sometime between 1780 and 1783 the excise sent a number of officers and forty soldiers to search the Carters’ premises. They were quickly greeted by cannon shell and shots fired from small arms. They eventually gained entry to the premises, only to be greeted by a ‘Cannon loaded with grape Shot & the Smugglers drawn up with lighted Matches in their hands seemingly determined to keep Possession of their Guns’.47

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment At times smuggling probably cost the country at least half its customs and ‘foreign’ excise revenue each year. In some parts of the country the situation was dire. The collector at Barnstaple, a Very capable and Intelligent Officer’, claimed that ‘nine Tenths of the Tea and Spirits there consumed, are smuggled’, while the officer on the Marlborough collection claimed that nine out of ten families consumed smuggled tea and spirits. The main market for popular smuggled items like tea was London. Huge caches of illicit tea were taken to Epping Forest and Clapham Common to be stored, until ready to be moved to Stockwell, the heart of the distribution network. During the eighteenth century it was a no-go area for revenue officers unless accompanied by a ‘very large Military Force’. The excise commissioners reported in 1783 that ‘no less than six Instances having (p.202) occurred within a very few Years past, wherein the Revenue Officers, attempting to make or many made a Seizure of run Goods, have been beat and wounded in the most inhuman Manner, That by the Reports of Our Officers not less that 50 or 60 Horse load of smuggled Goods were brought into, and secreted, or secured in that Hamlet Weekly’. The excise desperately applied to the secretary of war for a party of soldiers to be stationed at Stockwell to help them in their duty.48 The committee looking at illicit practices in their second report of 1784 reported that smugglers still often enjoyed the support of local JPs: ‘the Smuggling Practices, in different Parts of the Kingdom, are rather encouraged, than effectually punished, by the too favourable Judgements of Justices of the Peace: — The Penalties of treble Value, for unshipping, receiving, or harbouring Run Goods, as well as for other Purposes, being too often mitigated to trifling and inconsiderable sums’. However, the fangs of a new political economy had started to pierce deeper into the tissues of social life. The emphasis on policing people as well as products was propelled forward by the gravity of the increasingly powerful and wealthy commercial ranks. The central characteristics of this new force were solidiied in the writings of commentators like Adam Smith, the Scottish historian William Robertson, the Virginian merchant and agent for West Indies planters Patrick Colquhoun, and the London magistrate John Harriott, and above all in the various reports flying from the numerous committees set up in the late eighteenth century to scrutinize the nation’s accounts and finances. The following report from 1784 advised that there should be an increase in executive power rather than simply making new legislative provisions: Such as the stationary and Co-operation of the vessels employed by the Admiralty as well as the Customs, so as to form a Water Guard in a regular Line of Communication.; and also the Arrangement and Disposition of the Troops which are quartered near to the Shore, and upon the different Points of the Coast, or in the Neighbourhood; in which it is particularly important to preserve the Men, as much as possible, from too frequent or too long an Intercourse with the Inhabitants of the Coast. Improvements in

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment the internal Police of the Kingdom, and Measures for securing the Avenues to the Capital, may also be stated among the best Methods of Prevention. The imperatives of revenue and property were beckoning the need for an ‘internal Police of the Kingdom’.49 Expansion of the executive, however, was replete with political problems. The temptation to exploit their position as officers of the state was frequently too much for revenue employees. Mr Leycester, an attorney for the crown, was dismayed at the extent of corruption: ‘the mischief that I most lament with respect to the Revenue of this country is the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of keeping those whose business is to collect the Revenue many of them at least within the proper line of their duty—how is it to be expected that others will (p.203) not embezzle if those very men who are paid by the community for preventing them should themselves set that example?’. In this instance Leycester was prosecuting an excise officer from Penzance, Solamon Earle, for fraud. He was determined to make an example of him; ‘This man’, he raged, ‘has chosen an opportunity for his fraud extremely disgusting in its nature and which you will if you have proper evidence of it reprobate exceedingly’. As we have seen, excise officers were rewarded for their vigilance with a share of the money made from the seized goods sold. The ‘disgusting’ crime that Earle had committed was to use the permit he gained from his share of seized lowquality brandy to represent high-quality brandy. As Leycester explained, ‘he chose under the color of this sale and in hopes to use a permit for a different purpose than that which was intended to substitute in the place of Low Brandy [,] Brandy of a very superior quality so that the conversion of his prize into money as a reward for his supposed service he has chosen to make the cloak and instrument of his own fraud’. Earle’s defence tried to argue that the brandy was in fact the same and that it was the unreliable hydrometer that was at fault. To substantiate their claim they called a wine and brandy merchant, Mr Cook, to explain: ‘I have often found a good deal of difference in sampled goods of a sale, I never pay any respect to the samples for I have often found brandy worth 8 or 9 sold at the same price as they buy the weaker at’. Despite this argument the jury had no hesitation in finding the defendant guilty.50 Consider also the case of Danny Sampson who worked on the third ride in the Newcastle collection. Sampson, it seems, had deliberately overcharged licence fees and on one occasion actually forged one. Justice Williams could barely hold back his contempt at these fraudulent actions by someone serving the public. The language had clearly changed from earlier eighteenth-century cases, with trust and virtue now being firmly associated with public duty: ‘It is impossible Page 19 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment not to perceive that it is an offence of very considerable magnitude!,] it is not merely that you have broken through those ties [i.e. office of trust] which ought to have restrained you on your account and that of your family!,] but through those which your previous occupation and employment ought to have imposed’. He then sternly sentenced Sampson to ‘be imprisoned and kept to hard labour in the House of Correction at the town of Ipswich for twelve calendar months’.51

A Solution To Smuggling? Adam Smith’s gloomy reflections concerning possible solutions to smuggling were widespread among the higher echelons of social authority. The relationship (p.204) between steep duties and illicit trade was an unavoidable one and no number of preventative measures could begin to truly tackle the situation: ‘An injudicious tax offers a great temptation to smuggling. But the penalties of smuggling must rise in proportion to the temptation. The law, contrary to all the ordinary principles of justice, first creates the temptation, and then punishes those that yield to it’. Those who had to enforce the law were greatly outnumbered and frequently sympathized with those they sought to police and prosecute.52 By the 1810s, any idea Lord Liverpool may have had that the solution to smuggling was a reduction in duties was heavily countered by debt and numerous powerful figures. George Rose wrote to him in December 1814, ‘in the last conversation I had with you, you seemed to think smuggling might to a great degree be checked by a Reduction of the Duties, on the Return of Peace, on the articles most exposed to frauds: tea, foreign Spirits, and Tobacco’. However, he claimed, the case was the contrary: even with lower duties and an estimated loss of £3 million, the smuggler would still carry on his trade. ‘It is under this conviction that 1 venture again to press on you what 1 suggested at Fife-Ho; the endeavouring to protect the present high duties by active and immediate exertions by naval and military arrangements. I am quite aware that the attempt will be disagreeable to both services, but the national interest should outweigh that feeling’. Rose was worried that with the end of the Napoleonic Wars there would be a surge in smuggling, and wanted to install in readiness an expanded revenue waterguard under the auspices of the Admiralty or Naval Board.53 After some effective lobbying spearheaded by Rose and those of his ilk, it was decided to bolster the fight against smugglers by increasing the number of cruisers policing the English and Welsh coasts. In December 1815 a scheme was devised that divided the coast into four areas. Each district would be under the direction of a commodore who, in turn, would be answerable to the Admiralty. The western station would be composed of 1 frigate, 2 brigs, and 17 cutters patrolling from Solway to Land’s End. The southern coast would be broken into two parts running from Lands End to Foreland, and consist of 4 frigates, 8

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment briggs, and 29 cutters. The eastern district would ran from north Foreland to Berwick, and would be policed by 1 frigate, 2 brigs, and 13 cutters.54 A large number of ‘preventative Boats’ in and around creeks and inlets, Rose claimed, could patrol the whole length of the coast on a clear and calm day, while on a poor day the crews ‘might be on the look out on the land, and knowing the haunts of the smugglers, might be essentially useful in seizing their Goods’. He (p.205) also advised the stationing of military men near well-known smuggling bases, ‘The employment of soldiers has another incalculable advantage not to be obtained by Revenue officers, that of seizing the Persons, & leading to their imprisonment, with the consequences of an Exchequer Process; which these people have the utmost Dread of. Rose also suggested that the system of removal for seizures from customs and excise officers should, in some way, be improved, In the case of customs it took an officer two years or more to receive his share of the seizure, compared to six weeks for the excise: ‘This difference arises from the excise proceeding before Magistrates and the Customs in the Court of Exchequer’. Not surprisingly customs officers frequently called for excise officers when they made a seizure ‘to have the Benefit & Prompt distribution & to avoid the expenses of condemnation’. Despite these reforms, or rather because of them, the war with the smugglers entered a new and even more violent stage. In 1821 a battle with the waterguard near Rye involving 250 smugglers took place. Although the combined force of the waterguard, riding officers, the cruisers, and coastal blockade was taking its toll on the smugglers, it was also costing too much money and blood. A committee set up in 1821 to investigate the prevailing system concluded that it suffered from a lack of central control. The result was the assimilation of the waterguard back into the customs and in February 1822 the term ‘Coast Guard’ was coined to describe the new amalgamation of preventative forces.55 (p.206) Notes:

(1) R. C. Jams, ‘Illicit Trade with the Isle of Man 1671-1765’, THSLC 58 (1945–6), 245–67, on 247–8; G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 40; E. A. Carson, The Ancient and Rightful Customs: A History of the English Customs Service (London, 1972), 57, 63, and 68. (2) C. Leadbetter, The Royal Ganger; Or, Gauging made Easy, As it is actually practised by the Officers of his Majesty’s Revenue of Excise (London, 1739; 2nd edn., 1743), 294–5; ‘Papers relating to Trade etc.’, BL Add. MS 18903, fo. 5. (3) Board of Customs to the Weymouth Collector, 12 Dec. 1734, WCH. (4) W. Musgrave, ‘A List of Officers’, in A. L. Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests, the Sheriffs and Smuggling (London, 1928), 255–6. Page 21 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment (5) E. Hoon, The Organisation of the English Customs System 1696– 1786(Newton Abbot, 1968), 232; G. D. Ramsay, ‘The Smugglers’ Trade: A Neglected Aspect of English Commercial Development’, TRHS, 5th ser., 4 (1952), 131–57, on 134. (6) ’Proposed Review of the Smuggling Laws from Mr. Pitt’ n.d., and ‘Report of the Commissioners of Excise on Smuggling’, 15 Feb. 1783, in Cross (ed.). Eighteenth Century Documents, 239 and 308. For Devon and the south-west see E. Hathaway, Smuggler: John Rattenbury and his Adventures in Devon, Dorset and Cornwall 1778–1844 (Swanage, 1994), 12. (7) ‘The Third Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38. 4–5. (8) Lieutenant R.N. Rawstone, Smuggling Vessels Arranged in classes; Also an Abridgement of Smuggling Laws, handwritten book, 27 Nov. 1837, NMGM Customs and Excise Museum, 3–5; ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors at the Port of London 1687–1791’, 25 Sept. 1711, PRO CUST 102/162. (9) ‘Tide Surveyors Minute Book: 23 July 1822’11 Feb. 1832,17 Mar. 1829, PRO CUST 102/171. (10) ‘Proposals for Preventing Frauds and Abuses in His Majesty’s Customs, and the Ruinous Practice of Running Wool from Great Britain and Ireland, to Parts Beyond the Sea’, n.d., prob. 1733, CUL Ch(H) 41/39/1. (11) ‘Orders to the Tide Surveyors’, 18 July 1707, 4 May 1716, and 18 March 1735. (12) ‘An Account of the Present State of the Smuggling Trade between BoulogneSir-Mar-in France, & the Coast of Great Britain; in a Letter from a Merchant in Boulogne to——Esq. at London’, n.d., probably 1733, CUL Ch(H) 41/35. (13) Rawstone, Smuggling Vessels, 180. (14) Ibid. 182–3; G. B. Wood, Smugglers Britain (London, 1966), 126–7. (15) Rawstone, Smuggling Vessels, 181 and 184–5; ‘Tide Surveyors Minute Book’, 16 July 1823 and 19 Nov. 1823. (16) ‘Tide Surveyors Minute Book’, 26 June 1823 and 28 Mar. 1825. For the case of the sandstone Mocks see T. Quinn, Smugglers’ Tales (Newton Abbot, 1999), 114. (17) Rawstone, Smuggling Vessels, 194–5. (18) P. Muskett, ‘Military Operations against Smuggling in Kent and Sussex, 1698–1750’, JSAHR 52 (1974), 89–110, on 98. Page 22 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment (19) Weymouth Collector to Board of Customs, 11 Apr, 1719, WCH; Muskett, ‘Military Operations’, 99. (20) P. Monod, ‘Dangerous Merchandise: Smuggling, Jacobitism, and Commercial Culture in Southeast England, 1690–1760’, JBS 30 (1991), 150–82. (21) Weymouth Collector to Board of Customs, 28 Sept. 1717 and 4 Mar. 1718, WCH. (22) ‘Frauds relating to Wines in London and the Out-ports’, n.d., probably 1733, and ‘Frauds in the Wine Trade’, n,d., probably 1733, CUL Ch(H) 41/18/7 and 43/9. (23) ‘Notorious Instances of Riots and Assaults by the Smugglers and of Running great Quantitys of Tea and other Goods by Violence and Force of Arms’, n.d., probably 1734, CUL Ch(H) 41/25; ‘The Report, with the Appendix, from the Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Enquire into Frauds and Abuses in the Customs’ (1733), HCSP 12. 16. (24) Muskett, ‘Military Operations’, 106; Quinn, Smugglers’ Tales, 64–103. (25) Monod, ‘Dangerous Merchandise’, 168. (26) P. Langford, The Excise Crisis: Society and Politics in the Age of Walpole (Oxford, 1975), 27; C. Winslow, ‘Sussex Smugglers’, in P. Hay, P. Linebaugh, J. Rule, E. P. Thompson and C. Winslow, Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (Harmondsworth, 1988), 119–66, on 151,153, and 158; ‘Report of the Commissioners of Excise on Smuggling’, 15 Feb. 1783, 308; ‘Eeport from the Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Enquire into Frauds and Abuses in the Customs’, 97; Monod, ‘Dangerous Merchandise’, 158; Muskett, ‘Deal Smugglers’, 52; ‘Third Parliamentary Report Investigating Illicit Practices’, 58. (27) ‘The Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38. 3;‘Third Parliamentary Report Investigating Illicit Practices’, 7. See also ‘Proposed Review of the Smuggling Laws from Mr. Pitt’, n.d., and ‘Report of the Commissioners of Excise on Smuggling’, 15 Feb. 1783, in Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents, 240 and 309–10. (28) J. Pacy, The Reminiscences of a Ganger; Imperial Taxation, Past and Present (Newark, 1873), 47; Excise to the Treasury, 18 Jan. 1671, PRO CUST 48/1, (29) M. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England: Local Administration and Response (Suffolk, 1994), 222; J. Owens, Plain Papers Relating to the Excise Branch of the Inland Revenue Department from 1621 to 1878 (Linlithgow, 1879), 56–70; Carson, The Ancient and Rightful Customs, 76; Page 23 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment E. E. Oakley, The Smugglers of Christchurch: Bourne Heath and the New Forest (London, 1945), 23. (30) Winslow, ‘Sussex Smugglers’, 136–7; Carson, Ancient and Rightful Customs, 79; J. Rule, Social Crime in the Rural South in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’, SH 1 (1979), 135–53, on 148. (31) Winslow, ‘Sussex Smugglers’, 138–9, 141–3; Weymouth Collector to Board of Customs, 30 Apr. 1748, WCH. (32) ‘Report of the Commissioners of Excise on Smuggling’, 310–13. (33) Muskett, ‘Deal Smugglers’, 54 and 60–1; ‘Third Parliamentary Eeport Investigating Illicit Prac-tices’,58. (34) The Times, 57, and 10 Jan. 1785. (35) The Crown v.William Spencer, 15 Feb. 1806, PRO CUST 103/60. (36) ‘Papers relating to Trade etc.’, 27 Nov. 1718, BL Add. MS 1,8903, fos. 116– 17. For Guernsey and Jersey see ‘An Account of Frauds which the [indistinguishable word], and Inhabitant of Guernsey, will depose upon Oath, before the Committee, to be practised in the Islands of Guernsey & Jersey’, n.d., probably early 1730s, and ‘Commissioners Report relating to the Isle of Man’, 18 Feb. 1718, CUL Ch(H) 27/30/1 and Ch(H) 44/9; Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 302. (37) ’Revenue Papers 1568–1758’, BL Lansdowne Papers 1215/181; M. Postlethwayt, Britain’s Commercial Interest Explained and Improved in a Series of Dissertations on Several Important Branches of Her Trade and Police (London, 1757; repr. New York, 1968), 410–11. The collector at Whitehaven is quoted in Carson, Ancient and Rightful Customs, 67. (38) Postlethwayt, Britain’s Commercial Interest, 402–3, For a contemporary description of the illicit trading activities of the Isle of man see Arthur Dobbs’s draft letter to Walpole in 1732, repr. in C. R. Fay, ‘Arthur Dobbs, Adam Smith and Walpole’s Excise Scheme’, HJ 3 (1960), 203–7. (39) ‘Opinions of Counsel’, 23 Aug. 1727, PRO GUST 41/2; Jarvis, ‘Illicit Trade with the Isle of Man’, 246–51. (40) Jarvis, ‘Illicit Trade’, 253–4. (41) Carson, Ancient and Rightful Customs, 72. (42) Jarvis, ‘’Illicit Trade’, 259–63. (43) Jarvis, ‘Illicit Trade’, 264–5; Carson, Ancient and Rightful Customs, 73; Williams, Contraband Cargoes, 82–3. Page 24 of 26

 

Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment (44) The Crown v.Thomas Groves, 24 June 1779, PRO CUST 103/5. (45) The Board of Customs is quoted in Hoon, English Customs, 28(1–7; Davies, ‘Smuggled Goods’, 36. Between 1550 and 1659 informations concerning irregular practices performed in the market place constituted the largest generator of informers (43 per cent), with customs and foreign trade informers constituting by far and away the second largest category (26 per cent); sec WAV. Berestord, ‘The Common Informer, The Penal Statutes and Economic Regulation’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 10 (1957–8), 221–37, on 226. for the 18th cent, see J. Warner and F. Ivis, ‘Informers and Their Social Networks in EighteenthCentury London’, SSH 25 (2001), 563–87. (46) Weymouth Collector to Board of Customs, 19 Dec. 1720, WCH. (47) ‘Report of the Commissioners of Excise on Smuggling’, 309. (48) ‘Report of the Commissioners of Excise on Smuggling’, 312–14. (49) ‘The Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’, 9; ‘The Third Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’ 10. (50) The Crown v.Soloman Bark, 25 Feb. 1786, PRO OUST 103/20. For the contentious status of the hydrometer see Ch. 14, below. (51) The Crown v,Danny Sampson, 13 July 1842, PRO OUST 103/153. The importance of rebuilding trust in the state around such language is emphasized in M. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain 1799–1914 (Cambridge, 2001). (52) A, Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London, 1776; repr. Indianapolis, 1981), ii. 826–7. (53) George Rose to Lord Liverpool, 30 Dec. 1814, George lose Papers, BL Add. MS 42774B. (54) ‘Scheme for the Stationing of Cruizers round the Coasts of England for the more effectual Suppression of Smuggling’, 4 Dec. 1815, Liverpool Papers, BL Add. MS 38262, fo. 186. In 1809 a new preventative waterguard had been established, consisting of twenty-three cruisers and forty-two preventative boats. With the huge influx of soldiers and seamen after the Napoleonic Wars into the Job market, the waterguard had regularized its employment requirements (men aged 20-35 with at least six years’ experience at sea). (55) ‘A Report by George Rose’, 10 Dec. 1815, Liverpool Papers, BI. Add. MS 38262, fos. 187–93; W. Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts from the Minutes and

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Free Trade, Transport, and Concealment Orders Issued by the Commissioners of the Customs for the Instruction and Government of their Officers’ (1696–1829), PRO CUST 29/7, 4 Sept. 1822.

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Drink and Food

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Drink and Food WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0013

Abstract and Keywords This chapter shows that examining excise's practices and activities not only reveals what the pillar of public credit was actually built of, but also exposes the crucial role of the excise had in rectifying and sculpting the space of production for taxed goods. Keywords:   excise officer, customs duties, beer

the Excise-Man (like the subtle Jesuit in Affairs of State) hath an unavoidable Inspection into the Mysteries of Trade. Z.G., Excise Anatomiz’d (1659) Not only did the excise officer have knowledge of the mysteries of trade and production, but he was also a key component in defining and making them visible. All taxes, wrote the author of the eighteenth century’s most authoritative excise manual, were ultimately founded on the notion of property. Within a familiar broth of early eighteenth-century constitutional sentiments he declared: ‘That tho’ by the Law of Nature all things were originally common, and all Persons equal, there being then neither King nor Subject; yet when the Law of Nature came to be limited, and Property came to be claimed, and Kings or Rulers became absolutely necessary to maintain and defend such Property, (by which I mean Life, Liberty and Estate.) In order to support those Kings or Rulers in their Government, and to defray the Expenses, which they must inevitably be at, in protecting the Publick, and administering Justice to every Member, Taxes and Duties were granted them by the People’. This preamble to Charles Leadbetter’s Page 1 of 30

 

Drink and Food excise manual was attempting to justify the most hated of all eighteenth-century taxes, and the ‘viperous excise men’ that collected them. Far from being the devil’s offspring the officers of the excise were, Leadbetter assured his readers, an intrinsic part of the mechanics of a properly functioning Britain. It was, after all, they who made certain of the fiscal future of the state; it was they, as Charles Davenant had earlier described, who ‘are the wheels upon which the whole engine moves’. Without the work of these men the scaffolding that propped up public credit would crumble, waging sustained war would become an impossibility, and the persistent claim that the state was based on imagined pillars would be far more pervasive and compelling.1 (p.210) Unlike the customs officer, who was mainly concerned with the more narrow but still complicated task of measuring casks and weighing commodities, the excise officer had to also deal with the gauging of an array of other vessels, which came in a multitude of shapes and sizes serving a diverse range of goods. Leadbetter’s detailed manual The Royal Ganger was first written in 1737 probably as much for the manufacturer and trader who found the duties hard to comprehend and calculate, as for the excise officer. The book did for the excise what Henry Crouch’s A Complete View of the British Customs had slightly earlier achieved for customs. The rather slippery Leadbetter was by no means a favourite at the Board of Excise, having been discharged by them in August 1713 for refusing to be transferred to another division. Despite their strong reservations the commissioners did, grudgingly, recognize and acknowledge his valuable skills and ability in clearly prescribing the necessary technical procedures of the excise officer. After all, Leadbetter was ideally qualified: he was technically acclaimed and a very well-known and respected mathematician and astronomer. During his period as an excise officer, he had carefully divided his time up to ensure that during the day he would measure taxed commodities on his rounds in the ‘Bromsgrove 2nd Out Ride’, and in the evening gauge planets, write about sundials, or ponder the marvel of lunar eclipses. In short, Leadbetter applied his assaying and numerical skills to the task of measuring both the heavens and the more commonplace delights of home-produced goods.2 A close examination of the excise’s practices and activities not only reveals what the pillar of public credit was actually built of, but also exposes the crucial role the excise had in respecifying and sculpting the space of production for taxed goods. As such, the following has not attempted to stray from the seemingly mundane everyday chore of excise work, but on the contrary, has sought to emphasize it.

At The Brewery Beer and ale, along with bread, were the most important commodities in a family’s budget, with the average household spending more on these goods than Page 2 of 30

 

Drink and Food on any other item. A powerful argument can be made that the foundation (p. 211) of the English/British fiscal state was built upon the public’s addiction to alcohol. As Peter Mathias and Patrick O’Brien calculate, taking imported wines and spirits also into account, ‘over half the total revenue from indirect taxation was provided by this single group of commodities in the latter part of the eighteenth century’. In terms of the customs revenue £4.3 million was generated from imported wines and spirits, which constituted the bulk of the £7 million customs yield of 1800.3 The impact of duties played a major part in the calculations and pricing of excisable products by both the manufacturer and retailer. When Adam Smith was writing the Wealth of Nations, the tax on a barrel of strong beer was just over 50 per cent of its total production costs. This meant that issues other than technical ones had to be seriously factored into its production. Despite such high taxation beer and malt, unlike other commodities such as silk, tea, tobacco, and brandy, were not ‘run’ at a significant level, primarily because they were too bulky and cumbersome to be easily landed illegally, while the returns were not profitable enough to warrant the risk, It was rather, as we shall see, at the actual site of production or retail that illegalities took place.4 In 1699, two years after the introduction of the malt tax, the problem of brewers using large quantities of molasses in the brewing of ale and beer was deemed a fiscal one. This was severely damaging the consumption of malt that paid duty, and as a result an intense clampdown on such practices came into operation that year. Anyone pursuing this practice would receive a hefty fine that could easily put him or her out of business. Leadbetter justified the move as a matter of quality improvement, ‘It having been found by Experience, that Hops used in the making of Malt Drinks, are more wholesome to human Bodies, and of greater Advantage to the Drink itself, than any other ingredient that can be used thereof’. What he failed to underline was the importance of hops and especially malted hops to the revenue.5 By far the most popular form of fraud was altering the strength of beer, since duty was imposed at one rate for strong beer and at another for small beer. If beer was discovered to be mixed the brewer would be charged the full amount for strong beer as well as given a fine for £50. It was not until the hydrometer was legally used to calculate proof strength and define duty by a graduated process at the point of mixing in 1880, that the tide was stemmed.6 John Ellis was prosecuted (p.212) in May 1806 far mixing beer, the ‘doing of which’, the prosecution sternly reported, was ‘absolutely prohibited under certain penalties’. Ellis was further charged with having more than 10 lb of maltsubstitute on his premises.7

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Drink and Food Before a brewer could start up a business he first had to have his premises scrutinized and mapped by an. excise officer. All the rooms and utensils had to be officially authorized, clearly located, and recorded. Between 1688 and 1714 excise duties on beer greatly increased, leading to ever more innovative ways of defrauding the revenue. Underground pipes were installed that linked up with other pipes used to siphon off small and strong beer, and transport it to different parts of the brewery to be mixed or to simply escape paying duty. A law was subsequently passed: ‘That every Common Brewer having or keeping any pipe or other private conveyances in or about his Brewhouse by which any Beer ale or worts may be conveyed from one tun or Brewing vessel to another or out of any such … Brewing vessel into any other place shall before a certain day which was in the year 1697 take up or demolish every such pipe stop-cock and other private conveyance and shall also stop up every hole in every turn back or floor by which any beer ale or mash my be conveyed into or out of such tun batch or floor or any of them’. The excise officer now had the power to prevent pipes being placed in certain positions, or utensils being placed too close to a wail or sunk below ground. Any intended alteration to the site had to be first submitted to the excise. Revenue demands thus greatly impacted upon the practices and space of beer/ale production.8 Nonetheless several decades later the problem was even more widespread. The first committee set up to investigate illicit activities in 1783 concluded that there were extensive and wide-ranging practices adopted by brewers designed to deliberately defraud the revenue, ‘First’, they wrote, ‘in conveying, by concealed Pipes and other Means, a Part of the worts before the excise officer has taken an Account thereof, and previous to that stage of the Operation when the Law obliges the Brewer to declare to the Officer the Quantity and Quality of the intended Brewery’. Another common tactic was to add false bottoms to backs to deceive the officer’s gauging rod.9 The London gauger worked shifts of six hours. The intended quantity of each guile (a guile signified all the brewing of worts put together) had to first be declared before production commenced. The officer first took gauges of all the depending guiles in the morning, followed by a measurement of each wort, preferably both hot and cold, as soon as it came out of the copper. A wort was produced first by grinding and mixing malt with hot water to convert starch in (p.213) the grain into maltose and then mixing it with other constituents of the malt and dissolving it to form a sweet substance. The wort was then drawn off from the usual grains and boiled with hops to provide its flavour and preserving qualities. Yeast was then added once the drained wort had cooled. During this period of fermentation the yeast converted the maltose (or ‘saccharine matter’) in the wort to alcohol. The yeast was then removed leaving the beer.10

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Drink and Food The mash-tuns and guile-tuns used in the manufacture of ale, were generally frustums of cones that sometimes stood on the greater and sometimes on the lesser base. To gauge them the excise officer used his sliding cane to take the diameter in the middle, every ten inches from the bottom upwards to give him the necessary dimensions to calculate the volume. In addition, he also had to find the contents, in ale gallons, of a back or cooler once the boiling wort had been released into it from the copper. This was difficult since the backs were not evenly placed but sloped to enable the wort to be drawn off. As a result if he dipped his rod in a single deep spot he would overcharge the duty or undercharge it if the spot was too shallow. Therefore he had to make a number of dips and find the mean. He also had to take into account the fact that many of the bottoms of common brewers’ large backs warped with age. In some cases it was so bad that it was impossible to get an acceptable mean. Temperature also had to be accounted for, since the officer when gauging warm worts had to deduct one gallon from every ten gallons measured for waste.11 The coppers at London brewers were made with rising crowns to speed up the boiling process. The officer had to first test to see that the copper was perfectly round, and then with the aid of two colleagues, hold a packthread over the middle and take its diameter. Next he took its depth by use of a plumb line followed by a measurement to find the diameter of the crown. To measure the content of the copper from the crown upwards he took its diameter every four inches to find its respective area. Each area was then multiplied by the depth and reduced to measures of specified barrels, firkins, and gallons. A similar process was applied to the more complicated shaped sill.12 Evasion of duty was far more rampant in the numerous small breweries. This was why the excise far preferred and encouraged large monopolistic breweries. The excise officer had to be consistently on the alert for deviancy from the prescribed requirements of production. A country brewer, in particular, was prone to adding illegal pipes to secretly siphon off beer. As we have seen, a. brewer was allowed to use pipes and stopcocks but only if they were above ground and clearly visible. A brewer could also be heavily fined for every tun, batch, float, cooler, and copper set up, altered, or concealed without giving notice. Such a fine was given to William Snelling when his local excise officer, Lewis-Lewis, surveyed (p.214) his premises as usual in March 1802. On his first visit he observed old beer in three casks (each holding a hundred gallons) that had been brewed on 3 March. He then returned on the 13th to gauge the worts. Snelling told the officer that the worts would be out of the copper in half an hour. While he waited he went downstairs to cellar number three to have a snoop around. He walked over to three casks containing wort; he ran his hand across the barrel and noticed that they were warm, he then dipped his finger in and tasted the contents and to his surprise found that it was strong beer. He

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Drink and Food judged that it had not long been out of the copper—maybe an hour or possibly two.13 At this stage the excise officer kept his discovery quiet and carried on with business as usual. He gauged the contents that had been pumped out of the copper and recorded it as seventeen barrels and one firkin. Snelling’s brewer, David Hunt, claimed that was all he had brewed that day. The officer nodded and left. Shortly later he returned and told the brewer to escort him to cellar number three. He then proceeded to ask him about the three suspicious casks containing strong beer. Hunt claimed that they were ‘old stores’ marked with the letter ‘x’ to denote it as such. The officer then took a sample in his ‘tin taster’ and claimed, on the contrary, that it was warm and clearly freshly brewed, ‘it was of the quality of strong beer—it was new worts unfermented not in its progress towards fermentation—that barm or yeast was wanting to put it in a state of fermentation’. Later that week he surveyed the same cellar and now found the worts in question in a state of fermentation, ‘that yeast must have been put in—it working out of the bung holes’. In other words the brewer was using the casks as concealed coolers. Snelling was found guilty and fined £200.14

At The Malsters The following formidable instructions were officially distributed in 1731 to all excise gaugers of malt: ‘You must provide yourself with a cane, or stick figured, a plate of brass, a box and tape, and other proper instruments for gauging contents, and uting fats; and for taking ages on Barley, &c. in the cisterns, and on couches and floors, and with a Sliding rule for your greater ease and certainty in casting up your gages’. Malt is artificially germinated barley in which the germination is stopped at a certain point in order to conserve the saccharine or farinaceous matter that turns to alcohol under the action of yeast during fermentation. It was first excised in England and Wales in 1697 (at

d.

per bushel), and finally in Scotland shortly after the union of Britain in 1707. However, because of the lower quality of barley and the difficulty of surveying remote and frequently hostile regions, the Scottish duties were halved in 1725. In England, however, it soon became the most lucrative and successful excise tax and, significantly, the com (p.215) missioners of inquiry into the excise during the early 1830s did not recommend its repeal (unlike just about all other excise taxes).15 An officer on a foot walk was expected to survey the maltsters in his town at least once a day and ideally twice; while an officer on a ride surveyed maltsters at least four times a week or nine times in a fortnight. On entering the malster’s premises the excise officer would first note the geographical layout of the site of production (i.e. all the rooms, cisterns, kilns, and all other places used in its manufacture), and put the dimensions of each cistern and uting-fat (the containers that the barley were wetted or steeped in to commence germination) into his malt-book. This mapping had to be done ‘Before Midsummer every year’. Page 6 of 30

 

Drink and Food In places where the couch frames were used, the officer would take his measurements when they were empty and place the figures at the top of his ledger. It was important to take one of his gauges at a short interval before water was released from the cistern or uting-fat, and note the depth of the corn in three or four places. Before doing this he had to make sure that the corn was raked and levelled throughout the cistern. If there were differences in the depth of his dips he was to take the mean and enter it into his ledger as the official figure. All his gauges were made with a rule or cane with a brass plate.16 Once the barley or other grain had been thrown out of the cistern (which at this point could only be after thirty hours) into the couch, the officer again had to make one or more gauges. The first was taken as soon as possible after it had been removed, while the next was taken near the end of another thirty hours. He then had to enter in his book the shape of the couch (square, oblong, or circular), followed by the length, breadth, and depth of each couch gauge. He used an elaborate notation to signify each step of the process, and continued to take gauges until the corn was totally dried off (after thirty hours as a couch it was retermed a floor). He could then make the charge from the floor gauge with an allowance of ten bushels in twenty (½), or in the case of a cistern or couch gauge it was four bushels in twenty (⅕). It was up to the officer to decide whether the floor measurement or the cistern/couch gauge was the better one. This part of the gauging required particular vigilance: ‘he must with his Hand or otherwise, examine, and endeavour to discover whether such Couch or Floor be all of the same wetting’. It was not uncommon for a malster to secretly add to his wetting, ‘or that the corn which is in steeping, or that hath been steeped, to be rammed, pressed, trodden, or otherwise forced together’. This part of the process took from twelve to fourteen days.17 (p.216) There were numerous cases of malsters, after the officers had taken their cistern gauges, removing the greater part of the corn thus measured and replacing it with fresh barley covered in a coating of the steeped com. The instrument used to make the measurement was of no use detecting such schemes: the ‘Brass Receiver not answering the intention of it, will afford him no satisfaction in the Matter, unless it be in Speculative Gauging’. Instead, Leadbetter advised the officer to ‘use the best of his skill by biting the corn got from different Depths of the cistern’, or try and judge ‘by the Colour of the water’. The officers also faced other obstacles. For instance, they had to observe the dry as well as wet inches in the cistern and compare it with its real depth. In this way they could tell if any bricks, stones, or boards had been put in the cistern to prevent a correct gauge.18 Early in the eighteenth century another lucrative scam was hatched by malsters exploiting drawbacks on malt. The maltster was meant to allow the corn to ‘wither’ before going to the kiln, instead of letting it sprout and grow on the floor, and then taking it out of the kiln half dried. In this way they could make Page 7 of 30

 

Drink and Food thirty bushels of malt out of twenty bushels of barley. For every bushel of malt the producer could claim sixpence upon exportation. It was a practice particularly prevalent in Norfolk. The malt was mainly taken to Holland for half the price it cost to buy barley in England. Here it was used for spirits that, in turn, were smuggled back into Britain. The Excise Office concluded that this did ‘Not only very much discourage the Distilling in the kingdom and by consequence lessen his Majesty’s duty’s on low wines and spirits but must also effect his Majesty’s Revenues on Beer and Ales and lessen the home consumption of malt’. However, the Norfolk malsters had a great deal of support from local MPs who actually visited the Excise Office to complain at any attempts to end such practices.19 The Excise Office again warned the Treasury about the scam in December 1719; ‘To entitle themselves to larger Drawbacks & Premiums, they [maltsters] are now come in several places in Norfolk to run out this Malt to such a Length upon the Floor that the goodness of the corn is thereby destroyed, and in lieu of Malt, they make a commodity of little or no value which can make little or no Returns from foreign Parts, or served to any other Purpose than by destroying the corne to make a prey of the Revenue upon Malt, and to obtain considerable sumes from the Customes for Bounty-money’. The Excise Office suggested that no drawback or premium, should be allowed for malt that was not ‘all dryed, rubbed, screened & cleansed from Tails and Dust’. Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that the true quantity of malt actually shipped was calculated by corn-meters and coal-meters that were independent of the revenue and were paid by merchants. They frequently allowed exporters to obtain drawbacks for much greater quantities than were actually shipped. In addition, the ships were loaded and unloaded without waiters on board, which also allowed the relanding of malt after the drawback had been paid. The excise commissioners therefore recommended the (p.217) establishment of a set of officers to inspect the malt exported and ensure waiters were placed on board the vessel.20 Perhaps the most frequent fraud the malster conducted was to illegally rotate the different stages of production, a process known as ‘running a malting’. For example, a popular tactic was to keep the cistern’s water warm by topping it up with hot water to enable the grain to progress more quickly, and then removing it and replacing it with fresh barley. In effect all the stages were put forward with an extra large kiln to accommodate the increase. Take, for instance, the case alleged against William Hempath, a malster in Bristol in 1800. Sometime during the middle of February, Hempath gave notice to his local excise officer that he was going to fill his cistern between six and seven the next morning with grain and accordingly requested the officer to attend. It was alleged that the night before Hempath gave notice, he had instructed his servants to fill the cistern full and leave the barley to soak for an illegal period prior to the officer, William Aldridge, coming to gauge it. The next day, after the officer had taken Page 8 of 30

 

Drink and Food his measurements, the malster then apparently emptied the cistern upon one of the floors and then simply refilled it. As with most malt-houses, Hempath’s had four floors. The level known as the ‘couch floor’ was the first stage and was where the malt was at its youngest. Next came the ‘working floor’, then the ‘younger withering floor’, and finally, the ‘oldest withering floor’, where the malt was at its driest and most fit lor use. All these levels were in use as the malt made its journey from the cistern to the oldest withering floor. Hempath was accused of removing the malt from the final floor and replacing it with that from the younger withering floor which, in turn, was replaced by the working floor and so on, the final result being the replacement of the couch floor by the barley that had been put in the cistern the night before. Therefore when Aldridge came the next morning he found the cistern still full, and assumed it was the same barley that should have been put into the cistern on the morning the notice was given. The officer had no reason to suspect foul play. The case was brought to trial on the basis of allegations from a former employee of Hempath’s, who also alleged that he had conducted the same practice on a further four occasions. The man in question was John Shopland, now a malster and brewing victualler at the Pack Horse located along Lawrence Hill in Bristol. He had worked under Hempath for nearly two and a half years. He claimed that he had been told to disguise the malt on behalf of his master by adding some green corn, while Hempath got the excise officer drunk at his house. However, Shopland’s testimony was unconvincing, primarily due to the fact he had come to court drunk, found it hard to stand, and had trouble talking. Hempath was subsequently found innocent of all charges.21 (p.218) Since the maltster often worked on a Sunday, the officer was expected to make a visit ‘before or after Divine Service, and on all those he has reason to suspect of fraudulent practices’. He also had to ensure that the malster did not conceal cisterns or vessels used for steeping or keeping barley, and use undisclosed rooms used for laying malt. Sometimes an adjoining barn was used or a secret passage was discovered joining the malt-house to another space.22 Alternatively a malster could remove untaxed malt well away from his malthouse. John Moreton, a farmer near Worcester, regularly concealed malt made at his son’s four malt-houses until he was caught in the summer of 1802.23 The excise was forever tinkering with the process and structure of malt production. For example, sprinkling barley with water was a widespread practice, especially in the north and west of the country; by giving it a fresh application of moisture the process was thus aided. However, with the imposition of the malt duty at the beginning of the century, the excise commissioners had detected an increased application of the process and just over a century later in 1802 managed to get it legally banned. The fear was that Page 9 of 30

 

Drink and Food if the barley had been gauged in the couch more barley could be steeped in the officer’s absence, then thrown on the floor, and subsequently brought into line with the legally gauged grain via sprinkling. Alternatively it could be steeped for a shorter spell, therefore not expand as much, and consequently pay less duty. The malting could then return to its normal pace by adding more moisture on the floor. The excise officers surveying Charles Lowe’s malt-house in May 1805 suspected him of practising just such a scheme. On inspecting the floors of malt one of the officers ‘found it had lately received a considerable quantity of water [,] the corn being evidently much wetter than corn six days out of the cistern would have been [,] unless it had been watered after it was taken out of the cistern’. Corn must be dry or nearly so and if there was any ‘sweating’, the texture and appearance of the corn would be different to the feel and look of the corn under examination. This issue over ‘sweating’ was a particularly popular excuse employed by malsters as an explanation for the wet appearance of corn. For Chief Baron Macdonald, however, the argument was ‘childish[,] absurd and ridiculous’. He asked, ‘what is sweating—the term is borrowed from its being like the perspiration of the human body which is heat and a soft moisture arising —if you touch a person in a perspiration you find a gentle warm moisture but you cannot convince a Jury that the wetness from pumping water an hour over a man can possibly be mistaken for him being in a perspiration … We have had that defence often attempted here but it never has succeeded nor can for a moment’. Charles Lowe’s defence was dismissed and he was fined £200.24 The ban on sprinkling in 1802 reveals, as Mathias comments, ‘how a tax upon domestic manufacture at the point of production inevitably involved the taxation (p.219) authority in increasing control of the manufactory process to prevent evasion’. It raised ‘in an inescapable form the problem of general nation-wide regulations having to apply to regional products and manufacturing techniques differing widely, and of necessity, from each other’. In the case of sprinkling, it clearly aided the Hertfordshire malsters who did not sprinkle in the first place. The powerful London brewers, who had the ear of government, were able to force their competitors to compete with them on their terms but without their skills and capital. The uproar from maltsters and brewers (apart from those in London and Hertfordshire) over the sprinkling ban forced the government to repeal it in 1806 when it was once again allowed after a certain number of days.25 The introduction of the malt tax in 1697 is also a good example of how revenue concerns can bring about a new variation of a product and thence change consumption tastes. Oliver Macdonagh has shown that the consequence of this move led the way to porter (a type of beer initially enjoyed by porters). With the duty on malt rising much more than that on hops, there was an incentive to increase the hop rate in beer. At the same time a higher duty had been imposed Page 10 of 30

 

Drink and Food on coal, persuading some malt producers to revert back to the older method of wood or fern-dried malt. The end result was an increase in hop rates and a general reduction in the amount of malt used per barrel of beer. This, Macdonagh claims, led to porter. The story first began with the development of superior beers as more hops per barrel were used. The older, sweeter beer now tended to be termed ale—thus returning to the old beer/ale distinction. The new beer was more stable and had a longer shelf life, which was important at a time when the quantity and quality of most malt made it much less stable. However, the new beer was too acidic for a public accustomed to a sweeter beer and so was mixed with the ale. This blending led to new possibilities in brewing.26 The brewers continued to increase the hop rate which had the effect of stemming the growth of acidifying, and the longer it was left the more palatable its taste got—thereby counteracting the bitter taste. Therefore not only did it last longer than ale, enabling it to travel long distances, but also its taste could be as good if left long enough. It also allowed the use of cheaper and inferior barleys or inexpensive malted barleys, without lowering the alcohol or destroying its flavour. Porter, as it was now termed, used the cheaper wood-dried malt, which lost its initial ‘strong smoking tang’ after nine to twelve months. The product was 25 per cent cheaper than its rival, making it the new foundation of the brewing industry. It was also accompanied by a much larger cask in which to store it known as ‘the Butt’. Because porter needed to wait so long between the brewing and point of sale, it required greater capital. This pushed it toward mass manufacture, spurred on by a much larger market made possible by the increase in shelf life, and the subsequent establishment of large brewing monopolies.27

(p.220) Malt Versus Beer The duties on beer and malt were absolutely fundamental to the well-being of the public finances. They were easy targets since they could take rises more easily than just about any other commodity. In the words of Mathias; ‘Beer, rather than bread, was the commodity whose production made the imposition of such a system of administration feasible and sufficiently lucrative’. In the mid-1730s malt and beer gave Walpole £1.5 million out of total revenue through taxation of approximately £6 million. In 1805 the total revenue from Britain via taxes was £51.2 million; of this the excise provided £22.5 million (of which malt, beer, and hop excises constituted £9.8 million and the spirits excise £5.1 million).28 Many leading commentators, including Adam Smith, believed beer should not be taxed and a single tax on malt would be a much fairer and effective means of raising revenue. Smith calculated that it would raise £2.877 million as opposed to the prevailing figure of £2.596 on both malt and beer. However, the landed interest objected to the proposal for fear that it would have an adverse effect on their rents. Others, who followed the much earlier arguments of Charles DavenPage 11 of 30

 

Drink and Food ant and the general view of the excise commissioners, believed that since fraud was easier within the malting industry revenue would actually suffer. The overwhelming opposition came from farmers, freeholders, and those who lived in substantial households and avoided paying duty because they brewed their own beer. The last category were also a powerful lobby at Westminster and condemned the ‘evils’ of government officers intruding into their homes. Smith scoffed: ‘It has probably been the interest of this superior order of people, however, which has hitherto prevented a change of system that could not fail both to increase the revenue and to relieve the people’. The burden fell on the consumer who drank from the alehouses and inns scattered around the country. Since January 1762 publicans were allowed for the first time to compensate for tax rises by raising the price of their beer. The Act that allowed this also increased the penalty for anyone found mixing his or her beers—a popular ploy by the publican in an attempt to compensate for tax rises.29 Many of the larger members of the brewing industry were against abolishing the excise duties and the licensing system in 1830. The system of allowances under excise regulations was actually quite generous. It favoured the larger brewers and prevented the entry of new competitors who required a large reserve of capital to cope with the tax duties. The larger the brewery the more it benefited from exise allowances. Common brewers were given an allowance of three barrels in twenty-three free of duty for strong and small beer, and two barrels in twenty-two allowance for ale. In London the barrel was defined as holding thirtysix gallons of beer, thirty-two of ale, and thirty-four for vinegar. Conversely in the (p.221) ‘country’—beyond the Bills of Mortality—there was a flat rate of thirtyfour gallons measure to a barrel for all malt liquors. The large production of the common brewer was supposed to fall victim to more waste than that of the smaller, predominantly country brewers, and hence they gained more in allowances. In actuality the larger breweries were more efficient, had better technology, and suffered a great deal less in waste than smaller rivals. Everyone knew, in fact, that it was a policy of encouraging the success of the larger common brewer so as to make the task of revenue collection much easier.30 Beer was privileged at the expense of ale because of the capital tied up in the several months it was stored in London, whereas in the country the brewers normally sent out their ale (hopped malt liquor) much younger and therefore did not have excise payments locked up in storage to the same degree. Not surprisingly the country brewers continued to get more annoyed at the stark discrepancies—especially as the London production continued to move further from ale to ‘mild beer’. A complaint sent and supported by the Treasury in 1715 attacked the whole system of allowances. It argued that the public revenue was damaged and the system encouraged a monopoly of large brewers, who worked their strong beer upon stillings that prevented the waste of either drink or yeast. The Board of Excise replied by emphasizing the administrative advantages of its policy, that it was not just for waste but also to encourage practical entries and Page 12 of 30

 

Drink and Food the payment of weekly duties. The excise commissioners also knew that the allowance was the only means they had to stem the rise of home brewers who were not taxed. The Treasury Lords were subsequently satisfied by these explanations, leaving the country brewers totally isolated. Finally, in February 1768 these brewers at last managed to unite and form a common front to create a powerful lobbying group that culminated in a petition from nineteen counties. This time their complaint got as far as the House of Commons before being rejected. As a group they continued to grow and eventually, by the early 1800s, they were put on the same footing as the large London brewers.31 The beer duty was eventually repealed in 1830 and the result was a radical increase in the consumption of the product. Since the duty on beer was now levied indirectly through the duty on malt, the use of substitutes for malt was strictly prohibited, until 1847 when duty-paid sugar was allowed instead of malt in order to encourage its use as a substitute for barley. The primary reason for this was a scarcity in food and thus the need for more barley for human consumption.32

Surveying Hops Duty on hops, as we have seen, was also a source of excise revenue. Since it was a seasonal item, a great number of temporary officers were created for about six to (p.222) eight weeks of the year. The officer surveyed every planter once a day from the time the entry was made till the crop was picked. He resumed his survey on receiving notice from the planter that bagging, casking, or weighing was about to begin—specifying the day and precise hour he intended to start. This had to be done with at least twenty-four hours’ notice in the first week, and forty-eight hours’ before such bagging and weighing began in the second week. The officer had to ensure that the scales were properly balanced and that the weights were just. As such he would frequently change the ends and put weights sometimes in one Scale, and sometimes into the other scale, that he is not imposed upon by a false Beam; and he must not, on any Pretence, use Stones, &c. for Weights, because the Law obliges all Planters to provide just Weights and Scales; and when the Officer is obliged to weigh by Stilliards, he must try them by some known Weight, if he can easily procure one, or not fail to use such other Cautions as are necessary to prevent an Imposition, and always be very punctual in weighing each Bag or Cask; because no Custom of a Country is to be any Plea for allowing a Pound or two at each Draught.33 Once the pocket or bag had been weighed and the tare deducted (one pound in every ten) with the aid of a calculating table, the officer entered the number of the pocket or bag and its gross and net weight in his ledger book. He then marked the number, net weight, and year on each pocket and bag, and with his special rush he made some black strokes across the sewing at the top of the bag Page 13 of 30

 

Drink and Food and at the bottom. This was intended to prevent fraudulent hop planters adding more to the bag. If the hops were casked then the casks also had to be weighed, given a number, and the tare marked on it with ink. The tare of the cask was then deducted from the weight of the hops.34 The excise from hops was never a lucrative or important source of revenue. It was first introduced in June 1711 at a rate of 1d. per pound and rose to 1½d. per pound after 1778. It reached a peak in 1801 due to war expenses reaching 2½d. per pound before being reduced to 2d. per pound in 1806. Nonetheless, the tax, once again, made a significant impact on the hop industry, putting approximately 20s. on a hundredweight of hops and increasing the capital required for those holding hop stocks. However, it should be noted that increased rates of tax on hops did not affect demand that much, since brewers’ requirements were conditioned primarily by other costs. The average revenue raised from hops up to 1779 was about £75,000 per year although this was subject to harvest variations—it did, in fact, alternate from a low of £6,800 in 1726 to a peak of £118,500 in 1765. The duty for hops was eventually commuted in 1862 and replaced by an increase in the rate of the brewer’s licence.35

(p.223) At The Distillery The distillery, claimed Leadbetter, ‘is the very Apex, or highest Pitch that can be aimed at by man in Gauging; for it is not only required that he should be very expert in Gauging, but also in the manner of Book-keeping, and making up the Accoumpts; which is more difficult than any other Branch of this Art’. The distiller could produce liquor from 3 a.m. to 9 p.m. at night between 25 March and 29 September, and from 5 a.m. to 8 p.m. for the rest of the year.36 Between 1690 and 1784 the spirits tax was levied in two ways. A tax was put first on the product after first distillation (low wines), and, secondly, on the final product (spirits). This double tax was changed in 1784 when it switched to targeting the earlier process of manufacture on the ‘wash’ (just before distillation). The excise on the distillation of spirits rose more times during the eighteenth century than any other good. The percentage of excise revenue for spirits was only about 3 in 1723 but by 1820 it was 10; this was despite the fact that the quality of production had not risen much. Like malt, spirits were particularly targeted in the early nineteenth century. S. E. Fine sums up the situation: ‘The underlying tendency in the excise legislation of the first half of the nineteenth century was to remove the tax from the other inland manufactures and concentrate on the revenue from spirits and malt’.37 The first process of distillation involved the mixing of grain and malt within a large vessel of water along with certain other ingredients. This was known as the ‘mash-tub’ which had the purpose of soaking the corn in water to trigger fermentation. The next step was to strain, or as it was then commonly termed ‘rack-off’, the liquid into another container called the ‘under-back’ where it was cooled down. The term ‘back’ meant a vessel in which liquors, in their different Page 14 of 30

 

Drink and Food stages, were from time to time placed and removed. Further, since space— especially in London—was so expensive, a great deal of the apparatus was placed upon different floors or in different rooms divided by brick walls. Thus the liquid was frequently transported through pipes. This last development led to the distiller not infrequently concealing pipes ‘both to supply additional wash, and to carry off the extra Produce of Spirits’.38 From the ‘under-back’ it was pumped up into ‘coolers’—vessels with a large surface area and shallow depth to ensure that the liquid was exposed to the air. From this point it was carried by a pipe to a ‘wash-back’ (a tub which turned the liquid into ‘wort’). Other materials were then added to the wort to put it into a state of fermentation ready for distillation, and it was at this point that the excise officer did his gauging. He first noted the quantity of wash and then made a revenue charge on the basis of how much spirits would be distilled from it, it (p.224) ‘having been found by certain experience that a certain number of gallons of wash will produce a certain number of gallons of spirit’. During the winter the proportion was one gallon out of six and in the summer it was one gallon out of seven due to greater evaporation. A committee looking at illicit practices in 1783 claimed, ‘the Calculation adopted is much below the actual Produce of the Distillery; but the Standard being thus fixed, all check upon Fraud, by a Gauge of the Spirits extracted, is taken away; and this has also encouraged the fraudulent Distiller to introduce clandestinely large additional Quantities of Wash’.39 Due to the extensive fraudulent activities of the distiller the officer had to be particularly vigilant and would therefore frequently gauge the still and washback. If the distiller pumped up wash into the still without the presence of an excise officer he would be liable during the 1780s to a penalty of £500, and if he obstructed the officer making a gauge he could be liable to a similar fine. Further penalties were inflicted for keeping a private cock through which wash could be secretly conveyed from the backs into a still.40 As with all excise products the officer had to map the distillery. The 1825 Spirit Act legislated the following detailed instructions: together with every such Account there shall be delivered a Drawing or Drawings, or Description or Descriptions, distinctly showing the Course, Direction, Construction and Use of all fixed Pipes to be used by any Distiller, Rectifier or Compounder, and of all and every Branch and Branches thereof, and of all and every Cock and Cocks therein, together with every Place, Vessel or Utensil, from or to with which any such Pipe should lead or communicate; and every Pipe to be used by such Distiller, Rectifier or Compounder … shall be so fixed and placed as to be capable of being inspected and examined by the Officer for and through the whole of

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Drink and Food its Length or Course, and shall be painted and kept painted as hereafter mentioned. The pipe carrying wort or wash had to be red; that carrying low wines or feints had to be blue; spirits had to travel along white pipes and water through black. All other pipes could be whatever colour the distiller fancied. This strict set of stipulations again reveals the extent to which the excise went in organizing the space of the distillery. If the officer suspected any distiller was evading these regulations, he was allowed—night or day—to break up the ground and walls of the distillery and search for illicit pipes. In Ireland the restrictions were, if anything, even stricter. One commentator observed in 1830, ‘the determination of the form and measurement of the apparatus by which it is produced constitutes a part of the law of the realm; and the whole process is embarrassed by legislative restrictions of such a nature as to prevent the likelihood of improvement’.41 (p.225) The excise officer would creep into the still house first thing in the morning to check and see if amy work was under way. The time of each survey was carefully written in a minute-paper and deposited with the distiller. He was expected to record all the washbacks that belonged to the distiller and the results of gauging the wash in the backs. He did the latter by taking the dry inches with the assistance of a set of specified tables for the task. As well as measuring the quantity he also had to observe the quality of the wash and low wines. To do this he used a viol to estimate what materials were actually in the wash. If it was a brewer’s wash or tilts he put a ‘B’ next to his gauge, if it was for cyder or perry he put a ‘C’ if it was for malt he would put a ‘G’, and if for molasses an. ‘M’, etc.42 The war with France during the 1690s prohibited trade with that country, and culminated in a great reduction of legal brandy and wine. The government quickly acted by encouraging the domestic distillery industry. From 1690 the government increased the duty on imported spirits and allowed anyone to distil and sell it. The policy of protection and nurturing domestic industry (to be excised) here quickly paid big dividends. The result was an avalanche in the consumption of domestic spirits with production quadrupling between 1684 and 1714. This was also aided by the large increase in duties on beer and malt that doubled between 1688 and 1710, causing people to look to alternative intoxicating liquids. The consumption of the now relatively cheap array of domestic spirits available quickly increased, and became a national favourite with a significant section of the population.43 In 1696 an attempt was made to enforce all distillers to draw their low wines, brandy, or spirits in the first extraction entirely from malted grain. In other words, the government was specifying what materials could be used in the production process. The distillers were allowed a drawback of threepence per Page 16 of 30

 

Drink and Food gallon on exportation. Two years later in 1698 it was further ruled that a. distiller had. till February that year to demolish any concealed stills, backs, or other vessels, and any private pipes, stopcocks, holes in the washback, and any secret warehouses. If he did not, and was caught, he would be fined £100.44 Legally defining the manufacturing process only went on to create new fraudulent activities, which then went on to inform new revenue legislation; the whole process was a vicious circle. In 1699 it was discovered that any quantity of wash made of molasses would, upon distillation, produce a quarter part of the same quantity into low wines or spirits of the first extraction; and two-thirds of the quantity of the same low wines or spirits into proof spirits or spirits of the second extraction. And since it had been found that distillers concealed large quantities of these low wines and spirits before the gauger had charged duty, the (p.226) officers were ordered to keep an account of all molasses wash found in the hands of any distiller. If they found any decrease they were to charge the distiller with so much low wines of the first extraction (a quarter part); spirits of the second extraction were charged at two-thirds of the low wines or spirits of the first extraction, A similar move was made in 1705 regarding the quantity of wash made of drink fermented from malted grain.45 Despite continual legislative tinkering and adjustments in excise policy, the illegal distilling of spirits continued throughout this and the following century. The case of The Crown v. Mr Hannerford of Liverpool in 1781 was not untypical. The local excise officer, Luke Needham, suspected ‘wrong-doings’ at Bannerford’s premises and reported his hunch to the mayor who gave him a warrant to search the said building. Shortly thereafter Needham turned up, accompanied by a constable and ‘some gentlemen to assist me’, and proceeded to search the building. Needham told the court that they ‘found a Copper or a boiler and close to that a warm tub of a peculiar construction for there was a globular vessel resting upon the warm which answered the purpose of a Still’. He described this globular vessel as a ‘very ingenious contrivance’: a globe some 51 inches in circumference with a tube approximately 6 inches in diameter protruding out of its side and running into the copper. This copper was covered with a wooden cover and cemented around with a ‘kind of white mortar’. Dripping from the warm was a molasses spirit and to the left was a cask tucked in between the warm-tub and the wall. Needham went over to the cask and found it contained about sixteen gallons of molasses spirits. Next door to this room he found two unregistered cellars, which together held about 800 gallons of wash in fermentation. Mr Hannerford was subsequently found guilty of defrauding the crown’s revenue and fined.46 The rectifier, whose work was to reduce spirits, commonly took advantage of a major legal loophole. The committee investigating illicit practices reported in 1783:

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Drink and Food The Laws allow the Rectifiers to reduce the Spirits, by such Mixture of Water as may accommodate them to the Orders of their Customers; by Means of this Indulgence, and under Pretence of rectifying Spirits so reduced, the Water is afterwards separated, and the Deficiency made up by introducing Spirits which have been fraudulently obtained. But as there is no legal fixed standard of strength, in reference to the Duty, there is no Power to take Cognizance of the Alteration produced; and consequently the Rectifier has a Right, after Rectification, to have credit in his stock for the same Number of Gallons of Spirits as were put into the Still, although, by this Operation, it may have been reduced Two Thirds in Quantity, and increased as much in Quality. The revenue further suffered from the high level of spirits imported from Scotland where they paid only half the duty on malt which was paid in England. (p.227) Indeed they paid only half the duty imposed upon their malt compared to England.47 The second report of the above committee underlined another problem; namely, the fact that revenue officers ‘have no Authority to ascertain the strength of British spirits by the Hydrometer, or otherwise, so as to insert the strength thus ascertained in their Accounts of Stock, and in Permits’. In their third report they recorded that excise officers should be allowed to view a distillery at night as well as by day—‘even without the Presence of a Constable, or other Officer of the Peace’. They further advised that the penalty should be increased for a distiller found using an unentered room or utensil, and be considered a felony if the distiller made counterfeit keys or seals to any of the locks or fastenings used on his utensils. As well as various other recommendations they also suggested ‘That no Distiller, Rectifier, Compounder, or Dealer in Spirits, shall be allowed (under a Penalty of Forfeiture) to reduce, even in the Sight of the officer, his British Spirits in Stock to a lower Strength or Quality than Hydrometer Proof.— And lastly, that Officers of Excise should by Law be empowered to take Account of the Strength of British Spirits in the Stocks of Distillers, and put weights sometimes in one Scale, and sometimes into the other scale, that he is not imposed upon by a false Beam; and he must not, on any Pretence, use Stones, &c. for Weights, because the Law obliges all Planters to provide just Weights and Scales; and when the Officer is obliged to weigh by Stilliards, he must try them by some known Weight, if he can easily procure one, or not fail to use such other Cautions as are necessary to prevent an Imposition, and always be very punctual in weighing each Bag or Cask; because no Custom of a Country is to be any Plea for allowing a Pound or two at each Draught.33c. by the Hydrometer or otherwise, and to express the same, as well as the Kinds and Qualities thereof, in Permits granted for their Removal’. Measuring spirit density by ‘Clarke’s hydrometer’ became law in 1787.48

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Drink and Food The fact anyone could set up a distillery as long as they gave ten days’ notice to the excise had greatly helped its diffusion (this was in direct contrast to the tight regulations for the establishment of inns and alehouses). As spirit consumption, along with revenue returns, rapidly increased during the first half of the eighteenth century, it was simultaneously accompanied by widespread fears that much of the population was permanently drunk, morally imploding, and incapable of work. The environment was made even better for consumers by the relatively recent marketing of raw spirit redistilled with juniper berries to produce a drink called Hollands or Geneva. Although not an. instant success its sweet vapour gradually seduced much of the populace, and it rapidly became established as a common and inexpensive way of getting drunk. London, in particular, witnessed an exponential growth of gin or dram shops. The well-to-do classes, the Distillers Company, and the London Brewers all looked on in horror as they witnessed the invasion of this drink. Mother Gin was now perceived to be the root problem of many of society’s social ills.49 An attempt was made in 1729 to render the sale of gin illegal, but the Act was so poorly worded that the spirit was simply renamed ‘Parliament Brandy’. From 1733 (p.228) it was made illegal for any person to hawk or sell brandy and strong waters from a wheelbarrow; upon a ship or other vessel, a shed or stall. Anyone caught doing so would be fined a penalty of £10 on the spot and, if convicted, sent to a house of correction for two months. In short, they could only be sold from an official dwelling.50 A further effort was made to wean the spirit-swilling masses off hard drink in 1736, when Sir Joseph Jekyll brought in a Bill designed to prevent them purchasing the drink, by putting an additional duty of 20 shillings on a gallon of spirits and demanding a licence fee of £50 to be charged to the retailer. Parliamentary opposition to the Bill was fairly meagre, though Walpole—also with one eye on the reduction it could make to the revenue—predicted that such a scheme was far too drastic and would lead to trouble. It was not long before his concerns proved right. The Act coincided with anti-Irish riots in east London over weaving jobs; the English weavers protested that Irish cheap labour was undermining their livelihoods. A crowd of between one and two thousand people attacked public houses owned by Irishmen. The riots spread elsewhere in London and despite the arrival of a pitiful fifty guardsmen and the introduction of the Riot Act, they continued unabated. It was within this context that the Gin Act was passed, only to backfire as it quickly became included as one of the weavers’ additional concerns.51 So widespread was the evasion of the Act that no means were found adequate to police it. Revenue traditionally raised through spirits dramatically dropped. The number of licensed houses almost disappeared since no proprietor could possibly sell gin at the legal rate when it could be had round the corner at a fraction of the price. Despite some 1,600 people convicted over six years of Page 19 of 30

 

Drink and Food lucrative evasion, the avoidance continued to flourish. Illicit distilling was particularly noticeable near Kingswood Forest, where upon finding themselves detected by excise officers, a crowd of about a thousand men, women, and boys gathered to ensure that the authorities took no action. A meagre twenty soldiers were rushed to the area and told to accompany the officers on their rounds. Not surprisingly another Bill was introduced in 1743 that reversed the Act. It was now proposed that the duty should be reduced by threepence a gallon, and the licence reduced to £1, while the duty paid by the distillers would remain as before. The idea was for more vendors to take out a licence, the price of spirit to be sold at the same amount, and hopefully for revenue to pick up. The spirit duty was increased in 1746 and again a few years later in 1751 with new legislation that particularly targeted gin.52 No one remained immune from the illicit activities of domestic distillers and smugglers of foreign spirits and wine. Thomas Jackson, the butler of the very respectable Philip Yorke, third earl of Hardwicke, exploited the relative isolation (p.229) of his master’s stately home situated in the gentle countryside around Royston in Cambridgeshire. Under the nose of his master, Jackson ran a very lucrative trade in illicit ram, brandy, and gin. He took advantage of the thirsty farmers in the vicinity and built up a lucrative network of customers. It seems that Jackson, supposedly without the knowledge of Hardwicke, was receiving large quantities of spirits and wine by the London wagon and storing it in two of his master’s large cool cellars. The prosecuting attorney was outraged and told the court: ‘You must see that this leads not only to the greatest inconvenience to the Revenue because it affords the protection of the house of a very respectable nobleman to transactions of this nature but in truth it exposes the Master to very considerable inconvenience because the Master is responsible for the conduct of his servant and therefore he was exposing my Lord Hardwicke to risk by this practice’. Hardwicke was mortified ‘that his house was turned into a spirit and wine shop’. No doubt the whole dreadful incident was wiped from his mind a year later when he took over from his uncle as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1801– 6).53 The log books of Joshua Pritchard, an excise officer in Manchester between 1831 and 1835, reveal that the illicit production of spirits remained rife in England during the nineteenth century. Mary Sherry, for example, was apprehended in May 1834 for running a private still in a house in Wellington Court off Bengal Street, and was fined £30 or the choice of spending three months in New Baily Prison. Pritchard claimed that this particular part of Manchester was notorious for private distillers: ‘the neighbourhood in which the concern was carried on being inhabited by the lower order of Irish and who flocked around us, we [Pritchard and three officers from the Manchester Police] to prevent a rescue destroyed all the concern, namely one tin still, 1 tin crown, 3 tubs and about 30 Page 20 of 30

 

Drink and Food gallons of wash’. Such was the tense atmosphere generated by the hostility of the local community that Pritchard and the police officers had to use all their cunning to successfully get their prisoner out of the area: ‘There being a watch on the lookout, we to prevent us being seen went by coach to the place, and being but few of us we sent the prisoner back by the same to New Baily Salford accompanied by one of the police while I and the other destroyed’ the illicit distillery.54 On another occasion Pritchard went to New Islington on information that a certain Mary Craiton operated a private still. Again he was apprehensive about the area, once more being composed of a ‘No. of lower of Irish and others of base dangerous character’. He went accompanied by officers from the Manchester police and arrested Craiton along with two others. In order ‘to prevent them being rescued’, he recorded, ‘I sent them to the lockups accompanied by part of the police while 1 and the others destroyed the concern’. At one time Pritchard was (p.230) forced to draw his sword as a mob assembled, trying to rescue a number of illicit distillers he had arrested. Pritchard was annoyed by the events, particularly, since the distillery was somewhat distant from his usual round. The mob had immediately gathered with the intent of rescuing the prisoners ‘commenced a kind of howl its meaning well known to be intended to create a breach of the peace’. Pritchard was lobbying for some form of compensation for his additional duty.55 A great many of Pritchard’s arrests were women whom he described as of the lower order of Irish’, probably also involved in prostitution. Take, for instance, the case of Ann Campbell whom he apprehended along with three other women. Since the handcuffs used on them were too large they were forced to use ‘Handkerchiefs to assist in securing them’. As soon as they left the house they were rushed at on one side by a mob of women and on the other side by a number of men. Pritchard was dumbfounded, ‘we not liking to use violence to the women they continued in a heap together and Mary Lynch [one of the three women working with Ann Campbell] was rescued from us before we were aware of her escape’. The mob continued to follow them and grew in size as it recruited more people along the way. It was not until the police started calling some of them by their names, coupled with the appearance of the officer’s cutlasses and pistols, that they stopped and turned back.56

Surveying Tea, Coffee, And Chocolate Exotic commodities such as tea, coffee, tobacco, chocolate, and sugar exploded onto the scene in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Colonial and commercial expansion provided the impetus to the exponential growth in the addiction to and market for such narcotic products. All these goods were initially praised as having medicinal qualities, and to begin with were very much confined to the palates of the rich landed and merchant ranks. It was only when

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Drink and Food they started to filter down the social ranks that complaints began to flow concerning their impact on the health and morality of the people. A mere century after its introduction during the Restoration, tea had become the most highly taxed and consumed hot drink of the people. Its diffusion was originally fuelled by the appearance of the coffee houses that sprang up all over London during the late seventeenth century. Indeed these places were crucial for the initial spread of all the new exotic goods such as chocolate, tobacco, sugar, and, of course, coffee itself. The revenue from coffee increased from £14,290 in 1723 to £60,131 in 1733, and the revenue from tea from £102,665 to £120,332. In addition, chocolate generated some £11,470 more in revenue in 1733 than it had done ten years earlier.57 Perhaps the most important of these exotic goods was (p.231) sugar since it was a vital ingredient in making the rest palatable to British tastes, In 1660 the English consumed roughly two pounds of sugar per person per year, but by the 1790s this had increased to something like twenty pounds. Its huge expansion also coincided with the equally large growth in tea and coffee consumption.58 Duty on tea was first assessed in liquid form. Under an Act brought out under the Restoration Settlement the duty on liquid tea was eightpence per gallon and rose to two shillings per gallon in 1670. It had to therefore be made in bulk and await the exciseman’s gauging rod before it could be sold. It would slowly cool and mature in barrels, before being finally cleansed and reheated for the consumer. The considerable expense of continually regauging triggered a change in the method of taking the duty, and in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution in 1689 dry leaf was substituted with a tax levied at five shillings per pound. The new duty would now be paid at the Custom House.59 Since the East India Company had a monopoly, the process soon shifted to bonded warehouses, where duties were collected if the tea was going to be pumped into the domestic market.60 Adulteration of tea was a problem from the start. Many of the damaged teas that found their way to Britain were mixed with sloe leaves and other tree and plant leaves. By the mid-1720s the damage being done through adulteration was politically recognized, not because of people’s health, but because it meant lost revenue.61 English trees and hedgerows had provided an effective imitation of Chinese tea, while recycling used tea leaves also proved a lucrative business. The latter would be mixed with a chemical like Japonica or substances such as sugar, molasses, clay, and logwood, to bring back the original colour and astringency. The Revenue Act of 1724 made such practices punishable by a fine of £100. An additional fine of £10 was added to dealers and retailers in 1730 if they were found selling such a product, A third Tea Act was introduced in 1776, which stated ‘such evil practices’ had ‘increased to a very great degree, to the injury and destruction of great quantities of timber, woods and Underwood’. Ash and elder leaves, along with traditional sloe leaves had, it seems, been Page 22 of 30

 

Drink and Food mercilessly targeted. Manufacturers, dealers, retailers, and persons found with more than six pounds in their possession, were now fined £5 per hundredweight. A popular variety was known (p.232) as ‘smouch, which was composed of ‘ash leaves dried in the sun, baked, trodden on a dirty floor, then sifted and “steeped in copperas with sheep’s dung”’.62 Duty on coffee was paid either by the dealer upon his importing it, or by giving a bond to store it in a warehouse in the West India docks under the locks of the excise. The trader had fifteen months to make up his mind whether he would reexport it or sell it within the home market (and therefore pay duty). For dealers in coffee, tea, and chocolate the officer had to number all the large canisters, bags, boxes, tubs, and assign a column in his book to each one. At the top of the page he entered the numbers, depths, and the contents of the container in pounds; and the dimensions of the round canisters, bags, tubs, and casks as well as the sides of the square or oblong canisters and chests. If an officer found any of these vessels broken open and any part taken out, he had to make the surface of the remainder even and take the inches that the vessels required to be full.This enabled him to afterwards judge if any fraudulent increase had been made.63 Every keeper of coffee and chocolate houses, makers of chocolate, and sellers of coffee, tea, or chocolate had to enter the totals each night of all the small quantities that had been sold that day. A permit was also required for all stock (if over six pounds) to accompany the commodity wherever it went—failure to obtain one resulted in the good being seized. Sellers or dealers in these products also had to make an entry of the number of warehouses, storehouses, rooms, or shops they used.64 Not surprisingly the trader would attempt to prevent the excise officer making a just account of his stock of coffee by putting a weight in a bag of coffee that was stamped with duty paid. In the past, traders had tried to abuse the process of weighing by simply using false weights and scales, but they now ‘stuffed their bags with iron and lead and all sorts of things and therefore the [new] act forbids that putting in any heavy body to fill up the weight’. The trader would otherwise be charged a fine of £100.65 Another common fraud was the retail of items that were not what they purported to be. William Savage, a shopkeeper in Holborn, had 188 pounds of a product seized because it was not legally coffee’, although he was selling it, like many other retailers, as ‘British Coffee’. Prior to a recent Act, ‘British Coffee’ was legally sold as a product of burnt peas and beans. Such was its popularity that it had begun to seriously impinge upon the market for ‘real’ coffee. As a result the revenue generated from coffee was being expensively undermined, forcing the government to step in and legislate against imitation products. At the trial, the prosecuting attorney claimed, ‘I do not know what it is that is to constitute an imitation or resemblance of coffee if this does not do it’. He further added, ‘The appearance of a thing must exhibit itself to your senses. Coffee exhibits itself to Page 23 of 30

 

Drink and Food different senses—to your eye—to your nose—to your palate—if you will take the trouble of looking at this and of tasting it you will find it imitation coffee in all those respects not the fine flavour of coffee but it looks and smells and tastes like (p.233) coffee and if that does not constitute a resemblance and imitation of it I do not know what does’. In Savage’s defence, a Mr Raine argued, ‘you must before you can convict the defendant be satisfied that this is meant to resemble coffee—that it is a commodity made in imitation of coffee—and that it is meant to be sold to the customers that come to his shop as and for that commodity’. Raine dismissed any possibility that the article actually resembled coffee in any way. ‘I am quite sure’, he told the jury, ‘you won’t arrive at this conclusion because it is too monstrous for any man to contend that an honest manufacturer shall not fairly reap the fruits of his own ingredients and industry—and no fraud was intended in manufacturing an article which shall provide the poor with a wholesome and nutritious beverage at a cheap rate’. In other words Savage was actually providing a public service. Raine further argued: ‘Coffee of the worst description will not sell for less than four pence an ounce and this is sold for a penny’. He pleaded, ‘we are fighting here at fearful odds. The Revenue officers come and sweep away every ounce of this property that is in my shop and if because I do not like to tell in public what this is made of I acquiesce[.] I lose all my commodity it is all swept away by the Excise officer’. If the manufacturer revealed the ingredients of his commodity he would lose his livelihood. Raine made great play on this traditional critique of the excise: ‘If … in making my defence I tell you what it is made of you get out my art and mystery and every other shop keeper wil make it as well as I—and then I lose against part of my fair honourable and honest custom’. Raine again reiterated the welfare the defendant was supplying to the poor. ‘It is nothing more nor less than marrow fat peas prepared in a particular way and a very wholesome beverage it is’. Indeed, even the government thought as much: ‘peas were recommended by the legislative in the scarcity of bread as a mixture and they would not have been recommended by the legislative if they had been convinced they were a good wholesome article’. If a product was manufactured that provided ‘a cheap breakfast for the poor surely we may be allowed to do it without doing it at the risk of all this forfeiture and penalties’. The jury agreed and found the defendant not guilty.66 However, Ralph Beadley, a tea and coffee dealer, was not so lucky, and in February 1819 he was found guilty of selling ‘imitative’ coffee and tea. So too was the supplier he bought it from, Thomas Bachelor of Bethnal Green. The product in question was a mixture of ash, sloe, elm leaves, and old used tea. The prosecuting attorney told the court,

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Drink and Food Now to be sure we know there are a great mam persons who will go about London and buy old clothes and old glass and old paper but I never before the cases we have lately had heard of old tea leaves being collected but they are collected at Coffee Houses and Tea Gardens and of families and it may be a good thing for the servants in our families to collect the tea (p. 234) leaves instead of throwing them away among the dirt of the house— but when they are collected they are dried together with the elm leaves and so on … generally they are mixed with an article called. Dutch pink and Prussian blue [mixed together to produce green] … and then it arrives so nearly at the appearance of tea as to deceive the eye unless it is a very accurate one.67 Far less problematic was chocolate. The excise officer would arrive at the site of manufacture and enter the number of ‘Stones’ (a unit of chocolate) being made. From each stone the manufacturer could expect twelve or fourteen pounds of chocolate. It was important that the officer noted the number of pounds that had been put in the pans or moulds since his last survey and from this make the charge. The officer also had to keep a close eye on the ratio between the maker’s stock of cocoa beans and the amount of chocolate made. Every six weeks the chocolate maker had to give under oath the weight of all the chocolate he had made, before the product was finally tied up and stamped by the excise super-visor.68 Notes:

(1) C. Leadbetter, The Royal Gauger; Or, Gauging made Easy, As it is actually practised by the Officers of his Majesty’s Revenue of Excise. In two Parts (London, 1739; 2nd edn., 1743), p. vi (all references are to the 2nd edn. unless otherwise stated). Leadbetter was aided in this edition by the tough excise ‘methodizer’ sent to Scotland in 1707, John Downer. In the 3rd edn. help was provided by Joseph Bosley, the general surveyor of the London Distillery, while later editions were augmented and improved by the excise employee Samuel Clark. Much the same constitutional sentiments, almost to the word, appear in Henry Crouch’s opening remarks in his A Complete View of the British Customs (1737; London; 3rd edn., 1738), pp. v-vi. C. Davenant’s comments are in his Discourses on the Public Revenues, and on the Trade of England in Two Parts (London, 1698), 215. (2) E. R. Wood, ‘Charles Leadbetter, Teacher of the Mathematic’ (1967), CEMS 25000/296. To makeup some of the £50 income Leadbetter lost by his dismissal from the excise, he became established as a teacher of mathematics at the Hand and Pen located in Cock Lane close to the Thames in Shoreditch. By the late 1720s he had. become well known as a teacher to gentlemen, and. his fame was secured by the publication of his A Compleat System of Astronomy in 1728. As in the gauging of planetary movement, calculating tables were an important tool in the measurement of goods. Indeed, Leadbetter made the links explicit in his The Page 25 of 30

 

Drink and Food Royal Gauger, although due to the frequent mistakes made in printing, he advised the use of a sliding rule (as he also did in astronomy) as opposed to mathematical tables to make calculations. For the relationship between calculating tables, business, and astronomy see W. J. Ashworth, ‘The Calculating Eye: Baily, Herschel, Babbage and the Business of Astronomy’, BJHS 27 (1994), 409–68. (3) P. Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England 1700–1830 (Cambridge, 1959), pp. xxii–xxv; P. Mathias and P. O’Brien, ‘Taxation in Britain and France, 1715– 1810’, JEEH 5 (1976), 601–40, on 618–19. It should be noted that with the universal adoption of hops in the brewing process during the 17th cent. the terms ‘beer’ and ‘ale’ became fairly interchangeable; see O. Macdonagh, ‘The Origins of Porter’, EcHR, NS 16 (1964), 530–5, on 531. (4) Mathias Brewing Industry, 339–40. (5) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger (2nd edn., 1743), 240, and (7th edn., 1776), 262. Earlier in 1718 the Treasury had got wind that alehouse keepers had been adding molasses to convert beer into strong beer. The excise commissioners, with their extensive knowledge of brewing practices, told them that such a technique was rather to give the beer ‘a colour and firmness than add strength to such dark as sometimes may prove too pale’; Treasury to Excise, 18 July 1718, and Excise to Treasury, 13 Mar. 1718, PRO CUST 48/11. (6) Mathias, Brewing Industry, 346 and 352. (7) The Crown v. John Ellis and another, 23 May 1806, PRO CUST 103/60. See also The Crown v. William Lockwood the younger, 27 June 1842, PRO CUST/153; (8) The Crown v. Douglas Thompson and another, June 1819, PRO CUST/102. (9) ‘First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1783), HCSP 38.15–16. For an early account of beer frauds see a report by Anthony Barnaby, Excise to Treasury, n.d. probably June 1697, PRO CUST 48/6. (10) Mathias, Brewing Industry, pp. xviii, 352, and 405. (11) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 123–31 and 168–71; Instructions for the Officers in the London Brewery (London, 1731), 39. (12) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 131–2. (13) The Crown v. William Smiting, 25 May 1802, PRO CUST 103/51. (14) Ibid.

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Drink and Food (15) Instructions for the Officers who Survey Maltsters in London (London, 1731), 31; Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 253; Mathias, Brewing Industry, 355; S. E. Fine, ‘Production and the Excise in England, 1643– 1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 238. (16) Leadbelter, Royal Gauger, 253; Instructions for Officers who survey Maltsters and Cider Dealers in the Country (London, 1787), 10–11 and 15–16. (17) Leadbetter, Royal danger, 254–5; Mathias, The Brewing Industry, 407. For a list of penalties and forfeitures relating to malt sec CUL Ch(H) 38/6, n.d. probably 1720s. See also Instructions for the Officers who Survey Malsters in London, 81–6, and Instructions for Officers who survey Maltsters and Cider Dealers in the Country, 5. (18) Excise to Treasury, 13 fan. 1717[18], PRO CUST 48/11; Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 255. (19) Excise to Treasury, 9 Nov. 1717, CUL Ch(H) 41/2/2; Excise to Treasury, 9 Nov. 1717, PRO CUST 48/11. (20) Excise to Treasury, 7 Dec. 1719, CUL Ch(H) 41/2. (21) The Crown v. William Hempath, 2 June 1803, PRO CUST 103/53. For an example of a successful conviction see The Crown v. John Dyer, a malster in Deptford, 1 Dec. 1803, PRO CUST 103/54. This type of fraud is highlighted in the official instructions given to officer’s gauging malt; see Instructions for Officers who survey Maltsters and Cider Dealers, 12–13. (22) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 255. (23) The Crown v. John Moreton, 2 Dec. 1803, PRO CUST 103/54. (24) The Crown v. Charles Lowe, 18 Feb. 1806, PRO CUST 103/60. (25) Mathias, Brewing Industry, 409–10. (26) Macdonagh, ‘Origins of Porter’, 531–2. (27) Ibid. 533–5. (28) Mathias, Brewing Industry, 356–7; J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth in Eighteenth-Century England’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 43 (1990), 377–403, on 394. (29) Mathias, Brewing Industry, 358–60. (30) Ibid. 363–4. (31) Ibid. 364–7. Page 27 of 30

 

Drink and Food (32) H. T. Greenwood, Taxation of Beer: Revenue and literary Associations (Leeds, 1925), 12–15. (33) ‘Memo on the Organisation of the Excise’, 1820, PRO CUST 119/344.; Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 337–8. (34) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 338–9. For a general list of forfeitures relating to hops see CUL Ch(H) 38/11, n.d., probably 1720s. (35) Mathias, Brewing Industry, 357; Greenwood, Taxation of Beer, 15. (36) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 179–81. For administrative purposes the term distillery was also used to cover the duties taken on cider, perry, mead, and vinegar, see J. E. D. Binney, British Public finance and Administration 1774–1792 (Oxford, 1958), 135. (37) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 241. (38) ‘First Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’, 16. (39) ‘First Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’, The Crown v. John Atlee, 16 July 1784, PRO CUST 103/2;. (40) The Crown v. John Atlee. By 1830 the large distillers were gauged in the receiver by a fixed dipping rod marked in inches and tenths of inches; see J. Pacy, The Reminiscences of a Gauger: Imperial Taxation, Past and Present, Compared (Newark, 1873), 103–4. (41) Act of 6 Geo.IV.c.80, sect. 32 and 43. The 1830 commentator is quoted in E. B. McGuire, Irish Whiskey. A History of Distilling, the Spirit Trade and Excise Controls in Ireland (London, 1973), 4. (42) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 264–5 and 284–91. (43) W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640–1799: An Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), 138–9; Beckett and Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth’, 394; P. O’Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 41 (1988), 1–32, on 13. (44) Excise to Treasury, 31 Jan. 1695 [1696], PRO CUST 48/6; Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 269–70. For a general list of penalties and forfeitures upon distilers and dealers in brandy see CUL Ch(H) 38/12, n.d., probably 1720s. (45) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 272. (46) The Crown v. Hannerford, 16 Feb. 1781, PRO CUST 103/2.

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Drink and Food (47) ‘First Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’, 17. (48) ‘Second Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38, 6; ‘Third Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38. 28. For the hydrometer see Ch. 15, below. (49) P. Clark, The English Alehouse: A Social History 1200–1830 (London, 1983), 240–1; B. R. Leftwich, A History of the Excise; with Hints on Investigating Pension Claims (London, 1908), 79–80. (50) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 275–7. (51) I. Gilmour, Riots, Risings, and Revolution: Governance and Violence in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1992), 94. (52) Leftwich, History of the Excise, 80–2. (53) The Attorney-General v. Thomas Jackson, 17 Feb, 1800, PRO CUST. 103/42. (54) Log Books of Joshua Pritchard, Excise Officer of Manchester 1831–5, 17 May 1834, MCL M375/1/1/ 1–4 (1). (55) Log Books of Joshua Pritchard, 17 May 1834, M375/1/1/1–4 (2 and 7). (56) Ibid., M375/1–1/2. (57) For details on revenue from these products between 1723 and 1733 see CUL Ch(H) 27/20a,1733. (58) For the emergence and impact of these goods see S. Mintz, Sweetness and Power (New York, 1985); J. E. Wills, Fun., ‘European Consumption and Asian Production in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, in J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1991), 133– 47; J. Walvin, Fruits of Umpire: Exotic Produce and British Taste 1660–1800 (London, 1997). (59) D. Forrest, Tea for the British: The Social and Economic History of a Famous Trade (London, 1973), 33-4;), Burnett, ‘the History of Food Adulteration in Great Britain in the Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to Bread, Tea and Beer’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 1958), 205. (60) For the role of fiscal policy in the promotion of tea over coffee see S. D. Smith, ‘Accounting for Taste: British Coffee Consumption in Historical Perspective’, J1H 27 (1996), 183–214, esp. 205–6 and 214.

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Drink and Food (61) Forrest, Tea for the British, 55 and 71. References to adulteration can also be found in the summary of penalties and forfeitures relating to coffee, tea, coconuts, and chocolate in CUL (Ch)H 38/13, n.d., probably 1720s. This subject is discussed in depth in Ch. 16, below. (62) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 234–6, (63) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 343. (64) Ibid. 343–4. (65) The Attorney-General v. John Vickary, 10 July 1800, PRO CUST 103/45. (66) The Crown v. William Savage, 12 July 1802, PRO CUST 103/51. See also CUL Ch(H) 38/13 and Ch (H) 27/29, probably 1733. The subject of tea and coffee adulteration is discussed extensively in Ch. 16, below. (67) The Crown v. Ralph Beadley, 18 Feb. 1819, PRO CUST 103/102. (68) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 344–5.

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0014

Abstract and Keywords This chapter begins with a discussion of the taxation of candles. It then discusses the taxation of salt, soap, starch, leather, paper, textiles, and glass. Keywords:   excise tax, taxation, candles

By the Excise laws prescribing the processes of fabrication, the manufacturer cannot manage his trade in the way his skill and expense point out as the best; but he is compelled to conform to such methods of pursuing his art as he finds taught in Acts of Parliament. Henry Parnell, On Financial Reform, (3rd edn., 1831)

At The Candle Maker’s A retired nineteenth-century excise officer grumbled that taxing candles ‘was the most tiresome and trying part of a Gauger’s duty, on account of the early and late hours candle makers worked, both summer and winter’. Manufacturers had to inform their local excise office before beginning a course of candle making and were expected to work according to prescribed hours. All the manufacturing vessels were controlled by crown locks, which meant that the excise officer had to attend early in the morning and late at night in order to unlock and lock up the vessels.1 As candles, at least the tallow variety, gradually evolved to become a necessary item during the eighteenth century, they also became an increasingly useful Page 1 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass source of revenue. The first tax on both dipped and moulded candles commenced in 1710. The superior wax candles paid 4d. per pound while tallow and all other candles paid

d. per pound. The duties were all doubled the

following year and remained at that rate until the period between 1779 and 1782, when wax candles went through three successive increases of 5 per cent. The differentiated rates had the effect of the cheaper spermaceti oil candles taking business away from, and leading to the closure of, a number of wax candle makers. Meanwhile the illegal production of candles increased. The committee examining illicit practices in 1784 argued that the only way to stop the extensive fraudulent activities of the manufacturer was to lower the duties, and increase the duty on spermaceti candles along with properly ensuring that candle manufacturers took out a licence. The candle duty was subsequently levelled in 1784 to

d. for all varieties except the poorer quality tallow candles,

which had their duties raised to

d. per pound. These latter candles dominated

the eighteenth-century market, with the wax variety only being a negligible fraction of the total. A reduction on the tallow (p.236) candles was made in 1792 before all the candle duties were repealed in 1832. Taxing them took a great deal of labour and was problematic for the gauger, since manufacturers were scattered right across the country rather than concentrated in certain districts as with most other excised products.2 Chandlers, or candle makers, were expected to give descriptions of all their premises and various utensils every six weeks. The officer required the manufacturer to personally show him every melting-house, workhouse, warehouse, storehouse, shop, room, kettle, pot, mould, or any other vessel or utensil mentioned. He would then map their positions in his entry book in such a way that his supervisor could easily find them. The foot officer had to visit every chandler in his division at least once every six hours. These visits took place in the morning and as late at night as possible. The foot officer had to arrive within three hours of the time work was intended to commence, while riding officers had to make visits on uncertain days and at times when a declaration for production had been made.3 The official procedure went something like this. The candle maker first stated what sort of candles he intended to make and sent a notice to the local excise officer outlining all the accompanying details: weight to the pound, the number of ‘rods’, and the number of candles upon each rod. For example, the details ‘L08..I80..20’, indicated to the officer that the candle maker was going to make candles that were long and 8 to the pound, with 180 rods each having 20 candles. It was common practice to ‘under-dip’ the candles prior to the excise officer weighing them, and then redip them to make up their intended size. Hugh James Roberts, for example, was found guilty of such a practice in 1819. He had deliberately dipped his candles short, ‘so that in truth and in fact they were not eights when the officer charged them—and after the officer had taken Page 2 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass the weight … he then at a subsequent time made them up by re-dipping into the weight they ought to have been at first’.4 Leadbetter claimed that a good ‘officer from his experience is able pretty well by his eye to tell the candles with the description that has been given of them’.5 Another popular fraud was for the candle maker to use false weights. Take the case of William Sandiford, a tallow chandler who was caught using false weights (p.237) in 1803. As usual he sent for the local excise officer, John Beaumont, to come and weigh a quantity of candles that he described as being of the nine-inch variety. The experienced officer formed a quick ‘view of them by his eye’ and suspected they were in fact sevens. As a result ‘a more accurate inspection than usual took place[.] [A]fter weighing the candles the officer insisted on examining the weight[.] [T]he Defendant endeavored to force the weight from the officer but the officer keeping fast hold of it the Defendant called for the assistance of one of his servants and they succeeded in getting it away from the officer and carrying it off’. The tallow maker was subsequently found guilty and fined accordingly.6

At The Salt Works Collecting revenue from salt was transferred from the Salt Office to the excise in the late eighteenth century. It was a good source of revenue but, as an obvious necessity, it was also a deeply controversial tax. In terms of its production, it was first dug out of mines in large fragments and taken to the refineries. Here the salt was dissolved in cisterns of water and then, once completely saturated, it was pumped into a boiling cistern where the water was evaporated to leave the salt ready for human consumption. On being transferred to the excise, several new provisions were introduced for the purpose of preventing fraud. First, the actual process of manufacturing was made more systematic and visible, ‘in such a manner that the officers may see what is the quantity of salt produced upon which the duty is to be charged’. Salt makers and refiners had to give at least six hours’ notice to the local excise officer before filling their pan or boiler with brine. This was to enable the officer to see the quantity of brine that was actually put in the pan and, once produced, the salt was to be kept in the pan house or boiling house with each batch kept separate. Within ten hours of production the salt maker had to declare ‘in writing specifying the true number of baskets, barrows or troughs of salt made or taken out of such pan or boiler at such boiling and there upon the officer shall proceed to take an account of the number of baskets[,] barrows or troughs of salt so made or Taken from or out of such pan or boiler as aforesaid’. After the account was taken by the officer, the salt was deposited in a warehouse. If the salt maker failed to do this he was fined. For example, in 1799 Jonathan Evans, a refiner of rock salt at Topsham in Devon, was charged a penalty of £100 for removing salt before it had been accounted for by the excise officer.7

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass A popular scam involved an allowance for salt being exported from England to Ireland and the Isle of Man. On producing a certificate, the exporter was entitled (p.238) to an. allowance of four bushels for every forty bushels of rock salt as compensation for waste on the journey. Not only was this allowance perceived as much more than the real waste, but also the salt itself was relanded in England and Wales before reaching its specified destination. Another loophole exploited by soap and other manufacturers was the purchase of ‘foul salt’, which by law could only be used for the purpose of manure and was therefore only subject to a duty of fourpence per bushel. Despite the addition of common chimney coal soot in an attempt to prevent soap makers buying it, they still continued to use it ‘to the very great Prejudice of the Revenue and fair Trader’. The committee investigating illicit practices advised in 1784 that the allowance for the waste salt should be reduced to two bushels for every forty bushels of white salt, and one for every forty bushels of rock salt.8 For a number of decades, the excise on salt had pushed many small local manufacturers out of business, since they did not possess the necessary capital to survive the payment of duty. From the perspective of the Salt Office, and later the excise, it was a lot easier to tax and control the larger salt producers. The salt monopoly, in turn, was happy to pay the tax because it protected them from domestic competition. However, by the nineteenth century the tide was turning. In the late 1810s the leading representative of a society formed to regulate the salt trade, Thomas Marshall, lobbied to ensure that high duties remained on foreign imports and domestic production to prevent new producers entering the market. This was all to no avail and between 1818 and 1825 all the excise duties were removed.9

At The Soap House Soap is primarily composed of an alkali, usually a salt of a particular quality, which is combined with any variety of grease. Soap makers during the period covered in this book typically used lyes drawn from ashes or lime boiled up with tallow or oil (or both). Until 1784 there were a variety of types of ‘Soft’ and increasingly ‘Hard’ soap. In the north of England they produced and used a soap commonly called ‘Ball soap’ (the soft type) that was manufactured as follows. The lyes was first put into the copper and boiled for about twenty-four hours until the ‘Wateriest Part’ was almost gone. The remaining ‘nitrous Matter (which is the very Strength of Essence of the Lye)’ was joined with some tallow, while the copper was kept boiling and stirred for just over half an hour, in which time the soap was made. Before it hardened it was made into balls and put into tubs or baskets with (p.239) sheets in them. Hard soap was generally boiled twice (sometimes three times); the first process was called ‘half boiled’ during which time the lyes became separated from the tallow part by salt—a process known as ‘Graining’. The copper was then charged again with fresh lyes, which after being combined with the first half-boil, was once again heated until it was grained as in the first half-boil. After this process the soap was taken out of the copper and Page 4 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass put into a frame to cool and harden. The excise officer on a foot walk had to survey every soap house on his beat at least every six hours if the producer was working, and never less than twice a day if silent. The officer on a ride also had to make his survey at unspecified times.10 Soap, like many of the excised goods, was initially a very backward industry. Indeed, until the eighteenth century hard soap—initially considered a luxury— was imported, with most of the population using soft soap. For most of the seventeenth century it was predominantly produced in the domestic household, but by the start of the eighteenth century most English towns and villages had a soap maker. In 1711 the excise duty on soap, still at this point predominantly the soft kind, was introduced. Since most of the materials that went into making this variety remained in the end product, it made sense to gauge the duty by weighing the materials. It was only with the introduction of barilla, kelp, and the ash of seaweed from. Ireland and Scotland that English domestic production of hard soap really took off. With the increasing use of imported fat and alkali, port towns became the ideal location for soap makers, which made things much more convenient for the excise since they tended to be concentrated in clusters within specific areas. Indeed, the decline of dispersed manufacturers was stark. Between 1785 and 1851 (most soap during this period was of the hard variety) the number of producers declined from 918 to 176, while output increased from 19 to 537 tons per annum. By 1851 two-thirds of all soap was made in Liverpool, London, and. Bristol.11 As with tallow candles, soap was increasingly considered a necessary item for the lower ranks, and subsequent governments knew they would be greeted by a ferocious reaction if duties were increased. The pressure to find more money, however, eventually forced the hand of Lord North’s administration in 1775, and. ‘Old Soapsuds’, as he became known, substantially raised the duties. By this date, fraud was already extensive among the soap makers. It was common practice to boil the soap in one operation and then claim it was only ‘half boiled’ and imperfect. Then, once the officer had gone, the manufacturer would bring fresh lyes and tallow to a forward state in the copper or pan to make it look like a half-boil under the second operation. Another fraudulent technique was to remove some of the soap from the frame once the officer had accounted for it. The maker would then add hot lyes to the remainder and bring it to the same depth and quality as it was before. Consequently if the officer observed any (p.240) fresh lyes being heated in a copper while the soap was hot or fresh in the frame, he had a pretty good idea that some illicit activity was being conducted.12 Such illegal practices could easily be foiled, claimed Leadbetter, by two types of observation:

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass First, Soap, if it be Strong will be very thick, and what is taken up near the Lye will be bright, and have a Grain like a Pease; and if Squeezed betwixt the Fingers, will Shine, and Scale if bended; and such Soap being put into the Frame, and no Lyes put to it afterwards, will Sting the Tongue, if touch’d with it. Secondly, But: if Soap be weak, ’twill have a faint smell; and the Body will be thin, and it will either have no Grain, or what is very small and pale, and if Squeezed as above, will feel greasy; it will be soft; because not boiled to a real Body, and dull and not smooth; because not purified with the Second Lyes. The soap maker had to give the excise officer twenty-four hours’ notice before commencing production. The officer entered the details into his book, along with a note containing information on the numbers and size of each sort of cask that the copper deposited its load into. These casks were meant to be barrels, halfbarrels, firkins, or half-firkins with each barrel containing 256 lb and each firkin containing 64 lb. The most effective way to secure revenue from ball soap was to carefully attend the cleansings and be present at the time it was struck out of the copper. Ideally, it should then have been weighed before being made into balls to prevent the maker adding any fresh tallow. The officer therefore had to be on guard against the not infrequent tampering of weights and scales. He equally had to keep a vigilant eye on the surface of the soap to ensure that none of the boiling had been diminished. If the weight of hard soap was short of the framed gauge by one pound in ten or in a similar proportion he would invariably suspect fraud.13 By an Act passed in 1784, soap makers had to sell hard soap in no other shape than cakes or bars. By this point the consumption of hard soap was over 90 per cent. Once the soap had settled into a solid state the next operation was to shave off the rough surface by a wire which ran across it to make it flush with the frame. The upper lift was then removed and cut into equal slabs—the same operation was then carried out for all the lifts—before the slabs were finally cut into even bars of soap ready to be sold. All the scraps and parings were subsequently returned to the copper or boiler in the presence of an officer immediately after the soap-making process was completed. It was, however, common for great quantities of such scraps and parings to be sent out into consumption To the great detriment of the Revenue and the injury of the fair trader’. The situation was compounded by deining what exactly was meant by a bar or scrap of soap. This technical problem was frequently exploited in court.14 (p.241) Another problem for the excise officer was the soap maker’s frequent attempts at concealing soap. Isaac Vines was charged £500 in December 1803 for just such a crime. In July 1801 officers had arrived unexpectedly at Vines’s soap house at a time no one was there. The officers were surprised to find the door of the ‘ash hole’ (the place where the soap maker lit his furnace) locked. Their suspicions were further deepened when they found another entrance with its door bolted from the inside. They felt compelled and justified to investigate further and found a large basket situated in a strange area of the building. They Page 6 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass subsequently removed the basket and, on treading on the area where it had been standing, found the floor to be hollow. They removed the floor and discovered two soap frames concealed but with nothing in them. Carefully, they restored everything to its prior position and silently crept away. Their plan was to return at a time when the soap maker was actually in the process of production. On the next cleansing of soap they turned up as usual and immediately noticed that a smaller quantity of soap was being made than they expected. They therefore looked once again in the place they had formerly discovered and this time found the frames full of soap.15 Since 1764. wooden covers had to be fitted over coppers that were locked and sealed by an excise officer. This was strengthened in 1784 when the furnace door and ash-hole door also had to be securely fastened, locked, and sealed by the officer. Nonetheless, it was still easy to illegally take soap via a pipe or tow in the brickwork or the framing of the copper. As a result monthly checks commenced in 1777 by the excise officers, while all fixed pipes were banned in 1784.16 A charge of deliberately concealing soap was made in 1819 against Thomas Malay, a soap maker in Hammersmith. He was accused of having opened his copper in the absence of an excise officer and damaging the fastenings to its lock. It seems ‘if you continue to have a good surface at the bottom of the Copper and can take it out when the officer is not there by cutting it with a spade and taking it out … it is not charged with duty at all’. Malay had taken the staple out that fixed the lock to the copper and his scheme was only discovered when an excise officer dropped in unexpectedly. He found ‘lying in a hole in the wall the padlock and the staple with the seal unbroken all taken away from the Copper in an apparently perfect state and the fastenings open’. He swiftly departed and sought advice from a fellow officer as to how Malay had removed the padlock and staple so neatly. Later that day the officer returned and found ‘everything was in its proper state —the lock was in its place and the staple fast—how the deuce could this all happen?’. With the aid of a model soap copper in the courtroom the prosecution attempted to explain how: Now a soap Copper is generally greasy with soap so that unless you scrape you do not see what is under it—Upon scraping under this place [indicated on the model Copper] they found a cavity which was nicely filled up with soap as you would fill up a hole with putty [,] they there found an iron pin and with a piece of iron put in they could take that iron pin (p.242) away —as soon as that was done out came the staple all hermetically sealed as firm as ever and there is your Copper as neatly opened as can be.

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass Malay was also found guilty of concealing soap. The surveying officers found that the materials in the copper after the fourth boil (soap was now typically boiled three or four times), ‘were much in the same state as they would be in after the first boiling—that is to say that which had been boiled enough had been taken out’ without the officer knowing.17 The soap industry and its relation to the revenue suffered, as we have already touched upon, from a problem of classification and terminology. Thomas Green, a soap maker, successfully challenged the excise seizure of some of his soap because he claimed it was not soap. The argument is interesting because it also sheds light on how the nature of a product changes in response to changes in the economic and political environment. In this instance war was preventing the best-quality alkali salts being imported from South America via Spain. As a result new methods and the manipulation of limited resources were being devised. In the following case it was the creation of something called ‘alkaline composition’ that was under scrutiny. It was found that after good sope is made and the refuse is left behind in the vessel by an easy process they can extract a large quantity of the alkali [—] that is called refreshing sope less it may rather be called separating the dirty particles from the alkaline particles. In the course of this trade some sope makers so refresh their ‘Lees’ as it is called themselves but in other instances it is a separate branch of trade[.] [T]here are those who purchase from the sope maker this refuse and they separate the alkali from the other part of the refuse and use that over again. Gargen sold the product with the name ‘alkaline composition’ and should have, claimed the crown, paid soap duty. Their expert witness, Dr Higgins—probably the well-known chemist Bryan Higgins who ran. a school of practical chemistry in Greek Street close to Josiah Wedgwood’s London showroom—claimed that it was simply an inferior soap: ‘it differs from the common sope in having more extractive heterogeneous matter in it’. The defence, however, successfully charged Higgins with a lack of practical knowledge regarding the soap industry. All Gargen was doing, they appealed, was ‘extracting a valuable material for that which was till within these twelve years considered as worthless and thrown away’. In addition, Gargen had never concealed what he was doing from the excise officers. Judge Baron Eyre thoughtfully summed up the case: I think it will turn entirely upon the question whether this commodity which was seized at this man’s warehouse … is to be deemed course sope—vendible as such or whether it is (p. 243) only a material for making sope’ The judge saw no reason to charge Gargen with willfully intending to defraud the crown of duty. The jury decided he was a ‘pot ash maker’ and not a soap maker and found him innocent.18

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass The process of gauging soap continued to be made via the weight of raw materials entering the copper. However, since soap was now dominated by the production of the hard variety there could be a discrepancy of up to 15 per cent between the weight of materials and the end product. The 1835 Inquiry into the Excise Establishment was very critical of this method, and strongly advised the gauging to be done once the soap had been cast in the frame. It was, however, the actions of the soap makers that finally got the process reformed. Manufacturers deliberately made weighing awkward and slow, much to the annoyance of excise officers, while some refused to pay more duty than they believed was fair. The result was an amendment to the law in 1840 and the termination of gauging the duty via the weight of raw materials used. It was finally taken out of the excise ambit in 1853.19

At The Starch House Tax on starch was a relatively small source of revenue. It had been reintroduced during war with France in 1712, and was levied until it was dissolved after the recommendation of the 1834 commission on the excise. In order to tax starch, as Stephen Dowell noted, it was ‘necessary to subject to statutory regulation every part of the process of manufacture down to the skimming of the water and the stirring of the fire’20 Again, a map of the starch maker’s premises, utensils, and materials had to be made. The officer then had to number and gauge all ‘Fats’ and boxes. These dimensions and areas were subsequently put in his dimension book with the area of the fats given in bushels and the area of the boxes in pounds.21 When wheat was ground, the meal of it was put into a large vessel, or fat, where water was added, and then left to ferment for one or two weeks, depending on the weather and season. Once it had sufficiently fermented, it settled to the bottom of the fat. The water would then be removed followed by the discharging of the settled part into a tub. Here it was stirred with fresh water and strained through a hair sieve to remove the coarse bran and put into several other tubs called sour waters. It would then lie in these vessels for approximately two days during which time the meal would settle to the bottom. The water was then drained off and the tubs turned onto their sides. They were then turned back, and whatever remained (p.244) was once again stirred with fresh water and strained into other tubs. The now green water was left for another two or three days, during which time green starch formed on the bottom. The tubs were then once again turned over onto their sides and rinsed with water. The green starch that remained at the bottom was then put into boxes, where it would be gauged. Once it had hardened, it was turned out of the boxes to be broken up into large pieces, and laid upon a stove to dry for a further two days and become what the starch maker called a ‘crust’. The substance was then scraped off’ and again returned to the stove to be laid upon haircloths. Two days later the scrapings were perfectly dry and ready to be weighed and sold.22

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass The official excise guide to taxing starch instructed the officer to own ‘proper instruments, viz., a Spit truly figured, a brass or tin plate, to screw to the end of a figured stick, or cane; and a spatula to screw likewise to the end of a stick, for gauging and examining the starch in the several utensils it may be put into’. He was expected to survey each starch maker at least once a day when there was any steeping in the fats, or when sour waters were strained into tubs. The condition of each fat on each survey had to be examined, and after it had settled and finished fermenting, the officer would take a gauge of each steeping in the fats. The officer’s main check on fraud was a comparison of the number of pounds of starch according to his gauge of the fat, with his accounts for the boxes and weight. After checking that the scales and weights were just, the officer would weigh the starch. This had to be done while it was hot to enable the officer to distinguish the new from the old. The scrapings usually amounted to an eighth or tenth of the manufacture, and were usually sold to producers of hair powder or paste. Alternatively the maker could return it to the fats in front of the officer and receive an allowance in relation to the weight of the scrapings.23 However, the committee investigating illicit practices reported in 1784 that ‘great Frauds are carrying on in the Business of Starch; partly by clandestine Manufacturers, in Places unknown to the Officers of Excise, which are attributed to the Smallness of the Penalty; and partly by Importation’s, which are said to be made from Scotland, at a Price below what the fair Manufacturer in England can afford’.24 One of many such examples involved a leading figure from the landed classes. It appears that the countess of Aberdeen, much to the horror of her husband, the Right Hon. George Gordon, earl of Aberdeen, was discovered making starch on 1 November 1799 without having given prior notice to the local excise office. In a desperate attempt to escape association with his wife’s activities, the earl tried to wriggle out of the embarrassing situation by attempting to have his name scratched from his wife’s wrongdoings. However, the attempt at (p.245) a demurrer was quashed as potentially providing a precedent for all husbands to deliberately make their wives scapegoats in future illegal activities.25 Starch was never a huge earner for the state’s coffers. According to Fine’s calculations it yielded between £10,000 and £20,000 before 1750, and only passed £100,000 twice prior to 1800. In 1825 its net yield was £64,ooo.26

At The Tanners, Tawers, Oil Dressers, And Parchment Makers Leather, like soap and candles, was widely considered a necessary item and, as such, was a deeply contentious taxed commodity. All tanned hides and skins, tawed or dressed in oil, were first seriously taxed in 1711. Tanned hides were leather made with the addition of vegetable agents (such as wood bark), alum, and animal oils. Skins were classed into nineteen categories each with specific taxes. In 1712 the rates were increased from 50 to 200 per cent, with an Page 10 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass available drawback of two-thirds if it was exported. The next charge came in 1812 when the tax was doubled before finally being repealed in 1826 and 1830.27 An excise officer on a foot walk would survey every tanner, tawer, oil dresser, and parchment maker at least once a day at an unexpected time. All such manufacturers had to give two days’ written notice before taking any hides or skins out of the wooze to be dried. On the maker giving notice of production, the officer had to weigh and mark the goods as soon as possible. Once again he had to regularly examine the weights and scales against one another to ensure they were just. In 1802 John Jones, a tanner based in Caernarfon, was found guilty of using false weights to weigh his leather and was Ined £200. Jones had used a weight that purported to be 56 lb but was really 59 lb, and another weight supposed to be 15 lb but really 18 lb. Hides, butts, and backs were marked on each buttock; horse hides with the hair on were marked on the flank; tanned calfskins, hog skins, and dog skins were marked above the tail, and all other skins were marked in the neck. The officer had to ensure that no leather was ever marked on the flesh side, Naturally the temptation for many traders was to forge the stamp—a problem the officer had to be always alert to. If the leather was stamped when it was still wet the mark appeared smaller, which suggested that the duty had not been genuinely charged since it was not in the trader’s interest to have wet leather weighed. The stamp itself had to be safely guarded by the officer since he could be discharged if it were taken or lost.28 Numerous frauds were committed by removing wet goods from the tanners to the curriers, and privately washing skins at the oil mills. The officer had to make (p.246) ‘cautionary surveys’ of those manufacturers he suspected of such practices. It was therefore illegal for a person to trade as both a tanner and a currier. Some traders would also deliberately enter oiled deerskins for sheep and lamb, and tanned calfskins for slinks. It was therefore important that the excise officer had a good knowledge of the different types and characteristics of leather. For example, ‘he must observe, that in all Lamb and Sheep Skins the Gash of the knife will appear in the shanks, but in Back and Doe skins the shanks are smooth, by reason they are cased and not flayed, as Lamb and Sheep are’.29 The offal was the thin part of hides from which the ‘Bonds and Clout-Leather’ were cut. The offal part of the hide was most frequently found in the more remote collections, where it was sometimes referred to as roundings, heads, dibbings, and wombs. Again numerous names could be found for sole leather such as crop soles, bends, clout leather, butts, and backs. The crop soles were cut from the back of a good stout upper leather hide after it had been tanned. Bends were those pieces cut from the best part of the hide (i.e. the back, ribs, buttocks, and shoulders) and into something like six to ten bends—‘according as Page 11 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass the Custom of the Country requires’, wrote Leadbetter. They would then be tanned in the same way as butts and backs. The best part of the hide was cut into twenty or thirty pieces and cured in a different way to bends, backs, or butts. Clout leather (a smaller sort of bends), when it was sufficiently tanned, was laid in a hole and covered with horse dung. This gave the leather ‘an extraordinary Hardness and a black Colour which was very common in the west of England. Butts were most commonly made from the largest ox, bull, steer, or cow, while backs were usually made from small hides.30 Leadbetter warned the excise officer of the extremely confusing disparity between what were defined as types of leather by the revenue and by the manufacturer and trader. Though Bends, Butts, and Backs, are Names given to Leather, by those that deal and trade therein, yet they are words not to be found in the Acts of Parliament by which the Duties are laid upon Hides, &c. And since the words used in the Acts are necessary to be used in INFORMATIONS, it is best to insert both, viz. When Bends are to be mentioned in Informations, say, Ten Pieces of Hides, commonly called Bends. When Butts are to be mentioned, say, one Hide, commonly called a Butt, or four Hides, commonly called Butts. When Backs are to be mentioned, say, one Piece of a Hide, commonly called a Back, or Six Pieces of Hides, commonly called Backs. And by observing the Method, the leather mentioned in the Information will be sure to agree both with the Evidence and Acts of Parliament. Customary usage was a problem in classification as well as weights, measures, and containers.31 (p.247) Between 1714 and 1750, Fine calculates that the net yield from this tax varied between £130,000 and £185,000. It then increased to £250,000 in 1800 and reached a peak in 1815 at £605,000. By 1825 it had dropped to £343,000 after rate reductions three years earlier.32

At The Paper Maker’S An excise on paper was first introduced in September 1643 and continued to raise a small amount of revenue until it was removed in 1660. In 1696 it briefly returned for two years but proved insufficient for the purposes it was intended, and it was only under the expenses of the costly War of the Spanish Succession, in an Act of 1712, that the duty became established at a significant level. The paper makers, stationers, and printers squirmed under the increased burden: ‘The said Manufactures are not only intended to be charged with a heavy Duty more than they are able to pay, but the Consumption of those sorts of Papers, Page 12 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass particularly made in England, is in a great measure prevented, by Three other Taxes, viz. On cards, Almanaks, and on printing small Paper Pamphlets, etc, which not only are heavy upon the Goods, but amount to an absolute Stop to the Making, and consequently the Manufacture of Paper will be intirely lost as before.’ The paper makers claimed that the recent improvements in production would be nullified, and those ‘Poor Families’ now employed in the manufacture of paper would be devastated if the tax were not reduced. All this, however, has to be weighed against the much larger duties placed on imported paper. With the domestic paper industry so protected such pleas made no impact, and, indeed, two years later the duties were once again increased by a massive 50 per cent.33 In the seventeenth century paper was assessed by reference to the value of the paper. This changed during the eighteenth century, when the basis of assessment switched to a description of the type of paper, with eleven different excise rates ranging from 4d. to 1s. 6d. Pasteboard, millboard, and scaleboard were charged at 3s. per hundredweight. Printed, painted, or stained paper was charged at 1d. per square yard in addition to the tax already on the manufactured paper, while all other paper paid 12 per cent of its value. There were no further charges until an additional 5 per cent was added successively in 1779, 1781, and 1782. Increasingly, it was found that the eleven main classifications were easily avoided and paper-makers deliberately made paper to fit the cheaper ad valorem tax. Consequently, in 1781 a new classification was established with a staggering seventy-six classes of (p.248) paper,34 Unfortunately for the state, the excise officers now found it hard to distinguish the difference between the seventy-six different categories, and manufacturers continued to get away with paying less tax by pretending the paper was of a lower class. Writing or printing paper was made of fine rags, while ordinary or brown paper was made from coarse rags, ropes, and cables. Once the rags were sorted and washed they were put into troughs called mortars with each mortar having five hammers. The rags were beaten into what was called ‘Half-Stuff and laid to mellow in tubs, bins, or chests. Once they had passed through this process, what was termed ‘mellowed’, they would be put back in the mortars and beaten until reduced to ‘Fine-Stuff’ and ready to be made into paper.35 The fine stuff was first put into a fat or copper with water and heated to a lukewarm temperature. Each size paper had its own mould with a base of brass wire like a sieve. These moulds were dipped into the fat in such a way as to allow the water to run through the sieve of the mould. The residue was turned out of the mould and laid in a woollen cloth called a felt and appeared as a sheet of paper. Then another felt was laid upon that sheet and so on until a heap of seven or eight quires were produced (each quire had about twenty-four sheets). A workman typically’ put about five quires in a post and could make about Page 13 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass twenty-five to thirty posts per day. These were then put into a press until all the water was squeezed out, and the sheets were hung on a line called trebles situated in the drying house. Once dried they were taken down and cut to the required size, squeezed again, and finally hung on the line to dry in parcels of three or four sheets. After this they were pressed two or three times till smooth and then tied into reams or bundles for sale.36 The officer had to survey the paper maker at least once a day. As with all excised manufacturing sites, a map of the production area had to be made indicating all the rooms and various vessels. The officer then had to check the reams and bundles of paper to ensure they had been correctly accounted for. A common fraud was for the paper maker to claim he was making ordinary paper for printing in a ‘Demy’ or a ‘Crown’ mould, and calling it ‘Whited Brown’, and thus not paying the correct duty. To prevent such frauds the officer had to observe that whited brown paper was never sized, i.e. finished, while all ordinary paper made for printing was. Further, prior to 1781 some paper makers called ordinary whited brown other names, or cut small ordinary brown and called it brown pound or half-pound or even two pound in order for it to be charged ad valorem.37 To prevent such Vile Practices’, wrote Leadbetter, the Officers must be careful to observe, that small ordinary Brown (as well as brown Large Cap,) is made of old Ropes, or Cordage, and is a strong Paper; whereas Pound, Half-Pound, (p.249) or Two-Pound Paper, is made of Part Cordage and Part Woolen Rags, or such other Offal as happens amongst the Rags, and is generally thinner, and more uneven, and always more weak and rotten, than small Ordinary Brown, or brown Large Cap. And for the more effectual Discovery of such Imposition, as well as Frauds in valuing of unrated Paper, the Officer must request the Maker, or Owner, to give him Leave to take (for a Sample) a Sheet or half Sheet of each sort of Paper he charges, (which no fair Dealer will refuse,) and write upon it the Maker’s Name, when charged, the Quantity, the Quality, and the Value (if it be unrated,) and he must carry the same to the Sitting, to be viewed and examined by the Collector and Supervisor, and compared with Samples of Paper charged at other Mills.38 As with all excised items, the quality of paper was defined by, and therefore conducive to, the excise requirements. From 1781 paper was allowed to be removed to another place for processing. This required an excise permit or certificate similar to that which accompanied tobacco and liquors. The excise authorities specified the details required, including watermarking and the engraving of permits, certificates, and labels. In 1783 they even provided the moulds or frames required for making licensed paper, which enabled ‘the words Excise Office visible in the substance of such paper’, coupled with the necessary ‘plates engraved with certain marks stamps Page 14 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass and devices’. The paper maker had to give twenty-four hours’ notice to the footwalk officer or forty-eight hours for the riding officer of his intention to remove any paper. In turn the paper had to be enclosed and tied up with string in several ‘coars’ covers or wrappers, each with the maker’s name on it along with the denomination of the paper. When the excise officer charged the paper he had to mark it with a stamp.39 To counteract the debilitating impact of the excise on domestic producers of paper, a customs duty had been put on unprinted imported paper since 1712. Here was another example of a backward excised industry being sheltered and stimulated. At one point up to forty-five different descriptions of paper faced forty-five different duties, leading to an immensely complicated process of collecting the paper customs revenue. The system was not intended for high yields but, rather, as a process of prohibition on imports of paper that English manufacturers could make. This led to two-thirds of all paper consumed being domestically produced. The excise was simplified in 1794 when the five tables of seventy-six rates were repealed, and replaced by a simple duty

d. per pound

weight on all ‘paper, fit or proper or that may be used for or applied to the uses of purposes of writing drawing or printing’. A duty of 10d. per pound weight was similarly substituted for imported paper. This simplification, however, was also accompanied by a rigorous new and more precise method of assessing the paper.40 The revised process required a ‘ream’ (containing twenty quires) to now be put into wrappers that met upon the sides of the bundle. Here a stamp was ‘impressed (p.250) about one half upon the other wrapper so that the stamp you see always corresponds half upon one wrapper the other half upon the other wrapper’. And it was at this stage the officer charged the duty on the four different classes of paper. Thus it was not uncommon for a paper maker to claim his paper was of an inferior quality in order to pay less tax. Take, for example, Joshua Debanke, a manufacturer at the New Bath paper mill near Matlock in Derby. After denominating his paper as third class it was subsequently found that this not was true; Debanke had made use of old wrappers to try and defraud the revenue. The surveying officer, John Allesbrook, had arrived at Debanke’s mill on 4 June 1798, and charged three reams of brown paper classified as ‘third class’. The officer counted that each ream contained twenty quires, ‘at the time of charging the officer wrote upon each of these reams its proper progressive number together with his christian and surname “John Allesbrook the 4th of June 1798”—the progressive number of these three reams were 49, 50 and 51’. At the time Allesbrook observed how ‘remarkably stout’ and heavy the reams were —‘made of old rope with a very little use if any tar extracted out of it’. He then weighed them and found them to be 248 lb (approximately 82 lb per ream).

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass A couple of days later Allesbrook returned with his supervisor, Samuel Barley, and found the same three reams of paper still in stock. Harley again visited the mill on 16 June and once again found the three reams, ‘but upon examining the paper which was then in these wrappers—he found … [it] was not the same paper which had before been in the wrappers but it was so different that instead of the three reams weighing 248 pounds ail the three together weighed only 180 pounds’. Debanke was subsequently fined by the court £50.41 The excise officer was required to leave a ‘specimen paper’ of his survey. This informed the paper maker of what was proposed to be charged, and also helped fight any possible collusion between the paper maker and officer (the excise supervisor could unexpectedly turn up and check the specimen with his own survey). The paper maker did not have to pay the amount indicated on the specimen; rather, he had to make his own entry to the collector every six weeks. At the same time the officer would also send the collector the results of his surveys.42 The duties were doubled in 1801 but then reduced the following year. Classification was also, once again, simplified, with all paper being divided between two types of quality; namely, first or second class. Officers had to judge the quality by sniffing the paper—if it smelt of tar then it was of the second class (made of tarred rope). This became an enormous source of contention and a single tax was eventually levelled on all paper in 1836 at

d, per pound. With

the emergence of chlorine bleaching and other technological developments, the excise officers were now unable to detect tar. Consequently it was possible for low-priced wrappings (p.251) or Vhited-browns’ to enter class one and pay the higher duty, and through the addition of some smelling and colouring materials to convert high-quality and expensive writing paper to class two and therefore pay a lower duty.43 The nineteenth-century method of assessing paper based on weight led to new forms of evasion. The paper maker was obliged to tie up all his manufactured paper into ‘reams and half reams containing a certain number of sheets in each’. He then had to put specific labels on the bundles that were supplied by the commissioner of excise, giving the weight he considered the paper to be. Notice was then forwarded to the local excise officer who would come and weigh the paper for himself and stamp it duty paid. In addition, the paper maker had to keep a book in which he entered all the duty-paid paper that he sent out. Once the officer had gauged the paper he would stamp and sign his name to it. It seems that it was common for paper makers, like Richard Abrook in Hemel Hempstead, to forge these stamps. Further, under a mid-century Act, it was entered: ‘That no Stationer or Printer or Paper Stainer or Maker of Pasteboard not a Maker of Paper shall receive into his custody or possession … from any Mill, any paper … which shall not be an entire ream or half ream’. This was frequently ignored. Take, for example, a pasteboard manufacturer, Thomas Page 16 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass Wescott, who was caught using duty-free paper supplied by a nearby paper maker, a Mr Bryant, and subsequently fined £50.44 The management costs of collecting the duty were low and by the close of the eighteenth century the tax had become a lucrative source of revenue. According to Fine’s calculations it grossed £8,000 to £10,000 per annum between 1714 and 1748, rising to £30,000 in 1777, £150,000 in 1795, and £620,000 in 1825. After deductions predominantly for administration the net for 1777 was £26,000, for 1795 £133,000, and for 1825 £570,000. The jump in revenue in 1795 was due to the reform carried out in 1781 that had tightened up the paper categories from eleven to seventy-six different types. This had erased the huge ad valorem category (that paper which did not fit the rated categories). In addition, further increases in duties were made throughout the 1780s, and procedures of inspection were further tightened.45 Another way of looking at the impact of the excise on paper is through production costs. D. C. Coleman gives the example of James What man who, prior to 1781, gave 4 per cent of total manufacturing costs to the excise but by 1785 was giving 22 per cent! Between 1770 and 1800 the amount paid in excise increased elevenfold, while output had barely doubled. Nonetheless, as Coleman concludes, (p.252) as a whole ’the paper industry grew up in the eighteenth century as an. extremely sheltered industrial child’.46

Surveying Printers Of Silk And Linen In 1712 the first excise on silks, calicoes, linens, and stuffs—printed, painted, stained, or dyed—was introduced on English manufactures. At the same time higher customs duties were also placed on imported linen that was chequered, striped, and printed. All printed woollens were excluded from the tax while any kind of material just dyed with one colour was also not charged. Silk paid 6d. per square yard or 3d. per square yard of silk handkerchiefs, calico paid 3d. per square yard, while linens and stuffs paid

d. per square yard. A drawback was

available for any of these items if exported. With the exception of silk handkerchiefs these duties were doubled in 1714. There were no further raises till 1774 when printed cottons were levied at the same rate as linens and the banning of wearing pure cotton goods was lifted. An additional rise of 5 per cent was put on colt on in 1784 but quickly repealed the following year due to successful lobbying. All the excise duties on printed goods were repealed in 1826 and 1831. Fine calculates that the gross produce from these taxes grew from £36,000 in 1713 to £69,000 in 1750. Receipts rapidly multiplied after the additional excise of 1774 with the gross revenue expanding to £290,000 in 1790, £550,000 in 1800, £1,058,000 in 1815, and £1,734,000 in 1825. Again, however, there was a huge difference between gross and net produce. In 1775 net was only about 43 per cent of gross, 36 per cent in 1810, and a mere 23 per cent in 1825. As a result it was one of the least economical taxes and therefore one of the first to be repealed. The burden of taxation and collection did not appear to Page 17 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass dampen the growth of the printing industry, while a significant proportion managed to escape the tax through evasion.47 The officer surveying printers of silk and linen was supposed to begin his survey by checking all the rooms in the site of production.48 He was then expected to take an account of all linens or silks that were brought in to be printed and, if possible, measure them before they actually were printed. Each piece of cloth was then marked with a number and recorded in his book (along with its dimensions). Once the cloth was printed the officer would again measure it and compare its size with his earlier gauge. To take the length and breadth of the cloth the officer used a rule ‘exactly a Yard long’, divided into ten equal parts that (p.253) were, in turn, each divided into ten parts (making a total of 100 parts).49 Having been gauged and numbered the cloth was then stamped. A travelling or job printer who practised his work at any place other than his usual residence, had to make an entry of all the goods he intended to print and pay money down for the duty of the same (otherwise he was fined £50 and forced to forfeit his goods). The 1783 committee on illicit practices claimed that some manufacturers concealed their goods in unentered places, while others mixed them with stamp duty paid goods or simply gave counterfeit ‘progressive Marks, called the Frame Marks’.50 As with all excised commodities there were problems in defining the product within the boundaries of the Act. For example, in July 1786 there was a legal tussle involving the kind of cloth a certain John Irons was manufacturing. The case revolved upon the following question: whether the cloth he produced was linen in the sense of the Acts of Parliament upon the subject or whether it is in the sense of that Act linen or Cotton mixed with other materials’. The Act in question only specified linen. Irons was a manufacturer of ‘floor cloths’ that he considered printed cloth. If they were linen painted in one colour they were liable to one duty of threepence a yard, but if they were a mixture of cotton and linen they would be exempt from all duty. At the time of passing the Act, there were three sorts of materials that were denominated linen, mixed stuffs, and cottons. If the weft (the thread going lengthways) was entirely linen while the cross-thread was entirely cotton the cloth was classed as ‘cotton stuff’. If it was entirely made of cotton it was termed ‘calico’, and if it was entirely linen it was, of course, simply linen. Irons wanted his floor cloth to be denominated cotton mixed with other material and he therefore craftily put three threads of cotton at different intervals in the ‘web’ that was ‘truly linen’. The attorney representing the state claimed this actually weakened the floor cloth and called a number of manufacturers to support his contention. ‘No conceivable purpose can be answered by inserting two or three of these threads at particular places in the manufacture except it be for the purpose of giving it the denomination of cotton mixed with other materials’. The attorney claimed it was simply a stunt, ‘an experiment to try whether a different Page 18 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass denomination cannot be given to this which is really, bona fide linen—namely whether it cannot be called a manufacture mixed with other materials and therefore to exempt it entirely from the duty’. Further, since floor cloths were printed all over there was absolutely no point putting a thin dark stripe through the cloth. The state’s attorney concluded by telling the Jury, ‘your good sense is to be exercised upon it whether the useless introduction of a thread of cotton here and there does in truth and in substance (p.254) make it other than linen to be painted or stained’. In defence it was argued that the real question concerned the dimensions of Irons’s cloth: linens were then no wider than a yard and a quarter—none narrower than three quarters[.] [T]he Legislative [Act of 10th of Ann and 24 of Geo. III] therefore imposed a duty proportional to the fineness and as the sale was by the yard in length they estimated the fineness of the linen by the price that it sold for by the yard in length—but a manufacture has been introduced [i.e. Irons’s new floor cloth] for the purpose of avoiding seams in floor cloths that is in width six or seven yards—the consequence would he that if you were to estimate the fineness of that linen by the price that it sells for the yard in length it would be subject to as much duty per square yard as the finest linens that are printed. In short, Irons’s floor cloth was much wider than traditional and legally defined floor cloth and therefore sold at a higher price in the shops. As a result its quality was assessed at the same level as the most expensive cloth. It seems Irons had thus deliberately put in a line of cotton to try and avoid duty and remain competitive in his market. However, despite his predicament the judge told the jury, ‘If you are of opinion that the insertion of the cotton is merely in fraud of the law, that it does still retain its intrinsic virtue and quality of linen and is not cotton mixed with other materials[,] of course it continues subject to the high duty and if that duty is too high for the commodity to bear it is not for you or me to decide upon the propriety of it—there must be an application of the manufactures to another place where that will be set right’. Irons was found guilty.51

At The Glass Works English glass production, another backward industry, started to expand during the seventeenth century, primarily driven by the substantial reduction in manufacturing costs due to the switch from wood to coal. In 1589 it was estimated there were fifteen glass furnaces in England and, by the end of the seventeenth century, ninety. The transfer to coal also witnessed the emergence of a new type of cheap good-quality glass known as ‘flint’. During the eighteenth century glass was broadly classified into five groups: flint or crystal glass used for glassware, crown or German sheet glass used for fine windows, broad or

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass common window glass used for cheap windows, bottle or green glass used to make cheap bottles, and plate glass used for the best windows.52 A tax on glass was first introduced in 1695 but was removed four years later because of its detrimental impact on the infant industry and because it was hard to levy. Obviously it was a fragile product that had to be packaged carefully, while it was difficult to classify and police, with some types of glass, most notably ‘plate’. (p.255) glass, still needing to be imported from the more mature French industry. An excise was again introduced in 1746 to help raise money to fight the war with Spain, It was levied on bottle glass at 2s. 4d. and at 9s. 4d. per hundredweight on all other glass. By the early 1770s the British plate-glass industry was still relatively backward and all large plates remained imported from France. Nonetheless standard policy was creeping in with customs duties increased on imported glass, and a drawback available for homeproduced glass that was exported abroad. In 1777 all the duties were raised on plate and flint glass charged at 18s, 8d., broad glass 7s., crown glass 14s., and bottle glass at 3s. 6d. all per hundredweight. Lord North applied what, after all, was a tried and tested policy. As well as increasing the excise he also put prohibitive duties on foreign equivalents, while taking off the duties on all the raw materials needed in its production. However, in this case it ultimately failed since all waste glass (cutlet) was taxed again if reused—and there was an awful lot of waste in the process of production. The problem was also with the gauging which, like soap, was based on the amount of raw materials placed in the melting pot. A quarter of the earnings made in the British Plate Glass Company now went to the excise.53 An additional succession of 5 per cent increases were then made in 1779, 1781, and 1782, before being consolidated in 1787 at an additional increase of 15 per cent. The method of measurement was also changed to one based on the square footage of glass produced over a certain size. In 1794 the levies on plate, flint, and crown glass were all raised by 50 per cent. The process of gauging also reverted to weighing the raw materials, although this time many glass manufacturers had significantly reduced the amount of waste generated in the method of production, making the impact far less than it had been earlier. Slight increases again appeared in 1803, before a hefty 50 per cent on all glass, except bottle glass, was made in 1805. A huge 100 per cent increase was then legislated towards the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1812. This was followed by gradual reductions throughout the first half of the century, until the whole glass tax was repealed in 1845.54 Duty on glass was paid on the weight of the raw materials. First the materials, silica (sand) and alkali (potash), were put into a pot that was heated by a furnace to a point known as the ‘founding heat’ where the two materials combined (a process taking anything from twelve to forty hours). The excise officer had to know the dimensions of this vessel before he could make the charge. As with Page 20 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass other excisable commodities, the manufacturer had to give notice of his intent to produce glass stating the time he intended to fill the pot, at which point the officer would come to make a calculation of the weight. He did this by making a ‘dry gauge’, by working out the amount left unfilled in the vessel by dipping his rod at a perfectly straight angle. He would then simply subtract this from the pot’s known volume.55 (p.256) Like other goods, glass was subject to a number of practices designed to cheat the revenue. On 7 September 1802 one of the excise officers sent to survey John Hawker, a glass manufacturer in Birmingham, observed that part of the materials were in a different state to the rest, even though they should have been in a fluid condition. He therefore had reason to suspect that it had not been charged duty. Hawker was subsequently found guilty of having added material to the pot after the officer had taken his gauge. This was a common practice but, perhaps, not quite as frequent as officers made out. For example, the glass manufacturers Coultman and Grafton, based at Stourbridge in Worcestershire, were accused of ‘adding fresh materials that is cullet to the flint glass pot No. 8 upon the 6th of March 1799’. The prosecution admitted, ‘we have had a great deal of controversy upon the question whether what is called cullet can be put into the pot usefully to the manufacturer’. However, in this case, they were convinced that it was ‘put into the pot fraudulently to encrease the quantity of the metal’ Conversely, the defence typically, as on this occasion, argued that the cullet ‘would not melt and amalgamate with the other articles so that the fraud should escape detection’. Another popular line of defence was to question the accuracy of the excise officer’s gauging, and it was on this latter issue that the verdict came down in favour of the defendants in this particular case.56 A few years later, the method of charging duty changed to weighing the glass at a particular stage of production. The materials were heated to a liquid state in the pot, which was then poured into circular tables and placed into ovens called ‘annealing arches’ to produce the glass. In the case of John Lathern, a manufacturer of blown glass at The Old Swan, about three miles east of Liverpool, the furnace was situated in the centre of the building. Nearby were two ‘cullet chests’, where broken glass and materials were put for the purpose of recycling. Nearby there were the annealing arches where the round tables were taken. To their left was a dark passage leading to a place called the ‘cutting room’, and at the side of this room was an area where the excise officer came to weigh the glass. In the case of Lathern, he had broken the law by lighting a fire in the annealing arches before he had given notice to the excise officer (by law he had to give six hours). This was important since the duty was now paid on the weight of the glass taken out of the annealing arches. These arches had to be locked and not reopened until the excise officer gave the all clear. Lathern was found guilty of

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass not having given notice of removing glass before it had been weighed and, additionally, of concealing glass.57 Glass had come to be one of the most regularized and monitored excised goods. By the late eighteenth century the glass excise officers came to the foundry four or five times a day, with most large works having one or more officers permanently stationed there. This close monitoring and regulation was the biggest cause of complaint made by the manufacturers—even more than the (p. 257) size of the tax. Nor was it a source of enjoyment far excise officers. One gauger reflected: ‘This weighing business was a very stifling and suffocating affair, something akin to chimney sweeping in the olden days’. According to Fine’s calculations the gross yield for glass grew from £27,000 in 1747 to £46,000 in 1760, £80,000 in 1780, and £171,000 in 1800. By 1810 it was £276,000 and by 1.825 a staggering £600,000. However, a large chunk of these sums was paid back in drawback on exported glass and administration charges. In fact, Fine estimates that between 22 and 43 per cent has to be deducted from these figures. As a result, along with the tax on cloths, it was one of the least economical excises.58 In conclusion, Chapters 12–13 have shown how the excise worked as a kind of mediator between producer and state, stirring contention but also permitting compromise. The nature of regulation entailed close control of the manufacturers while also attempting to elevate their products—these two facets were anything but mutually exclusive. We have also seen that many of the revised edicts and incidents stem from the late eighteenth century, when revenue issues, a massive national debt, a mature alternative (i.e. the common) economy, and the growing maturation of many trends intersected. This was the period, as we will see in Part VI of the book, when industrial policy came into its own, as revealed by the stark choices facing, and made by, England’s lawmakers and revenue officers. (p.258) Notes:

(1) ‘The Third Report of the Committee Investigating Illicit Practices’ (1784), HCSP 38. 30–1;. J. Pacy, The Reminiscences of a Ganger: Imperial Taxation, Past and Present, Compared (Newark, 1873), 50. (2) S. E. Fine, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643–1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 215–16; Pacy, Reminiscences, 57. (3) C. Leadbetter, The Royal Gauge; Or, Cauging made Easy, As it is actually practised by the Officers of his Majesty’s Revenue of Excise (London, 1739; 2nd edn., 1743), 315–16; Instructions for the Surveyors of Candles and Sope in London (London, 1731), 105–10. For a brief overview of the penalties and forfeitures on makers of compounders for candles see CUL ch(H) 38/2, n.d., probably 1720s. Page 22 of 27

 

Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass (4) The Crown v. Hugh James Roberts, 28 May 1819, PRO CUST 103/102. (5) If the candles were not in an adequate condition to be weighed, the officer would take an estimate of them by trying a pound or other small quantity of each candle size, and from his results decide whether there was any discrepancy with the candle maker’s original declaration. Further, if any candles were found missing from a former account he was to charge the duty on them according to their expected weight. And if he suspected that the sizes were different from the declaration he would weigh them separately. See Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 317– 18, and Instructions for the Surveyors of Candles and Sope, 127. (6) The Crown v. William Sandiford, 6 Dec. 1803, PRO OUST 103/54, and The Crown v.Henry Brown, 5 July 1827, PRO CUST 103/85. (7) The Attorney-General v. Jonathan Evans, 6 Dec. 1799, PRO CUST 103/42. (8) ‘The First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1783), HCSP 38.21–2, and ‘The Third Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’, 34. For an in-depth history of salt and taxation see E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934). (9) D. A. Iredale, ‘John and Thomas Marshall and the Society for Improving the British Salt Trade: An Example of Trade Regulation’, EcHR, NS 20 (1967), 79– 93, on 84 and 91. (10) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 319–20; Instructions for the Surveyors of Candles and Sope, 131. (11) L. Gittins, ‘Soapmaking and the Excise Laws, 1711–1853’, IAR 1 (1977), 265–75, on 274. (12) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 320; Instructions for the Surveyors of Candles and Sope, 132–3. For a survey of the penalties and forfeitures relating to soap makers see CUL Ch(H) 38/1, n.d., probably 1720s. A memorial from the Company of Sope Makers of the City of London was extremely fed up with the extent of soap fraud and advocated much higher fines as a deterrent; see ‘Memorial to the Treasury’, 8 Mar. 1715, PRO CUST 48/11. (13) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 320–2. (14) The Crown v. William Parkes and others, 6 Dec. 1803, PRO CUST 103/54. For the background and extent of this problem see the ‘Third Report of the Committee’, 31. (15) The Crown v. Isaac Vines, 2 Dec. 1803, PRO CUST 103/54.

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass (16) Gittins, ‘Soapnoaking’, 267. (17) The Crown v. Thomas Malay, 1 June 1819, PRO GUST 103/102. Earlier, in 1783, the ‘First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the liicit Practices’ claimed that, although. ‘The Law provides strict Regulations for securing the Covers and Furnace Doors to the Coppers; but they are so easily evaded in the Absence of the Officer, that great Quantities of Soap are supposed to escape the Payment of Duty, more especially in the Night, when the officer can have no Admittance without the Assistance of a Peace Officer’, 19. (18) The Crown v. Thomas Gargen, 8 July 1786, PRO CUST 103/20. (19) Gittins, ‘Soapmaking’, 266; S. Dowel, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), ii. 301. (20) Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 304. (21) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 325–6. The duty was doubled in 1712 where it remained at 2d per pound until three successive additions of 5 per cent were made between 1779 and 1.782 (a further increase was also made during this period in 1780 of 3¼d.); see Instructions for Officers who Survey Starch-Makers in London (London, 1731), 159–60. (22) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 326. (23) Ibid. 327–9; Instructions for Officers who Survey Starch-Makers, 161–70. (24) ‘The Second Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), 12. For a general list of the penalties and forfeitures relating to starch makers (and dealers in hair powder), see CUL Ch(H) 38/7. n.d., probably 1720s. (25) The Attorney-General v. the Countess of Aberdeen, 1 July 1800, PRO CUST 103/45. (26) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 224–5. (27) Ibid. 228. (28) Leadbetter, Royal Gaugen 309–10; Instructions for Officers of the Duties on Hides in London (London, 1731). 297–8. (29) Instructions for Officers of the Duties on Hides, 310–11. See also The Crown v.George Ansell, 23 May 1803, PRO CUST 103/53. For a general list of penalties and forfeitures on tanners and curriers see CUL Ch(H) 38/9, n.d., probably 1720s.

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass (30) Leadbetter, Royal Cauger, 313; Instructions for Officers of the Duties on Hides, 305. (31) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 313. (32) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 228. (33) A. II. Shorter, Paper Making in the British Isles: An Historical caul Geographical Study (Newton Abbot, 1971), 43–4. However, many importers were able to get foreign paper through at reduced levels because it did not come under legislated categories. Hence in 1724 something like 49.3 per cent was imported ‘unrated’, thereby just paying ad valorem duties based on the merchant’s valuation given under oath. The Act of 1725 was about to rate this hitherto unrated range into seventeen categories and the result was a fall in unrated paper to a meagre 4.3 per cent the following year. See D. C. Coleman, The British Paper Industry 1495–1860 (Oxford, 1975), 125–6. (34) Shorter, Paper Making, 49; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 182–3. (35) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 330. (36) Ibid. 330–1. (37) Ibid, 335. For a brief survey of forfeitures relating to paper making see CUL Ch(H) 38/5, n.d. probably 1720s. (38) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 335–6. (39) R. C. Jarvis, ‘The Paper-Makers and the Excise in the Eighteenth Century’, L, 5th ser., 14 (1959), 100–16, on 110–11. (40) Ibid. 113–16. (41) The Attorney-General v.Joshua Debanke, 20 Feb. 1799, PRO OUST 103/42. (42) Jarvis, ‘The Paper-Makers’, 106. (43) Ibid. 100–3; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 184; Coleman, British Paper Industry, 322–3 and 332. (44) The Crown v. Richard Abrook, 2 June 1803, PRO CUST 103/53; The Crown v. Thomas Wescott, 2 Dec. 1844, PRO CUST 103/155. (45) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 185–6. These rises were in spite of the case that the principal raw material of rags had greatly increased in price during the 1780s. Rags were obviously crucial and France, Germany, and Belgium placed prohibiting (some were actually prohibited) duties on rags for export. The

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass situation became even gloomier when Britain actually put a duty on imported rags in 1803. See Coleman, British Paper Industry, 135–8. (46) Coleman, British Paper Industry, 141–2. (47) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 211–14. Between 1740 and 1790 the English linen industry enjoyed a remarkable period of expansion until it was eventually destroyed by the meteoric rise of cotton; see N. B. Harte, ‘The Rise of Protection and the English Linen Trade, 1690–1790’, in id. and K. G. Pouting (eds.) Textile History and Economic History (Manchester, 1973), 74–112, on 74. (48) However, there were many ‘Job Printers’ who had no ixed place of residence and were thus difficult to tax; see Excise to Treasury, 17 June 1715, PRO GUST 48/11. (49) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 345–6; Instructions for the Officers who Survey Printers of Calicoes, 'c, in and near London (London, 1731), 342–3. For the penalties and forfeitures relating to printers of linen and calicoes see CUL Ch(H) 38/4, n.d. probably 1720s. (50) Leadbetter, Royal Ganger, 346; ‘The First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices’, 20; CUL Ch(H) 43/11/3. (51) The Crown v. John Irons, 17 July 1786, PRO OUST 103/20. Defining linen goods in general for tax reasons was immensely difficult for both the excise and customs. For an example of the latter see The Crown v. Mr Yates, 11 Feb. and 4 July 1812, PRO CUST 41/31. (52) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 191; Instructions for Officers Concerned in Ascertaining the Duties on Glass in London (London, 1731), 218. (53) J. Harris, Essays in Industry and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: England and France (Hampshire, 1992), 40 and 50. (54) Harris, Essays, 52; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 199–202. (55) The Crown v. John Hawker, 2 June 1803, and The Attorney-General v. Coultman and Grafton, 22 June 1799, PRO GUST 103/53 and 42. (56) The Crown v. John Hawker, 2 June 1803, and The Attorney-General v. Coultman and Grafton, 22 June 1799, PRO CUST 103/53 and 42. (57) The Crown v. John Lathern and Others, 11 July 1829, PRO CUST 103/138. (58) Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 204; Pacy, Reminiscences, 72.

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Candles, Salt, Soap, Starch, Leather, Paper, Textiles, and Glass

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0015

Abstract and Keywords This chapter argues that the economic implications and impact of the hydrometer can only be understood by examining the work that went into making it robust and trusted. The focus is on the impact of gauging by this instrument on the constitution and production of spirits. The story of the development and adoption of the hydrometer by the Board of Excise reveals that instruments designed for economic purposes are not unproblematic and need to be considered along with traditional factors such as the profundity of political debates, government policies, the actions of interest groups, and the pattern of social relations when accounting for social, economic, or technological change. Keywords:   excise tax, taxation, hydrometer, instruments, measurement, Board of Excise

As we have seen in Chapter 12– Chapter 13, attempts were made by the excise to organize the site of production to meet revenue demands. Once determined, it was up to the excise officer—armed with his eyes, ears, map of the premises, instruments, calculating tables, slide rules, mathematical formulae, and bookkeeping skills—to enforce and police these measures. The wider tools used to enable this were the law, an institution to enforce it (in addition to the excise officers—soldiers and eventually a police force), knowledge (claims to objectivity), and education (agencies used to reinforce knowledge). A vital requirement in legitimating the excise was for the fiscal form of measurement to be perceived as objective and therefore just. This took a great deal of work and

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards ongoing negotiation, which was crucial to enabling sites of production to be stable enough to be taxed. Disputes centring upon the trade and manufacture of such fundamental goods as tea, sugar, tobacco, soap, candles, leather, paper, starch, glass, spirits, malt, and beer, saw contests between the standards and stipulations of the state and those defined by local customs, public preferences, and deliberate acts of evasion. It was a place where the law sought to make the practices and spaces of manufacturers and merchants visible through regularized laws, product qualities, procedures, weights, measures, and product packaging. Since many practices were predominantly tacit and hard to translate, it meant attempting to change them or the environment that bred them. The state had to, at times, ride roughshod through cultural localisms and traditional procedures, and attempt to roll them into conformable shapes. The line between confrontation and acceptance was frequently a thin one. Recent scholars have all shown, in varying ways, how the science of metrology went hand in hand with the increasing definition of the commodity.1 Spaces as wide apart as breweries and ports needed to be accessible and easily monitored to be effectively taxed. When these places deviated from the enforced standards or procedures, they could then be branded hopelessly errant or illegal, which was not (p.262) infrequently the case. As with all forms of official stipulations another powerful counter-culture emerges. We have already seen how techniques were developed by the manufacturer, smuggler, port employee, retailer, and merchant that cunningly deceived the revenue officer. The role of the excise in all this requires further explanation. Different taxes evoked different responses through either their incidence or the level of social contact. The excise, as we have seen, was deeply unpopular at both these levels. First, its introduction represented the first time the masses had been seriously taxed, and, secondly, it demanded a great deal of contact time at the source or target of the tax. This, in turn, eventually forced the state to recognize that in order to be effective, it required a process of judging the rate of tax that was amenable to both the revenue body and the victim. Its policy makers had to try and frame all the possibilities that could affect the product, ranging from the impact of the levy on the commodity and its future consumption, the aggravation to the manufacturer, and the ease in which the item could be gauged, to the possibility and level of evasion it would create at source. This, of course, was far from exact and there were numerous factors that were either not accounted for or could not be controlled. This can easily be seen in the continual changes to the law in an attempt to regain the initiative. A quick flick through the various volumes of Charles Leadbetter’s eighteenth-century guide to the excise demonstrates the continual changes in excise practices due to the invention of

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards ever-new illicit techniques. The space of production was dynamic and continually had to be adjusted for deviations.2 Once the method of measurement was tolerably stable, the whole process of extracting the revenue was considered adequately visible to be calculable and thence more predictable. As already mentioned, there were always (and always will be) unaccountables and uncontrollables. Nonetheless, the process worked well enough to gather adequate revenue and ensure the state had enough credit to sustain the huge national debt. The relative success of the excise, in particular, is due to its eventual achievement in taxing goods at the point of production and encouraging, if not monopolies, then certainly larger and fewer producers preferably combining in a distinctive region. This allowed greater rationalization of manpower, greater consensus among manufacturers about the equitable nature of gauging techniques, and greater specialization among excise officers. Through its technical and quantitative emphasis, coupled with crucial support from the legislature and army, it overcame rival calculative agencies, enabling the boundaries of excise extraction to be stable enough to extract revenue. By the nineteenth century taxed manufactures had fairly much given up offering alternative means of gauging their products, and concentrated on ways of defeating state-defined methods. However, in doing so, they had also accepted the form of state gauging as the official process of calculating the duty. Similarly, once a weekly wage was established at the expense of perquisites and certain (p.263) gratuities at ports, subversion or negotiation hinged on the wage rather than custom. In the case of excise collection the state had won the battle to define the official boundaries: to frame the physical space and process of revenue collection, Of course, powerful illegal boundaries remained that had to be continually renegotiated. Nonetheless for a substantial period the markets for excised goods were organized and subject to broadly the same form of standard calculation using the same instrumentation. For example, by the mid-nineteenth century, distillers on the whole agreed to the form of measuring adopted for taking the alcohol density of spirits on which duty was charged. It was through the hydrometer that the object of measurement was linked with the state, the importer, and the distiller. A form of the hydrometer was used right up until the 1970s. The economic implications and impact of the hydrometer can only be understood if we examine the work that went into making it robust and trusted. My concern is confined primarily to the impact of gauging by this instrument on the constitution and production of spirits. Its use was surrounded by extensive negotiation over methods of gauging spirits and over the relative merits of mechanized measurement and personal judgement. In an attempt to assuage the hostility of manufacturers and traders, excisemen increasingly turned to numbers and precision measurement. The result was an instrument moulded by Page 3 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards a complex network of trade, manufacturing, and national interests. The story of the development and adoption of the hydrometer by the Board of Excise reveals that instruments designed for economic purposes are not unproblematic and need to be considered along with such traditional factors as the profundity of political debates, government policies, the actions of interest groups, and the pattern of social relations when we seek to account for social or economic or technological change. As duties on spirits rapidly increased in the early eighteenth century, techniques for measuring their strength became ever more contested. Despite concerted efforts, revenue officers despaired that standards would ever triumph over the particularities of custom and place. As the supervisor and assayer at the port of Dublin, William Speer, anxiously advised in 1801, ‘A standard alone can put an end to this contrariety of opinions, in so important a matter as this is (finding the strength of spirits), I humbly submit, that when it is practicable to obtain a certainty, that the reverse of it should not be permitted to continue in use’.3

‘that bagatelle thing’: Clarke’s hydrometer Up until the mid-eighteenth century and even into the nineteenth, place of origin (English or otherwise), taste, appearance, and smell were the main criteria relied (p.264) upon to indicate whether a spirit was ‘perfectly made’ and thus strong and liable to a higher rate of tax. There were, in fact, at least thirteen different types of ‘proof’: actual, arithmetical, arrack, statute, merchants, glass, customs, saleable, powder, perfect, less perfect, high proof, and strong proof. No doubt a number of others existed in addition to these. Shortly after the Glorious Revolution a duty of sixpence per gallon was put on single brandy, and a duty of one shilling per gallon on double brandy (brandy above proof). This led to vigorous protests from merchants, who complained that even if a brandy was just a little above proof they were still charged the double duty. After a period of sustained pressure the government yielded, and agreed that merchants should only pay duty based on the actual strength above proof, which would be measured by seeing how much water would reduce the whole of a cask to a single brandy.4 The section on spirits in Chapter 13 revealed how large increases in the tax on beer and malt between 1688 and 1710 had converted many people to spirits. The consumption of the now relatively cheap array of spirits increased considerably, from half a million gallons of British spirits in 1688 to about 6.4 million gallons in 1735. By the 1720s a fear swept through London that an orgy of drunkenness was rendering the lower ranks morally corrupt (not to mention unfit for work). The government exploited this fear by raising duties considerably, and the contribution of the excise on spirits to drink-related excise revenue rose from a negligible amount to between 8.6 and 11 per cent from the early 1720s to the 1780s.5 Page 4 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards In this lucrative context the state had to tread carefully. A diverse array of customary practices used to assess spirits created a difficult and often confrontational environment. Prior to the emergence of an instrument to measure alcohol content, people relied on various other tests. One of the oldest of these dated from the fifteenth century and worked by the addition of oil of a certain density to the liquor. The analysis was simple: if the spirit was strong, the oil sank; if it was weak, the oil floated. Another early method of finding proof involved pouring some spirit onto a little gunpowder and then igniting it: if at the end of the combustion the powder went off with a little explosion, the spirit was held to be proof; if it burnt steadily, it was classed above proof. Perhaps the most popular and speediest technique was to shake the spirit in a glass vial and note the number of beads that formed at the edges of the surface, as well as the speed at which the beads formed and length of time they remained. This was known as the ‘bead’, (p.265) ‘crown’, or ‘proof vial’ test, and it remained a customary test among importers and distillers throughout the eighteenth century.6 However, by the early eighteenth century, the expansion and importance of the spirit duties made such methods appear too arbitrary. Distillers, merchants, and excise officers frequently clashed in their estimation of a spirit’s strength. It had been known for some time that the density (specific gravity) of spirits— that is, the ratio of the weight of the spirits to the weight of water—provided the most precise measure of alcohol content: a given volume of spirits weighed less than the same volume of water by an amount proportional to the strength of the spirits. The problem was finding a way to measure density to everybody’s satisfaction. Assessing spirits involved solving two central problems. The first stems from the different physical properties of water and alcohol. Alcohol expands much more than water does when the temperature rises, and therefore the measurement of density must be corrected for temperature. Further, the penetration of alcohol into water means that when one gallon of alcohol is mixed with one gallon of water, the result is something less than two gallons. The second concerned fixing a standard to measure the proportions in a mixture. Because it was at the time not possible to ascertain that one had produced alcohol totally free of water, a standard based on percentage of alcohol could not be established. A standard called ‘proof spirit’ was therefore arbitrarily fixed, consisting of half rainwater or distilled water and half spirit as tested by the gunpowder method. Proof spirit weighed 7 lb 12 oz per gallon, and its specific gravity was ascertained to be 0.923 at a temperature of 51 degrees Fahrenheit. Other spirits could now be measured against this standard, with the result expressed as a percentage over or under the proof spirit. Thus, if a spirit was 25 per cent overproof, 25 gallons of water would be needed to reduce 100 gallons of it to the strength of proof

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards spirit; conversely, if the spirit was 25 per cent underproof it contained 25 gallons of water more than was contained in 100 gallons of proof spirit.7 Three main methods existed for finding specific gravity: the gravity bottle (vessels of known volume), hydrostatic balances, and flotation instruments.8 The last and least precise of these provided the only practical option for use by excise officers. The first well-known floatation instrument adopted for the purpose of (p.266) taking proof spirit, the hydrometer, was devised in 1725 by John Clarke, a ‘Turner and Engine maker’ based at York Building Waterworks, near Charing Cross in London. Clarke had been asked by one of the general surveyors and several other principal officers of a distillery to contrive an instrument that would ‘ascertain the true strength of proof of Brandy, rum, malt or molasses spirits, without tasting the same, or trusting to the uncertainty or fallacy of the proof vial, the only method then made use of by the whole trade to discover whether any of the above mentioned liquors were proof or otherwise’.9 Clarke frequently relied on the advice of the powerful and authoritative Newtonian experimental philosopher John Desaguliers, and Desaguliers’s status gave Clarke’s hydrometer credibility.10 Clarke began his experiments using instruments made of ivory, but he found that the material expanded and contracted so much in response to moisture or heat that the hydrometer gave different results at different times for the same liquor. He then built an instrument of copper and brass, which, he believed, accurately showed ‘the different degrees of strength either over or under proof, from the strongest to the smallest that can be produced’. Clarke’s hydrometer embodied the principles of earlier flotation devices contrived by experimental philosophers, such as Robert Boyle. Since temperature affects spirits in a way that makes them appear either stronger or weaker, a process of accommodating different external temperatures was obviously important. Eleven of the weights attached to Clarke’s original hydrometer were calibrated for various temperatures in the range within which spirits would normally be tested. Other weights were used to ascertain the strength of the spirit in relation to proof. The revenue officer would first take a sample of the spirit and put it in a tube. He would then take the temperature of the liquor, attach the appropriate temperature weight to the hydrometer, along with the proof spirit weight, and sink the hydrometer into the liquid. If the instrument Vibrated’, or floated so that the speck or sight on the spindle or index appeared at the surface of the liquor, the liquor was proof. If the weight sank the hydrometer to the bottom of the tube, the liquor was stronger than proof, and thus the weight engraved ‘1 o/ to 20’ would be tried. If the hydrometer then floated so that the spindle appeared at the surface, the liquor was one to twenty overproof—or, put another way, it would admit a gallon of water to every twenty gallons to reduce it to proof. If the hydrometer still dropped to the bottom, another overproof weight would be added and the process repeated until an overproof weight was found that caused the instrument to float. Conversely, if the proof spirit weight and Page 6 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards hydrometer rose in the liquor, and part of the ball of the hydrometer appeared above the surface, the liquor was underproof. In this case the proof weight would be replaced by the weight (p.267) engraved ‘1 in/u 20’. If the instrument now floated it had found the liquor to be one in twenty underproof, or a twentieth part water.11 The hydrometer meant that for the first time the strength of spirits could be measured directly by means of a calibrated instrument. Clarke demonstrated his hydrometer at public and private lectures given by Desaguliers at Channel Row, Westminster, and before several principal officers of the excise. It was officially sanctioned by the Royal Society and included in its Philosophical Transactions in 1730. Although Clarke’s hydrometer came into widespread use by the excisemen, and gradually by reluctant distillers and merchants, it was not mentioned in the Revenue Act of 1758. Almost all hydrometers made after 1730 were Clarke’s, recognizable by his mark of the half-moon and dagger on the lower brass spindle. But when Clarke died in 1746 he took with him the recognized skills embodied in the instrument, and his firm’s monopoly on production suffered a blow. Trust in instruments during this period very much depended on the credibility of the instrument maker. The fact that Clarke’s son Richard took over the business, and could be thought to have a familial knowledge of his father’s skills, eased the problem of credibility somewhat. Richard married the sister of John Dring, a well-known instrument maker, and the firm of Dring and Fage eventually became the recognized manufacturers of Clarke’s hydrometer. The market for scientific instruments had mushroomed by the second half of the eighteenth century. Leading lecturers, such as Benjamin Martin, and instrument makers, like George Adams, set about exploiting this large and increasingly competitive market. With demand for hydrometers growing and the dominance of Clarke’s hydrometer undermined by his death, other instrument makers saw an opportunity. But the monopoly that Clarke had established continued to have an effect; distillers and traders needed a hydrometer that would give the same reading as Clarke’s. The entrepreneurial Martin developed a rival instrument, which he described in a 1759 pamphlet titled A Sure Guide to Distillers, Three years later he criticized Clarke’s hydrometer in his Theory of the Genuine Hydrometer, a work which he dedicated to both the Board of Customs and the Board of Excise: ‘It is with the utmost reluctance that I find myself necessitated to have any regard to that bagatelle thing, that goes under the name of “Clarke’s Hydrometer”, or to make any comparison between it and mine; but my customers’ demands must be satisfied, who tell me that they are obliged to buy, sell, pay duty &c., according to the number of weights of that instrument; and, therefore, unless my numbers could be expressed by Clarke’s, or made to show the same degree of strength that his does, it will be of little sense to them’. Martin constructed a table to convert (p.268) readings obtained with his Page 7 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards hydrometer to values that would be shown by Clarke’s. It seems that this was just one among several controversies that erupted over the respective virtues of the various rival hydrometer designs that began to appear,12 Perhaps because of the sudden increase in new varieties of hydrometers and subsequent variations in results, Clarke’s hydrometer was mentioned officially for the first time in a 1762 law that decreed that the standard gallon of spirits would be one composed of six parts by weight of spirits and one of water and weighing 7 lb 13 oz at 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Hydrometer On Teial Clarke’s hydrometer faced a growing challenge to its credibility by merchants and distillers. Increasing objections to the instrument readings obtained by excise officers, coupled with the widespread use of techniques designed to defeat the instrument, placed the Board of Excise under pressure to resolve the situation. Indeed, the search for consensus and an indisputable standard took up an immense amount of their time. Clarke’s hydrometer underwent significant changes in response, as can readily be seen from the increase in the number of weights employed: from 36 in 1755 (23 weather and 13 stem weights), to 140 in 1815, to 300 in 1820, probably the last year in which it was made. The discontent of distillers and merchants was triggered by allegations that merchants deliberately adulterated brandy with molasses or other saccharine substances in order to evade the excise. It was far from clear whether these ‘sweets’ were in fact intrinsic elements of brandy—certainly many merchants thought they were.13 The issue became particularly controversial in 1760, when a series of experiments indicated that a method had seemingly been devised to disguise the strength of brandy by infusing it with treacle or syrup, which Clarke’s hydrometer failed to detect; in other words, that the hydrometer could accurately determine the alcohol content of a liquid only as long as the solution did not contain anything that would affect its specific gravity. In response, it was decided that if an exciseman suspected a brandy that tested underproof of having been deliberately sweetened as a means of preventing ‘the fair and proper gauge being taken of its strength or experiment made to ascertain the strength of it’ he was to (p.269) charge double duty, without regard to the actual measurement of proof. This temporarily had the desired effect of eliminating the practice—or, one might also argue, of altering the constitution of popular brandy to ensure that it conformed to the limitations of the hydrometer.14 But in 1780 the custom of sweetening brandy revived. The price of spirits had shot up in 1778, as the government desperately sought new ways to fund the spiralling costs of the American War of Independence, and the practice of adulterating spirits intensified to ‘the utmost point possible:’, according to one nineteenth-century historian of taxation.15 In this context the efficacy of the hydrometer was severely tested.

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards The situation came to a head in December 1781 in The King v. Steele and others. The case ostensibly concerned the crown’s allegation that Steele and Company, London-based spirit merchants, had sweetened their imported brandy in order to avoid paying double duty. But as the trial progressed it became increasingly clear that the credibility of the Board of Excise itself and its reliance upon Clarke’s hydrometer were in the dock. Most distillers and merchants still relied on customary standards based on the human senses, and many saw these as superior methods of gauging actual strength; they used the hydrometer reluctantly, and only because the revenue department had adopted it, and they distrusted official interpretation of the instrument’s results. In the end the court case centred on the spectre of the personal judgement of excise officers being bent toward the interests of the state, and on the question of whether or not the brandy had been sweetened to such a degree as to constitute a deliberate evasion of the duty. The trial would prove a catalyst for deeper questions concerning the general trustworthiness of Clarke’s hydrometer, questions of far greater significance than simply the use of sweets to defeat it. A breakdown had occurred in the agreement between the revenue departments and the brandy merchants, if indeed there had ever been agreement between them. The trial exposed the fragile foundations beneath the practice of supposedly objective measurement through the use of Clarke’s hydrometer. In the broadest sense, The King v. Steele and others concerned the state’s ability to define and police the character and quality of goods, an ability on which the extent and security of the state’s revenue implicitly depended. During the evening of 17 May 1780, ten puncheons of brandy were landed at the port of London, where they remained overnight on the quay. The following morning John Tuffin, an insurance broker and clerk to Steele and Company, applied to the ‘proof-master’ (excise land surveyor), John Burbridge, to sample the puncheons and ascertain the spirit’s proof. Armed with his instruments and accompanied by a colleague, Thomas Groves, Burbridge set to work. He began by dipping his long, thin valance into the bottom of the first cask to draw out a sample, repeating the process for all ten puncheons. He then took the samples to the proof office and carefully tested each one with Clarke’s hydrometer. (p.270) However, Groves was not satisied with the results and suspected that the brandy had been deliberately sweetened. He conducted an experiment to test his hunch, burning a sample of the brandy and examining its residue. That residue, he claimed, was treacle-like, and he therefore concluded that it had been adulterated. The excisemen duly informed Tuffin that they were giving the proportions of overproof because they believed that the brandy had been sweetened.16 Steele and Company then decided to conduct their own test, with the aid of a man called Edward Hutchins. Hutchins began by comparing the density of the imported colored brandy with that of a white or pale brandy. He diluted samples Page 9 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards of each to a solution of four parts water to five parts spirit, considerably below any proof and certainly below any standard by which spirits were sold. A visual inspection of the samples, using the bead test, indicated that the white spirit was the stronger of the two. He then cooled each sample for a time in cold water, to remove any residual heat caused by fermentation in the casks. When the temperature of the samples registered between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit, Hutchins loaded a Clarke’s hydrometer with the ‘warm’ weight and the weight marked ‘i in/u 5’, or one in five underproof, and tested both samples. The instrument appeared to float at about the number 8 or 9 on the stem in the diluted coloured sample, and two or three degrees lower in the white spirit. This, Hutchins claimed, showed that Steele and Company’s brandy was not as strong as the excise officers had alleged.17 When the dispute went to trial, the crown called as its first expert witness its most authoritative assayer of spirits, Bartholomew Sikes, who had retested the brandy. He observed first ‘by burning away the spirit and the water I find they were sweetened by the thick syrup left behind like molasses’. The effect of sweetening, he noted, prevented the hydrometer from detecting the real strength of the spirit, ‘Sugar or any other sweet substance being of a much more dense nature will increase the density’.18 He then attempted to establish the spirit’s true strength, by first extracting the sweets by distillation—Sikes claimed that after the sweets were extracted from the samples, they gained in strength by some 50 per cent, as subsequently measured with Clarke’s hydrometer—and then adding water to the unsweetened spirits to bring the sample back to the original volume. Using a hydrometer of his own invention to test the sample again, he ‘found those spirits to be four and a half percent stronger after the sweets were taken out and their place supplied with water than they were in their sweetened state’.19 Sikes was cross-examined by the defendants’ attorney, a Mr Dunning. Dunning began by establishing that Sikes would not say in so many words that the syrupy substance was molasses. After planting that seed of doubt, Dunning then made the case that sweetened brandy was preferred by those who bought it—in other words, that sweetness was an intrinsic quality of popular brandy. He next (p. 271) underlined that the defendants were not distillers of brandy but merely dealers who imported the spirit: ‘Those who import for sale upon the Quays cannot manufacture the brandy’s [sic] they import in England’. Sikes replied: ‘Not for such as they sell upon the Quays and send from the Quays. I presume the Gentlemen in question not only sell upon the Quay but trade much larger quantity home to their seller than they sell upon the Quays’. Dunning retorted, ‘You may presume that if you please but you presume contrary to the truth’. Sikes remained resolute in his opinion: ‘I have not a doubt in my own mind that where there is such a quantity of sweetening as appeared in these present samples it is done for the purpose not of colouring nor of gaining taste or flavour but for fraud’. Finally, Dunning played his last card and impugned Sikes’s Page 10 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards credibility as a witness. Sikes had been apprenticed as a whitesmith and gunsmith before becoming an exciseman in 1754. How, Dunning wondered, invoking a still powerful belief that veracity was the monopoly of gentlemen, could the testimony of a mere ‘blacksmith’ (as Dunning misspoke, perhaps deliberately) be believed? The defendants wheeled out their own expert witnesses, merchants and dealers whose main object was to prove that most imported brandy was coloured and sweetened, that these were essential qualities of brandy. John Jones, a dealer in brandy for over forty years, claimed that the hydrometer was quite capable of measuring density correctly for both coloured and pale brandy; he personally could judge by the taste of the liquor and believed the brandy in dispute to be typical of that produced in France. Another merchant, John Stacey, emphasized that the bead test conducted by the defendants indicated that the coloured brandy was weaker than the white; before the introduction of the hydrometer the strength of a spirit was judged by eye, and he considered it still the superior method.20 The attorney-general aggressively attacked the evidence presented by the defendants, and in doing so deftly summarized the predicament in which state and merchants found themselves: It must have struck you that out of all the Distillers produced by the Defendants[,] it did not occur to one of them to try the effect of distillation … What is the conclusion for this[?] why that they were convinced themselves that this experiment would have turned out against the Defendants[,] they could have no other reason for abstaining from an experiment which carried conviction to any person that saw it, but they had rather trust one to his eye which is better than any hydrometer in the world and another to his taste. In truth there must he a standard between the Trader and the Public and it was formerly the practice to do it by what they call the bead by shaking up two bottles of Spirits and they calculated by the time the bead stood upon the spirit—That was found to be uncertain[.] [T]he hydrometer was discovered and from the time of its introduction it has been the constant practice of the Trade to adhere to that standard and no other has been used [,] and the duty has been from that time to the present improved by the hydrometer.21 (p.272) Lord Chief Justice Skynner put the matter rather more succinctly, telling the jury in his summing up that ‘in truth the whole seems to me to depend upon the credit you give either to the experiments on the one side or the other’.22 In the event, the verdict came down in favour of the crown, but the revenue departments knew that their standard, Clarke’s hydrometer, had been exposed as a vulnerable one.

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards The King v. Steele and others highlighted the problems of ambiguity and accuracy surrounding Clarke’s hydrometer. The issue of adulterated spirits had merely triggered the real question; namely, the diverse array of techniques still used in the trade to ascertain spirit strength. Traditional tests that relied on senses of sight, smell, and taste increasingly had no place in the bureaucratic apparatus of excise collection. Equally intolerable were the different interpretations of Clarke’s hydrometer made by distillers and traders, a problem compounded by the array of rival instruments. What was needed was a universal standard, defined by an arbitrary density, made to yield to a standardized hydrometer, and with the final result presented as a number.

Making The Hydrometer Robust The problem of adulterated brandy quickly found a solution: in 1786 William Pitt’s administration raised the duty on the sweets added to spirits and beer. In the following year Clarke’s hydrometer (and not variations of his instrument) was legally sanctioned as the standard.23 The statute, however, also recognized the problematic nature of the instrument and therefore invited Britain’s premier scientific society, the Royal Society, to investigate the most effective means of establishing the duty to be paid on a liquid containing spirits. The work was headed by Sir Charles Blagden, secretary of the society. Blagden began working with a Swiss chemist, Johann Caspar Dollfuss, but Dollfuss soon departed England and his part was picked up by the clerk of the society, George Gilpin. The results of these trials were published between 1790 and 1794. The alcohol used as a standard throughout had a specific gravity of 0.82514 at 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which at the time was the strongest spirit that could be met with in commerce. Gilpin used a pyknometer to measure the specific gravity of a range of accurately known alcohol-water mixtures at temperatures between (p. 273) 30 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit.24 The third report of 1794 gave a complete table of specific gravities for all mixtures, progressing by unit differences of weight of water or spirit for each degree of temperature. Blagden and Gilpin’s work was conducted with the view that any new system devised would be based upon the absolute quantity of alcohol in a mixture and not upon a proof standard. Blagden advised that the new instrument should have weights marked with their specific gravity. The weights should not, he argued, be placed on the bottom of the instrument and come into contact with the liquor.25 However, it was not until the Act of Union between Britain and Ireland, in 1802, that any urgent action was taken oven the inadequacies of Clarke’s hydrometer. Here we once again rejoin the newly appointed supervisor and assayer at the port of Dublin, William Speer, who produced a detailed and devastating report for the Treasury documenting the limitations of Clarke’s hydrometer. Speer had worked a long time with hydrometers in. both England and Ireland. He believed that all the attempts to correct the instrument’s errors had made it even more complicated. He was concerned, as he put it, to ‘render this instrument more Page 12 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards accurate, and less complex’. In addition, he highlighted the glaring differences between the Irish and British hydrometers, a problem that, in light of the union of the two countries, required a swift solution.26 Since spirits could be imported into Britain at any strength less that 10 per cent above hydrometer proof (that is, 0.910 specific gravity) without paying extra duty, it was in the importers’ interests to get as close as possible to, but never above, this figure. In Ireland, conversely, additional duty was levied on all spirits above hydrometer proof, but at a graduated rate depending on the actual percentage overproof—which Speer thought a much simpler and fairer way of proceeding. Under the British system, an error of 1 per cent, not uncommon with the instruments used, could cost either the merchant or the government a great deal of money, depending on which way the error went.27 (p.274) Speer dismissed the weight system used by Clarke’s hydrometer because it was unable to indicate every different percentage over- and underproof. ‘All discriminations of strength unascertained’, Speer warned, ‘injure the Revenue, as I apprehend they cannot be charged if merely conjectural’. Only when the hydrometer was ‘legally defined by the unequivocal and invariable test of specific gravity, at a particular temperature, one material part of a solid foundation will be laid for putting an end to those irregularities which, otherwise, will continue to create doubts and perplexities in this imported branch of the Revenue and Commerce of the Country’.28 Speer argued that, on the whole, the instrument’s errors injured the state far more than the merchants, even though the latter believed the opposite to be the case.29 Indeed, the wrath of disgruntled distillers and frustrated traders was growing. Pressure on the government intensified when an angry memorial condemning Clarke’s hydrometer was lodged at the Treasury by an interest group representing the corn distillers, rectifying distillers, and importers of foreign spirits. The instrument, they claimed, had ‘been proved to be incorrect’ and was the source of ‘frequent disputes’, which would continue to arise until a trustworthy hydrometer could be found. Another petition followed, from the rectifi.ers to the Board of Excise: ‘That exclusive of its insurmountable hardships, the traders run great risks by their stocks being taken by Clarke’s hydrometer…. said instrument is so fallacious that if the allowance itself for reducing had been sufficient, yet the errors of the same would often be the means of depriving a fair trader of his lawful property…. said instrument in some instances does not profess to point out gradations less than 17 percent, leaving all the intermediate degrees to the guess of the Excise Officers’.30 Armed with Speer’s views, Nicholas Vansitart, the chancellor of the Exchequer, addressed the House of Commons on the issue in June 1802. Claiming that the use of different and untrustworthy hydrometers in Great Britain and Ireland had caused significant commercial inconvenience, Vansitart advised that a Bill be Page 13 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards passed to authorize the Lords of the Treasury to look into and introduce a trustworthy instrument. The Commons obliged. Vansitart then wrote to the commissioners of excise on 28 July 1802 to form a committee of experts to investigate the possibility of a new hydrometer ‘with the greatest Advantage to the Revenue and the greatest Justice and Convenience to the Public’31 A committee of the Royal Society was duly established, and a competition launched to build a new hydrometer. The committee members included the eminent chemist and experimental philosopher William Henry Wollaston; William Parish of Cambridge University; the inspector of imports (excise) for (p.275) the port of London, Thomas Groves (the exciseman who had accused Steele and Company of adulterating spirits in 1781); and the secretary of the Royal Society, William Mandell. Others involved in the experiments included John Grant, surveyor of excise for Scotland; the instrument maker Thomas Sanders; the chemist William Higgins (nephew of one of the crown’s expert witnesses in The King v. Steele and others); a distiller at Battersea, one Mr Bennell; and other ‘persons of trade’.32 The trials took place at the Excise Office in Broad Street from January to April 1803, From the outset the committee sought to determine not only the most precise instrument but also the easiest to use. One of the finalists was Bartholomew Sikes, the state’s main expert witness in the 1781 court case. The committee described his hydrometer in glowing terms: ‘It is simple in its Construction, & by reference to tables which have been computed with very great Pains, appears capable of ascertaining the strength of spirits with greater precision than any of the rest’. Sikes’s main rival was an instrument with thirtysix graduated weights and ten divisions designed by the late Liverpool instrument maker John Dicas and marketed by his daughter, Mary. Dicas’s hydrometer had strong credentials— not least the fact that the United States of America had adopted it in 1790—but the committee decided it was susceptible to damage and more cumbersome due to the number of weights it used (Sikes’s only had nine weights). Strong competition also came from Dring and Fage, who had been manufacturing Clarke’s hydrometer, and from Speer. Indeed, Dring and Page’s hydrometer was both faster and more accurate than Sikes’s and Dicas’s instruments. However, the committee deemed it more complicated, and although it was faster to use in the trials, in inexperienced hands the opposite was true. What really impressed the judges was the fact Sikes’s hydrometer was the only one accompanied by calculating tables instead of a slide rale. Sikes designed his instrument for measurements at a standard temperature of 50 degrees Fahrenheit (the average temperature of a warehouse), so he had to make some provision for correcting actual temperature to that standard temperature. He derived ‘expansion and contraction’ conversion tables from the results of Gilpin’s first table from the second report published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1792.33 Page 14 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards Despite a popular call to change the definition of ‘proof’ from Clarke’s hydrometer proof to proof spirit, the committee decided to retain the former as the standard, probably for the reasons that Jessie Ramsden had outlined in 1792: (p.276) ‘to retain the present value of Proof, will, no doubt, have many advantages: it will prevent that confusion which always happens in commerce, when any change of the value, or denomination, of merchandise takes place. I would therefore progress to ascertain what is the specific gravity of the Proof by Clarke’s Hydrometer, or as it was fixed (by the weight per gallon,) and make that specific gravity the term’. Greater precision, in other words, was desirable to the extent that it did not cause too much disruption to established commercial practices.34 The measurements obtained with Sikes’s hydrometer closely approximated those yielded by Clarke’s, but Sikes’s instrument expressed them differently. In Clarke’s nomenclature (described more completely above), overproof strength was expressed as, for example, one to ten, meaning that ten gallons of the spirits being tested might be reduced to proof by adding one gallon of water; underproof strength was expressed as, for example, one in ten, meaning that proof spirit could be obtained by extracting one gallon of water from ten gallons of the liquor being assayed. Sikes’s hydrometer expressed proof as a percentage determined by the amount of proof spirit that could be extracted from 100 gallons of the liquor being tested. If, for example, the alcohol contained in too gallons of liquor would, when mixed with water, equal 145 gallons of proof spirit, then the liquor was said to be 145 per cent or 45 degrees overproof; conversely, if it yielded 75 gallons of proof spirit it was said to be 75 per cent or 25 degrees underproof. In the end, the committee declared that Sikes’s hydrometer best combined ease of use and acceptable accuracy. In August 1803 Sikes petitioned the Treasury for a contract to make his hydrometer for a fixed number of years. As an added inducement, Sikes held out the possibility of reducing the number of weights the instrument required from nine to four. He claimed that the simplified instrument, along with new conversion tables, would ‘greatly facilitate their Application in Practice, in so much that Port Officers using the instrument under this improved state, will very rarely have occasion to employ more than one and the same weight in the cause of their Business’.35 However, in October 1803, before he could obtain the contract he sought, Sikes died. In May 1805 and again in April 1806 Mary Sikes petitioned the Board of Excise to approve her late husband’s instrument and reward his family with a (p.277) financial settlement. Sikes’s daughter, A. M. Bate, writing on behalf of her mother (and of her husband, the instrument maker Robert Bate), emphasized her father’s valuable legacy. The ‘voluminous labour of the Calculations’, she purred, were ‘fundamentally necessary in the Structure of a Work which in its present perfect state ranks among the first attainments of Page 15 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards science…. The truth and accuracy of the Instrument resting therefore on so unnerving a Basis, can be only questioned by a Person incompetent to decide upon or ill disposed to appreciate its merits’.36 Sikes’s family were building up to the question of financial reward. In December, Mary Sikes, this time writing in person, suggested the sum of £3,000 for the rights of the new hydrometer. She was asked to reconsider and subsequently dropped the price by £1,000, but with the clause that her nephew and son-inlaw, Robert Bate, manufacture the instrument. Once again the excise commissioners sought Wollaston’s advice, who replied: ‘Whatever may have been Mr. Sikes’s merits as a diligent officer of the Excise, & whatever the labour which he voluntarily undertook in the completion of his Hydrometer, we know that, when he engaged in the competition with other instrument-makers, the premium supposed by them to be offered, was the adoption of the successful Instrument for the purposes of the Excise; & we have reason to presume that the profits which would arise from the sale of an instrument stamped with such a mark of approbation was considered by him as an adequate compensation for his exertions’. However, Wollaston felt ‘wholly incompetent to decide’ the value of Sikes’s mental labour—‘labour for which I never yet had occasion to pay, still less can I estimate its pecuniary value to the Excise, or presume to take into consideration the motives which may have influenced a faithful servant in directing his attention to that subject’. Wollaston also gave his approval for Bate to produce Sikes’s hydrometer.37 Wollaston, it should be remembered, was an important figure on the map of British science, and his name added great weight and authority to the objects it adorned. For all Wollaston’s input and praise of Sikes’s instrument, he also wanted to make it quite clear to the excise commissioners that Sikes was no philosopher like himself, and that the instrument itself was therefore not theoretically sound. ‘Altho’ I have above proposed the completion of Sikes’s Hydrometer according to his own principles, which appear sufficiently correct for all practical purposes, I wish it at the same time to be distinctly understood by the Board that I do not consider them to be philosophically accurate’. Wollaston did not want his name associated with Sikes’s hydrometer if the principles underpinning the instrument were published. If this was to be the case ‘it might be advisable to give a perfect theory, & to make certain small alterations of the weights, And it would then also become necessary to revise the tables & to make (p.278) corresponding small corrections, which under the present circumstances do not appear worth the trouble they would occasion’. The instrument, as far as Wollaston was concerned, was ready as long as it was not associated with him.38

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards The ‘Breath Of Habitual Drunkards’ And The Paradox Of Accuracy Ironically, greater accuracy did not necessarily translate into more revenue or greater efficiency. Groves showed that use of Sikes’s hydrometer would reduce revenue by at least £356,376 annually, because the new instrument measured alcohol content more precisely (for example, a reading of one to ten, or 10 per cent, overproof on Clarke’s hydrometer corresponded to 8 per cent overproof on Sikes’s). The Excise Board considered recommending that the duty be increased to cover this loss, and asked Groves for a full comparison of Clarke’s and Sikes’s instruments, as well as any other details they should be aware of. Amazingly, after years of criticizing Clarke’s hydrometer and championing the need for a new one, Groves now changed his mind. In his report, dated 2 February 1813, he defended Clarke’s hydrometer, arguing that it took twice as long to test spirits with Sikes’s hydrometer and disputing the claim that the need for more weights with Clarke’s instrument led to more mistakes. He reported that the traders who paid the duty now told him that Clarke’s hydrometer, through ‘its simplicity and application[,] affords greater dispatch than any other—they are satisfied with it’. He did admit, however, that ‘Clarke’s hydrometer is erroneous and that Sikes’s is far more accurate’. Nonetheless, he concluded sombrely that ‘I do not myself see nor have I ever heard a rational account of the real Benefit which the Publick are to derive from the change’.39 The Hydrometer Act came into force on 6 January 1817. This was a provisional statute sanctioning the use of Sikes’s hydrometer and tables until 1 August 1818, but it was made permanent on 23 May 1818.40 Section two of the Act decreed that ‘all spirits shall be deemed and taken to be the Degree of Strength at which the said Hydrometer called Sikes’s Hydrometer, used under direction of the Commissioners of Excise, shall, upon Trial by any Officer or Officers of the Customs or Excise, denote such spirits to be’. Of course, greater accuracy did not mean that the new hydrometer was any better at detecting substances deliberately (or not deliberately) added to spirits to defeat it. The Act therefore also decreed that spirits designed ‘to defeat the Operation of the said Hydrometer, or deceive the Officer in trying the true strength thereof with the said Hydrometer, whereby His Majesty may be defrauded: in all and every of which Cases, such spirits shall be forfeited, and shall and may be seized by any Officer or Officers of Excise’. (p.279) Although placing high duties on sweets had helped stem the practice of adulterating brandy, the technical problem of measuring adulterated spirits remained unresolved. Frederick Accum, one-time assistant to Humphry Davy and an adviser to manufacturers, highlighted the extent of the practice of adulterating spirits in his Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, published in 1820. Accum advised that the best way to detect sweetened brandy was to heat it and get rid of its alcohol and water content, just as Groves and Sikes had done nearly forty years before: ‘the residue thus obtained, of genuine French brandy, possesses a vinous odour, still resembling Page 17 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards the original flavor of the brandy, whilst the residue, produced from sophisticated brandy, has a peculiar disagreeable smell, resembling gin, or the breath of habitual drunkards’,41 Wollaston had specified that ‘the principle and not the instrument’ should be established by legislation. However, in practice instruments that were presumed to be in agreement with working standards were in use throughout the country, and Bate was more concerned to avoid any possibility of disturbing their everyday use. As a result he worked to obtain agreement with the prevailing instruments rather than Sikes’s original data, calculating his own ‘weight per gallon’ table by actual observations of instruments already in use rather than the data used by Sikes to calculate these values. As Francis Tate remarks; ‘It is of interest to note that the table takes no account of the thermal contraction and expansion of Sikes’s hydrometer…. It can only be assumed that the slight error involved was not regarded as of sufficient importance to justify the complications which would have been introduced into the system by making the necessary allowance’. Measurement was thus still conducted with one eye on everyday working practice rather than theoretical necessity. Setting standards was an administrative endeavour involving the application of just enough scientific authority to justify its imperative.42 Nonetheless, the new hydrometer did alow excisemen to more conveniently and accurately measure the alcohol content of spirits as a percentage of proof spirit, and this in turn allowed the government to simplify the spirit duty.43 The shift toward a more quantitative, systematic, and consolidated system was in tune with general changes occurring in the organization and practice of revenue work during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. However, as we have seen, its parameters went only as far as the state’s demands legislated, customary tolerance could be pushed, and prevailing skills and technology could actually manage. Notes:

(1) Most notably W. Kula, Measures and Men, trans. R. Szreter (Princeton, 1986); P. Linebaugh, The London Hanged; Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), ch. 5; R. Sheldon, A. Randall, A, Charlesworth and D. Walsh, ‘Popular Protest and the Persistence of Customary Corn Measures; Resistance to the Winchester Bushel in the English West’, in A. Randall and A. Charlesworth (eds.), Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in EighteenthCentury Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), 25–45. (2) For ‘framing’ and ‘externalities’ or ‘overflows’ i.e. those things which cannot be controlled or are unforeseen, see M. Gallon, ‘An Essay on Framing and Overflowing: Economic Externalities Revisited by Sociology’, in id. (ed.), The Laws of the Markets (Oxford, 1998), 244–69.

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards (3) W. Speer, An Inquiry into the Causes of the Errors and Irregularities Which Take Place in Ascertaining the Strengths of Spirituous Liquors by the Hydrometer (London, 1802), 45–6. On the Act of Union and its economic effects, see F. Geary, ‘The Act of Union, British-Irish Trade, and Pre-Famine Dendustrialization’ EcHR 48 (1995), 68–88. (4) F. G. H. Tate, Alcoholometry: An Account of the British Method of Alcoholic Strength Determination (London, 1930), p. x; J. Scarisbrick, Hydrometry and Spirit Values (Wolverhampton, 1893), 34–5. There are numerous examples of excisemen gauging how much water to add to brandy to bring it to the level of single brandy; see e.g. Board of Excise to Treasury, 14 Dec. 171 1, PRO OUST 48/11. (5) P. Clark, ‘The “Mother Gin” Controversy in the Early Eighteenth Century’, TRHS 38 (1988), 63–84, esp. 64–7; P. K. O’Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–181.5’, EcHR 41 (1981). 1–32, on 13; J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth in Eighteenth-Century England’, EcHR 43 (1990), 277–303, on 394. (6) Tate, Alcoholometry, p. xi; W. Hammond and H. Egan, Weighed in the Balance: A History of the Laboratory of the Government Chemist (London, 1992), 2; G. Smith, Something to Declare: One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 81. (7) E. B. McGuire, Irish Whiskey—A History of Distilling: The Spirit Trade and Excise Control in Ireland, (Dublin, 1973), 47; P. Jonas, The Genuine Art of Gauging Made Easy and Familiar (London, 1805), 355; J. Bateman, The Excise Officers Manual, and Improved Practical Ganger (London, 1840), 27. (8) The early gravity bottle was typically a glass vial that could compare the ratio of the weight of spirit at a given temperature to the weight of an equal volume of water, thereby indicating gravity. The hydrostatic balance suspended a known weight into water or spirit; the loss of weight sustained by the plummet when immersed in the liquid gave its strength. An early flotation instrument, such as that devised by Robert Boyle in 1675, had a long stem attached to two bulbs (the main bulb weighted below by the small one). They were so arranged that the instrument would float at the base of its stem in water and at the top for the highest known spirit. See Tate, Alcoholometry, pp. xii–xiv. (9) Clarke is quoted ibid., pp. xiv–xv; PTRS 36 (1730), 277. (10) On Desaguliers, patronage, and the York Building Company, see L. Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992).

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards (11) See Jonas, Genuine Art of Gauging, 367–9 and 374, and Tate, Alcoholometry, pp. vi–xcii. Clarke claimed that if the liquor were a ‘fair merchantable proof’ the instrument would rise or float so high that the crown engraved on either side of the spindle or index would appear near the surface. But if the liquor were overproof the hydrometer would not rise at all, or at least not to the crown as before; if the instrument either rose or floated out of the liquor so that not only the index but even parts of the base appeared above the surface, ‘as broad as a silver threepence or groat etc.’, then the spirit was considerably underproof. See Tate, Alcoholometry, pp. xv–xvi. (12) P. Mathias, The Brewing Industry in England, 1700–1830 (Cambridge, 1959)68–9; T. G. Smith, ‘Bartholomew Sikes and the Selection of His Hydrometer for Official Use’, 1977, CEMS 25000/255. Benjamin Martin is quoted in Scarisbrick, Hydrometry, 32. (13) Legally defining and framing commodities was a continual problem. e.g. in 1701 the government was taken to court by a number of merchants over the issue of charging duties on Alicant raisins when the relevant Act only specified Smyrna raisins. Similary the sugar bakers in Bristol complained that the definition of white and brown sugar (both taxed at different rates) was far too vague and was being completely exploited by English importers. These were just two instances of a major difficulty the government had in wording legislation and accounting for all types of variations both in product and origin. See ‘Opinion of Council 1701–1713’, 13 Aug. 1701, PRO CUST 41/1; ‘Papers Relating to Trade etc.’, 1706, BL Add. MS 18903, fo. 15. See also the sections on soap, paper, and leather in Ch. 13, above. (14) The King v.Steele and others, 4 Dec. 1781, PRO CUST 103/3, 240–1. (15) S. Dowel, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. New York, 1965), ii. 172. (16) The King v. Steele and others, 354–6. (17) Ibid., 162–3. (18) Ibid. 272–4. (19) Ibid. 274–5. (20) For the testimony of Jones and Stacey, as well as other defence witnesses, see ibid. 452–60. (21) Ibid. 428–9. (22) The King v. Steele and Others, 461.

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards (23) Act of 27 Geo. 111, c. 31 ‘All spirits shall be deemed and taken to be of the degree of strength at which the said Hydrometer, called Clarke’s Hydrometer, shall, upon Trial by any Officer or Officers of Excise, denote any such Spirits to be’. There were, in fact, two types of Clarke’s hydrometer, one for trying imported spirits and one for domestically produced spirits. The makers of the hydrometer, Dring and Page, had to continually regulate each hydrometer to ensure that it corresponded to the export or import standard defined by government. To help fight the growing market for counterfeit Clarke hydrometers, the lower stem of the official hydrometer retained the following details: the word ‘Clarke’, bis mark (the half-moon and dagger), the word ‘import’ or ‘export’, and the number of instruments so far made. (24) Tate describes the pyknometer as ‘a spherical vessel of thin glass 2.8 inches in diameter, flattened slightly at the base and furnished with a neck made from barometer tube, the bore of which was 0.25 inch in diameter. This neck was 1½ inches long and was marked with a line circle about ¾ inch above the globular portion of the apparatus. During weighing a small silver cap was placed on the top of the neck to prevent evaporation. The capacity of the pyknometer was 2965 fluid grains at 60 degrees F’. See Tate, Alcoholometry, 2. (25) The reports are summarized in Tate, Alcoholometry, 1–3 and 10. (26) Speer An Inquiry, p. i. (27) Ibid. 11. In addition, the weather weights used in Clarke’s hydrometer were far too broad and unable to handle temperature differences of four to five degrees. e.g. if a ship picked up brandy from Ireland with a hydrometer reading of, say, 9.5 per cent over hydrometer proof at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, it was quite common that during the voyage its temperature would rise to, say, 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet the same weather weight would be used on landing in London, and the brandy would appear to be 1.5 per cent stronger than when first loaded in Ireland; that is, it would now appear to be 11 per cent overproof and thus required to pay extra duty. Speer claimed he had numerous examples of merchants making such complaints. Equally problematic was the fact that the instrument had been constructed to assume that the effect of temperature was the same in strong as in weak spirits; see Ibid. 16–19 and 44 (28) Speer, An Inquiry, 47 and 10. (29) Ibid. 19. (30) For the distillers’ petitions, see Scarisbrick, Hydrometry, 39–40. (31) Act of 42 Geo. III, c.97: ‘An act to authorize the Lord High Treasurer or Commissioners of the Treasury in Ireland, to order the use of the Hydrometers now employed in the Management of the Revenues, to be discontinued, and Page 21 of 23

 

Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards other instruments to be used thereof’. Vansitart to the commissioners of excise is quoted in Tate, Alcoholometry, 4. (32) Tate, Alcohoiometry, 5; T. G. Smith, ‘Sites’; London Gazette,. 25 Aug. 1802, advertisement. (33) ‘Sketch of a Report to be Laid before the Honourable Board of Excise respecting Hydrometers’, Apr. 1803, Bartholomew Sikes Papers, CEMS. These papers are waiting to be deposited at the PRO. I thank Ian Wright and Trevor Jones for bringing them to my attention. On Sikes’s conversion tables, see Tate, Alcohoiometry, 29–30, 34–5. On the growing importance and appeal of calculating tables in commerce, finance, manufactures, and science during this period, see W. J. Ashworth, ‘The Calculating Eye: Baily, Herschel, Babbage and the Business of Astronomy’, BJHS 27 (1994), 409–41, and ‘“System of terror”: Samuel Bentham, Accountability and Dockyard Reform During the Napoleonic Wars’, SoH 23 (1998), 63–79. (34) J. Ramsden, An Account of Experiments, to Determine the Specific Gravity’s of Fluids, Thereby to Obtain the Strength of Spirituous Liquors (London, 1792), 25; Scarisbrick, Hytirometry, 69. (35) Sikes to the Commissioners of Excise, 23 Aug. 1803, Sikes Papers. It seems that he may have been under pressure from Groves at the Board of Excise to consider reducing the number of weights, for he wrote on 6 Aug, 1803 that Groves had ‘expressed strongly his opinion that the number of weights in Sikes’s instrument should be reduced, if possible’, and at this point he approved of the idea. However, a few days later Sikes claimed that Wollston ‘says he cannot hut prefer the original Construction with nine Weights, as having a greater Sensibility for discriminating minute Differences of Strength; and it being the original Instrument which he and Professor Farish reported to, as being the most correct of the instruments examined by them’. Farish certainly did not think the number of weights should be reduced; to the contrary, he thought that accuracy had already been diluted enough in relation to practicability. However, as an exciseman Sikes clearly felt there was room to bend this imperative in order to aid practical everyday use. Wollston to the Commissioners of Excise, 6 and 9 Aug. 1803, and Sikes to the Commissioners of Excise, 23 Aug. 1803, Sikes Papers. (36) A. M. Bate to the Commissioners of Excise, 5 and 6 Sept. 1806, Sikes Papers. OnRobert Bate, see A. McConnell, R. B. Bate of the Poultry 1782–1847: The Life and Times of a Scientific Instrument Maker (London, 1993). (37) Mary Sikes to Mr. Burton, Secretary to the Board of Excise, 22 Dec. 1806 and 15 Jan. 1807, and Wollaston to the Commissioners of Excise, 17 Feb. and 9 Sept. 1807, Sikes Papers.

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Measurement, Instrumentation, and Alcohol Standards (38) Wallaston to the Commissioners of Excise, 9 Sept. 1807, Sikes Papers. (39) T. G. Smith, ‘Bartholomew Sikes’. (40) Act of 58 Geo.III, c.28. (41) F. Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons (London, 1820), 275. (42) Tate, Alcoholometry, 53–4. Arne Hessenbruch makes a related point regarding the ‘level of exactitude’ in his discussion of Scandinavia in the implementation of state measurement. See his ‘The Spread of Precision Measurement in Scandinavia 1660–1800’, in K. Gavrogln (ed.), The Sciences in the European Periphery during the Enlightenment (Dordrecht, 1999), 179–224, on 198–9. (43) Act of 6 Geo.1V, c.8o, paras. 2, 72, 91.

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0016

Abstract and Keywords This chapter examines issues relating to metrology and the state. A uniform system of taxation meant accounting for foreign and domestic customary variations in weights, measures, and containers. As a result, the state's revenue activities gradually impinged upon the diversity of British and colonial metrological practices and containers/packaging, as it tried to recast such things to aid its own activities. Measurement was not the primary issue, rather, it was the fact that it was a state-defined version — increasingly alienated from the object being gauged — being implemented over local versions that really rattled dispersed communities. The state, after all, was hardly the most trusted agglomeration of institutions. Everyday folk may have been suspicious of state approaches to quantification, but they themselves lived by their own version, dominated by a local notion of a ‘just measure’. Keywords:   taxation, metrology, revenues, measurement

In his lecture on ‘Money as the Measure of Value and Medium of Exchange’ delivered in 1763 to a packed room of eager students, Adam Smith explained the need for a standardized system of measures. He told them: natural measures of quantity, such as fathoms, cubits, inches, taken from the proportion of the human body, were once in use with every nation. But by a little observation they found that one man’s arm was longer or shorter than another’s, and that one was not to be compared with the other; and therefore wise men who attended to these things would endeavour to fix upon some more accurate measure, that equal quantities might be of equal Page 1 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks values. Their method became absolutely necessary when people came to deal in many commodities, and in great quantities of them.1 The requirements of increased trade and the fiscal demands of the state fuelled the march toward a regular form of metrology and the gradual defining of the commodity. Measures originally gained their meaning (and practice of gauging) from the local understanding of the object being measured. For an. emerging national market to properly function required a reduction in the number of different types and versions of weights, measures, and containers. As we have seen, it was also simultaneously the case that as the need for taxation intensified, more systematic processes of gauging developed that invariably impacted upon the nature of the goods, thereby also fuelling these imperatives. Customs and excise increasingly sought more effective ways to make the item taxed more amenable and conformable to its system of measurement. Implicit to this development was an attempt to install a uniform method of gauging taxed goods across the whole of Britain, predominantly at the source of production or importation/exportation. As well as making the examination of taxed items appear equitable, it also allowed all interior commerce and most of the coastal trade to pass entirely free (with the important exception of coal). Smith rightly boasted: ‘This freedom of interior commerce, the effect of the uniformity of the system of taxation, is perhaps one of the principal causes of the prosperity of Great Britain; every great country being necessarily the best and most extensive market for the greater part of the production of its own industry’. He recommended the same policy to be applied to Ireland and the British Empire as a whole. This uniform system of taxation was in sharp contrast to France, where duty was paid at ‘the end of almost every town they go into, equal, if not greater, (p.281) to what is paid by us at first’. For all the gloomy conclusions modernday economic historians might make regarding the possible adverse effect of high excises on trade and industry, it was also the case that a nationwide level playing field in taxation—free of regional variations juxtaposed with a prohibitive coastal wall of high tariffs—enabled traders and manufacturers to plan, compete, and ease trading. Crucially, it helped develop an integrated domestic market.2 A uniform system of taxation meant accounting for foreign and domestic customary variations in weights, measures, and containers. Not surprisingly, this could be a tiresome, complicated, and time-consuming process. As a result the state’s revenue activities gradually impinged upon the diversity of British and colonial metrological practices and containers/packaging, as it tried to recast such things to aid its own activities. This was not without immense opposition. Such a preoccupation, as Arne Hessenbruch has shown, was also the obsession of the Scandinavian countries during this period. Measurement, as such, was not the primary issue; rather, it was the fact that it was a state-defined version— increasingly alienated from the object being gauged—being implemented over Page 2 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks local versions that really rattled dispersed communities. The state, after all, was hardly the most trusted agglomeration of institutions, with the excise quite literally the least. Everyday folk may have been suspicious of state approaches to quantification but they themselves lived by their own version, dominated by a local notion of a ‘just measure’. Indeed, the market place was the dominant setting for eighteenth-century calculation. In the words of Simon Schaffer: ‘Rationality cannot be seen as the prerogative of the friends of the capitalist market’. To have trans-regional standardized abstract measures requires a legitimating form of knowledge, the agencies to enforce it, and a process of regional education.3 The interesting issue is not diversity, but rather when diversity was seen to be a problem. These are all issues that will be examined in this chapter.

(p.282) Metrology and the State ‘Ye Judgement of the Gaugers’ was questioned from the moment men had been sent to measure a commodity for the purpose of extracting a levy. Accompanying the growing importance of customs and excise revenue was the need for effective and systematic methods to ease the process of collection. The auditor of the excise and a commissioner of trade, Colonel John Birch, had revenue concerns half in mind when he steered in the Winchester Bushel Act in 1670. The aim was to make ‘one standard measure for corn and salt throughout the Kingdome, by which it is enacted they should be had here in London, and bought by all corporations and market towns; and it enacts that nobody should shake their corn or salt, and some other unreasonable things’.4 Edward Hughes highlighted long ago that accompanying the huge increase in salt duties during the 1690s was the ‘imperative to supersede old and varying local standards of bulk measurement by some national and standard avoirdupois equivalent’. Similarly, Charles Leadbetter wrote in his authoritative excise manual The Royal Ganger in 1739, ‘no Custom of a Country is to be any Plea for allowing a Pound or two at each Draught’. Again such stipulations were also required in the actual methods and practices adopted by customs and excise officers. Henry Couch emphasized this in his later customs manual, in which he worked to unify port procedures around the country by providing volumes of formidable tables and instructions reducing foreign measures to British ‘official ones’.5 One commentator optimistically remarked in 1663, ‘there is to be but one Measure and Weight for all things in the Nation, and this according to the king’s standard’. The historian Julian Hoppitt has argued that the income of the crown was an important factor in attempting to regularize measures on certain commodities. Between 1660 and 1714 Acts were passed that attempted to define the measures to be used nationwide for ale, beer, coal, corn, herrings, soap, salt, fruit, malt, cider, and perry. The cask used for beer, ale, and other liquors was defined in a revenue Act of 1660 (year of the Restoration) and amended in 1688 Page 3 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks (a year ending with the Glorious Revolution). The Winchester bushel was imposed upon the malt trade in a financial Act of 1701, accompanied by the claim that ‘there is a great variety of Bushels and other Measures of different Contents and Gauges used … for the measuring, buying and selling of all sorts of Graine, Salt and other Commodityes … to the great defrauding and oppressing of the people’. The same (p.283) sentiments appear to be behind an Act the year before concerning measures for retailing ale and beer.6 All this poses a paradox. To appear fair, taxation should be universal and governed by a set of standards equitably applied. However, to impose such measures required illiberal methods that often rode roughshod through widespread diversity. Within this context the work of the Polish historian of metrology Witold Kula is particularly useful. Kula has demonstrated that prior to the establishment of the metric system on the Continent over the course of the nineteenth century, concrete concepts such as the finger, foot, and ell (elbow) were in everyday use. They had no abstract, standardized denomination, and accounting for the weight or measure of a commodity was a qualitative process that varied from region to region (and indeed within regions). It was a process suited to small communities and local markets. Consequently making measures accountable to a centralized source of social authority was extremely difficult.7 Kula argues that, with the growth of the state’s power and the expansion of its reach, combined with increased commerce and expanding markets during the second half of the eighteenth century, weights and measures were increasingly made accountable to an abstract standard separated from people’s everyday lives and work. This argument is neatly summarized by Theodore Porter: ‘Informal measurement was inseparable from the fabric of these relatively autonomous communities. It broke down with the intrusion of more centralised forms of power—both political and economic—with the relatively private domain of communal life’. The people that suffered were, most frequently, those excluded from some form of institutional power. As Peter Linebaugh powerfully shows with regard to the Atlantic tobacco trade, ‘The class struggle in the oceanic tobacco trade took a metrological form, because the ambiguities of measures benefited the porters, the crews, the slaves, the lightermen and the “little inconsiderable persons”. Legislation attempted to standardise the hogshead’. Greater regularization and centralization was accompanied by increased abstraction. To legitimate this abstraction and make it appear real required an accompanying form of reason that appealed to a notion of objectivity (and equity).8 (p.284) For much of England’s history the standard of length was appropriately based upon the nation’s most important source of food, the barleycorn. It had to be ‘taken out of the middle of the ear, and being well dried, three of them in length were to make one inch; and thence the rest’. Similarly, the standard weight derived from ‘a corn of wheat gathered out of the middle of the ear: Page 4 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks which being well dried, 32 of them were to make one penny-weight, 20 penny weights one ounce, and 12 ounces one pound troy’ (a total of 7,680 grains). In a actuality, there were as many as six different pounds: for example, another troy pound used for gold and silver that weighed 5,760 grains; the tower pound used to test coins that weighed 5,400 grains, and a wool pound, which at 6,992 grains, was used to weigh ordinary goods. Under Elizabeth I an unsuccessful attempt was made to impose a single troy pound weighing in at 7,000 grains, for the purpose of gauging all ordinary items, while in 1758 parliament decided to legalize the single troy pound and enforce the avoirdupois pound for weighing heavy goods. For measures of capacity a unified approach was taken for both dry and liquid goods: ‘eight pounds troy weight of wheat, gathered out of the middle of the ear, and well dried, shall make one gallon of wine measure; and that there shall be but one measure for wine, ale, and corn, throughout this realm’.9 Hoppitt makes the case that much of the legislation passed under the later Stuarts concerning weights and measures could be interpreted in terms of attempting to geographically bring remoter areas into line with the more economically active regions of the south and east.10 Certainly under the Act of Union with Scotland in 1707 an unsuccessful attempt was made to bring areas together through metrology. One of the articles of the Act stipulated that Scotland had to adopt the legal weights and measures of England. The earl of Godolphin complained to the Scottish commissioners of excise that the English gallon in the Exchequer was some ten cubic inches less than the Scottish equivalent. In July 1707 the Scottish commissioners of customs, were quick to highlight the need for uniform weights and measures between the two newly unified nations: ‘By reading the 17th Article of the Union, it occurs to us that we ought to have weights and measures of England sent here forthwith, at least patterns, to the end, every port and place be furnished; for we conceive that without these calculations cannot be made, and it is a great trouble to us that early care was not taken thereof’. Abolishing the Scottish system of weights and measures simply meant Scotland used two systems. The Scottish courts defended the continued use of local measures for internal trade, while London directed duties collected by customs and excise to ensure they used English measures. Trying to make a (p.285) coherent and therefore predictable tax policy under these conditions was immensely difficult.11 Attempts to enforce the Winchester bushel (a large metal container with the capacity of eight gallons of grain dating back to the late tenth century) returned in 1732 under the auspices of Walpole—again the project failed. In 1742 an anonymous gentleman of the Royal Society was struck by the diversity of supposed standard weights and measures kept in the various London locations, which were meant to hold the original authoritive ones, A few years later a select committee report on weights and measures headed by the Irish peer and onetime Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Crayford, was submitted in 1758, followed by a second report the following year. Its contents centred upon the inadequacy Page 5 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks of current legislation and the weak process of enforcement. Although attempts were made to act on the committee’s resolutions, the Bills that were subsequently introduced appeared so late in the session that they failed.12 Crayford’s committee examined all the standards kept in the government’s Exchequer depositories at the Guildhall, Founders Hall, the Watchmakers Company, and the Tower of London. Among the members of the committee were the president of the Royal Society, Lord Macclesfield, and several prominent mathematicians and astronomers. They universally condemned the various official liquid gallon measures and advocated that the wine gallon kept at the Exchequer—and not the one housed in the Guildhall—be adopted.13 The choice was guided by the quest to centralize all the measures and the fact that it was the most commonly used. Despite the committee’s failure to pass any legislation, it did instigate new standards for the troy pound and yard, which were constructed in 1758 and 1760 by the mathematical instrument maker John Bird. These were subsequently made the primary references for the imperial system established in 1824. One problem mitigating the standardization and enforcement of weights and measures was the vast array of legislation that allowed exemptions. For instance ‘one Act permitted Oats, Malt, and Meal, to be sold differently from other Corn; that was repealed after 20 Years Practice had habituated the People to that way of selling: Another Act exempted, the county of Lancaster, because in the county a larger measure was in Use than the Law allowed; and many other (p.286) instances of the like kind might be shewn?14 The locally informed and therefore haphazard nature of legislation till this point was thwarting what the Crayford committee termed ‘the Principles of Uniformity’. The committee concluded, ‘in order effectually to ascertain and enforce uniform and certain Standards of Weight and Measures to be used for the future, that all the Statutes relating thereto should be reduced into one Act of Parliament; and all the said Statutes now in being, subsequent to the Great Charter, repealed’. But it was precisely because communities were so devoted to local measures that MPs could not agree on authorizing a system that overturned such a highly charged context.15 In 1814 a Commons select committee reported, ‘the great causes of the inaccuracies which have prevailed, are the want of a fixed standard in nature, with which the standards of measures might at all times be easily compared, the want of a simple mode of connecting the measures of length, with those of capacity and weight, and also the want of proper Tables of Equalisation, by means of which the old measures might have been made to establish a mode of connecting the Measures of capacity with weight’. Nature had by now become the state’s legitimating authority to crush localism. However, the problem was twofold: first, there was no physical standard with which to police deviation, and secondly, as we have seen, there was confusion generated by the proliferation of statutes concerned with variations in weights and measures. The 1814 committee was composed of twenty-three members, all now reliant upon Page 6 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks scientific inlormation supplied by two of Britain’s leading men of science, the experimental natural philosopher and physician William Hyde Wollaston—expert adviser regarding Sikes’s hydrometer discussed in Chapter 14—and the professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University John Playfair, both of whom had worked extensively on pendulum-vibrating seconds in the latitude of London. A Bill was put forward in 1815 ‘for establishing and preserving an uniformity of weights and measures’, but failed after its second reading. A new committee was subsequently formed in 1816 to further investigate pendulumvibrating seconds as a source for grounding met-rological standards, this time led by the MP for Bodmin and future president of the Royal Society, Davies Gilbert.16 The new committee again contained the cream of British men of science, many of whom were, or went on to be, employed in major state institutions. The members consisted of the commissioner of the Board of Longitude (from 1818), Wollaston; the secretary of the Board of Longitude (from 1818), Thomas Young; the leading precision instrument maker and FES, Edward Troughton; the natural historian and president of the Royal Society, Joseph Banks; the secretary of the (p.287) Royal Society and until 1814 a medical officer in the army, Charles Blagden; the army surveyor and FRS, Henry Kater; the secretary of the Admiralty and onetime topographer of South Africa, John Barrow; and finally, the lieutenant-governor of Woolwich Military Academy, one-time director of the Ordinance Survey, and FRS, William Mudge. Their results were brought out in 1818, but again, their findings ultimately failed to come up with a solution. Yet another committee was subsequently formed on how best to define the standards and implement them into legislation. This time it was led by the former members of the above committee along with the addition of the MP and from 1819 Lord of the Admiralty, George Clerk.17 The work of these and additional committees finally culminated in the imperial system of weights and measures in 1824. As we saw in Chapter 14, Blagden and especially Wollaston were also crucial in aiding the Board of Excise to improve the precision and credibility of the hydrometer, while Robert Bate, the official instrument maker to the excise of the hydrometer, was employed to construct the new imperial standards. Like the hydrometer, the imperial system aimed at reaching a balance between scientific objectives and practical requirements. It had to be consistent, recognizable, and simple in the sense of being easily understood and enforceable. Exactness was a negotiation of all these boundaries. Unlike the French metric system, which was now perceived in Britain as having been an expensive failure and commercial disaster, the 1824 solution was a pragmatic compromise. The customary practices and use of old measures were far too deeply ingrained to be simply replaced at a stroke. The new imperial weights and measures took the most widespread and everyday consistent standards in Page 7 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks use, and simplified them into a coherent system. The key imperative of the Act was to ensure as little disruption to the commercial environment.18 Lineal standards were now regularized and derived from the imperial standard yard, which was based on a pendulum vibrating seconds in London at the proportion of 36 to 39.1393. The standard for all measures of capacity derived from the imperial standard gallon, which contained 10 lb weight avoirdupois of distilled water weighed in air at a temperature of 62 degrees Fahrenheit and the barometer reading at thirty inches. All duties, allowances, drawbacks, payments, and accounts under any law of excise were to be made to these standards. This, of course, meant that all prior existing statutes related to this issue were repealed. For example, the wine gallon of 231 cubic inches was replaced by the imperial gallon defined as 277.274 cubic inches, this being the space taken up by water poured in a ten-pound avoirdupois weight at the legally defined temperature and pressure. The imperial standards established three weights and measures from which all other metrological standards derived. They were the yard, the troy (p.288) pound, and the gallon. All measures of length were now to stem in parts or multiples of the yard—as constructed earlier by John Bird at the request of the Crayford committee in 1760. Similarly, all weights were now derived from the troy pound as originally constructed, once again, by Bird in 1758.19 The next really significant legislation came with the Weights and Measures Act of 1835, which legally abolished the Winchester bushel and all local and customary measures in the market place, along with practices such as striking the commodity, Everything now had to be sold by the imperial bushel. The combination of this and the earlier 1824 Act inspired Joshua Bateman, the author of a very popular nineteenth-century excise manual, to gleefully declare: ‘The Winchester bushel, and all local or customary measures are abolished’. Heaped measures are also abolished’. To ensure that time was saved and mental labour was minimized, all calculations were ‘reduced to tables’.20 In addition, inspectors were authorized to check all weights and measures in their own areas. ‘Great Britain’, declares a recent historian of metrology, ‘was on the verge of creating one of the most efficient metrological officer corps in European history’.21

Diversity of Meaning Legislating for regularized containers was one thing, but making them all the same was another. The technology, skills, and sheer cost of manufacturing standardized casks (or packaging in general) was simply not feasible. This problem haunted all eighteenth-century attempts of imposing accurate measures like that of the bushel. How could a village turner or cooper correctly calculate and build an accurate representative of a bushel? What materials should be used and what should the relation be between circumference and outer body? How

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks could the vessel be made to avoid tampering and how should the grain be poured into the vessel? The heavily taxed item of coal is a case in point. It was generally sold by the measure rather than weight and this depended upon capacity. The vessels used to measure the coal varied greatly from place to place and over time. For example, the Newcastle chaldron increased by a factor of three over the course of 150 years. W. D. Patlenden claims the changes in measures in the coal trade were due to technical developments and tax evasion. By far the largest consumer of coal was London, which received its supply from the north-east and especialy Newcastle. Each shipload of coal was levied according to the number of chaldrons or keels it carried. The commissioners examining the public accounts during the 1780s complained that a chaldron was ‘different at different Places. The chaldron at (p.289) the Port of Lading, whether Newcastle or Sunderland, is more than the chaldron at the Port of London (which is according to the Winchester Measure) in the proportion nearly of Twenty-one to Eleven’. The actual gauging was done by men known as ‘meters’ who were appointed by the commissioners of customs. Not only could the size of chaldrons vary but their value was dependent on the size of the pieces of coal and their water content. Merchants would buy their coal in lumps as large as possible and sell them in medium sizes known as ‘round coal’. All this was abolished in the Weights and Measures Act of 1835, which legislated that from January 1836 all coal was to be sold by weight only.22 Gauging the duty on salt was equally a problem. The excise commissioners complained to the Treasury in June 1696 that serious confrontations were plaguing the measurement of salt in several places near Newcastle. The relevant legislation stipulated that the duty was to be gauged by the Winchester bushel of eight gallons, but a measure of ten gallons was still being used in these regions. The ‘manner of measuring was with a shovel to shiver the same into the Bushell as light as they could and then striking it thus was the usage in measuring of salt before the Duty lay’d’. However, after the duty had been made, the buyers would not purchase the salt unless they had ten gallons to a bushel. Consequently, ‘the seller to comply with the buyer took up in a shovell and letting it fall heavy into the Bushell[.] [T]his way of measuring is called lumping as the other is shivering and does more than compensate the Two Galons lessened in the measure of their common Bushell’.23 The excise commissioners pondered the process of measuring salt and subsequently responded to the Treasury’s concern with the following terse remarks: ‘We must observe to your Lordsps. that the salt act is altogether silent as to the method or manner at measuring of salt and gives no directions either for light measuring or measuring by lumping, But it saith salt shall be measured by fitt measurers living on the place’. The only solution, they claimed, would be the introduction of a standard weight throughout the country: ‘It would much to Page 9 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks be wisht that the duty upon salt were ascertained by one certain weight throughout the Kingdom’. The problem was compounded by the fact that certain salt, such as that taken from Cheshire, was not subject to the Winchester bushel. Instead, it was gauged at a weight of 56 lb, while rock salt was measured with a 120 lb weight—both of which were meant to be the equivalent to the Winchester bushel. Again, a bushel of salt from Newcastle only weighed 45 lb. The excise suggested that in future ‘all salt should pay by the weight and that a 46 Pound weight should be deem’d a Winchester bushell of eight Gallons’. They also advised that the twelvepence drawn back on every 120 lb weight of rock salt was unfair.24 (p.290) One problem in trying to establish standards was the fact that official state institutions holding original weights and measures differed. The Exchequer’s standards stemmed from the reign of Henry VII and were frequently the ones named in legislation, A statute passed during that reign legislated that ‘standard weights and measures be made and sent to the several Cities, Boroughs, and Market Towns therein mentioned’. This was subsequently done but it was soon realized that ‘the said standard weight and measures were found defective’. Consequently another statute was passed in which it was specified that ‘the measures of a Bushel shall contain eight Gallons of wheat, and that every Gallon contain eight Founds Troy of Wheat, and that every Pound contain 12 ounces Troy weight, and every Ounce contain 20 sterlings, (now 20 Penny-weight,) and every Sterling, or Penny-weight, be of the weight of 32 corns of wheat that grew in the Middle of the Ear of Wheat, and that a Standard of a Bushel and a Gallon after the Assize be made and kept in the King’s Treasury for ever’. The new measures were thus ordered and distributed while the old ones were returned and destroyed. As a result the Exchequer now contained a standard brass bushel and a standard gallon.25 In February 1696, during the passage of the extremely important Bill concerned with establishing a duty on malt, an experiment was conducted in the presence of certain MPs and several excise officers—George Toilet, Philip Shales, Thomas Jeff and probably the most authoritative economic technician and ganger of the lime Thomas Everard—to ascertain the content of the standard bushel. It was decided that the said standard should be a cylindrical vessel with a diameter of 18.5 inches, a depth of 8 inches, and contents of 2,150.42 solid inches. The dimensions were rounded off to these figures to make them ‘convenient … without counting to the hundredth Part of an Inch’. This new standard for the Winchester bushel was made law in the Malt Act. The excise officers also compared the standard troy weights with the standard avoirdupois weights and found that 15 lb avoirdupois was equal to 18 lb, 2oz, and 15 pennyweight troy. Hence 140 oz avoirdupois was equal to 218.75 oz troy. Therefore ‘The Bushel, as now settled, contains 2150.42 Solid Inches … and will contain of common spring water 1134.344 Ounces Troy’.26 Page 10 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks The measure for wine was taken from the gallon sealed at the Guildhall in London, It was officially by this measure that all wines, brandies, spirits, strong waters, mead, perry, cyder, vinegar, oil, and honey were to be measured and sold. The Guildhall wine gallon was assumed to contain 231 cubic inches while a hogshead was presumed to hold 63 gallons. However, following a claim made (p.291) by a certain Dr Wybard that the standard wine gallon actually only contained 224–5 cubic inches at the most, two general excise officers, Richard Walker and Shales, made an experiment to test his claim. They carefully constructed a vessel out of brass in the form of a parallelepipedon with sides 4 inches long and a depth of 14 inches. This gave a content of 224 cubic inches. They presented the vessel at the Guildhall in London on 25 May 1688 to an audience consisting of the Lord Mayor, the commissioners of the excise, the astronomer royal John Flamsteed, the Oxford astronomer Edmund Halley, and several other gentlemen. The vessel was filled with water and emptied into the old standard wine gallon that was filled exactly. Nevertheless, ‘for several reasons, it was at that time thought convenient to continue the former supposed content of 231 Cubic Inches to be the Wine Gallon, and that all Computations in gauging should be made from thence as above’. Thus there was no check on the gauger through a reliable standard vessel.27 The gallon for wine had been defined several centuries earlier in 1303 as a vessel containing eight tower pounds of wheat. All the subsequent legislation referred to wine gallons which, without specifying it, thus legally stemmed from this definition. The story gets even more confusing. Crayford’s later committee were curious to ascertain why customs and excise gangers used a wine gallon of 231 cubic inches, which was 51 cubic inches less than the beer and ale gallon of 282 cubic inches. The commissioners of excise told them that they believed the difference stemmed from a memorial dated May 1688 from the commissioners of excise and hearth money to the Treasury. It seems that there was some initial confusion after the results confirming the Guildhall experiment, showing the wine gallon to be 224 cubic inches. Originally the excise commissioners recommended the standard to be taken at this revised figure. Merchants soon got wind of the suggested change and enquired whether they could sell at the new standard. The powerful attorney-general Sir Thomas Powys quickly ruled against such a change: he cannot advise prosecuting the Proposal, in regard of the Hazard attending it; For if the Usage of gauging is departed from, he knows not where we shall be, because Resort cannot he had to the Exchequer; for a Standard to which, almost all the statutes refer; for there is none there but what the King will be vastly a Loser by. Secondly, Guildhall cannot be resorted to for a Standard; for no Law or Statute refers to it.

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks He then, in the third Place, observes, that by the antient Statutes, eight Pounds made a Gallon; and the 12th of Henry the 7th, Chap. 5. mentions the Pounds to be Pounds of wheat; and as there was to be one measure throughout the kingdom, which could not be, unless it was adjusted by some one Thing, and that seemingly to be intended Wheat; therefore he did not know how 231 cubical Inches came to be taken up, but did not think it safe to depart from the Usage; and thereupon the Proposal dropt.28 (p.292) Precision was invariably a factor of legislation, commercial procedures of convention, and vitally—as revealed here—the crown’s purse. The problem once again arose in 1700 when a dispute involving the amount of excise duty payable on the legal contents of a gallon was triggered. The controversy concerned the tax charged on 1,417 gallons of wine imported from Spain in January 1699 by the merchant Thomas Barker. The wine came in sixty butts that were legally assumed to contain 126 gallons in each vessel. However, the customs officers gauging the butts claimed they contained somewhat more and thus charged the merchant additional duty. In his defence the merchant claimed he had used, as the law dictated, a standard gallon kept in the Exchequer containing 282 cubical inches (the gallon officially used for ale and beer)—‘the standard for the Kingdom’. Conversely the customs officers had used the smaller customary wine gallon housed in the Guildhall.29 The dispute, however, could not be resolved by the Court of the Exchequer and was subsequently farmed out to a parliamentary commission. In November 1703 the issue came to a head when the opinion in council discussed the nature of the wine gallon. We ‘perused & considered ye long state of ye law relating to ye wine measure & am of opinion that ye contts. of a Wine Gallon appears to be very uncertain for it is to be fixed by Wheat Cornes & no fixed standard of a Gallon to be found to warrant the Demand as aimed at by ye case, I am of opinion no success is to be expected from a tryal at law. But it will be proper to apply to Parliament to have a standard of the Gallon made which, will ascertain all greater measures’.30 Three years later in 1706 a parliamentary commission, headed by Sir Edward North, concluded that the dispute arose from the uncertain nature of the wine gallon as defined by wheat corns. The result was the legalization that year of the customary wine gallon (231 cubic inches), the ale and beer gallon (282 cubic inches), and the grain gallon (272 cubic inches), all to be housed at the Exchequer. The wine gallon was also used to define vessels such as the pipe (defined as 126 x 231 cubic inches) and the tun (specified as 252 x 231 cubic inches)—not that these vessels, as we shall see, ever came that close to this standard. For one thing the technology was no way near good enough to

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks standardize the process of constructing them, while time and wear significantly altered their shape.31 The Crayford committee suspected, as the attorney-general had earlier implied, that behind the confusion lay the consequences of a loss of wine revenue if the gallon was equalized with that of beer and ale. ‘The Difficulty which has occasioned the Difference in the Measure of Wine, &c. and Beer, and Ale, the first being 231 Cubical Inches only to the Gallon, and the other 282, arising evidently from a Practice of resorting to a deficient measure sent to Guildhall, while the real (p.293) standard might have been resorted to at the Exchequer, apparently was the Loss that might arise to the Revenue, by following the legal Standard, instead of the erroneous Practice; and while a variety of liquid measures remain, and different standards are in Use, it will be impossible to enforce Certainty and Uniformity’. Certainty had now become a process of equalization through a system of uniformity, and Crayford’s committee suggested that the wine gallon should return to its ancient standard of 282 cubic inches. Consequently, ‘all Gauging would be performed’ the same way for all alcoholic liquids. Short-term losses to the revenue were deemed necessary for the long-term benefits that would arise through greater uniformity in metrology and practice.32 To assist in the research for their report the Crayford Committee had interviewed a number of revenue and other government employees. For example, Joseph Harris, the assay master of the mint and author of the monometallist Essay on Money and Coins (published in two parts in 1756 and 1758), claimed that to assist revenue officers in their gauging activities all measures of capacity should be standardized: one that contains 300 [cubic] Inches, having two sides five inches wide, and two six inches wide, all ten inches deep, another containing sixty cubic inches, another twelve cubic inches, and one other two cubic inches; these might be set nearly level by adjusting screws, and the Bushel, Gallon, or other Measures of Capacity, measured with all the Exactness, that such measuring admits of. This system, he urged, would enable ‘the Gangers which are placed all over the Kingdom for the Uses of the revenue’, to ‘easily determine the Contents of all the Measures used in the Kingdom, and the real contents of Bushels, Gallons, &c. by this means be universally known’. A Mr Brougham, excise surveyorgeneral of the glass duty, tried to explain the method of gauging adopted in measuring all drink-related excise duties; All Ale and Beer, contained in square vessels, are gauged by the Division of 282 Cubical Inches to the Gallon, and 231 Cubical Inches for Wines, Cyder, Sweets, and all other Liquors, except Beer and Ale; that if the vessels are Page 13 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks circular, they charge Beer and Ale by 359 Cubical Inches, and by 294 for all other Liquors; and in the Admeasurement of Malt, and all Squares, they take the length, Width, and Depth of the Vessel, and divide it by 215042; and 2738 for Circular Measures.33 The land surveyor at the port of London, Mr Frewen, told the committee that all duties paid by the bushel were collected by the Winchester bushel (except coal which had its own version of a bushel) as derived from the one kept at the Exchequer. They took their gauges after the bushel had been struck. To do this they used ‘a round circular Strike, which is of the same Diameter from one End to the other; and by order of the Commissioners, that is to be used in all the Ports in the kingdom’. James Loftus, a customs gauger, stated that he and his colleagues (p.294) used the wine gallon to charge duty on wine. The version they used was seven inches in diameter and six inches deep. The instruments and methods they adopted were the same as those of the excise officers.34

The Case of Casks The measurement of casks was notoriously difficult. The abstracted cask of the excise manual was an idealized shape that did not fit exactly any of the various casks made for taxed items. Take, for example, the case involving the spirits trader Mr Dracord. By law traders could not transport spirits without a permit certifying the quantity and quality of the spirit. In this instance Dracord had a permit to remove 420 gallons from Bristol to London. On arriving at his destination, the local excise officer, Mr Hall, diligently gauged the casks and claimed that the four puncheons actually contained 450 gallons’—thirty more than his permit allowed. Dracord vigorously denied the allegation and challenged the accuracy of Hall’s measurement in court. Hall had commenced his gauging almost immediately the spirits arrived at the plaintiff’s shop. The problem centred upon the difficult process of actually gauging ‘them at the bung with any great precision’, and the fact that ram puncheons came in uncertain sizes (ranging from 90 to 120 gallons and, in some cases, as much as 130 gallons). As a result traders generally calculated on an average of 105 gallons per puncheon. A distiller of British spirits, Mr Langdale, claimed ‘that the manner in which they take the permit of British spirits is by a rule taken from the number of puncheons’. He claimed that this was ‘a better rule of determining than according to the gauge or the measures, for he says this. He says that in general they cannot measure to be sure of 8 gallons in a puncheon, now as here were 4 puncheons the Counsel for the Plaintiff has made a computation upon this and made this observation—why this corresponds exactly with our evidence [,] for if you suppose there has been an inexact or inaccurate measure[,] there will be 8 gallons in 4 casks which comes to 32 gallons which is more than the difference between which is in the permit and the quantity delivered in London’.

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks In other words the customary usage of the trade was ‘not to remove by putting into the permit the quantity as it appears upon the gauge [i.e. number of gallons] but as it appears by the number of the casks taking it upon an average quantity and that this is the usage’. Thus the question hinged upon the measurement taken by the excise officer and his instrument versus the everyday usage of the trade in taking the average contents of the puncheons. Lord Justice DeGrey summed up the case: It seems to me to depend upon the weight of the evidence that is given by officers, and from the evidence that is given by Mr Langdale and those that would correspond with him in the (p.295) same way from the average contents of the puncheons [—] and the usual way of taking the quantity contained in them, from the supposed bigness of the casks [i.e. from 90 to 120 with an average of 105 gallons]. If you are of opinion that the quantity within two or 3 gallons did exceed 420 sent from Bristol!,] I think then by law there is a cause of forfeiture and you must find for the Defendant[.] [I]f you think there is no evidence to satisfy you that the quantity sent from Bristol was greater than 420 then you are to find a verdict for the Plaintiff. The issue revolved upon customary practice defined by ‘the regular persons bred to the business’, versus the state’s method of gauging and its increasing emphasis on accuracy. The verdict came down in favour of the plaintiff and, despite an attempt at a retrial, Mr Dracord was awarded £130 in damages.35 Casks came in an extraordinary diversity of shapes and sizes, containing every imaginable product from spirits, wine, and tobacco, to pork, nails, and tallow. In 1740 the customs gauging authority, Robert Shirtchiffe, explained—in an. apologetic tone—the problem of measuring casks: ‘And it may be with truth affirm’d, that there never was, strictly speaking, a Cask in the Shape of any one of those Solid Figures whose Names they bear; since it never could happen so, unless perfectly by Accident: The Maker having no thought of designing them as such’. And, indeed, why should they? The only people clamouring for standardization were state departments and large producers who would benefit at the expense of smaller competitors. A century later the solution to the problem seemed no nearer. Writing in the early nineteenth century, the excise man Joshua Bateman complained: ‘If all casks were formed upon the same principles (which they ought to be,) and were not subject to change, a very ready mode of finding their contents could be devised’. But, alas they did not. Consider the following: Jamaica puncheons usually came close to a spheroid, they were allowed to be one inch solid in the head while the starves had to be from five to eight tenths thick. If they were thin casks then the gauger was to allow fivetenths in length, all the brass for the bung, and five- to seven-tenths for the wet. The Jamaica puncheon was iron-bound while the Barbados variety was woodenbound. The Guinea butts were regular casks and about one and a half inches thick, while although Madeira pipes were similar to the butts, the officer had to Page 15 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks allow three-tenths of an inch more than the callipers gave when gauging it. For coniac pipes the officer had to allow one inch more than the callipers, three- or four-tenths in the bung besides the brass, and again three- or four-tenths in the wet beside the common allowance of six- or seven-tenths. The whole process was a nightmare for the poor officers expected to calculate taxes from this diverse array of containers.36 The variety of shapes was such that Peter Jonas, a one-time supervisor of the excise and author of the popular Art of Gauging, warned, ‘great regard must be (p.296) had to the thickness of the cask, and also its length, and whether it be copped or indented at the bung, squeezed in or bulging out in the quarter, or indented in the head. Experience however must be your guide in these cases’. Cask gauging was still very much an art learnt on the job.37 Before beginning his daily round gauging at a port the revenue officer required the casks to be placed in regular rows along the quay with their bungholes facing upwards. Each cask had to be as level and upright as possible, and at a regular distance from every other to enable room for the officers to shift and manoeuvre their instruments. It also had to be established if the bunghole was in the middle of each cask, whether they were regular and even within, and if the heads of the casks were equal and circular. The following dimensions would then be chalked on the outside of the cask: its cross-bung diameter, the back head diameter, the perpendicular bung diameter and wet inches, the length, and the cross-diameters of the front head. These chalked figures would then be transferred to the officer’s book, and the volume of the cask calculated.38 The main method used to obtain the above measurements was as follows. The officer would first take the thickness of the wood staves with his ‘stave calliper’. The instrument would enter the bunghole and take a number of readings—with their average being the final result. The officer would then take the thickness of the heads using a ‘head calliper’—again taking a number of measurements followed by the average. The length of the cask was taken with a long calliper’— an instrument that contracted til its legs made contact with the heads of the cask The head’s dimension was then taken with a ‘head rod’. To ascertain the thickness of the cask the officer would reach for his ‘cross calliper’ and gauge the vertical depth of the bunghole. This was followed by a cross-measure of the cask through the bunghole with his gauging stick—known as the ‘diagonal’ or ‘dipping rod’. The rod was inserted so that its end would meet the head where it intersects the staves of the opposite side of the cask, and the contents would be displayed in gallons on the diagonal line. The rod was four feet long, divided into four parts and graduated in inches and tenths, and another of gallons and tenths. Once the officer had figures for the head, length, bung, and content he would make his calculation with a slide rule. However, as we have just seen, this was all complicated by the fact that casks came in so many different sizes and shapes—as well as being characterized with other individual variables such as Page 16 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks pressure. The dipping rod was only made with a particular kind of cask in mind. Despite such great variations the revenue officer would measure them as if they were all spheroid (bent in the middle and ends) in shape.39 A certain Mr Moss gave details of sixty-one different forms of spheroidal casks and forty-seven types of other casks. If a cask deviated from the spheroidal type, a deduction in the length was made to reduce it as near as possible to a spheroid. (p.297) Indeed a table of allowances was constructed on the different kind of casks to enable them to be reduced to an spheroidal form. In calculating the wet inches in the cask an allowance had to be made for the type of liquid gauged and the external temperature. For example, some spirits expanded by four- to five-tenths in hot weather and two- to four-tenths in moderate weather, but not at all if it were cold. If a. cask was only partly filled it was said to be on ullage and another method would have to be used to calculate its contents. Not surprisingly, Bate-man warned, gauging a cask necessarily leaves much to the judgement and experience of the gauger; and the practical officers usually consider that the necessary knowledge in this respect is to be acquired only by verbal instruction and observation’.40 There are numerous examples throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries of problems arising from cask gauging, both of a technical and fraudulent nature. Take, for example, the complaints made by the port of London jerquers in May 1689 that the cask gaugers were deliberately making false dimensions. The problematic and frequently chaotic business of cask gauging is usefully illuminated by the official regulations and advice given for such measuring in that same year: ‘The true Dimensions described are of ye Heads & Lengths of all Casks [illegible word] & also of the Bung Diameter where such Casks are perfectly round. Where not perfectly round then to give a medium between ye wal Bung Diameter & ye Cross-bore Diameter (which measured or guessed at) as will induce ye vessel to be gauged to a perfect round cask’. However, it was admitted, ‘’tis Impossible to lay down rules for finding ye certain contents of all casks’, and therefore it was ultimately down to ‘ye Judgement of the Gangers’. It was also advised that the land surveyors should make sure that the gaugers gave the land waiters ‘the true Dimensions of the Head, Length and Bung’ and the jerquer should then check the computations,41 Another major problem was the lack of symmetry in cask gauging throughout England’s various ports. For instance, a complaint was issued by the ‘Wine Merchants of London and other interested parties’ that a much greater allowance was given for leakage in the outports than in London where it was 12 per cent. As a result, carefully appointed officers were stationed at the outports to monitor the work of gauging practices, and ensure that ‘the same exactness’ and The same method as used in London’ was observed. The commissioners also regularly printed ‘orders to the Land-Surveyors in this

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks [London] and the other Ports constantly to inspect the Land Waiters and Gaugers in the Execution of their Duty’.42 A common method of deceiving the gauger was to fix a piece of wood one or two inches thick in the imported brandy casks directly opposite the bung, which (p. 298) would have the impact of rendering the bung diameter less than it was. The wood was sometimes so well fixed that the officer could not detect it by running his bung rod along the bottom of the cask. Taking the diameter at the bung on the outside with a pair of callipers, and then comparing this with the internal diameter given by the bung rod could uncover the deception. The customs officer could further test the cask by piercing the staff opposite the bung with a wood gauge. He also had to be vigilant for casks purposely made with double heads and partitions in the middle, filled with water, allowing the surrounding partitions to contain wine. This form of evasion was fairly widespread with seven to eight gallons of wine typically smuggled within a cask of this nature.43 The problem of gauging casks was such that it preoccupied some of Britain’s leading mathematicians and natural philosophers, including Thomas Young and Charles Hutton. Earlier the celebrated Scottish mathematician Colin Maclaurin spent many a day on the dock quays at Glasgow examining molasses barrels. This resulted in a detailed memoir that attempted to show how the gauger could find the volume of molasses in ‘Tuns’ or ‘Backs’—containers typically containing between 800 and 1,000 gallons. The task of measuring the contents was hindered by an array of irregularities: staves of differing heights, interior bottoms that were frequently not flat, individual staves which stuck out further than others, and the fact many of the barrels were made with a little hollow, called a chine, around the inside of the bottom. The barrel was also usually at an angle along the quays to make it easier to clean, but in so doing making it more difficult to gauge. In other words, with the liquid not parallel to the top, ascertaining the number of dry inches was near impossible. Finally, as well as the shear diversity of casks, another problem was that as they got older the hoops had to be tightened, thereby decreasing the diameter of the cask. The tables the officers used to calculate the volume of these vessels did not take into account this decrease.44 Notes:

(1) A. Smith, Lectures on Justice, Police, Revenue and Arms; delivered in the University of Glasgow and reported by a student in 1763, ed. Edwin Cannan (Oxford, 1896), 183. (2) ibid244–5. The Erench were well aware of the adverse impact its diverse internal duties was having, and at various stages of the 18th cent. attempted to replace them with a single duty. However, strong regional interests and deep suspicions, coupled with crown revenue concerns, squashed any attempt for Page 18 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks most of the century; see J. F. Bosher, The Single Duty Project: A Study of the Movement for a trench Customs Union in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1964), esp. ch. 4. For coal see W. Hausman, ‘The Tax on London Coal: Aspects of fiscal Policy and Economic Development in the Eighteenth Century’, ECL 9 (1982), 21–34, and ‘Market Power in the London Coal Trade: The Limitation of the Vend, 1770–1845’, EEH 21 (1984), 385–405. (3) A. Hessenbruch, ‘The Spread of Precision Measurement in Scandinavia 1160– 1800’, in K. Gavroglu (ed.), The Sciences in the European Periphery during the Enlightenment (Dordrecht, 1999), 179–224; S. Schaffer, ‘A Social History of Plausibility: Country, City and Calculation in Augustan Britain’, in A. Wilson (ed.), Rethinking Social History: English Society 1570–1920 and its Integration (Manchester, 1993), 128–57, on 144. A similar argument is implied by A. Charleswortb, ‘from the Moral Economy of Devon to the Political Economy of Manchester, 1790–1812’, SoH 18 (1993). 205–17, on 208. for plebeian suspicions of state quantification see R. Sheldon, A. Randall, A. Charlesworth and I. Walsh, ‘Popular Protest and the Persistence of Customary Corn Measures: Resistance to the Winchester Bushel in the English West’, in A. Randall and A. Charlesworth (eds.), Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), 25–45. See also E. F. Heckscher, Mercantilism., trans. Mendel Shapiro, 2 vols. (London, 1935), i. 111–15. (4) J. Thirsk and J. P. Cooper (eds.), Seventeenth-Century Documents (Oxford, 1972), 678. (5) E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 178–9 and 234–5. C. Leadbetter, The Royal Gauger; On Gauging made Easy, As it is actually practised by the Officers of his Majesty’s Revenue of Excise (London, 1739; 2nd edn., 1743), 338; H. Couch, A Complete View of the British Customs, Part the Second (2nd edn. London, 1746); J. Smyth, The Practice of the Customs in the Entry, Examination, and Delivery of Goods and Merchandize (3rd edn., London, 1821), 8–9, The mathematical examiner at Trinity House, bookkeeping authority, and ex-mathematical master at the Finsbury Square Mercantile School Patrick Kelly, first coined the word ‘metrology’ in the early 19th cent. (6) J. Hoppit, ‘Reforming Britain’s Weights and Measure, 1660–1824’, EHR 1 (1993), 82–104, on 92–3; R. E. Zupko, Revolution in Measurement: Western European Weights and Measures since the Age of Science (Philadelphia, 1990), 26; J. Brewer, ‘The English State and Fiscal Appropriation, 1688–1789’, P&S 16 (1988), 288–385, on 360; P. Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991), 162–3. For the 17th-cent. commentator see anon., A Sure Guide for His Majesties justices of Peace (London, 1663), 441.

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks (7) W. Kula, Measures and Men, trans. R. Szreter (Princeton, 1986), 70. Karl Marx wrote, ‘the diversity of the measures for commodities arises in part from the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, and in part from convention’, Capital 3 vols. (London, 1867; repr. Harmondsworth, 1990), i. 125–6. Thus to have standardized measurement, and therefore make public calculations, required the suppressing of diversity in localized markets. (8) Kula, Measures and Men, 70; Porter, Trust in Numbers, 223; Linebaugh, London Hanged, 162–3. Colonies usually, but not always, adopted the measures of the occupying country; sec J. J. McCuskcr, ‘Weights and Measures in the Colonial Sugar Trade: The Gallon and the Pound and their international Equivalents’, WMQ, 3rd ser., 30 (1973), 599–624, on 600. (9) Anon., ‘Weights and Measures’, BRLCJ 9 (1817), 159–84, on 160–1; ‘Proposals for Attempting the Gauge of Wines & Brandies’, n.d., probably early 1730s, CUL Ch(H) 44/93; J. T. Graham and Maurice Stevenson, Weights and Measures and their Marks: A Guide to Collecting (3rd edn., Haverford-West, 1993), 3–4. (10) Hoppit, ‘Reforming Britain’s Weights and Measures’, 93–4. (11) G. S. Keith, Different Methods of Establishing an Uniformity of Weights and Measures Stated and Compared (London, 1817), 1; McCusker, ‘Weights and Measures in the Colonial Sugar Trade’, 604. For numerous other ScottishLnglisb legal variations in metrology see Zupko, Revolutionin Measurement, 5–7. As late as 1817 it was estimated by the agriculturist, expert on the distillation of spirits, and minister of Keith-Hall and Kinkell, George Keith, that throughout provincial England there were ‘about two hundred and thirty’ different weights and measures, and in Scotland a further seventy. He also added that it was extremely frequent to find several different weights and measures in the same county; see Keith, Different Methods, 2, (12) Anon., ‘An Account of a Comparison Lately Made by Some Gentlemen of the Royal Society of the Standard of a Yard, and the Several Weights Lately Made For Their Use’, PTRS 42 (1742–3), 541–56; Hoppit, ‘Reforming Britain’s Weights and Measures’, 94–5. (13) During the Middle Ages City of London officials were in charge of stamping and testing bronze and brass weights at the Guildhall jointly with the Worshipful Company of Founders from 1579; see Stevenson, Weights and Measures, 11. (14) ‘Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Original Standards of Weights and Measures in this Kingdom’ (1758), HCSP 19. 352. (15) Ibid. 389. The use of damaged, false, and poorly constructed weights, measures, and scales was also endemic. Take e.g. the case of salt. All the weights were corroded at Droitwich where no new scales had been introduced Page 20 of 23

 

Revenue, Metrology, and Casks for over fifty years. As a result ‘here and elsewhere it is the practice to balance the scales with stones, brickbats, pieces of old iron and dirt’; see Hughes, Studies, 344–5. (16) Hoppit, ‘Reforming Britain’s Weights and Measures’, 87; Zupko, Revolution in Measures, 105–7. (17) Zupko, Revolution in Measures, 107–8. (18) Hoppit, ‘Reforming Britain’s Weights and Measures’, 99–102. For an account of the implementation and reception to the French metric system see K. Alder, ‘A Revolution to Measure; The Political Economy of the Metric System in France’, in Wise (ed.), Values of Precision, 39–71. (19) Zupko, Revolution in Measures, 178–9; B. R. Leftwich, Customs: The Story of a Great Department typed MS, Customs and Excise Museum, NMGM, n.d., 207. John Bird gained immense prestige during the 18th cent. for the precision instruments he made the astronomer royal James Bradley. (20) J. Bateman, The Excise Officer’s Manual, and Improved practical Ganger; Being a compendious Introduction to the Business of Charging and Collecting the Duties of Excise (London, 1840), 28–9. (21) Zupko, Revolution in Measures, 178–9. (22) W. D. Patlenden, ‘Weights, Measures and Taxes in the Coal Trade’, BCTHS 20 (1973), 12–22, on 12–14. For the commissioners see the ‘Thirteenth Report of the Committee Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’ (1785), HCSP 44. 18. See also PRO CUST 41/1, 14 July 1713. (23) Treasury to Excise, 7 June 1695[6], PRO CUST 48/6. For an interesting discussion on the problem and solution to techniques like ‘shivering’ and ‘packing’ pain see Hessenbruch, ‘Spread of Precision Measurement’, 208–9. (24) Excise to Treasury, 1 July 1695 and 10 Feb. 1695 [96], PRO CUST 48/6. (25) Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 119. (26) Ibid. 120.s One pound troy was in proportion to the cubic inches contained in a wine gallon, while one pound avoirdupois was Very near’ the cubic inches contained in an ale gallon—as demonstrated by the general gauger of the Excise Nicholas Gunton in about 1695. The standard ale quart was kept in the exchequer and defined as 70 cubic inches, which meant that the ale gallon must contain 282–3 cubic inches; see Ibid. 120.s 118, Under the same Act the coal bushel was legislated at 2217.47 cubic inches— ‘the last Bushel and one Quart of water’; see S. Reynardson, ‘A State of the English Weights and

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks Measures of Capacity, as They Appear from the Laws as Well Ancient as Modern’, PTRS 46 (1749–50), 54–71. on 59. (27) ‘Proposals for Altering the Gauge of Wines & Brandies’, n.d., probably early 1730s, CUL Ch(H) 44/93; Leadbetter, Royal Gauger, 117. (28) ‘Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Original Standards’, 376. (29) ‘Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Original Standards’, 377. The changing size of the Butt was a regular problem, see H. Atton and H. H. Holland, The King’s Customs, 2 vols. (London, 1908), i. 53. (30) ‘Opinion of the Council’, 16 Nov. 1703, PRO CUST 41/1. (31) ‘Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Original Standards’, 377; Zupko, Revolution in Measures, 47–8. (32) ‘Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Original Standards’, 378. (33) Ibid. 373–4. (34) ‘Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Original Standards’, 374. (35) Mr Dracord v. Mr Hall and others, 3 July 1779, PRO CUST 103/5. (36) R. Shirtchiffe, The Theory and Practice of Gauging, Demonstrated in a Short and Easy Method (London, 1740). p. viii; Bateman, The Excise Officer’s Manual, 218; P. Jonas, The Genuine Art of Gauging Made Easy and Familiar; Exhibiting All The Principal Methods Actually Practised By The Officers Of His Majesty’s Revenue Of The Excise And Customs (London, 1805), 357. (37) Jonas, Genuine Art of Gauging, 357. (38) Ibid. 225. (39) ‘Gauging’, CEMS 25000/384; Bateman, The Excise Officer’s Manual, 218–20 and 228; Atton, and Holland King’s Customs i. 110–11. (40) Bateman, The Excise Officer’s Manual 223 and 228. For calculating partly filled casks see ibid. 236–8. (41) ‘Jerquers’, 6 May 1689, BL Add MS 18903, fos. 10–11. (42) CUL Ch(H) 41/18/1 n.d., probably between 1730 and 1733.

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Revenue, Metrology, and Casks (43) Bateman, Excise Officer’s Manual, 227; Jonas, Genuine Art of Gauging, 358; ‘Frauds Relating to Wines in London & the Outports’, n.d., probably early 1730s, CUL Ch(H) 41/18/7, and ‘Frauds in the Wine Trade’, 1733, CUL Ch(H) 43/9. (44) J. V. Grabiner, ‘A Mathematician Among the Molasses Barrels: Maclaurin’s Unpublished Memoir on Volumes’, PEMS 39 (1996), 193–240, on 194–5, and‘“Some Disputes of Consequence”: Maclaurin among the Molasses Barrels’, SSS 28 (1998), 139–68, on 142.

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The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0017

Abstract and Keywords This chapter begins with a discussion of the incarceration of goods. It shows that incarcerating goods through the new tight Warehousing Act meant excarcerating people: protecting trade from the various hoards that roved along the quays and those employed along the waterfront. The chapter then discusses the adulteration and policing of commodities. Keywords:   excise, import, export, Warehouse Act, commodities

For nearly three centuries Excise duties have been levied on certain manufactures selected by Parliament for the purpose. For many decades the selection was not regarded with equanimity by the traders concerned, and much conflict resulted between, them and the departments. One great good arose from this, that is to say the department gained experience in the science of tax incidence and collection which is now utilised fully, J. Scarisbrick, Beer Manual: Historical and Technical, Revenue Series, no. 1 (3rd edn., 1896) Chapters 12–15 have demonstrated the integral role the excise played in helping to shape the domestic mode of production for taxable goods. For the midnineteenth-century industrial journalist George Dodd, the excise was ‘a great Wot upon the fiscal arrangements of this country, and one which severely affects the manufacture of malt, of glass, of soap, and many other articles, that in order to collect the duties levied on these commodities, the officers of the Excise are Page 1 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods empowered to control, as it were, every step of the processes, and to regulate the extent to which any improvement in the operations may be carried… it is the mode of collection which is so objectionable, by imposing impolitic checks to the natural course of improvement in manufacturing processes’. It was not just at the site of production that tax was making such a decisive impact, but also at the place of importation and exportation.1

Incarcerating Goods: Warehouses And Walls In a move similar to Robert Walpole’s earlier doomed excise scheme of 1733, William Pitt proposed to transfer the greater part of the duties on wines from the customs to the excise in 1786. The purported aim was to prevent the extensive frauds in the wine trade, in particular domestic adulteration, fabrication, and smuggling. It was hoped that the additional revenue raised would remediate an estimated deficiency in the sinking fund. The public reaction to the proposals was once again hostile. The Times wrote in the familiar language of 1733 and 1763; ‘The excise is as much to be dreaded as the inquisition. Can it be believed, that at the (p.300) time that formidable tribunal is drooping its head, and losing all its power in the most bigoted and arbitrary countries, the excise, like the Manchioneel-tree, shall extend its branches and spread its influence in this Island’. The reporter then went on to warn that a general excise would be next on the government’s list.2 The same Bill proposed that the main control of duty on the tobacco trade should be passed to the excise. Thus instead of duty being levied at the point of import, it was proposed that only part of it would be paid at import and the rest raised as an excise duty on removal from the warehouse for home consumption. Bonded warehouses were arranged, while all tobacco manufacturers, dealers, and retailers were required to take out licences, and submit to the control of excise officers. These reforms increased revenue by £300,000. The introduction of wine and tobacco warehouses laid the foundation for a more generalized warehouse policy on other goods. This culminated in an Act of 1803 that allowed all types of goods to be placed in warehouses pending duty, therefore allowing the smaller merchant to compete more effectively with the larger importers.3 Thence commenced the large-scale establishment of the warehousing system during the early nineteenth century. Under this method a commodity on being imported was stored in a warehouse secured by the joint locks of the crown and the merchant. The bulk of the duty was paid if the goods were removed for sale in the domestic market, and a negligible amount was paid if the goods were re-exported, instead of duty being paid immediately on importation and then claimed back if re-exported. A whole area of fraud and confusing paperwork was thus removed. The system was not new but its elevation to mainstream, national policy was. A version of this form of warehousing had developed around the turn of the seventeenth century, specifically for Indian and Persian wrought silks. These items were prohibited Page 2 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods from the home market but permitted by law to be warehoused and re-exported without payment of duty. In 1709 pepper, which on being imported paid half its duty, joined these goods and if entering the home market it paid the other half. Under Walpole the warehousing of tea, coffee, and cocoa was made compulsory, and as we have also seen, an unsuccessful attempt was made to apply the system to tobacco and wine in 1733. This scheme was resurrected when the committee investigating illicit practices again recommended part of it in 1784. The aim underpinning all these regulations was to relieve merchants of the inconvenience of paying duties on goods destined for foreign markets, and to prevent the fraudulent activities revolving around the drawback system.4 (p.301) The 1797 select committee on finance concluded its fourth report with a resounding recommendation ‘for adopting the system of warehousing Goods imported, and bonding the Duties, without actually levying them till the Goods axe taken out for Home Consumption’. They claimed that the case of tobacco, in particular, justified the expansion of bonded warehouses to all the largest articles of importation. In 1799 yet another committee was set up to investigate and consider evidence regarding two Bills for the improvement and trade of the port of London. The central issue concerned which commodities imported into London would be ‘proper to be warehoused under the King’s Lock duty free, or on payment of the present duty, so as to be free of all duty if re-exported’. Meanwhile the customs officers at Britain’s second largest port, Liverpool, were also invited to give their opinion. They were initially negative on the issue: The warehousing of goods on importation in our opinion, is objectionable on several accounts, except in those cases where the Duty exceeds, or bears a great proportion to, their intrinsic value; the Merchant is less interested, in preventing embezzlement than he would be if he had to pay the duty for them,—the charge and guard of them from the time they are landed until they come to be re-exported, must be entrusted to Officers, of an inferior description, and being lodged in a variety of Storehouses, dispersed over a great extent of ground, and widely separated from each other, occasions a considerable expense to the Revenue in the pay of Officers, and affords to the porters and labourers employed, a variety of opportunity for theft and pilferage.5 In contrast, the momentum in London for the plan was in full swing. A scheme for surrounding Blackwall and five other wet docks with large formidable walls to prevent the running of goods, had been proposed as long ago as the early 1730s during Walpole’s onslaught on port pilfering. The idea was to force all incoming ships ‘to go into such Dock or Docks, and continue there til they are entirely cleared, and that as soon as the cargoes of such ships and vessels or any Part thereof are entered at the Customhouse, any Hoy, Lighter, Barge Wherry or Boat having a proper authority in working may have the Liberty of Ingress, Egress and Regress to fetch up from thence all such Goods & Merchandize to Page 3 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods the Custom House as shall be there entered’, wrote an enthusiastic correspondent to Walpole,6 After over a century of operating a policy of drawbacks, the warehousing system was eventually adopted as an. alternative in the 1803 Warehousing Act. Now merchants could deposit goods for up to fifteen months free of duty. The commissioners appointed in 1820 to inquire into the departments of customs and excise highlighted the importance of this Act: ‘This measure became not merely (p.302) eligible, but almost indispensable, for the numerous additions to the rate of duty on most of the material articles of Foreign Commerce, had in this effect nearly deprived the Country of the benefit of being in any degree a depot for Foreign merchandize, and had confined the trade in articles of this description to our own consumption’.7 The first walled warehouses to be opened were the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs in 1806. They were all built with large towering thirty-foot walls and an outer-railed moat for the further security of goods. This ‘dosed system’, as it was known, only allowed dock or company or revenue employees into the premises. During the early phase it also had a military guard constantly patrolling its space. All the windows had cast-iron frames and enclosed staircases separated access from the sugar floors to the attic storing coffee. Twenty years later the customs were able to declare that the dock system had ‘entirely stopped largescale pilfering’—an emerging political economy had once again become embedded in the architecture and geography of the world. As one historian has commented; ‘We may think of docks and warehousing as an aspect of the great enclosure movement; enclosure of the open fields: the gathering of spinning jennies and weaving looms into factories; of customs and excise in the new fiscal unit of the United Kingdom; the replacement of fees and perquisites by the all-in salary; efficient government; big business; the anatomy of modern capitalism’. The enclosed system also greatly assisted everyday customs control over shipping work. The import and export activities were segregated into separate docks, while better accommodation was established for customs staff. Other ports around the country soon tried to also adopt the enclosed system.8

Warehouses And The PORT Of Liverpool Once the newly built warehouses appeared in London and were declared fit for the Warehousing Act of 1803, a public meeting was urgently held in Liverpool under the chairmanship of the mayor, Thomas Bold. The issue had now become one of vital importance to the future of Liverpool’s trading prosperity. After some hard negotiations, the Treasury consented to extend the provisions of the Act to Liverpool in 1805. However, this was on the condition that the warehousing came up to the government’s prescribed architectural requirements: ‘That the fireplaces shall be solidly built up; the superfluous windows and particularly those looking into yards; and over other buildings stopped up with brickwork as solid as the walls themselves, and the remainder of the windows secured with Page 4 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods Iron Bars fixed with the brick work and the internal shutters also properly secured. That the tiles (p.303) of each roof be well pointed externally, the skylights stopped up, and the Rafters ceiled, and when the floor run over a gateway that the same be ceiled also’.9 The key question was how to make the port secure enough? Two revenue officers, one from customs and the other from excise, were appointed to survey its requirements, and report their conclusions to the Treasury, The officers’ findings made depressing reading. They ‘were of Opinion that the Benefit of the General Warehousing Act, ought not to be extended to this Port, in the present State of its Accommodations’. The docks, they claimed, were totally inadequate in providing the required ‘security to Property on Board, either Outward or inward bound vessels, & consequently equal insecurity to the Revenue’. The docks as a whole were far too crowded and needed to be extended, including the provision of greater quay room to assist with the poor facilities for ships loading and unloading. Owing to the dense congestion of light & laid up ships & vessels in the said Docks great facilities were afforded to Plundering & Fraudulent practices’. There was no way, they claimed, that highly taxed articles could be protected from the mass of pilferers swarming menacingly around the docks. The two officers were totally unimpressed with the proposed plan offered to them ‘by the Dock Surveyor (the slippery John Foster) for establishing secure warehouses upon the West side of the present Docks without enclosing such Docks with a wall’. This, they continued, was ‘inadequate to the purpose of securing Property & the Revenue on board vessels lying in the said Dock, & therefore they could not sanction their Plan’. For Liverpool to qualify, it had to provide an enclosed dock, or more appropriately docks, with secure warehouses attached to them.10 In addition there were still some aspects of the Liverpool organization that the Board of Customs strongly objected to. For example, entrusting tide waiters with the keys of the warehouses was highly disapproved of. Instead, the Board instructed the Liverpool authorities to discontinue the practice and give the trust ‘to officers of more responsibility who, when the keys are not necessarily wanted, are to deliver them into the care of the Collector (who is by the nature of the appointment the warehouse-keeper for the Port) or to such careful and responsible persons as he may select, for whome he is answerable’. The collector estimated an increase of 40,000 to 50,000 casks of goods per year entering the port that would need to be lodged under the locks of the crown. As a consequence he asked for a number of new posts, including twelve lockers to receive and deliver the goods. In the event twelve weighing porters were appointed to act as lockers.11 Nearly all goods arriving into Liverpool were released at open quays situated, without any physical barrier, on the town’s streets. One particular problem with (p.304) building more warehouses by the quays was the threat of fire. The Page 5 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods abundance of wood, tar, congestion of vessels, and flammable commodities such as rum, tobacco, and sugar made the risk extremely likely and hugely expensive, as the Goree Warehouse fire of 1802 had revealed (the damage was estimated at £323,000). Only the Kings Dock Tobacco Warehouse built in 1799—one of the largest buildings in the city—met the criteria, and it already stored duty-free tobacco. However, perhaps the greatest obstacle to building more appropriate warehouses by the quays was a political one. Such a move would devalue the large number of private investments already made by individuals in providing warehouses, and these individuals held powerful interests within Liverpool.12 One of the factors enabling Liverpool to eventually gain warehousing status in 1805 was the agreement to build a surrounding wall around the quaysides, with a number of gateways manned by a newly established dock police. The architect hired to make all this possible was the authoritive engineer John Rennie. He immediately pointed to the extremely difficult task ahead: In the original Construction of these Docks, no systematised plan for their gradual extension seems to have been kept in view,—each Dock is placed as if there was no probability of others being required’. He was also somewhat bemused by the fact the quays, as already mentioned, were also public streets, causing all sorts of problems for vessels loading and unloading. He calculated that the entire space occupied by the docks only came to thirty-five acres leaving it five acres too short, by his estimate, to cope with the volume of existing traffic—let alone the need for space to meet the projected expansion.13 The excise commissioners wrote to Foster in 1810 with a number of queries regarding the plans for Liverpool’s docks. He reassuringly replied that the Proposed new Docks are intended to be enclosed with surrounding walls as nearly as possible upon the principle and plan of the London Dock, that the Dock Quays and new warehouses upon the west side of Georges Dock, the Salthouse Dock and the Kings Dock are intended to be enclosed with surrounding walls upon the Principle above mentioned. Warehouses for the reception of high dutied goods are proposed to be erected within these enclosures provided the Hon.ble Boards of Customs and Excise will establish proper officers for the dispatch of business at each Dock where these warehouses are erected. He also reiterated that these architectural changes required a dock police to ensure that ‘Pilfering and Plunderage’ were kept down. The 1811 Dock Act authorized Rennie’s plans, especially for the wall to surround the quays. This barrier was to be sixteen feet high and made from local brick. The Act also established the creation of the dock police, with powers based on those that had been obtained by the port of Bristol in 1806.14

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The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods (p.305) Incarcerating goods through the new tight regulations demanded by the Warehousing Act meant excarcerating people: protecting trade from the various hoards that roved along the quays and those employed on the waterfront. Pilfering remained stubbornly embedded within the culture of port life. One experienced customs officer complained to the dock committee in July 1814, ‘the regular system of plunder now carried on upon the Dock quays which I am compelled to be a daily witness of a gang consisting principally of women & in number from forty to fifty are in constant attendance upon all coffee ships,— whether lading or unlading’. The officer had known some of these women as long as sixteen years, during which time, ‘thieving on the quays has been their sole occupation which they have carried on unmolested and apparently without fear of apprehension’. Although the merchants used all sorts of devices to try and secure their goods, including the hiring of constables to guard their goods, it was all to no avail. For one thing the ‘Constables never think it their duty to disperse the vagabonds who stand in crowds around them & take every opportunity of pilfering’. The same officer was also damming of ‘the robbery committed by lumpers employed to discharge & take in cargoes’. He concluded that he had only touched upon a few of the problems of dockyard life, but all his examples ‘arise from the total want of a day police around the quays’. Other problems pointed out by the dock committee included the scavenging by ‘those Men and Hoys who are now in the Hahit of going down into the Docks… for the purposes of picking up Ropes, Dye Woods, and Other articles that have fallen or have been thrown into the Docks’.15 The 1811 Dock Act may well have agreed to the principle of establishing a dock police force, but actually organizing it was a different matter. For a start where should its headquarters be situated? The trustees of Liverpool Docks petitioned the Treasury in September 1814: ‘That the Pilferage on the Quays of the Liverpool Docks has long been the subject of complaint on the part of the Officers of His Majesty’s Customs and of the Merchants of this Town, and has become an evil of such magnitude that whether it be regarded as affecting His Majesty’s Revenue the Interests of the Merchants or the Morals of the People, it loudly calls for the most prompt exercise of the magistrates authority, to arrest its rapid progress’. The memorialists were extremely concerned. ‘So enormous is the extent of this mischief, they continued, that we ‘believe the officers of Customs will admit the loss to the Revenue and the Merchants to be most serious, if not incalculably great, and they will also confirm the fact the Pilferage is made with such success and system, that hundreds of children are taught to earn their livelihood by the dreadful practices of theft and plunder’. The solution, they argued, was to speedily solve logistic problems and operationalize the dock police.16 (p.306) The issue, however, continued unresolved. For example, in April 1815 the trustees received a letter from one of the principal customs officers complaining of the promiscuous plundering of merchants’ property upon the Page 7 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods west quay of the King’s Dock, ‘and strongly recommending measures to be taken for clearing that and the other Dock Quays of the Hordes of Pilfers that now infest them’. Eventually the clamour for a dockyard police became overwhelming, and arrangements for the new body were finally made in October 1815, with the new office situated adjacent to the Customs House.17 The port of Liverpool remained a magnet for trouble. During the 1830s several arrests per night were made for theft, picking pockets, begging, being drunk and disorderly, fighting, ‘exposing his person’, hawking without a licence, and being ‘a suspicious person’. The force in 1836 consisted of 153 privates, seven sergeants, and five acting inspectors. Despite Liverpool’s new warehouses, high walls, and police force, pilfering continued to thrive but in a much more organized fashion. The superintendent, Mr Dowling, told a subcommittee looking into the expediency of uniting the dock police with the town police in 1836 that a great deal of property was still stolen from the docks, mainly going straight into the town to be distributed or taken directly by train to Manchester. Charles Berry, a former dockyard officer and now a constable in the town police, described the thriving culture; ‘There are many classes of thieves about the Docks—In ships discharging sugar, the lumpers undertake to discharge and employ their own men, and have what they generally call “Carriers” who belt themselves with Sugar or Coffee in jackets made on purpose with false wings which they carry into the town—they also tie their drawers at the bottom round their boots and fill them with Coffee, pepper or any Produce’. Berry was also convinced that a great deal of illicit trade in tobacco continued, since a large number of people ‘appear to dress well who have no known means of subsistence’. One local practice involved taking goods out of the docks by ‘belts in their hats’, with some ‘Carriers’ earning two guineas a week for this common trade.18 The necessary requirements for operating the new warehousing system were not met until the Bill for building the Albert Dock was submitted to parliament in 1841. The eventual warehouses were totally enclosed by a fearsome wall, except in the north-east angle where thick iron doors creaked shut, preventing anyone entering the buildings and its surroundings.19

(p.307) ‘subterraneous philosophers’: adulteration and the policing of commodities The rapid expansion of bonded warehouses and the establishment of a dockyard police tried to create a wider and more robust space between the pilferer and commodities entering a port. During the same period the space between the consumer and the producer of food and drink was also becoming greater, ‘Their (the poor) stomachs are the waste-baskets of the State’, thundered George Jacob Holyoake to a group of Rochdale co-operators in 1843 and added, ‘It is their lot to swallow all the adulterations in the market’.20 The moral economy had, to a certain extent, ensured—through local relationships and understanding, the Page 8 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods system of assize and local JPs—that the quality of bread, ale, and other foods was regulated. Moreover the self-contained nature of local communities guaranteed that if such intervention were not properly pursued then, they would do it themselves. Outside London and the larger English cities the local, smallscale, face-to-face societies that dominated eighteenth-century England meant that the consumer and local producer were, as yet, not separated. However, with the increasing sprawl and spread of urbanization, coupled with the change in working practices (especially the huge increase of female labour), the quality of food and drink rapidly deteriorated.21 There had always been periodic public complaints over the quality of flour, bread, and beer, but, although more frequent from the 1750s, they were nothing to challenge the rage expelled in the nineteenth century. By this point, as John Burnett writes in his important work on food adulteration, ‘an ever-increasing proportion of the population was necessarily dependent on others for its food, and, as capitalisation and specialisation advanced, more and more separated from the ultimate food-producers: in the process, the old local relationships and sanctions which had existed between consumers and retailers largely broke down’.22 The only protection, of sorts, was the revenue bodies of customs and excise. However, their first line of duty was to safeguard the state’s coffers, not the people’s health. The consumer was seemingly digesting cheaper and frequently poisonous substances at ever-greater levels. (p.308) The public concern over the adulteration of tea was fed by a number of well-publicized excise trials against manufacturers and sellers during the 1810s. This led to more sophisticated forms of testing tea, and to the emergence of a new set of tea dealers that played on the increasing public fear of adulteration. In 1819 almost 100 people were prosecuted for adding the dangerous substances of cocculus indicus, multua, capsicum, copperas, quassia, and numerous other things to beer. All these ingredients were cheap alternatives to malt and hops, and provided the appearance of strength and flavour. The first problem to be addressed was the retailers’ fear that the tea they purchased was not what it purported to be. In 1823 John Michelson changed the rules of the wholesaler and introduced a system in which the retailer knew every aspect of the tea’s history—a method that became dominant by the late 1820s. The tea now reached the dealer in the same state as it was when loaded on the ship from India and China. The next aspect to be solved was the public fear that the retailer might adulterate the tea. This threat was removed when a Quaker, John Horniman, introduced tea retailed in sealed packets from 1826 (by the 1870s his company dominated the British tea market).23 Within the context of late eighteenth-century England, public health and food adulteration simply was not a mainstream government (or public) issue. For one thing the knowledge and technology for detecting adulterants simply was not there, nor was the medical knowledge indicating the harmful effects of such Page 9 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods adulterants on people’s health. The only reason it became such a widely discussed problem was through government fears that they were losing a great deal of revenue. From about the mid-teens of the nineteenth century the excise started utilizing the argument of public health in their various prosecutions. Of course they only did so in an attempt to win their cases and safeguard the revenue. The result was the development of a number of new ways to investigate the matter, which culminated in many more prosecutions. It was this that brought the issue into the public sphere. Burnett has convincingly demonstrated how the affects of the unprecedented high taxes on popular goods such as tea, beer, coffee, and malt—particularly during the Napoleonic Wars and at times of terrible harvests—forced manufacturers and retailers into the shady world of adulteration. For instance, the brewer’s monopoly on public houses that had began, in the eighteenth century often made life for the tenants very difficult, forcing them to adulterate their beer to enable them to make a proper living. The monopoly of the East India. Company on tea enabled them to limit the supply into the market and. therefore keep prices high, which, coupled with the escalating tax (back up to 100 per cent by 1819), was a powerful, impulse to adulterate and produce tea substitutes. And with the smashing of the licensing policy towards beer in the Beerhouse Act of 183.0 and tea from India in 1813 and China in 1833 came different problems. It was (p.309) hoped that the competition, the creation of some 45,000 additional beershops around the country, would naturally purify the product. However, the exact opposite happened and the practice of adulteration expanded further. It was undoubtedly tax that was the greatest factor in the rise of adulteration in goods such as these, as well as other commodities like coffee, spirits, pepper, and sugar. By 1855, according to the founder of The Lancet, Dr Arthur Hill Hassall, adulteration of spirits was costing the revenue £2,196,000; malt £2,040,000; tobacco £908,000; and wine, hops, tea, and sugar each between a quarter and a third of a million pounds. It was also the case, as Burnett notes, that many people had come to prefer the taste of adulterated goods.24 The first widely read and regarded work on the subject came in 1820 with the publication of Frederick Accum’s Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons, Accum, at the time of writing, was a well-respected professor of chemistry at the Surrey Institution, having served as an assistant to Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution and been a prominent consultant to manufacturers and industrialists for a number of years. Inspired by the recent spate of excise prosecutions against manufacturers for adulteration he set out to investigate the extent of the problem. Accum boiled its growth down to industrialization, urbanization, and the new division of work: ‘It is a painful reflection, that the division of labour which has been so instrumental in bringing the manufactures of the country to their present flouribhing state, should have also tended to conceal and facilitate the fraudulent practices in question; and that from a Page 10 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods correspondent ramification of commerce into a multitude of distinct branches, particularly in the metropolis and the large towns of the empire, the traffic in adulterated commodities should find its way through so many circuitous channels, as to defy the most scrutinising endeavour to trace it to its sources’.25 According to Burnett, Accum’s first edition of 1,000 copies sold out in a month, and a fourth edition appeared within two years. Yet despite its sales and publicity it did little to stem adulteration.26 Such practices were big business and dominated by a number of large organizations that defeated ‘the scrutiny of the revenue officer’. The whole process was carefully organized; ‘to ensure the secrecy of these mysteries, the processes are very ingeniously divided and sub-divided among individual operators, and the manufacture is purposely carried on in separate establishments’. Accum then proceeded to give literally hundreds of ways various commodities were adulterated. For example, cocculus indicus (a poisonous berry)—known in the market as ‘black extract’ and meant for the use of leather tanners and textile dyers—was more frequently added to porter or ales, while a substance composed of an extract of quassia and liquorice juice was used to stretch the use of malt and hops.27 (p.310) From fifteen different samples of beer supposedly of the same denomination, bought from different retailers, Accum found that the samples of brown stout gave on average an alcohol content of 6.5 per cent, while the average porter brewed was 4.5 per cent. ‘Where can this difference between the beer finished by the brewer, and that retailed by the publican, arise?’ The answer was clear. The mixing of strong and small beer was one of the most practised frauds operated by brewers and publicans. A representative from the Excise Office in 1819 told a parliamentary committee: ‘The duty upon strong beer is ten shillings a barrel; and upon table beer it is two shillings. The revenue suffers, because a larger quantity of beer is sold as strong beer; that is, at a price exceeding the price of table beer, without the strong beer duty being paid. In the next place, the brewer suffers, because the retailer gets table or mild beer, and retails as strong beer’. The solicitor of the excise, a Mr Carr, claimed it was almost impossible to prevent this fraud. In addition, a huge market had grown up for quassia and wormwood by brewers, in which shavings from the wood were ground into a powder and added to beer instead of the taxed item of hops. The appearance of a good-quality porter—’a fine frothy head’—could be achieved by adding sulphate of iron, alum, and salt while capsicum and grains of Paradise were employed to improve weak insipid beer.28 Other examples included the addition of a compound of sugar with extract of capsicum to heighten the flavour of brandy; ground coriander seeds mixed with nux vomica and quassia to give a bitter taste and narcotic property to beer; Cornish fine white clay to soap; plaster of Paris to increase the weight of paper stuff; and making white pepper from black by soaking it in sea water and urine. Page 11 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods The frauds committed in the tanning of skins were particularly rampant, but perhaps the most adulterated of taxed commodities was wine. The colour of new wines was made brighter by adding alum, Brazil wood, or the husks of elderberries and bilberries in order to deepen the colour of pale red port, while gypsum was used to make cloudy white wine transparent. Accum pointed to an article written several years earlier in The Tatler (1797) describing the activities of these people: These subterraneous philosophers are daily employed in the transmutation of liquors, and by the power of magical drugs and incantations, raising under the streets of London the choicest products of the hills and valleys of France. They can squeeze Bordeaux out of the sloe, and draw champagne from an apple… this art… can turn a plantation of northern hedges into a vineyard. These adepts are known among one another by the name of Wine-brewers; and, I am afraid, do great injury, not only to Her Majesty’s customs, but to the bodies of many of her good subjects.29 As already noted, other taxed and heavily adulterated products included tea, coffee, and spirits. An imaginative creation promoted by Edmund Rhodes of Hatton Garden eventually cost him a fine of £500. He was found dyeing, fabricating, and manufacturing one hundredweight amounts of sloe leaves, ash leaves, (p.311) elder leaves, and various other leaves, to be used in imitation of tea. Another group of men were convicted for employing an army of people to pluck leaves from north London bushes as a major adulterant for tea. To achieve this, the leaves were first converted to resemble black tea by boiling them, baking them upon an iron plate, and then rubbing them with their hands to make them recoil into the distinctive curl of black tea (the colour was given by the addition of logwood). To make green tea leaves they were laid upon sheets of copper where they received their colour with the help of a substance called Dutch pink. To complete the operation the deadly poison of verdigris was added to make it appear like China tea. Those involved in this particular case were fined £840.30 The collection and selling of old tea leaves was a popular trade in midnineteenth-century London. Men and women would collect them from servants, who received something like two to fourpence a fortnight for retrieving them from their employer’s teapots. When the agent had accumulated a basin of the used leaves, she would sell it for fourpence to a chandler. Some of the most successful agents would sometimes spend a sovereign in a week on the purchases of such leaves. Once collected, they were placed on hot plates and dyed with plumbago or Prussian blue depending on what type of tea it was to resemble, During the 1840s there were at least eight factories in London devoted to drying and reselling used tea leaves to the common but illicit market.31

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The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods A typical defence by grocers of adulterated coffee was to plead that they were in some way providing a public service to the poor. Take the case of Edward Fox, a dealer in tea and coffee convicted in 1818: ‘he did it as a matter of accommodation to the poor, who could not give a higher price; he did not sell it for genuine coffee’. The excise commissioner hearing the case had no time for such arguments and concluded: ‘Then you have been defrauding the public for many years, and injuring the revenue by your illicit practices: the poor have an equal right to be supplied with as genuine an article as the rich’.32 The above case of coffee adulteration reveals a hardening of the excise toward such dealers as compared to those taken to court in the early 1800s. For example, compare the trial, already referred to in Chapter 12, of William Savage in 1802 with that of Alexander Brady in 1818. Savage’s attorney successfully convinced his audience that his client provided a public service by supplying the poor with a wholesome beverage. ‘It is nothing more nor less than marrow peas prepared in a particular way and a very wholesome beverage it is… a cheap breakfast for the poor’. At a time of scarce corn and a government actively trying to encourage the greater consumption of items like peas, such an argument received a sympathetic ear. However, the socio-economic climate had subsequently changed, especially after the close of the Napoleonic Wars, and with it came a rise in awareness of tax evasion through adulteration or imitation. It was also a time when necessaries and popular luxuries were being taxed as never before—especially with the (p.312) removal of the wartime income tax. In contrast to Savage, Brady was fined £50 and harshly reprimanded by the commissioners: ‘you have been for twenty years acting most dishonestly, defrauding the revenue; and the health of the poor must have suffered very much by taking such an unwholesome article’. Again, in 1818, the excise concluded its case against Thomas Owen by arguing they had a double duty: first, towards the revenue and secondly, to protect people’s health. The excise was now utilizing the possible threat to people’s health through adulteration to make more convictions, and as a rhetorical device to generate the momentum for more resources to police commodities. It was this debate that Accum was entering.33 As we have already seen in the case of brandy, one tactic the excise used in compensating for adulteration was to tax the main adulterant. Consider the case of chicory. From 1832 grocers were able to keep chicory on their premises and eight years later sell it mixed with coffee. In 1851 more so-called coffee, made primarily of chicory, was being sold, while far less highly taxed coffee was being imported. As far as the government was concerned this was not a major problem, since home-grown chicory had been highly taxed since 1840. Even here, however, the one-time adulterant was in turn adulterated. A grocer from Shoreditch revealed a compound of burnt peas, dog biscuit, prepared earth, ‘and a substance which I shall not describe because it is too horrid to mention’, used instead of chicory (several tons were in fact offered). The bottom line, as Burnett Page 13 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods points out, was revenue and not health: ‘With the purity of food and drink as a whole, the excise had no concern whatever; its interest was entirely fiscal, and it seems not improbable that the Treasury would have sanctioned an adulteration if its effect had been to increase, rather than diminish, the revenue’. During a period of dismantling trade and manufacturing restrictions coupled with natural law notions of a self-acting market, the last thing deemed necessary was legislation on the control and quality of commodities.34 Take the case of beer. Until the eighteenth century it had remained relatively unadulterated, but with the huge growth in beer taxation came a similar increase in the use of adulterants, with the tax on malt and hops adding greatly to the incentive. The century also saw the rise of large beer monopolies whose standardized brews bulldozed many small, struggling brewers. As we have seen, there were literally hundreds of adulterants developed by ‘beer doctors’ to provide cheap substitutes in the production of beer. The beer doctors and druggists were at the forefront of brewing developments and simultaneously responsible for more than a few deaths and widespread iiness. Although the excise lacked the knowledge, manpower, and resources to detect adulteration in beer, they did make a number of prosecutions of brewers who kept such substances on their premises. It was much more difficult to detect the illegal use of adulterants among (p.313) the large brewers, although it seems most revenue men knew they used them. As one excise officer explained in 1818 to a House of Commons committee: In large breweries, five hundredweight or half a ton of grains of paradise could be used without being discovered by the most skilful officer in England*. Between 1812 and 1818 twenty-eight druggists and grocers were convicted for supplying cocculus indicus, as well as other substances like Spanish liquorice and molasses. A further thirty-four brewers were convicted for using illegal ingredients; another nineteen for adulterating their strong beer with table beer; and an additional nineteen publicans were found guilty of adulteration.35 Despite the publicity surrounding the above excise trials, Accum’s sensational findings merely raised a few eyebrows and, on the whole, failed to make much headway. Interestingly, Accum had laid much of the problem stemming over adulteration at the doorstep of a number of powerful interests, including wealthy brewers and distillers: It has been urged by some, that, under so vast a system of finance as that of Great Britain, it is expedient that the revenue should be collected in large amounts; and therefore that the severity of the law should be relaxed in favour of all mercantile concerns in proportion to their extent; encouragement must be given to large capitalists; and where an extensive brewery or distillery yields an important contribution to the revenue, no strict scrutiny need be adopted in regard to the quality of the article from,

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The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods which such contribution is raised, provided the excise do not suffer by the fraud. Accum was here highlighting the form of industrial development preferred by the excise and encouraged by eighteenth-century economic policy. It is also the case that detecting adulteration was difficult, costly, and, as we have seen in the case of brandy, often beyond mechanical methods. Perhaps, rather suspiciously, a year later Accum was indicted by the managers of the Royal Institution for having mutilated books in their library. He subsequently fled the country rather than face a public trial. With Accum’s credibility shattered, those interested parties implicated in his work could breathe a sigh of relief and continue with their lucrative practices. The adulteration of tea, beer, spirits, and various other items continued to flourish well into the century.36 In spite of fifty convictions of brewers for the use of adulterants by the excise between 1830 and 1832, the surface of the problem was barely scratched. As a brewer and ex-excise officer told the commissioners of inquiry into the excise in 1834, ‘from my experience as a brewer I can state most positively that the occasional visit of the surveying officer can be of no check whatever upon such practices’. In addition, the excise had stopped actually surveying beer retailers in 1830 despite 111 convictions of publicans since that date. This has to be seen against both a historic dislike of excise officers entering private property, and a growing faith in a free market left to regulate and purify itself. More competition and less interference, it was believed, would enable the most skilled brewers and (p.314) best brew to come to the surface. The excise commissioners were less convinced and believed it was a major mistake to stop the surveys.37 It was generally acknowledged that traders attempting to stay within the law nonetheless had to adulterate their tobacco in order to compete with traders working the common economy. The tobacco manufacturers themselves argued that they should be allowed to do what they liked with the tobacco once duty had been paid. In fact, their lobbying resulted in an Act of 1840, known as the Mixing Act, which outlawed the mixing of leaves and plants with tobacco but nothing else. The government believed that the Act would drive the dishonest merchants out of business. The tobacco manufacturers immediately added a whole array of substances to their tobacco, including sugar, honey, molasses, treacle, liquorice, nitre, salt, sand, and non-tobacco leaves. The shag and roll tobacco was often more like confectionery than tobacco. Although the tobacco trade was now more than happy with the situation, the government was not; indeed, something like 6 per cent less tobacco was imported between 1840 and 1842. To make things worse, traders were claiming drawback on the adulterated product for re-export. Consequently on 10 August 1842 another Act was passed known as the Pure Tobacco Art.38

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The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods This time no substances could be added to tobacco except water or oil (usually olive oil) in the case of roil tobacco, and alkaline salts and lime water in the case of Welsh and Irish snuffs. The only way this Act could be enforced was through careful scientific analysis of the product within a carefully controlled space. Perhaps the most significant fiscal development of the 1840s, along with the introduction of the income tax and eclipse of the Corn Laws, was the establishment of the first state laboratory in October 1842. It was headed by an excise employee, George Phillips, and aimed to scrutinize excisable goods (originally just tobacco but quickly also the remaining excised items of beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, and sugar) for adulteration. The tobacco trade was initially sceptical that adulteration with up to 5 per cent sugar could be detected, and they continued to add it to their tobacco. However, Phillips on his personal visits to large sites of manufactures brought many successful prosecutions in the first year of the Act. By 1844 something like 30,000 lb of tobacco had been seized in just Lancashire and Yorkshire alone.39 (p.315) To conclude, this book has so far traced the trajectory of the excise as an evermore systematic institution that reached maturation in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. From its establishment we have seen that the excise was loaded with political meaning and connections, ultimately providing the institutional underpinnings of Britain’s capacity to overcome Napoleon and shepherd an incipient capitalist economy to fruition. The excise helped shape production and markets (including capital markets), which, in turn, informed state policy as it responded to the particularities of production (including the nature of the commodity itself). This reveals how the state, through the excise, created an effective framework for the rise of industrial capitalism, while supplying itself with revenues necessary to protect and guide this development. Political stability was thus linked with the sinews of power through this institutional nexus, and as we shall see in Part VI, it also conjured up political opposition at home and across the Atlantic. (p.316) Notes:

(1) G. Dodd, Days at the Factories; or the Manufacturing Industry of Great Britain Described (London, 1843; repr., Wakeleld, 1975), 192. (2) The Times, 25 April and 5 May 1786; ‘Second Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Establishment and Collection of the Excise Revenue’ (London, 1835), 5–11. (3) E. H. Rideout, ‘The Development of the Liverpool Warehousing System’, TCLAS 58 (1945–6), 1–41, on 1–2; G. Smith, Something to Declare; One Thousand Years of Customs and Excise (London, 1980), 73; B. R. Leftwich, A. History of the Excise (London, 1908), 89–90.

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The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods (4) N. A. Brisco, The Economic Policy of Robert Walpole (London, 1907), 120; Rideout, ‘Development of the Liverpool Warehousing System’, 2–3; ‘Third Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1784), HCSP 38. 15; ‘Second Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Enquire into the Departments of the Customs and Excise’, PP6 (1820), 9. In addition to these items rum and rice were also warehoused in. 1742; see Customs Tariffs of the United Kingdom from 1800– 1897. With some Notes Upon the History of the More Important Branches of Receipt from the Year 1660 (London, 1897). (5) ‘Fourth Report, from the Select. Committee on Finance’ (1797), HCSP 107, 214–15; Liverpool Collector to the Board of Customs, 13 June 1799, quoted in Hideout, ‘Development of the Liverpool Warehousing System’, 35. (6) ‘Proposals for Preventing Frauds and Abuses in His Majesty’s Customs’, CUL Ch(H) 41/39/1, n.d., probably early 1730s. (7) ‘Second Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Departments of the Customs and Excise’, 10 (8) P. Gailiery, ‘Warehouses and Sheds: Buildings and Goods Handling in London’s Nineteenth- Century Docks’, in A. Jarvis and K. Smith (eds.), Albert Dock Trade and Technology (Liverpool, 1999). 77–87, on 79; Smith, Something to Declare, 81; Fay C. R, Huskisson and his Age (London, 1951), 290. (9) The Board of Customs to the Liverpool Collector, 9 May 1.805, quoted in Rideout, ‘Development of the Liverpool Warehousing System’, 35–6. (10) ‘Dock Committee Minutes’, NMGM MDHB/MP/1/1a, 23 Jan. and 4 Feb. 1805. For the controversial figure of John foster see A. Jams, ‘The Interests and Ethics of John Foster, Liverpool Dock Surveyor 1799–1824’, THSLC 140 (1990), 141–60. (11) Board to Liverpool Collector, 9 July 1805, and Collector to the Board, 20 July 1805, both quoted in Rideout, ‘Development of the Liverpool Warehousing System’, 38–40, (12) A. Jarvis, Liverpool Central Docks, 1799–1905: An Illustrated History (Bath, 1991), 59–61. (13) ‘Dock Committee Minutes’, 5 Dec. 1804–18 June 1811, NMGM MDHB/MP/ 1/1a, 22 Jan. 1810. This entry prtwides a detailed account of the various changes Rennie thought were necessary to be made. (14) John Foster to the Excise Commissioners, 18 Oct. 1810, NMGM MDHB/ MISC/17; ‘Dock Committee Minutes’, 14 Sept, 1807,10 and 29 Aug., 1 and 11 Sept, 1809. Page 17 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods (15) Customs Officer to the Dock Committee, 18 July 1814, NMGM MDHB/MISC/ 12; ‘Dock Committee Minutes’, 4 June 1806, (16) It seems Liverpool Customs were unhappy at the proposed headquarters of the new dock police because it was located at the current warehouse used by a sugar refinery, which was extremely convenient for the officers to visit and gauge the said good. See ‘Proceedings of the Trustees of the Liverpool Docks’, 18 June 1811 to 22 Dec, 1818, NMGM MDHB/MP/1/1b, 12 Sept. 1814. (17) ‘Proceedings of the Trustees of the Liverpool Docks’, 12 Apr. and 13 Oct. 1815. See also another customs officer’s remarks in a letter to John Foster two days earlier, 10 Apr. 1815, NMGM MDHB/ MISC/12. (18) ‘Dock Police Arrests’, Sept. 1835 to Mar. 1836, 2 vols., NMGM MDH3; ‘Minutes of Evidence taken by a Sub-Committee of the Dock Committee, as to the Expediency of Uniting the Dock Police with the Town Police’, 21 Nov, 1836, NMGM MDHB/MISC/12. For the powerful local interests, esp. the warehouse owners, opposing the new warehousing system see G. Boxer, ‘Securing the Revenue: Liverpool as a Warehousing Port, 1805–1841’, in Jarvis and Smith (eds.). Albert Dock, 27–33, on 31. (19) N. Ritchie-Noakes, ‘The Construction of Albert Dock and its Warehouses’, in Jarvis and Smith (eds.), Albert Dock, 35–42 on 37. (20) Quoted in J. Burnett, ‘The History of Food Adulteration in Great Britain in the Nineteenth Century, with Special Reference to Bread, Tea and Beer’ (unpublished thesis, London School of Economics, 1958), 52. (21) J. Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day (Aylesbury, 1968), 100–1 and 109. (22) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 8–9 and 19. The demise of the moral economy and regulation of the market is best explored in E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (Harmondsworth, 1993), and D. Hay, ‘The State and the Market in 1800; Lord Kenyon and Mr Waddington’. P&P 162 (1999), 101–62. For the change in work practices and its impact on consumption, see J. de Vries, ‘Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe’, in J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1994), 85–132. For some early 18th-cent. examples of drink adulteration see F. A. Filby, A History of Food Adulteration and Analysis (London, 1934), 157–62 and 170–2. (23) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 199–201, and Plenty and Want, 102– 3; H. Mui and L. H. Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1989). 275–80. (24) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 21–7, 33–41, and 344–8. Page 18 of 19

 

The Incarceration, Adulteration, and Policing of Taxed Goods (25) F. Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, and Culinary Poisons (London, 1820), 12–13. (26) Ibid., p. iii; Burnett, Plenty and Want, 104. (27) Accum, Treatise on Adulterations, 5–8 and 153–67. (28) Accum, Treatise on Adulterations, 174–93. (29) The Tatler is quoted ibid. 98–9. (30) Ibid. 224–33. (31) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 243. (32) Accum, Treatise on Adulterations, 243–54; Burnett, Plenty and Want, 106, (33) For the trial of William Savage see the section on tea, chocolate, and coffee in Ch. 12, above and for the later trials see Accum, Treatise on Adulterations, 254–9. (34) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 58–60. (35) Ibid. 382 and 395, (36) Accum, Treatise on Adulterations, 9–11 and 16. (37) Burnett, ‘History of Food Adulteration’, 401–8, (38) W. Hammond and H. Egan, Weighed in the Balance: A History of the Laboratory of the Cavern-ment Chemist (London, 1992), 5–6. (39) The tobacco producers hired Professors Andrew Ure, Brando, and Cooper, and Mr Herapath to refute the excise’s claim over sugar adulteration, tor a time the strategy- worked and the credibility of the new excise laboratory took a real battering. Indeed, the trustworthiness of the excise’s expertise and method of chemical analysis was instead put on trial, In addition, Phillips’s own reputation took a dive when the Board of Excise directed him in Oct, 1845 to attend classes in general and analytical chemistry at London University. This was to herald the start of staff training in chemistry in general. The excise chemists sent there first studied under Professor Thomas Graham, then George Lownes from 1845, and finally from 1849 Alexander Williamson, See ibid, 8–22 and 71–4.

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0018

Abstract and Keywords This chapter begins with a discussion of the protests unleashed by the decision of the Earl of Bute, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Francis Dashwood, to seek revenue via an Act designed to raise the excise duty payable upon cider and perry. It then discusses tax and the Colonies, focusing on the issue of ‘no taxation without representation’. Keywords:   excise tax, taxation, representation, Colonies, Earl of Bute, Sir Francis Dashwood, Chancellor of the Exchequer

‘cider-land’ and the excise In the aftermath of Britain’s expensive success in the Seven Years War (1756– 63), the national debt had risen to a staggering £146 million, of which only £137 million was funded, while the interest per annum was an impressive £4.7 million. There was only one question on the mind of government: where could they get more money? In 1763 the prime minister, the earl of Bute, and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Sir Francis Dashwood, decided to seek revenue via an Act designed to raise the excise duty payable upon cider and perry. An explosion of protest comparable in importance and force to the excise crisis of the early 1730s was subsequently detonated. Contemporaries quickly resurrected the not-so-distant memory of 1733 and harnessed much of the same political language used then to condemn the rise of the cider excise. According to one contemporary reviewer, ‘no political project since the year 1733 not excepting even the Jew Bill, ever threw the Nation into Page 1 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation so high a Ferment’. The decision to concentrate on just one commodity of consumption had the effect of placing the burden of the increased national debt on the shoulders of those based in the cider counties: Cornwall, Devon, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire, Somerset, and Worcestershire. This was a deliberate policy on the part of government to target districts that seemingly paid less tax. In the case of these counties, it was calculated that they paid the least on a compounding of the land and malt tax. Despite such logic, the notion that particular regions were being targeted to pick up the financial costs of war swelled into a sea of consternation followed by a wave of orchestrated protest.1 In addition to shifting the burden of tax onto the producer rather than the retailer and dealer, the 1763 Act also gave the excise officers substantially increased powers—the most disliked of which was their right to enter and search any property believed to be brewing or hoarding cider. For the staunchly independent (p.320) people of the West Country, the new Act both threatened an important local commodity and impinged upon the privacy and ideal of traditional English liberty. The result was a communal response that combined to produce a renewed powerful opposition and a real threat to the stability of Bute’s government. This collective resistance, as in the case of 1733, ranged across the whole social and political spectrum within the cider counties.2 James Harris, MP for Christchurch, who had worked under Grenville at the Admiralty and later the Treasury, kept a diary of events surrounding the cider controversy. He recorded in March 1763 that the Members of Parliament for the west of England requested a postponement of the Bill to enable further consideration. This resulted in Dashwood altering his original proposal in an attempt to diffuse the growing opposition. It had originally been the intention to charge an additional ten shillings per hogshead on all cider sold by retail, but this was subsequently changed to four shillings per hogshead on all cider made, with compensation for domestic consumption and exemptions for the poor. Patrick Woodland claims that this ‘reversed concessions of almost a century’s standing which had restricted the cider duty to the retailer in order to free the “gentlemen” owners of orchards from the visitations of excisemen’. For this reason William Pitt the elder warned against such a move; “Every man’s house was his Castle … The laws of excise are odious and grievous to the dealer, but intolerable to the private person. The precedent was particularly dangerous when men by their birth, education and profession very distinct from the trader became subject to those laws’.3 Grenville confronted Pitt in the Commons and challenged him to come up with an alternative source of revenue. Pitt apparently started to hum the beginning of an old song, ‘Gentle shepherd, tell me where’. From that moment on Grenville was nicknamed ‘the Gentle shepherd’. It was all too much for Bute and he resigned in April 1763. This was celebrated all across the cider-producing Page 2 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation counties with Bute being depicted as a boot hanging from a gallows. A new administration was formed led by ‘the Gentle Shepherd’. He felt strongly that if he conceded this Act, it would encourage other petitions against other taxes. It did not take long before disgruntlement at Grenville’s handling of the cider tax mounted in the western counties.4 Cider played an integral role in the economy and society of the West Country. It was cheaper than ale and was primarily made for immediate consumption by farmers and labourers. In short, cider was an important part of the labourer’s remuneration and diet. During a plentiful crop of apples employees would frequently complain that the labourers were ‘idle and savey’. Conversely, in times of poor harvests labourers would moan of the impact it had on the cost of living. A year after the excise on cider was introduced, on 29 October 1794, The Bath Journal described the effect the tax had on the cloth-making areas of (p. 321) Gloucestershire and Wiltshire: ‘the woollen manufactory in those counties is greatly decayed, owing chiefly to the Cyder Tax, as the Spinners and others employed in that branch are not able to maintain themselves by reason of the excessive high prices of provisions, and that Cyder is now almost as dear as beer’. Some of the poor brewed their own, but even this was now targeted by the said Act. Cider, like beer elsewhere, was an important part of the harvester’s perquisites. Low wages were supplemented with free cider, which, at harvest time, meant as much as you could drink. Thus the decision of the government to focus its attention solely on this one commodity to solve its financial predicament had profound effects for both a regional economy and an. embedded way of life.5 Within a short period of time a well-organized lobbying campaign from the West Country had commenced. Labourers, farmers, and gentlemen were all united in their condemnation of the tax. One representative from the gentry, William Dowdeswell, wrote to the earl of Hardwicke in March 1766 (just months before Dowdeswell himself became chancellor of the Exchequer and modified the Act), claiming that it had unfairly shifted the impact of taxation onto the individual household and especially working ranks, while relaxing the duties payable by middlemen or badgers. It was, he argued, these latter people who should be the focus of excise attention and not the actual cider makers.6 The response of the press was immediate. They let fly a hurricane of swirling anger clothed in the traditional political language associated with the excise. On this occasion they claimed such an Act would damage English liberties while fuelling foreign oppression. Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal announced on 2 March 1763: ‘Let the swarthy, lean, haggard Frenchman dress his vines under the sultry sun, without enjoying liberty or reaping the fruit of his wretched Toil; but, let not Britain’s [farmer] plant orchards in vain, or be deprived of the benefits arising from his industry, or have an Exciseman as Overseer in his family. The extending of the Excise is evidently subversive to Liberty; that on tobacco would Page 3 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation affect but few, but on cyder the whole community’. While other regions celebrated the peace of 1763, crowds in the West Country used it to demonstrate their dislike of the government’s new excise. As David Walsh et al. have shown, a major characteristic of these demonstrations was the use of symbolism. For example, in a demonstration at Exeter a group of protesters carried white sticks as an emblem of purity, and a contrast to the black staffs of the excisemen.7 These popular theatrical protests at the excise attracted audiences from far and near, which, in turn enabled the message to filter across the land through family and friends. Long processions of people carrying apple trees and empty cider hogsheads covered in black streamers, meandered through towns. Opposition was also channelled through songs and ballads sung in taverns and market places, and through the distribution of handbills, cider mugs, squibs, cartoons, and other popular pamphlets. These were often stuck up on walls and doorways. However, the most prevalent and important medium of popular dissemination was the (p.322) national and regional newspapers, of which improved communication through the postal service and turnpike system enabled widespread circulation.8 The intense feeling and opposition in the West Country further worried the authorities, who feared that it had become mixed up with the agitation surrounding John Wilkes. Wilkes’s main political organ, The North Briton, was generally hostile to the excise and especially to the cider tax. And certainly Velters Corne-wall, a Herefordshire knight of the shire, believed that many of the cider opponents who were fighting ‘under the Banner of Orchards’ really had ‘other Nails to Drive’ He hoped ‘Mr. Wilkes wou’d let us alone, and submit more quietly … to Parliament, as we must do’. It was also the case that in London the protest generated by the cider counties was both well organized and effective. Structurally it was mainly composed of freeholders with county subcommittees that, in turn, reported to large standing committees serviced by salaried clerks. Here attention was concentrated on lobbying and forging interests with MPs at Westminster. The switch from provincial protest to lobbying Westminster had changed the dynamics of the regional situation to one of co-ordinated pressure.9 The Cider Act was eventually modified in 1766 by an Act that exempted a levy on cider produced for home consumption. Thousands of miles away murrnurings of unease were surfacing in the North American colonies.

‘No Taxation Without Representation’:Tax And The Colonies ‘London’, groaned one ageing colonial agent in 1721, ‘had arisen out of the plantations and not out of England’. He, of course, had a good point. He was responding to a report just published by the Board of Trade that the colonies yielded to the relatively new state of Great Britain an annual balance of £200,000 profit, and provided between a quarter and a third of its whole navigation. Colonies produced a great deal of Britain’s raw materials and increasingly provided a market for its manufactures (and destination for its Page 4 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation unwanted or dispossessed population). In return colonialists enjoyed lucrative incentives in the shape of generous bounties to encourage the exportation of such material, but were not allowed to compete with British domestic manufacturers. This policy was underlined during Robert Walpole’s long administration, and if bounties were not incentive enough there was always brute force. Much closer to home the Irish were persuaded not to compete with Britain’s woollen producers by the use of eight fearsome armed cruisers roaming the Irish channel.10 (p.323) The relationship between the North American colonies and England/ Britain had been far from stable throughout the early eighteenth century. The problems accelerated, ironically, when Britain actually tried to stabilize the situation. Until the mid-century, and unlike the imperial policies of Spain and France, there had been no particularly coherent and effective administrative policy. The North American colonies were a turbulent sea of demographic, economic, and social change. The population, for instance, quadrupled from 250,000 in 1700 to over a million by 1750, while the colonial economy had rapidly accelerated at a rate nearly four times that of Britain. Politically, a great deal of power had already been devolved from Westminster to the ever more confident colonial assemblies. Here they could raise and decide their own taxes and initiate matters of legislation. Importantly, they were far more representative of the people than a body sitting on a European island thousands of miles away. Against this the commercial ties between North America and Britain were becoming far closer and more important. In 1700 American and West Indian trade was worth £1,855,000 to England and by the mid-century this had grown to £4,105,000 per annum. Britain feared the fate of such lucrative commerce if North America became independent or, indeed, if it were taken over by France or Spain.11 During the second half of the seventeenth century much of English colonial sugar had evaded the navigation laws by bypassing England and entering continental Europe via North America, the Dutch and French West Indies, and to a certain extent Ireland and Scotland.12 Initially the traders stuck to British sugar but towards the end of the century increasingly turned to cheaper French colonial supplies. This, in turn, raised the prices British planters now had to pay for lumber, horses, and provisions. Meanwhile in London, sugar buyers further upset the planters by deliberately depressing wholesale sugar prices. Relations between Britain and many North American colonies, especially New England, became particularly tense after the peace treaty of Utrecht in 1713. French sugar-based colonies greatly expanded and increasingly snatched chunks of the sugar trade from the British West India colonies. In 1688 Massachusetts imported 156,000 gallons of British molasses, but by 1716 this had dropped to 72,000, with 105,000 gallons now coming from the French colonies (molasses was not palatable to the French taste while rum was discouraged as it competed with French domestic brandy and wine). In addition, British sugar sold to Page 5 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation Europe was massively down, again losing out to the French. A letter to the Board of Trade in August 1720 painted a very stark picture: (p.324) This trade tends to the Encrease and Improvement of the Foreign Sugar Colonies and the decrease of our own and is at present very prejudicial to His Majesty’s Revenue; for without this Trade, the Sugar, Rum, and Molasses consumed in the Northern Colonies would be Exported from the English Sugar Colonies and pay His Majesty not only a duty of 4½ per cent., but also the Enumerated Duty as we call it, which is a duly of 18 pence per hundred paid the King for all Sugars exported to our Colonies. The Quantity of Sugars imported to our Colonies from the French and Dutch is so great that they send a great deal of it to England as the Produce of our Colonies. By which means His Majesty is not only defrauded of the Double Duty, but also of the Enumerated Duty supposed to have been paid upon this first Exportation from the Colony where they were made. By the end of the 1720s, after fifteen or so years of trying to rectify the problem through local legislation, the British West India colonies started lobbying the British parliament to resolve the situation. One author has estimated that at least half of the sugar entering the British domestic market was French illegal imports.13 The British colony of Barbados was particularly scathing in 1730 over the role of trade between New England and the French colonies of Martinique and Guade loupe. The news that the British sugar islands were petitioning parliament reached North America. The result was a ferocious pamphlet and petitioning war. The New York Gazette summed up the argument. First, North America was a far more important and populated landmass than the West Indian islands, and thus a much more important market for British manufacturers. Secondly, it was unhealthy for trade to allow Barbados and the British sugar colonies in general to have a monopoly. Such an analysis, however, made little impact on the House of Commons, which was more influenced by the sugar colonies, and subsequently passed ‘An Act for the better Securing and Encouraging the Trade of His Majesty’s Sugar Colonies in America’ in April 1731. Not only would this mean that the North American continent would legally have to buy sugar, rum, and molasses from the British, but they would also be prohibited from trading horses and lumber with the French colonies. However, the House of Lords— more sympathetic to North American interests—after deliberately stretching out the debate till parliament was prorogued, put an end to the legislation.14 The interesting thing to note at this stage, claims Albert B. Southwick, is that no claim was made at all over the constitutionality of the law. That, however, was all Page 6 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation to change after the sugar planters switched tactics and proposed a duty on foreign rum and molasses imported into the Northern colonies, designed to harm French colonial imports by imposing such high duties on these products as to (p.325) prohibit them. Equally, massive duties were placed on Northern colonial lumber, provisions, and horses to prevent their exportation to French colonies. This time the Bill was passed by both Houses of Parliament. A leading colonial agent based at Rhode Island, Richard Partridge, was furious and told Governor Wanton on 28 February 1733: ‘I am of the opinion if such a Law take place, (besides the present Injury it will do), it will be rather worse in consequence of it than the Bill of prohibition last year, because of the levying a Subsidy upon a free People without their knowledge agst: their consent, who have the libertys and Immunitys granted them of National born Subjects … besides it may be drawn into a Precedent for the future, for by the same Rule that a British Parliament imposes a duty on the Kings Subjects abroad, who have no Representatives in the state here, they may from 4/- advance to 20/- to 100/-, on different things, and so ad infinitem, which is an Infringment on Liberty and Property and as I apprehend a Violation of the Right of the Subject’. Here trade, taxation, and governance were manifestly entwined. As it turned out, the Molasses Act was a failure but it did set the precedent for taxing the colonies.15 The hugely expensive Seven Years War was a tremendous fiscal strain, which entailed squeezing more and more money out of the people. The duke of Newcastle and his administration were constantly looking for new ways of generating revenue. The costs were so high that taking loans provided the only solution. In 1760 an unprecedented £8,000,000 was borrowed, followed by loans of £12,000,000 in 1761 and 1762. Such was the trust in the British tax system that creditors were still willing to part with such sums. Newcastle was an enthusiastic admirer of the excise as the most equitable and effective form of taxation. The policy pursued for framing the new loans was simply to increase existing excise rates.16 After the success of the Seven Years War, some in Britain’s government felt American settlers should bear more of the fiscal burden involved in maintaining the colonies, particularly in the light of a national debt amounting to something like £133 million and the added expense of all the new acquisitions. The justification for the tax proposals was the fact that American settlers were the greatest beneficiaries of the war, even though the bulk of the funds to fight it had come from Britain. All this was the eventual motivation for attempting to introduce internal duties on the American colonies to be used specifically for administrative measures in the colonial districts of North America. Despite, or rather because of, the distress among many of the North American labouring masses and elites, the colonies had emerged more independent, and now wanted greater power and a louder say in the running of the empire through enhanced political status. The situation was not helped by the continued presence of British troops on North American soil, raising the spectre of a standing army Page 7 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation which, within a robust (p.326) Anglo-country ideology, traditionally represented a threat to liberty. The Americans believed the garrisons were there to police them rather than to defend them; to remind them that they were still subject to British sovereignty.17 The experience of the Cider Tax Act had revealed in stark terms the government’s desperation to find additional revenue, A tax on income, at this point, was politically impossible, which therefore left the government with very little room to manoeuvre. George Grenville was forced, or rather took his chance, to turn his gaze to the Atlantic. He proposed to place internal taxes on the North American colonies. This greatly multiplied the kind of issues that had long ago arisen when the excise had first been introduced in England, and especially in debates concerning taxation and representation in Scotland and Ireland under Richard Cromwell. What right had the state to tax people who were unrepresented in parliament and therefore had no say in the policies of their country? The issue became far more powerful in a country growing in wealth and self-confidence, populated by a large proportion of disaffected Britons and settlers from an array of other nations. It was also the case, as Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker have shown, that much of the American post-1763 radicalism was migrating across the Atlantic into British ports, most notably London, where it joined the ‘Wilkes and Liberty’ clashes with king and parliament.18 Grenville’s scheme was twofold; to introduce first internal stamp duties and, secondly, customs duties on goods exported to countries other than Britain. This scheme had been floating about for some time, but the point had only now been reached when anybody was willing to implement it. Many North Americans were shocked by Grenville’s proposed tax, while others, no doubt, saw it as an ideal opportunity to vent their growing political concerns. The customs duties targeted imported wine, coffee, sugar, indigo, silks, calicoes, linen, cambric, and lawn, as well as any coffee and pimento being exported to destinations other than Britain. The Stamp Act included internal duties on a variety of deeds, instruments and law proceedings, newspapers, pamphlets, and any advertisements they contained. Cards and dice were also targeted along with licences for retailing liquors and wines. The Act became law on 1 November 1765. Up until this point external taxes on the American colonies had all primarily been related to issues of trade.19 (p.327) There had been talk for some time in the newspapers and on the streets of the American northern seaports regarding an impending Stamp Act. An ominous sign of things to come was first seen hanging from a large elm tree in the south end of Boston. Swaying to the seasonal winds was a ‘rag-clad effigy’ of Andrew Oliver, a stamp distributor, along with another effigy of the two Britons most associated with the Stamp Act, the earl of Bute and George Grenville. The mob that gathered nearby then turned their attention to Oliver’s Page 8 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation impressive new brick and wood office, which they proceeded to flatten and then symbolically stamp on until all was nearly level. The wood from the building was next taken to a hill close to Oliver’s luxurious house and set ablaze, which kept the crowd warm as they smashed and trenched his house to the ground. This was followed a few days later by the destruction of the home of Oliver’s brotherin-law and those of a number of other wealthy members of the rich prerogative elite. Boston was unique in its emphasis on attacking property, but other places certainly made life tough for stamp distributors. In New York a few thousand people gathered to prevent an English ship from unloading new stamps, while relentless pressure was put on customs officials to clear ships without stamped papers.20 Grenville and many Members of Parliament simply believed they were asking people who lived under British sovereignty to pay stamp duties just like the domestic population of Britain. Sovereignty meant government and control of legislation, and thence the ultimate right to tax if necessary. Besides which, Grenville and others noted, the colonial assemblies of New York and Massachusetts had already imposed such duties. What was disregarded, however, was the fact the duties in this instance had been imposed by the American settlers’ own representatives. The issue was not strictly the burden of the taxes but the fact that they were imposed by a body that many Americans felt did not represent them. Vociferous opposition took to the American streets; angry preachers condemned the taxes from the pulpit, while certain newspapers and assemblies encouraged dissent. Meanwhile, in Britain, a significant opposition also gained momentum particularly among sailors, merchants, tradesmen, and Rational Dissenters.21 William Pitt the elder agreed with the American settlers and argued that, unlike external taxes applied to control trade, internal taxes were unconstitutional. However, he was careful to underline that the colonies were still subservient and subject to British sovereignty.22 Domestic opposition and persistent petitions proved important, on this occasion, in securing a repeal of the Stamp Act in 1765 under the new Rockingham administration. However, in climbing down, the government also passed a Declaratory Act, which asserted the right and authority of the British parliament to make laws and statutes to bind the colonies and people of America as subjects of the crown. This may have helped settle nerves in Britain over the right of parliamentary sovereignty but it simply inflamed feelings (p.328) in the American colonies. Settlers appealed to their rights as emigrants, to their liberty, and to the colonies’ charters to support their case. Much of the domestic British opposition to American internal taxation was educated in the same ideological traditions as many of the American settlers. Concerns over an expanding executive, arbitrary power, and the erosion of liberty were familiar on both sides of the Atlantic. As we have seen, many of Page 9 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation these factors took centre stage in the aggressive fight against Walpole’s excise scheme of 1733 and again in the contemporary battle against the cider tax. However, a huge difference between the anti-excise protests in Britain and the events in North America stemmed from the issue of enfranchisement and political representation. It was the issue of British sovereignty, enshrined in parliament, which was the ultimate stumbling block to avoiding irreversible war. This also realigned the powerful link between taxation and the enfranchisement in England. If the Americans could get away with not paying tax without representation, surely the same could happen in Britain itself?23 The Rockingham administration proved weak and short-lived. Pitt the elder was asked to form a new administration that heralded the start of two more volatile years. The elevation of Pitt, perhaps, should have been good news for the American colonies and their sympathizers in Britain. He had, after all, previously made clear his distaste for the Declaratory Act and believed there were limits to British parliamentary sovereignty. In particular, he argued that the American assemblies should decide supplies to the crown and that the right of approving taxation should be done by the North Americans’ own representatives. Unlike Grenville he therefore agreed with the American distinction between external and internal taxation. However, he remained a staunch imperialist and continued to search for ways of ensuring that British interests remained primary in North America. Pitt’s tone hardened in February 1766 and he threatened that if the repeal of the Stamp Act ‘did not bring obedience to the Mother Country, he would be for strong measures to enforce and compel obedience to the laws … That if they presumed to manufacture, he would be for taxation’. By October he was convinced such measures had to be taken.24 Pitt’s impact was short and effectively immobilized once he decided to enter the Lords as earl of Chatham, after a nervous breakdown. The result was the elevation of the duke of Grafton as the new leader. Grafton’s first crises came immediately when the government was hit by a loss of £1 million revenue per annum after parliament had voted for the land tax to be reduced by a shilling in the pound. Meanwhile Townshend passed a Bill levying a number of customs duties on tea, paints, glass, and lead on the American colonies, in order to raise revenue to pay the salaries of a number of colonial officials. He believed that he (p.329) had cleverly found a way of bypassing the distinction raised by the Americans concerning the taboo issue of internal duties and the accepted need for external taxes to control trade. However, he was wrong, and the Act was seen as deceitful and a symbolic indication of Britain’s ominous moves toward interfering in North American representative government.25 Additionally, Townshend’s Act would only raise an additional £33,000 that, after the collection of expenses, would probably amount to a net loss. This clearly suggests it was more of a gesture to reassert Britain’s right to tax the colonies than a serious attempt at raising lost revenue. Meanwhile Townsend’s additional Page 10 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation duties ignited further outrage among many North Americans, who refused to pay them and prohibited the importation of tea, paints, glass, and lead. Due to the distance between Britain and America it was very hard to supervise colonial customs officers adequately. In addition, colonials were extremely successful in prosecuting revenue men for the most minor of offences, and in Boston there was a ban on the consumption of all British goods. The colonialists were particularly incensed over the actions of a new board of customs commissioners sent over to both enforce the Act and ensure that trade restrictions were being observed. The commissioners themselves fuelled the situation by accusing the New York assembly of deliberately not providing adequate resources for British troops as legislated under the Quarterly Act of 1765. Townsend’s plan to create a customs commission in America was crumbling. He died in 1767, before he could witness the full consequences of his Act.26 Those physically spearheading the revolt against Britain’s attempt to implement internal taxes were the labouring masses. For them, however, the issue was less ideological and driven far more by economic circumstances. Perhaps the loudest and most aggressive were the aggrieved merchant seamen, as they would also be in London a few years later. North American seamen bore a deep grudge over the treatment that had been dished out toward them over the years, in particular the harsh treatment they received from press gangs. As Jessie Lemisch explains: ‘Seamen and non-seamen alike joined to oppose the Stamp Act for many reasons, but the seamen had two special grievances: Impressment and the effect of England’s new attitude toward colonial trade’. The result was an understandable fear among the customs officers who, within such fraught circumstances, sensibly allowed goods to be loaded on and off ships in New York duty free. Grievances, rather than abstract ideological reflections, predominantly drove the hardy, weather-beaten seamen.27 (p.330) This is not, however, to downplay ideological opposition to British policy and polity. The interesting point to note is the familiarity to English ears of much of the language evoked in the attack upon the Stamp Act. Lord North had understood this and highlighted American sensitivity over their differentiation between external (customs) and internal (excise) taxes: ‘in point of right there is not difference; in point of operation there certainly is: external might not go further, internal might’. Fear of an unrepresentative expanding central authority riding roughshod through elected assemblies was, for many, too much. In 1765 Stephen Hopkins believed that the implementation of the ‘stamp duties and other internal taxes’ would reduce Americans to ‘the miserable condition of slaves’.28 In January 1770 Lord North formed an administration that repealed Town-send’s divisive American Tax Act. This had been partly propelled forward by the uproar that followed the death of five Bostonians Killed by British troops earlier in March. However, in yet another example of British defiance in upholding the Page 11 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation principle of parliamentary sovereignty, the duty on tea was retained from Townsend’s Act. As well as keeping the British right to tax, it enabled the continuation of close links between the East India Company and the American colonies. This proved ruinous in 1773, when the British government tried to aid the company’s increasing financial problems by stimulating tea sales in North America. Tea exported here would not have to pay English duties but would have to incur American duty. The result was the taking by fifty Americans of several East India vessels moored in Boston, and the emptying of some 200 chests of tea into the sea. Britain was forced to respond and passed the infamous Coercive, or as they were known in America, the Intolerable Acts. These included the closing of the Boston port and transferring trade to Salem; they also entailed interfering in American representative institutions and the judicial system, and extending the power of the governors. Britain hoped that this would unite loyalists and weaken the nationalists. However, the result was the exact opposite, and the Acts actually set in motion a fairly rapid free fall towards the American War of Independence in July 1776.29 The North American cry of ‘no taxation without representation’ ignited old political arguments and provided the spark to raise the stakes concerning Britain’s (p.331) own constitution—particularly over the thorny issue of enfranchisement and taxation. This time, too, it had the sympathy of a growing middling commercial class. This predominantly urban sector—adopting a familiar language that John Brewer categorizes as ‘the urbanisation of countryparty ideology’—was increasingly frustrated by a seemingly archaic and hugely expensive government. It was an alliance that writers like Paine successfully tapped. When he wrote in 1776 that ‘The mercantile and reasonable part of England will be still with us; because peace with trade, is preferable to war without it’, Paine was not simply whistling into the wind. Throughout the buildup toward the American War of Independence the British imperialists argued that many of the British emigrants had not had the vote prior to leaving the mother country, so why should they have it now? In addition, it was claimed, those that had the franchise prior to departing gave up that right as soon as they landed on American soil. Above all, despite the settlers’ appeals to colonial charters they were all, at the end of the day, subordinate to the sovereignty of the British parliament. Colonial assemblies were considered to be like English town corporations and certainly not on a par with the British parliament—a principle that was central to the whole British Empire— besides which, everyone was virtually represented by Westminster and its virtuous MPs. This principle was deeply engraved in British politics and political thought and was an. important factor in the road to war.30 The exchange of political debates across the Atlantic was extraordinary. Nearly half the pamphlets debating the relationship between the colonies and Britain were, Brewer points out, published in Britain. Information flowed as freely as the goods of the Atlantic trade. Spearheading the exchange of political Page 12 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation sentiments, however, were not just the merchants but above all, as Linebaugh and Rediker have shown, the huge maritime populace that worked the vessels and ports and made trading possible. A distinctive form of radicalism blossomed and was transformed as it mixed with other members of the dispossessed and downtrodden Atlantic labour force caught up in the brutal world of international commerce. As Linebaugh writes: ‘When the countries on the limit of the empire exploded in slave revolts and revolution, the dispersed traditions returned and were reawakened in London within whose alleys and courts dwelt a proletariat which by the 1790s was both Atlantic and international’. Many English radicals wanted the same natural rights that the Americans appealed to—especially enfranchisement. Indeed, after almost a century’s mainstream absence, such a momentum had already started to gather in England during the 1740s. As H. T. Dickinson observes: ‘It is, in fact, possible to detect the emergence of the concept of “no taxation without representation” in Britain, before it was articulated so much better by the American colonialists and the British radicals of the later eighteenth century’. As we saw in Chapter 3, such sentiments had already (p.332) been articulated in debates over Irish and Scottish representation at Westminster in the late 1650s.31 After the Dissenters it was the artisans and skilled labourers who were the most numerous supporters of the Americans. The Bristol artisans declared, ‘the poor man has an equal right, but more need, to have representations in the legislature than the rich one’. However, the space for political change was far more restrictive under a well-entrenched political system, established armed forces, and a parliament run by the aristocracy. Although a republic seemed an impossibility, parliamentary reform did not.32 When war with America commenced in 1776 the national debt was approximately £126,000,000; this subsequently ballooned by a further £97,000,000. Patrick K. O’Brien and P. A. Hunt estimate that between 1774 and 1782 British revenues in general increased by about 30 per cent. Lord North turned to more stamp duties on manservants and on auctions. Such taxes were designed to fall principally upon the wealthy but did not generate anywhere near enough revenue to fund and service the growing national debt. North had to turn his eyes elsewhere. He therefore proposed a general rise of 5 per cent in the port and excise duties—except those on necessaries such as beer, soap, candles, and leather—and a huge 15 per cent rise on malt. In 1780 taxes were increased on all alcoholic drinks and salt, followed the year after by a general rise of 5 per cent on all excises (except on soap, candles, and leather). In 1782 the excise on soap was increased, and another 5 per cent was put on port duties followed, once again, by an increase on a number of excises.33 The experience and soaring costs of the American War sharply focused parliament’s attention on waste, taxation, and management. So did an increasingly disillusioned populace reflecting on the vast amount of taxation Page 13 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation they were paying without any say in how it was managed. In the desperate years between 1779 and 1784 additional taxes were placed on every conceivable commodity as the government tried to sustain confidence in its funds. As Martin Daunton has argued, it made complete administrative sense to tax mass consumption, collected by the comparatively efficient excise, since taxes on luxuries were predominantly received by the relatively inefficient customs. In addition, the consumption of necessaries, by its very nature, would not be altered much by a rise in duties. He concludes; ‘Taxation policy was not based upon social equity so much as the search for goods whose demand was price inelastic’; namely, items like malt, beer, (p.333) domestic spirits, salt, coal, and later tea and sugar. This was a point underlying the contemporary comments of the younger Pitt: ‘Taxes on consumption, to be productive, must be laid on articles of general consumption’. Money derived from this sector accounted for 45 per cent of all revenue between 1788 and 1792, compared to 22 per cent from land and assessed taxes.34 Within this context ‘Old Corruption’ was propelled onto centre stage and a general feeling emerged which, as Norman Chester describes, was characterized by ‘a strong belief that bad government and ill-founded policies could not last for long under the strong light of publicity’. A notion of administrative visibility emerged as the political saviour of a faltering perception of British government. As we shall see in Chapter 18 and Chapter 19 the gleaming beacon for this reform was, ironically, the excise.35

Bread And Circus? Against the context of ‘no taxation without representation’ sensitivity toward the incidence of taxation was once against heightened, less out of paternalist instincts than concern with stemming social conflict. Instead of fiercely taxing necessaries, Adam Smith suggested, in the new half-baked dress of the old paternal view, it must always be remembered … that it is the luxurious and not the necessary expense of the inferior ranks of people that ought ever to be taxed’. No society could flourish if most of its people were poor and unappreciative. This time, however, the burden should not just fall on the landed ranks but be shared with the increasingly wealthy middling classes. It was also the case that by this stage the diffusion of luxuries among a larger portion of the population was seen as a good thing since it could lead to higher employment as well as more revenue. ‘The middling and superior ranks of people, if they understood their own interest, ought always to oppose all taxes on the necessities of life, as well as all direct taxes on the wages of labour. The final payment of both the one and the other falls altogether upon themselves, and always with a considerable over-charge’. Consequently, Smith advocated the repeal of excise taxes on necessaries like salt, leather, (p.334) soap, and candles. His argument was a familiar one, which was traditionally wheeled out by the paternal clan in opposition to the equitable argument; namely, that in the case of luxuries the choice to consume them lay with the individual. As was Page 14 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation being pointed out here, however, this was not the case regarding the fundamental items of life. Smith recognized the tremendous power taxation gave to the state to define the market for taxed goods, guide patterns of consumption, and influence the productive efficiency of labour. He warned that excises ‘alter, more or less, the natural direction of national industry, and turn it into channels always different from, and generally less advantageous than that which it would have run of its own accord’.36 Like the sour and bad tempered West Country cloth manufacturer William Temple, Smith believed that a tax on consumption could be used as a device to mould the economic morality of the lower orders (making them industrious) but, unlike Temple, he concentrated on those products that had a detrimental effect on the labour potential of an ordinary person: Upon the sober and industrious poor, taxes upon such commodities [goods like tobacco, beer, and spirits] act as sumptuary laws, and dispose them either to moderate, or to refrain altogether from the use of superfluities which they can no longer easily afford. Their ability to bring up families, in consequence of their forced frugality, instead of being diminished is frequently, perhaps, increased by the tax. It is the sober and industrious poor who generally bring up the most numerous families, and who principally supply the demand for useful labour. In other words, although Smith and Temple disagreed in their choice of commodity type, they both believed taxes on consumption could be a source of manipulating the morality of the labouring ranks. Therefore, despite their differences, their aims were ultimately the same: to squeeze as much labour out of the working masses as possible.37 Smith, with one eye on the earlier arguments made by the predominantly London-based Anglo-Dutch merchant lobby of Decker, Fauquier, Postlehwayt, Barnard, and Vanderlint, agreed that a tax on necessaries operated exactly like a direct tax upon the wages of labour: it pushed them up. Smith believed that the free importation of the necessaries of life would reduce their price in the home market and thus reduce the price of labour. This was despite the evidence put forward that wages did not actually rise when necessaries were taxed—a point enthusiastically used at great length earlier by Walpole, obsessively emphasized by Temple, and admitted as a possibility by David Hume. Smith responded to this counterfactual by arguing that this may have been the case in the short term but in the medium run—say ten to fifteen years—it would eventually shift onto wages. The point was not who was right, but that labour productivity had become (p.335) the key factor, with taxation a major tool far manipulating the level of indus-triousness.38

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation Hume, in fact, predicted three possible outcomes; ‘When a tax is laid upon commodities which are consumed by the common people, the necessary consequence may seem to be, either that the poor must retrench something from their way of living, or raise their wages, so as to make the burden of the tax fall entirely upon the rich. But there is a third consequence, which often follows upon taxes, namely, that the poor increase their industry, perform more work, and live as well as before, without demanding more for their labour’. In this sense Hume acknowledged all possibilities and at least one part of his tripartite argument was more of the Temple and Walpole school. The ageing contention that the poor should not be taxed did not altogether go away; rather, it simply became greatly diluted as we have seen under Smith and other commentators. The predominant claim now was that, if necessaries had to be taxed, they should only be taxed lightly. Like Smith, Hume uncontroversially insisted that the best taxes were ultimately upon luxury products: ‘they seem, in some measure, voluntary’. However, with a national debt sky high such moral spinning was a pipe dream.39 Nonetheless, during the hugely expensive Napoleonic Wars, visible objects of luxury and wealth such as impressive houses, windows, carriages, pleasure horses, male servants, dogs, hair powder, and armorial bearings were all targeted. It should also be remembered that apart from salt, basic foodstuffs and plain clothing were now not taxed, and certain commodities were calibrated so that more expensive types of goods paid higher duties. This can be seen, for example, in the rates for different types of beer, cloth, wax, and soap. Moreover, by the late 1790s the fiscal needs of the state necessitated turning to direct taxation on income. During the twenty years of war between 1793 and 1815, approximately 63 per cent of the extra revenue needed to finance military costs, fell upon what contemporaries considered were the incomes and consumption patterns of the rich.40 Lurking beneath Smith’s emphasis on taxing luxury goods lies the importance he and numerous others now placed on the middling ranks: ‘the duties upon foreign luxuries imported for home-consumption, though they sometimes fall upon the poor, fall principally upon people of middling or more than middling (p.336) fortune. Such are, for example, the duties upon foreign wines, upon coffee, chocolate, tea, sugar, etc.’. The duties from cheaper luxuries of home-produced consumption, however, ‘fell equally upon people of all ranks in proportion to their respective experience. The poor pay the duties upon malt, hops, beer, and ale, upon their own consumption: The rich, upon both their own consumption and that of their servants’. Nonetheless, Smith also underlined the fact that despite the rise of the middling ranks it was the ‘inferior ranks of people’ who were suffering the most under the huge costs of propping up the creaking scaffolding of the fiscal state: ‘The whole expense of the inferior is much greater than that of the superior ranks’ he admitted to his readers. In short, the most lucrative earner for the state was excise taxes on home-produced goods, which Page 16 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation fell disproportionately upon the wealth of the common people—a fact quietly acknowledged by successive governments and loudly condemned by political activists such as Paine, William Cobbett, and John Thelwall.41 Smith was also negating a still widely entrenched country view that the incidence of taxation fell disproportionately on their income to the advantage of the monied interest getting plump on the nation’s debt. Daunton succinctly captures the prejudice: ‘The country ideology could be viewed as selfish special pleading, for the tax regime in the eighteenth century allowed land to escape relatively lightly’. He roughly calculates that direct taxes fell from 10 per cent in 1700 to 7 per cent by 1795. In addition the country party gained considerable income from the profits of offices they held in the armed forces and government departments. As such, contrary to their own rhetoric, they also did rather well under the fiscal-military state.42 Defining what was taxed had a profound effect on people’s consumption, particularly on the budget of the householder, and on the scale of industry. For example, the Quaker Catherine Phillips noted in 1792: ‘it was formerly the custom of wives of labourers and artificers to purchase, on market days, two or three gallons of malt, which would perhaps brew tolerable table beer for the week’, but they now ceased to do so, since the tax on malt had become too high. Instead, it was cheaper for them to buy it ready made from the retailer—despite the government’s increasing tax on such beer. Also in 1792 David Hardie claimed in a report of the London Coal and Corn Meters Committee: ‘The exorbitant Duties on the necessary Article of Coals, have long proved not only a most cruel Oppression of the Poor, but likewise an heavy Encumbrance on every Branch of Manufacture, carried on in and about the city of London’.43 It is, perhaps, more correct to describe the eighteenth century as a state hungry for consumers of taxed goods than as the birth of a consumer society. After all, the state consumed the people far more than the people consumed. This was not (p.337) missed by Paine, who saw first hand as an excise officer how the state was willing to tax the poor to the hilt and unwilling to give them rights and a representative political voice. For the government, however, rights and enfranchisement were not at this point profitable, and a tax on necessaries was a reliable source of income. Restrictions to the former were legitimated by a prominent ‘free-holder’ view of society in which only the propertied ranks had ‘natural’ rights and the wisdom—through land and financial independence—to run the country, while a tax on the people was simply the product of fiscal necessity. Rights were a product of time and tradition and were, literally, buried in the earth. They were not abstract creations based on mechanical principles, as some home-grown radical rationalists expounded or the North American and French tried to put into practice.44

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation ‘Excess and inequality of taxation’, preached Paine, ‘however disguised in the means, never fail to appear in their effect. As a great mass of the community are thrown thereby into poverty and discontent, they are constantly on the brink of commotion’. He further fumed: ‘What is called the splendour of a throne is no other than the corruption of the state. It is made up of a band of parasites living in luxurious indolence out of the public taxes’. These were familiar arguments to late seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century ears and continued to pack a persuasive punch. The issue of indirect tax was intrinsically embedded within the question of rights and the franchise. Paine concluded: ‘It is not whether this or that party shall be in or out, or Whig or Tory, or high or low, shall prevail; but whether man should inherit his rights, and universal civilisation take place— whether the fruits of his labour shall be enjoyed by himself, or consumed by the profligacy of governments—whether robbery shall be banished from courts, and wretchedness from countries’. The equally clear and forceful orator of the London Corresponding Society, John Thelwall, equated greater taxation with greater corruption: ‘In the first place, the wages of their corruption must be paid from the revenue; and what is the revenue? Is it not the produce of the taxes?’—all of which, Thelwall claimed, were ‘paid by the common people’ the ‘productive labourers’ and backbone of the country.45 This theme cropped up again and again in radical commentaries and political oratories. At a demonstration on a crisp autumn day in November 1816 at Spa Fields in London, Henry ‘Orator’ Hunt, clearly drawing upon Thelwall, told his large audience of diverse folk why there were so few jobs: What was the cause of the want of employment? Taxation. What was the cause of taxation? Corruption. It was corruption that had enabled the borough-mongers to wage that bloody (p.338) war which had for its object the destruction of the liberties of all countries but principally of our own … Everything that concerned their subsistence or comforts was taxed. Was not their loaf taxed? Was not everything they ate, drank, wore, and even said, taxed? … They [taxes] were imposed by the authority of a borough mongering faction who thought of nothing but oppressing the people, and subsisting on the plunder wring from their miseries In a Letter to the Luddites, also written in 1816, Cobbett tried to tell them that the real target of their frustration was not the machine or middlemen but taxation and the monied interest: It is not machinery; it is not the grinding disposition of your employers; it is not improvements in machinery; it is not extortions on the part of bakers and butchers and millers and farmers and corn-dealers, and cheese and butter sellers. It is not to causes of this sort that you ought to attribute

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation your present great and cruel sufferings; but wholely and solely to the great burden of taxes, co-operating with the bubble of paper money. For one MP, a certain Mr Preston, quoted by Cobbett, it was all too much: ‘Every family, even of the poorest labourers, consisting of five persons, may be considered as paying in indirect taxes, at least ten pounds a year, or more than half his wages at seven shillings a week! And yet the insolent hirelings call you the mob, the rabble, the swinish multitude, and say, that your voice is nothing.’ Between 1816 and 1842 (when income tax was reintroduced) the British system was more dependent on indirect tax than at any point since 1688. Not surprisingly, then, anti-tax cries could be heard in fields, manufactures, and towns right across the land.46 In the November edition of Fraser’s Magazine of 1830, William Magihn condemned what he saw as double standards, by pointing out that those ‘living labourers’ who worked for industrial capitalists ‘were taxed tooth and nail, back and front, blood and sinews, bones and marrow … But on the machine which superseded their labour, and converted them into paupers, there is no tax … capital should be equally protected and equally taxed whether found in ten fingers of the husbandman or artisan, or in the latest furnaces … or the steam loom of the large capitalist’. Labour was labour, whether flesh or machine, and should thus be taxed alike. Similarly, the weavers sought a tax on power looms to level the conditions of competition. A letter from the Leeds stuff weavers in April 1835 complained: ‘Their labour had been taken from them by the power loom; their bread is taxed; their malt is taxed; their sugar, their tax, their soap, and almost every other thing they use or consume is taxed. But the power-loom is not taxed’. Such a view received little sympathy in government circles nor from the harbingers of the new political (p.339) economy. David Ricardo, far one, believed a tax on the power loom would simply constitute yet another restriction on trade and thus fervently opposed the suggestion.47 The botanist, statistician, and member of the court of the East India Company, Robert M. Martin, highlighted the ruthless consumption of the poor by the government in his treatise Taxation of the British Empire, first published in 1833. He rammed home the point when he was called as a witness to a select committee set up to look at the plight of the handloom weavers in 1834. He claimed that an average working man was taxed in the following way: ‘No. 1. Tax on malt, £4.11s. 3d. No. 2. On sugar, 17s. 4d. No. 3. Tea or coffee, £1. 4s. No. 4. On soap, 13s. No. 5. Housing, 12s. labourer per annum, £11. 7s. 7d. Taking a labourer’s earnings at 1s. 6d. per diem, and computing his working 300 days in the year (which very many do), this income will be £22.10s.; thus it will be admitted that at the very least, 100 per cent, or half of his income is abstracted from him by taxation … for do what he will, eating, drinking, or sleeping, he is in some way or other taxed’.48

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation Perhaps the most prevalent revolutionary view towards the impact of indirect tax on the poor flowed from the pens of the radical agrarian Spenceans. The prominent Spencean sympathizer, Richard Carlile argued in The Republican in September 1822 that a single equitable tax on land was the most effective social and financial policy for a reformed parliament to adopt. This would force the full cultivation of the land and therefore guarantee fuller employment. This, in turn, would lead to an increased demand for goods and produce, which would no longer be taxed and therefore be much cheaper. This was not so different from some of the eighteenth-century views we have looked at. But now labour and employment had moved centre stage. In February 1833 Carlile preached: ‘The sentiment of Thomas Spence, that THE LAND IS THE PEOPLE’S farm, is incontrovertible by any other argument than that of the sword. The land cannot be equitably divided among the people; but all rent raised from it may be made public revenue, and to save the people from taxation’.49 Spence’s people’s farm was in stark contrast to the state’s promiscuous farming of the people. Whigs and independent MPs, as well as those of a more radical persuasion, used this argument to remorselessly bash Lord Liverpool’s administration. The liberal Tories had no alternative but to start being seen to reform and rationalize the infrastructure of the fiscal-military state which, under the mammoth expense of the Napoleonic Wars, had become unsustainable. Ironically, as Philip Marling has persuasively shown, by the post-war slump much of the radical critique of’Old Corruption’ had been effectively dealt with under successive Tory ministers since 1806. The cry of ‘Old Corruption’ had now become much more of (p.340) a powerful political symbol to launch greater projects of reform. Attacks on indirect tax were joined by condemnation over high land rents, the rent of houses, and the interest of money, tithes, and profit. The government really had no option but to start slowly reducing taxes during the 1820s on everyday consumption, especially on necessaries.50 The subject of taxation remained a prominent and symbolic bulwark to unite radicals well into the nineteenth century. It is not a coincidence that the Excise Office in Old Broad Street, close to the City, was one of the most guarded buildings in London at the height of Chartist agitation in 1848. Special constables were contracted and given firm and resolute instructions: ‘If one of the gates be attacked the whole body will move to its protection & resist any forced entrance’. The back gates were partly barricaded and the yard constantly patrolled in parties of three.51 Notes:

(1) D. Walsh et al, ‘The Cider Tax, Popular Symbolism and Opposition in MidHanoverian England’, in A. Randall and A. Charelsworth (eds.), Markets, Market Culture and Popular Protest in Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Liverpool, 1996), 69–90, on 69; S. Dowell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. London, 1965), ii. 148; B. R. Page 20 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation Leftwich, A History of the Excise (London, 1908), 84. The contemporary quote is from P. Woodland, ‘Political Atomization and Regional Interests in the 1761 Parliament: The Impact of the Cider Debates 1763–1766’, PH 8 (1989), 63–89, on 66. (2) Walsh et al., ‘Cider Tax’, 70. (3) Woodland, ‘Political Atomization’, 68; Powell, History of Taxation, ii. 141. (4) Woodland, ‘Political Atomization’, 78–9; Dowel, History of Taxation, ii. 142–4. (5) Walsh et al., ‘Cider Tax’, 72–3. (6) Ibid. 74–5. (7) Ibid. 76–7. (8) Walsh et al., ‘Cider Tax’, 80–1; P. Woodland, ‘Extra-Parliamentary Political Organization in the Making; Benjamin Heath and the Opposition to the 1763 Cider Excise’, PH 4 (1985), 115–36, on 115. (9) Ibid. 84–6. Velters Cornewall is quoted in Woodland, ‘Extra-Parliamentary Political Organization’, 116. (10) N. A. Brisco, Walpole’s Economic Policy (London, 1907), 157–65, 172, and 202. (11) J. Greene, ‘An Uneasy Connection: An Analysis of the Preconditions of the American Revolution’, in S. G. Kurtz and J. H. Hutson (eds.), Essays on the American Revolution (New York, 1973), 1–13; K. Mason, ‘Britain and the Administration of the American (Colonies’, in H. T. Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the American Revolution (London, 1998), 21–43, on 30–7; H. T. Dickinson, ‘Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty: The Ideological Case against the American Colonies’, in Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the American Revolution, 64–96, on 66– 8, (12) British sugar planters were far from happy with the rigid regulations the English had introduced during the 17th cent.; see C. M. Andrews, ‘Anglo-French (Commercial Rivalry, 1700–1750: The Western Phase, I’, AHR 20 (1915), 539–56, on 551–2. (13) A. B. Southwick, ‘The Molasses Act: Source of Precedents’, WMQ3rd ser., 8 (1951), 389–405, on 389–90; R. B. Sheridan, ‘The Molasses Act and the Market Strategy of the British Sugar Planters’, JEH 17 (1957), 62–83, on 62–3 and 66–8. The letter from W. Gordon to the Board of Trade, 17 Aug. 1720, is quoted in C. M. Andrews, ‘Anglo-French Commercial Rivalry, 1700-1750: The Western Phase, II’, AHR 20 (1915), 761–80, on 765, Page 21 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation (14) Southwick, ‘The Molasses Act’, 392–5, The French colonies were vital for the surplus products of New England, New York, and Pennsylvania (i.e. lumber, livestock, and provisions) since they were not needed by England; see Andrews, ‘Anglo-French Commercial Rivalry, 1700–1750’, 762. (15) Southwick, ‘The Molasses Act’ 395–404. Closer to home the Act proved ‘quite effective in expanding the protected home market to include Ireland’; see Sheridan, ‘The Molasses Act’, 83. (16) R. Browning, ‘The Duke of Newcastle and the Financing of the Seven Years War’, JEH 31 (1971), 344–77. (17) J. Perry, ‘Government Policy and the American Crisis 1760-1776’, in Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the American Revolution, 44–63, on 44–6; Mason, ‘Britain and the Administration of the American Colonies’, 40–1. for North America’s role in the Seven Years War, its impact on stirring radical politics, and the post-war depression see G. B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: The Northern Seaports and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass, 1979; abridged version, 1986), 147–83. (18) P. Linebaugh and M. Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Staves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Boston, 2000), 218–22. For the specific contribution and transmutation of English plebeian culture on American radicalism see A. F. Young, ‘English Plebeian Culture and Eighteenth-Century American Radicalism’, in M. C. Jacob and J. R. Jacob (eds.), The Origins of Anglo-American Radicalism (Princeton, 1991), 185– 212. (19) Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 148–51. For the impetus and leading role of Charles Townsend in formulating and advocating taxation of the colonies see R. J. Chaffin, ‘The Townshend Acts of 1767’, WMQ, 3rd ser., 27 (1970), 90–121, on 90–4. (20) Nash, Urban Crucible, 185–93. (21) Derry, ‘Government Policy’, 50–1; Dickinson, ‘Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty’, 73 and 76. (22) EO’Gorman, ‘The Parliamentary Opposition to the Government’s American Policy 1760–1782’, in Dickinson (ed.), Britain and the American Revolution, 97– 123, on 99. (23) For the extent of ‘public’ support for the people of the American colonies see J. E. Bradley, ‘The British Public and the American Revolution: Ideology, Interest and Opinion’, in Dickinson (ed.),Britain and the American Revolution, 124–54.

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation (24) Derry, ‘Government Policy’, 54; Dickinson, ‘Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty’, 70; O’Gorman, ‘Parliamentary Opposition’, 99. For Pitt’s quote see Chaffin, ‘The Townsend Acts of 1767’, 101–2. (25) Derry, ‘Government Policy’, 55–6. (26) P. D. G. Thomas, ‘Charles Townshend and American Taxation in 1767’, EcHR 83 (1968), 33–51, on 50; Chaffin, ‘The Townsend Acts of 1767’, 109; Dickinson, ‘Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty’, 82–3; Nash, Urban Crucible, 200 and 226. (27) J. Lemisch, ‘Jack Tar in the Streets; Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America’, WMQ,3rd ser., 25 (1968), 371–407, on 398. The backlash to the deeply hated policy of impressment is also alluded to in T. Paine, Common Sense (1776; repr. Harmondsworth, 1976), 75. Gary Nash has convincingly demonstrated the fundamental impact the labouring ranks in the North American ports had in shaping the build-up to the American Revolution; see Urban Crucible, 247. (28) T. P. Slaughter, ‘The Tax Man Cometh; Ideological Opposition to Internal Taxes, 1760–1790’, WMQ, 3rd ser., 41 (1984), 566–91, on 572 and 581. These themes would intensify when delegates came together in 1787 to reorganize central government. One Pennsylvanian commentator reminded his readers of the ‘glorious struggle’ against the British, and indicated the dire consequences that would follow the introduction of any internal taxes. For one thing it would lead to the creation of ‘the standing army’. William Goudy of North Carolina claimed it ‘will totally destroy our liberties’. Patrick Henry was fearful: ‘Look at the part which speaks of excises, and you will recollect that those who are to collect excises and duties are to he aided by military force … Suppose an excise man will demand leave to enter your cellar, or house, by virtue of his office; perhaps he may call on the militia to enable him to go’. When a whiskey excise was introduced in 1791 there was an uproar and rebellion on a scale reminiscent to that triggered by the Stamp Act; see Slaughter, ‘The Tax Man Cometh’, 585–6. (29) Derry, ‘Government Policy’, 57–63; Dickinson, ‘Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty’, 71; O’Gorman, ‘The Government’s Opposition’, 102–4. The Revolution also coincided with a crisis among colonial debtors to British creditors that, no doubt, made the former more receptive to anti-British sentiments. See R. B. Sheridan, ‘The British Credit Crisis of 1772 and the American Colonies’, JEM 20 (1960), 161–86. (30) J. Brewer, Party Ideology and Popular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 205 and 208–9; I. Kramnick, ‘Introduction’ to T. Paine, Common Sense (1776; repr. Harmondsworth, 1976), 40–2, and for Paine’s actual comments, see 121; Dickinson, ‘Introduction’, 18–20, and ‘Britain’s Imperial Sovereignty’, 76–81 and 90–1.

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation (31) Brewer, Party, Ideology and Popular Politics, 202–3; P. Linebaugh, ‘All the Atlantic Mountains Shook’, in G. Eley and W. Hunt (eds.), Reviving the English Revolution; Reflections and Elaborations on the Work of Christopher Hill (London, 1988), 193–219, on 215; M. Rediker, ‘Good Hands, Stout Heart and Fast Feet: The History and Culture of Working People in Early America’, in Eley and Hunt (eds.), Reviving the English Revolution, 221–49. H. T. Dickinson, The Politics of the People in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Basingstoke, 1994), 178,182, and 202–3. (32) J. G. A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History: Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), 267; Bradley, ‘British Public’, 147. (33) P. O’Brien and P. A. Hunt, ‘The Rise of a Fiscal State in England, 1485– 1815’, HR 160 (1993). 129–76, on 175, Dowel, History of Taxation, ii. 165 and 172–6. (34) M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1995). 524–5. Pitt the younger is quoted in E. Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 1558–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 455. (35) N. Chester, The English Administrative System 1780–1870 (Oxford, 1981), 106; G. E. Aylmer, ‘From Office-Holding to Civil Service: The Genesis of Modern Bureaucracy’, TRHS, 5th sen, 30 (1980), 91–108, on 104; S. E. Fine, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643–1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 34. The huge impact of the American conflict on Britain was not all detrimental. As Stephen Conway has recently argued, the huge cost of mobilizing the armed forces—spending increased here from £3.8 million in 1774 to over £20 million in 1782—was predominantly spent in Britain. It thus ‘helped to stimulate British and Irish industry and agriculture, either through government contracts or the innumerable more modest transactions of industrial officers, soldiers, sailors, and militiamen with a multitude of different kinds of traders’. In other words the impact of the conflict may well have been a great deal less damaging on the economy than was once thought. See S. Conway, The British Isles and the War of American Independence Oxford, 2000), 44 and 76–7. (36) A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London, 1776; repr, Indianapolis, 1981), ii 826, 871, and 873; G. Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium: From Moral Economy to Socialism, 1815–1860 (Oxford, 1987), 32. (37) Smith, Wealth of Nations, ii. 872. (38) Ibid. 871 and 885; W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640–1799: An Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), 119. Page 24 of 26

 

The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation (39) D. Hume, ‘Of Taxes’, in his Essays; Literary, Moral and Political (London, 1864), 104–5. By the early 19th cent. the link between wages and high taxation had been greatly diluted. It was now more associated with the demand tor labour, see Hughes, Studies in Administration,459–60. R. C Wiles has shown that there had already been a significant section of commentators advocating high wages in the late 17th and early 18th cents.; see his ‘The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism’, EcHR, NS 21 (1968), 113–26. (40) P. Mathias and P. O’Brien, ‘Taxation in Britain and trance, 1715–1810’, JEEH 5 (1976) 601–40, on 618–21; P. O’Brien, ‘Political Economy of Taxation, 1660– 1815’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 41 (1988), 1–32, on 10–27; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 216– 17; J. V. Beckett and M. Turner, ‘Taxation and Economic Growth in EighteenthCentury England’, EcHR, 2nd sen, 43 (1990), 377–403, on 387 and 391–6; W. R. Ward, ‘The Administration of the Window and Assessed Taxes, 1696–1798’, EHR 67 (1952), 523–42, on 534. (41) Smith, Wealth of Nations, ii. 886–7. (42) Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 522 and 525. (43) Catherine Phillips is quoted in Thompson, Customs in Common, 318, and David. Hardie is quoted in W. J. Hausman, ‘The Tax on London Coal: Aspects of Fiscal Policy and Economic Development in the Eighteenth Century’, ECL 9 (1982), 21–34, on 30. (44) For Thomas Paine as an excise officer sec J. Keane, Tom Paine: A Political Life (London, 1996), 52–8. For Adam Smith as a customs commissioner see E. G. West, Adam Smith: The Man and His Works (Indianapolis, 1976), 219–32; G. M. Anderson, W. F. Shughart II and R. D. Tollison, ‘Adam Smith in the Customhouse’, JPE 93 (1985), 740–59; I. S. Ross, The Life of Adam Smith (Oxford, 1995), 320– 33. (45) T. Paine, ‘The Rights of Man, Part II (1792), in Thomas Paine: Political Writings, ed. Kucklick, (Cambridge, 1989), 145–203, on 158 and 200–1; J. Thelwall, The Tribune,3/34 (1795), in The Politics of English Jacobinism: Writings of John Thelwall, ed. G. Claeys (Pennsylvania, 1995), 276–7. (46) E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (Harmondsworth, 1967), 661 and 823. Cobbett is quoted in N. Thompson, The Real Rights of Man: Political Economies for the Working Class 1775–1850 (London, 1998), 26–7. For taxation and machinery see G. S. Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in id., Languages of Class: Studies in the English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), 90–178, on 116. For Henry Hunt see J. Belchem, ‘Orator’ Hunt: Henry Hunt and English Working-Class Radicalism (Oxford, 1985). For the reliance on indirect tax between 1816 and 1842 see Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 522–3.

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The Limits of Taxation and the Politics of Representation (47) For William Magihn and David Ricardo see M. Berg, The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy (Cambridge, 1980), 71 and 266. For the Leeds stuff weavers see Thompson, Making of the English Working Class, 335–6. (48) Robert M. Martin is quoted in Thompson, Making of the English Working Class,336. (49) M. Chase, The People’s Farm: English Radical Agrarianism 1775–1840 (Oxford, 1988), 124–5; Jones,‘Rethinking Chartism’, 118–19; Powell, A History of Taxation, ii. 268–70. (50) P. Marling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’:The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1776– 1846 (Oxford, 1996), 89–135; P. Marling and P. Mandler, ‘From Fiscal-State to Laissez-Faire State, 1760– 1850’, JBS 32 (1993), 44–70; Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, 104; Claeys, Machinery, Money and the Millennium, 25 and 60. The sense of a growing grievance amongst the middling sort over taxation is also argued in S. E. Brown, ‘“A Just and Profitable Commerce”; Moral Economy and the Middling Classes in Eighteenth-Century London’, JBS 32 (1993) 305–32, on 326–8. (51) ‘Special Constables for the Protection of the Chief Office in Old Broad Street in Case of a Chartist Attack’, 10 Apt. 1848, PRO CUST 119/356.

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0019

Abstract and Keywords This chapter shows that huge administrative expansion and the costs of the Napoleonic Wars had pumped the fiscal-military state to the point of bursting. The public was angry and no longer willing to shoulder the burden through taxation. This was coupled with the perception that much of the revenue was being squandered and that they were powerless to rectify the situation because they wielded no power. People from diverse backgrounds began expressing their concerns, which had far-reaching political, economic, and institutional implications. Keywords:   taxation, corruption, manufacturing

‘Tyranny, for Paine’, writes Isaac Kramnick, ‘was taxation’. Along with the monarchy and aristocracy, taxation formed a supernatural trinity to rival the holy one, Part II of Paine’s Rights of Man is all about dismantling the hugely expensive and complex fiscal-military state. It was an acute attack on the greedy consumption of the people’s wealth to fund a corrupt political system revolving upon an obsolete constitution. Government, he and numerous others claimed, was predominantly based on talentless monarchs, the abuse of power, and a sea of placemen in public offices. The only so-called republican part of the constitution, the House of Commons, had been so contaminated by crown patronage that all its ‘virtue’ had been ‘swallowed’, digested, and deposited within the corridors of power. In this sense it was no better than the absolutist monarchies of France and Spain, Paine saved his greatest condemnation for the Page 1 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests endless flow of meaningless but hugely expensive wars that accompanied such a ‘barbarous’ system. In contrast, he claimed, another world was arising characterized by a new social, political, and economic order: ‘Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and the tranquil arts, by which the prosperity of Nations is best promoted, require a different system of government, and a different species of knowledge to direct its operations, than what, might have been required in the former condition of the world’ Success in this new commercial world, so the argument went, required a rational and streamlined state executive and government reduced in both size and cost. Paine may not have got his political revolution in England, but his desire for institutional reform was already under way. Others of diverse political stances also shared his dream of a visible, cheap, and simplistic administrative machine.1

Patronage And Revenue During the Middle Ages and well into the eighteenth century, executive officer— especially in large monarchies such as France—was a form of private property. (p.342) Tax collection was farmed out to private enterprises, while proto-state apparatus was increasingly colonized by families of financiers and office holders. These wealthy men typically had their own agenda, which was often at odds with the official interests of the crown. In France during the eighteenth century, the growing expense of war forced the state to simply sell more and more offices to raise money, and to intensify the extraction of direct taxes from the peasantry. This combined to cripple the country’s long-term financial and administrative capacity to rule, and simultaneously debilitate the tax base stemming from the lower ranks.2 Conversely, in England a stage was never really reached where someone could just routinely sell his hereditary office. Indeed, in September 1711, the selling or purchasing of any place of employment within the revenue departments was loudly condemned: ‘Her Majesty is pleased to declare, that the selling of Offices and Places in Great Britain, which concern the Administration on Execution of Justice, or the Receipts, Comptrollment, or Payment of any of Her Treasure, Money’s Customs or Revenues whatsoever, or any of the Offices or Places in HOUSEHOLD and FAMILY, to be highly dishonourable to HER MAJESTY, prejudicial to her SERVICE, introductive of CORRUPTION and EXTORTION and a DISCOURAGEMENT to VIRTUE and TRUE MERIT’. These were early sentiments concerning a version of proto-meritocracy and the redefinition of virtue around the bulwarks of visibility, accountability, and tractability—such aims, outside of the excise, would have to wait several more decades before they truly began to penetrate the rapidly expanding, military driven, state bureaucracy. However, already a major difference between England and France’s process of revenue collection was evident. France, for all its eighteenth-century rational attempts at improving state administration, could not unlock the shackles of its parallel, rooted private world of office holders, Page 2 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests hidden mechanisms, and especially strong independent regions. Visibility, accountability, and tractability may have been the well-known prescriptive plans of some French reformers but, unlike in England, the necessary administrative mechanisms and culture built around them were not there.3 When major military encounters erupted between 1689 and 1714, England/ Britain did not have the overwhelming burden of a huge debt, while its central bureaucracy—especially the Treasury and Navy Board—were firmly under parliamentary control. The English revenue system was therefore much more unified than its European rivals and more effectively controlled by the staff at Whitehall. In the words of John Brewer, the ‘triumph of the Treasury in the late seventeenth century produced a remarkably centralised fiscal system in which all depart- (p.343) ments—those of both receipt and disbursement—were accountable to a single body, the Treasury Board. This enabled Britain to become the first major European state to keep full accounts of total government revenue and expenditure’. Nonetheless the clash between the issue of private and public interest for office holders was one that would last, and increasingly dominate English politics right down to the mid-nineteenth century and beyond.4 Prior to the Glorious Revolution, certain important offices could still be purchased but, with the exception of the Royal Household, a purchasable office by 1700 was almost invariably a sinecure or quasi-sinecure. Influence rather than purchase was by far the most important criterion. After 1689 the pressure exerted by a more confident and powerful standing House of Commons created an element of public accountability. Through various commissions, parliamentary reports, and the production of official data, a core section of the House sought to root out malpractice and financial waste. This is not to say there was not corruption, far from it, but it was generally not on the scale that characterized European fiscal administration. In addition, tax collection in most countries in Europe was still predominantly (although not totally) in the hands of a consortium of private financiers and tax farmers.5 The French populace typically paid two to three times more direct tax over the course of the eighteenth century than England/Britain. Peter Mathias and Patrick O’Brien conclude that the incidence of direct taxes probably fell more heavily upon the wealth and incomes of the affluent ranks than they did in Britain. Most revenue generated from indirect taxes came from royal monopolies concerned predominantly with salt, tobacco, and levies on the transit of commodities— most notably wine. These tolls, in turn, created risks, costs, and delays upon internal commerce, and undoubtedly had a negative effect upon the unification of the French domestic market. It is also the case that the cost of collecting revenue was a great deal cheaper in Britain. In addition, then, to having a nationalized, relatively efficient (at least in the case of the excise), and more accountable system of revenue collection, Britain also had a far more integrated economy to tap. It was not burdened with regional tariffs and such Page 3 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests strong independent-provincial identities and taxes as France. Throughout the century, officials from the French bureau battled to implement a single duty, knowing that the free flow of domestic goods was one of the key strengths of the British (p.344) domestic market. As J. F. Bosher comments: ‘The attitude of the reforming officials… was based on the belief that English goods enjoyed an advantage over French goods, not only because of the superiority, in many cases, of British machines and manufactory processes, but also because there were no internal customs duties in England and the frontier duties were adjusted more or less in favour of British national trade and industry’.6 Hanoverian ministers knew that the collection of excise revenue was far more organized, simple, and reliable than the customs. The system of excise removes, by which officers were periodically transferred to new stations, meant not only that excisemen were less likely than customs men to be complicit with local traders and smugglers, but also that they avoided local political entanglements. Moreover, as we have seen, excisemen were given a reasonable wage while being subject to much closer scrutiny than their colleagues in the customs. This was one of the reasons why the Walpole administration had earlier wanted to switch the supervision of imported goods to the excise. Adam Smith confessed, ‘In point of perspicuity, precision, and distinctness, therefore, the duties of customs are much inferior to those of excise’.7 It was during the latter half of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth centurv that substantial changes were made to the revenue services. As we saw in Chapter 17, colonial tax policy had helped ignite years of growing hostility within North America and Britain. With the loss of the American colonies close, the expense of the war unbearably high, and political radicalism—fuelled by the cry of no taxation without representation’—ever louder, the government had to at least look as if it were seeking wavs of economizing to subdue the explosive situation. As Brewer writes, ‘why should men pay for incompetent, extravagant administration when they were unrepresented, particularly when the reason why it was incompetent and extravagant was because it was not representative?’ In an attempt to dilute growing cries for parliamentary reform, Edmund Burke blamed the civil list for creating political corruption through the crown’s liberal allocation of placemen. This, however, was more of a distraction from the really serious task of solving the government’s dire financial difficulties and sustaining public credit. In 1780, Lord North with Lord Shelbourne close on his heals, appointed a board of commissioners to investigate the state of public accounts. In a sense it was initially a gesture to allay ‘public’ fears that their money was being wasted, (p.345) and was modelled upon the body set up in 1667. It was composed of six expert laymen (not politicians), although they were closely tied to North’s government, who had the power to take departmental evidence upon oath and suggest recommendations for reform. Their objective was to cut waste

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests and promote a public ethos in an attempt to improve the efficiency and safeguard the legitimacy of the state institutions.8 Over the next few years the committee made a total of fifteen reports that variously condemned sinecures and ‘irregular’ emoluments, and the idea that offices were private property—a point bolstered by the ‘odious system of Fees’ in operation within most of the state departments. Most sinecures were located in the oldest sections of the English administration—such as the Customs and Exchequer. They contrasted the customs procedure to that of the excise: ‘it appears, in our Eighth Report, that the Accounts of the Excise Duties are audited in a Department of the Excise Office. The Commissioners themselves are Accountants. The Auditor examines, draws up in the Exchequer Forms, and passes the Accounts through the Offices of the Treasury and Exchequer. We know of no Distinction that renders this Mode of Audit eligible in the Excise, and ineligible in the Customs’. Unlike the excise commissioners their equivalents in the customs ‘are no Accountants’, while the process of official customs checks was relatively useless and characterized by a number of redundant offices. The report recommended the retrenchment and replacement of these offices by the ‘Institution of an Audit Office’. Importantly, the excise was the only fiscal department to escape the condemnation of the commissioners of public accounts during the 1780s. Indeed it was hailed as the model towards which all branches of revenue (and state departments in general) should aspire.9 The committee also recommended the end of the customs patent offices of comptroller and searcher, and advised the appointment of two officers at every creek where the patent deputies were currently stationed. However, the fourth report of the finance committee in 1797 noted that these recommendations had not been implemented. They also claimed that a system of promotion had still not yet been worked out and strongly advised that it should be: it was ‘an Incentive to Diligence, and the most likely Means of placing in these offices Persons of approval, Ability and Fidelity’. The notion of meritocracy practised by the excise was now creeping into general state bureaucracy in conjunction with a clear demarcation between public and private interests. Here the salaried, hierarchical, and relatively meritocratic career structure of the excise was being made the blueprint of general reform.10 (p.346) Out of the 196 offices so far recommended for suppression by the commissioners only 46 had fallen by 1797. In the mean time the Customs Department had appointed a further 444 officers with no less that 200 on no fixed salary and therefore heavily dependent upon fees—estimated as having risen a staggering 800 per cent since last recorded. The committee were far from impressed and reminded the government, ‘where Salaries have been substituted in their lieu, the Fees of course have been totally abolished’. The finance committee made thirty-six reports covering all aspects of revenue collection, the management of expenditure and the national debt, the audit of Page 5 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests accounts, and the organization and payment of personnel. They revealed that Pitt’s administration had made few reforms and had not really acted upon the advice of the commissioners for public accounts. Pitt defended his slow progress by reminding the House of Commons that ‘sinecure offices are given in the nature of a free-hold tenure.’11 Meanwhile taxpayers were becoming increasingly agitated over the wasteful and corrupt use of their hard-earned money. Although the government abolished some of the patent offices in the customs, and transferred the collection of the salt duties from the sinecure-ridden Salt Office to the excise, it generally failed to enact the finance committee’s main recommendations. This made it very easy to accuse the government of ‘Old Corruption’ and parasitic squandering of the people’s purse. Philip Harling, in particular, has shown that from Pitt’s administration to Robert Peel’s, the narrow elite of predominantly landed gentlemen who governed the country increasingly had to find ways of diffusing attacks on ‘Old Corruption’, the venom of which reached unprecedented levels during the Napoleonic Wars as the awesome military expenses took their toll. The ruling elite was accused of defending and increasing their property and interests through the policies and mechanisms of the state. To make matters worse it was a view spread across much of the political and social spectrum. If the government and prevailing social authority were to survive these attacks they had to convince the people that the state was there to defend everyone’s property and interests; that they were prudent and honest in the administration of their public duties. To do this, argues Harling, successive Pittite and conservative ministries had to be seen to be reforming the state’s administrative structures and financial policy.12 In 1810 state sinecures cost over £297,000 per year to service. It was this ‘influence’ that particularly grated on Pittite opponents. Yet by 1834 the 600-odd sinecures estimated by S. E. Finer to have existed in 1780 had been totally erased, and from 1814 ministries stopped using reversions due to the public revulsion they generated. This period also saw the official inversion of the notion that an office was private property, to one of public property accountable to the people. The commissioners’ reports located the public interest with the economy, (p.347) which, they believed, was not operating systematically and efficiently since it was so clogged up with redundant duties, archaic regulations, and tacit procedures. It needed to be stripped down to its natural state. As such, irregular practices were advised by the committee reports to be replaced by a systematic and visible method, in which the collection of accounts for all bodies should ideally be standardized. The underlying thrust was the view that the whole fiscal apparatus could be kid open and made transparent through a rational approach to financial matters. It was also hoped that this would improve efficiency and lower administrative costs. All these reports helped provide the language and

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests ideas to make substantial changes later in the first half of the nineteenth century, paving the way for a more streamlined and professional bureaucracy.13 In contrast to the relatively efficient and accountable Board of Excise there was no adequate check in the customs over the payments made to the collectors and receivers, while the commissioners never saw the weekly accounts. The thirteenth report of the public accounts committee despaired that they ‘have no knowledge of the state of the cash; He carries over no Balance: Each week’s Account is independent of, and unconnected with, the Account of either the preceding or succeeding Week’. They strongly advised that the collector and receiver at the port of London should therefore make out a weekly account, indicating the total sum paid to the receiver-general with the balance remaining at the end of each week.14 The land tax was also harshly compared to the excise. The committee claimed that since 1756 the land tax had accumulated arrears of some £113,161, ‘whereas by a like Return which we required from the Commissioners of Excise, for the same Period, we find there have been no Arrears or Defaulters among the officers of Excise, except in one Instance, to the Amount of three thousand six hundred Pounds’. The committee condemned the practice of the receivergeneral of the land tax in detaining public money due to the unfounded excuse that he could not procure bills and that his salary was insufficient Despite the committee’s scathing verdict on such practices, the select committee investigating the nation’s finances in 1797 claimed the receiver-general of the customs in Scotland had an average balance of £47,000 and sometimes as much as £74,895. The committee reiterated its predecessor’s sentiments that ‘such Balances ought not to be suffered to accumulate in private Hands; and that the Compensation which the Receiver General may be made entitled to for his services, ought to be made by a fixed and adequate salary, but not by the Profit which he may be supposed to derive from the Use of the Public Money.’15 (p.348) Emerging relatively unscathed from this noisy political turmoil was Pitt himself. On coming to power it had been critical for him to appear as someone who could be trusted, someone solid and clothed in genuine integrity. Put succinctly, it was important he occupied his office as a public trust—the embodiment of what the public accounts committee wanted to enforce on all state positions. Pitt successfully convinced country reformers that he was untouched by the traits associated with ‘Old Corruption’. In 1785 he implemented some of the commissioners’ recommendations by abolishing the Exchequer’s two auditors of imprests and replacing them with a more acceptable board of auditors working under Treasury supervision. By the close of the 1780s Pitt had successfully recast the image of the country’s ministers and started to slowly erode the assaults on ‘Old Corruption’. In this, of course,

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests he had been aided by a number of factors, not least a period of prosperity and peace providing the stability for his administrative financial reforms.16

Pitt And Reform The most immediate imperative fuelling reforms and informing public opinion was, as ever, the servicing of the gigantic national debt. Over the course of the American War it had grown from £131 million to an approximate figure of £245 million. Pitt had three choices. The first was simply to cut back on expenditure; the second was to increase the yield from existing taxes; and the third option was to create new taxes. This would all take cautious planning, administrative improvements, and careful timing. There was, however, one area that could be addressed sooner rather than later. Throughout 1784 Pitt, like Walpole earlier, concentrated a great deal of his attention on tackling the problem of the common economy. During the American War the manpower of the revenue service and the home forces had become depleted, and the smuggling activities had taken an. even firmer hold. As we have seen, the most popular commodity with the smuggler was tea. The success of free trade in tea was also undermining the finances of the powerful East India Company that resulted in concerted lobbying from this powerful organization. The size of illegal trade had recently been investigated under the auspices of Lord Shelbourne’s ministry prior to Pitt’s period of power. However, the most extensive investigation was conducted in the summer of 1783, when the coalition government appointed a Commons committee to investigate illicit practices. Pitt estimated that a mere 42 per cent of the tea and 14 per cent of the brandy consumed in Britain had paid tax.17 These investigations prepared and laid the path for one of Pitt’s most celebrated tax reforms, the Commutation Act of 1784: the reduction of excise duties (p. 349) on tea from 119 to 12½ per cent ad valorem. The main thrust of the Act was to destroy widespread tea smuggling, and instigate a total monopoly of tea imported by the East India Company. To enable Pitt to do this, the retail prices of tea had to be reduced to a figure that could be compensated for by a new window tax. This was no easy task since the retail price of tea was mainly based on the availability of tea. In addition, the East India Company fiercely defended its rights to decide at what price tea should be sold at auctions, and did not warm to the idea of government legislating for the price. Lastly, of course, the smugglers were obviously going to do what they could to prevent the Act from working.18 Pitt needed to be particularly alert and in regular contact with key players such as William Richardson, the deputy-accountant of the East India Company, who both presented the company’s case and supplied information on known smugglers. He also had frequent meetings with Richard Twinning, the leader of the tea dealers, and with the MP Francis Baring, who was both commercial adviser to Pitt since 1782 and a director of the East India Company. Absolutely Page 8 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests fundamental to the success of the Act would be the availability of a large quantity of tea at low prices; without this the smugglers would easily defeat the plan. The dealers had already purchased six months of stock during the May sale at the higher duties, and faced a great loss if the Act was passed before they had sold it. After consulting extensive excise figures on the distribution and number of legal tea dealers, Pitt made a deal with the company to accept the tea back from the dealers. This enabled him to enforce the Bill in September and the company to put a greater quantity of tea up for auction. It was after this agreement that Pitt implemented the uniform rate of 12 ½ per cent ad valorem. The Act also legislated for the price and quantity of tea that the company could put up for sale, the amount of stock they could hold, and the number of sales they could make. The retail prices were, however, still left unregulated.19 The plan nearly failed when tea smugglers, ‘dressed in silk handkerchiefs around their neck’ and characterized by ‘weatherbeaten countenances’, took the initiative and bought most of the quality tea at the crucial first auction, leaving the fair trader without a popular supply. Pitt was pushed into all sorts of manoeuvrings with dealers, retailers, and the East India Company. A major necessity was to find more tea, which forced the company to tap into the smugglers’ Continental suppliers. To ensure a continued and adequate supply, the company arranged for tea to be purchased from Europe until larger shipments returned from China. To do this Pitt and his team organized an advanced loan to the company of £300,000 from the Bank of England, with the promise of more money if necessary. The prize of destroying the grip of the smugglers was deemed worth it. This allowed the company to take control of domestic demand, (p.350) and sever the traditional links smugglers had with tea suppliers from Europe. By 1786 the increased demand for tea was met by supplies from China, and for a time the Commutation Act finally achieved what its instigators had hoped.20 The final third of the eighteenth century witnessed a number of new taxes on luxuries. Despite this expansion, however, it was nowhere near enough to meet the required revenue. As a result taxes on necessaries were all increased. For example, malt rose in 1779, 1780, and 1790; salt in 1780, 1782, and 1798; soap in 1782, and the candle tax in 1784. The only reductions, as we have seen, were on tea in 1784, followed in 1792 by a reduction in the candle and malt taxes. Pitt once again increased the tax on tea in 1795 and exploited the great demand for sugar among the poor by also increasing its duties. Charles Fox protested: ‘tea and sugar were now in such common use that he feared they were necessaries of life’. The next year Pitt proposed to increase the tea duty again, but this time exempted the coarser kinds of tea drunk by the lower orders in an attempt to dilute Fox’s criticisms.21

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests Following on from the brief success of the Commutation Act, Pitt slightly lowered the duties on ram and British spirits. This was succeeded, after the Anglo-French treaty of 1786, by the progressive reduction of duties on French wines and brandies, and soon after on other European wines in general. Official British statistics reveal that prior to this treaty imports of duty-paid French wine;, hardly ever passed 100,000 gallons but by 1787 surpassed 969,856 gallons. W. O. Henderson convincingly concludes; ‘Much of this increase was due to the fact that French wines which had formerly been smuggled into England now paid duty and were officially recorded as imports*. In other words, the market was already there but it was now being filled by legal wine. Pitt’s above moves were still primarily aimed at the smuggler, but were also fuelled by a more general process of communal negotiation and financial reform. The reduction in the rates on British spirits in 1785 was the beginning of a scheme to tighten up the laws on (state-defined) quality—part of the impetus behind the reform of the hydrometer we saw earlier, and a plan to reorganize the distribution of duties on all spirits between customs and excise. Like many of his predecessors Pitt wanted the task of revenue collection to be put as much as possible into the hands of the excise.22 Most of the duties on wines were transferred from customs to excise in 1786, while, as we have seen, the duties on ‘sweets’ used to adulterate spirits and beer were raised. Some fifty-three years after the humiliating disaster of Walpole’s tobacco and wine excise Bill, Pitt had finally managed to pass much of the scheme. Most of the above reforms were a great success, with the revenue on wines increasing from £625,000 in 1783 to £804,000 in 1790; on spirits from £561,000 in 1784 to an average of £915,000 between 1787 and 1790; and on tobacco from an average of £424,000 in 1789–90 to an average of £590,000 between 1789 (p.351) and 1792. Taxes were also increased or created in 1784 on retail licences for certain excisable goods, on shooting certificates, on bricks, tiles, linens, and calicoes; new levies were placed on gold and silver plate, on imported silk and exported lead, and the postage rates were also raised. Two new taxes also appeared, one on men’s hats and another one on ladies’ ribbons. Also in 1784 Pitt transferred some of these taxes, mainly on carriages and manservants, from the excise, and put them in a category termed ‘Assessed Taxes’ (along with taxes on horses, saddle and carriage horses, and race horses). This new classificatory group was to be collected by the Board of Taxes modelled on the excise. These were followed in 1785 by an increased levy on employers of manservants and new duties placed on gloves, on the employers of female servants, on pawnbrokers’ licences, and an increase in the shooting licence fee. The flood of taxes continued with new duties on attorneys, on coach maker’s licences, on new carriages, on perfume, and, just for good measure, the duty on imported gin was raised in 1786.23 In addition, Pitt continued to keep up the pressure on the common economy by substantially increasing the legal weaponry against illicit trade. For instance, the Hovering Act of 1780 had stated Page 10 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests that vessels within two leagues of the coast could be seized, and this was extended to four leagues in 1784; vessels being built along known smuggling routes could be stopped at any stage; and lastly, Pitt and his government made it legal for forfeited vessels to be destroyed if the customs did not want them.24 Despite an ill-fated attempt to tax shops, in the end the only policy Pitt could really pursue was to increase the revenue from existing taxes either by raising them, or improving methods of assessment and making revenue collection more efficient. The most effective way to increase the yield was to nurture the necessary conditions for increased prosperity. Not surprisingly, such an increase in indirect taxation provoked a number of confrontations. Indeed the extension of excise taxes led directly, as we have seen, to the formation of new economic interest groups. For example, due to effective lobbying by interested parties in 1784, Pitt failed either to bring out an excise licence for hop planters, or to change the tax on coals from a levy on cargoes carried by sea to one on coal at the pit. Meanwhile the manufacturing interests were beginning to combine together to produce an even more potent pressure group. Indeed, in the case of the coal tax, the manufacturing interest flexed its muscle in such an unexpectedly powerful way that Pitt was forced to drop it within a week. The ironmasters bitterly complained that the increase in coal duties would make it extremely difficult for the British iron makers to compete with the Swedish. Another example came over the government’s policy on linens and calicoes, which was aggressively opposed by Manchester and Glasgow cotton manufacturers who vented their anger when they were asked by the government to give evidence on the economic plan (p.352) proposed for Ireland. They were willing to accept competition but only if both countries were subject to the same regulations. The Manchester and Glasgow cotton men were instrumental in forming a General Chamber of Manufacturers, and they gained the further support of the iron founders of the Midlands and west. The aim was to be a national body coordinating industrial policy and influencing parliament on behalf of domestic industry. However, there were too many diverse interests and clashes of opinion to sustain the body, and it eventually dissolved during a bitter dispute over the proposed trade treaty with France in 1786.25 The impact of the new manufacturers on fiscal policy is extremely significant. The cotton industry had been given important concessions in 1774 including the removal of prohibitions, and, soon after, the go-ahead for British people to actually wear or use goods wholly made of cotton. However, in 1784 an attempt was made to tax dyed stuffs of cotton and cotton and linen mixed, at a duty of onepence per yard if the value of the cloth was under three shillings per yard and twopence per yard if the value of the cloth was three shillings or more per yard. In addition, a duty of 15 per cent was added to both the old duty (threepence per yard introduced in 1774) and the new duty, while bleachers and dyers now had to purchase licences. It was less, however, the introduction of these new levies that rattled the cotton manufacturers than the fact they were Page 11 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests collected by the excise. This was a view that united all the new industries. The pottery manufacturer and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood wanted to see the excise ‘annihilated’. He warned: ‘Excise laws are the bane of manufacturers: the officers are spies upon all the operations of the artist: discoveries, which have been the fruit of great labour and expense to him, they convey to his rivals, perhaps foreign nations’.26 Each industry taxed by the excise had to fairly much conform to a process of production acceptable to the excise’s method of extraction, and to have its premises mapped—providing detailed information on secret methods and the precise location of utensils or machinery. The excisemen were allowed to enter the cotton manufacturer’s premises at any time and, if obstructed, fine him £200. If the producer made a counterfeit of the exciseman’s stamp he was punishable by death. It was claimed that all this interfered with the elaborate stages of the production process, which the excise regulation failed to appreciate. In a familiar tone it was declared by the main cotton manufacturers in April 1785, ‘such an influx of those gentry [the excisemen] to disturb the harmony and arrangements (p.353) of their manufacture, to deprive them of personal liberty and the free exercise of their property, is unwise, impolitic and unjust’. In the words of Witt Bowden: ‘The administrative features of the law, minute and inquisitorial, were similar to those of earlier excise laws. These older methods were no longer applicable to the more complicated and advanced technique of manufacturing then being introduced’. Other industries, fearing a general extension of the excise, joined the attack, most notably the iron founders and manufacturers in the counties of Salop, Worcester, Stafford, and Warwick. So too did the Birmingham Commercial Committee who sought the cooperation of other manufacturers. A great deal of anger was also generated by Pitt’s policies toward Ireland. Whereas the British wool industry had a monopoly over raw materials, the cotton manufacturers had to compete with Ireland over limited supplies. Many cotton manufacturers seriously considered moving their operations to Ireland.27 Water was still the most dominant power source in the large-scale cotton industry, and Ireland seemed to provide ideal conditions (including cheaper labour and, of course, less taxation). Very attractive offers were made by powerful Irish figures to woo English manufacturers over. There was an attempt in England to level the playing field by putting countervailing duties on Irish imports, but it was the mode of collection that the cotton manufacturers were primarily against. What was also new in this debate, spearheaded by the new industries, was the view towards the market. Unlike older industries bred upon the culture of preserving and protecting markets, the cotton manufacturers, in particular, wanted to acquire new ones. Unlike the traditional excised industries, cotton by this stage had no rivals and therefore needed no protective barrier. The stakes grew and the difference between the Irish and British tax systems took centre stage. At a meeting in Manchester of the top eighteen Page 12 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests manufacturers, it was resolved that ‘the destructive system [of taxation] adopted towards the manufacturers of this kingdom, and to this town and neighbourhood in particular, renders it incumbent upon them immediately to appoint delegates to go to Ireland for the purpose of treating with any public body, or individual, nobleman or gentleman, respecting a proper situation for conducting an extensive cotton manufacture’. As for their reasons, they underlined the evil excise system and compared it to the far more advantageous system in Ireland. Robert Peel claimed the excise tax would mean the end of the British cotton industry. The threat worked. On 20 April 1785 Pitt told the Commons that the excise on plain cottons and fustians would be repealed.28 The power of the newer industries—most notably cotton, iron, and pottery— was surging forward. This was particularly evident in the 1786 trade treaty with France. This deal, as already touched upon, split British manufacturers roughly in half. Crudely, those older industries used to protection, relatively monopolistic conditions, and the excise, were against the treaty, while the newer industries that (p.354) did not benefit from these conditions generally supported the treaty. The pro-monopoly organ The British Merchant claimed in 1787 that one group were keen to conserve control over the domestic markets, while the other faction sought ‘an open trade’ since ‘their present ascendancy of skill, have nothing immediate to fear from competition, and everything to hope from the speculation of an increased demand’. The publication identiled cotton, pottery, and iron as representative of this latter group; other industries such as the silk, ribbon, hat, paper, clock and watch, leather and glass producers felt they would lose their domestic markets to the French. One woolen draper in 1786 foresaw the collapse of the old industries, and claimed that if the iron, potteries, and cotton manufacturers knew that ‘they rise by our fall, they would to a man scorn the notion of getting on by any such means’. Spearheading the negotiations with the French was William Eden. He had fervently opposed an excise on cotton and favourable Irish resolutions from the start, and was an important supporter of the new industries in general. In the negotiations Pitt made it clear to Eden that he was willing to make concessions on glass and other products to aid cotton, some woollens, hardware, and earthenware.29 In many ways the treaty was predominantly about cotton, on which Eden secured a mere 10 per cent duty from France. The government knew cotton had no rivals in terms of technology and production methods, while the French optimistically thought they would quickly catch up. This underlines a new departure to eighteenth-century British industrial policy that had been gathering pace since the Seven Years War. The period of nurturing predominantly nonexporting industries was being eroded, and, instead, these were now being squeezed to an extremely high point through fiscal demands, placing them beyond the wall of custom tariffs. Increased inland duties were also accompanied by a greater disciplining of gauging methods and the mode of assessment. Meanwhile the new competitive export-led industries, most notably Page 13 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests cotton, were left relatively untouched. This selective proto-laissez faire policy, of course, would reach full fruition later in the nineteenth century. As William Edmon-stoune Aytoun, professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres at Edinburgh University, deftly summarized in 1848: ‘The truth is, that the whole scheme of free trade was erected and framed, not for the purpose of benefiting the manufacturers at the expense of the landed interest, but rather to get a monopoly of export for one or two of the leading manufacturers of the empire.’30 As well as the French trade treaty, 1786 was also significant for Pitt’s reintroduction of Walpole’s sinking fund, established with the aim of paying off the national debt through surplus revenue—a policy urged by the commissioners (p. 355) examining the public accounts. Carl B. Cone has argued that it ‘was in order to secure that surplus that Mr Pitt sacrilced much power, patronage, and popularity, by restricting all unnecessary expenses’; John R, Breihan similarly concludes, ‘Of all the administrative reforms he undertook, the sinking fund was the closest to Pitt’s heart’—it had become the symbol of fiscal probity. This surplus was to be generated by further tapping domestic industry and especially foreign trade. From 1783 to 1792 the public revenue had increased by a staggering 56 per cent. Government spending had also been reduced by 30 per cent due to the huge decrease in military spending since the American War. Despite the fact that the national debt had almost doubled during the war, the cost of servicing it had only grown by 20 per cent. Pitt’s government was now riding high, but all that was about to change due to events just across the Channel. Over the next twenty-three years the government would have to raise some one and a half billion pounds in taxes and loans to enable the country to effectively fight against Revolutionary France. According to Patrick O’Brien’s figures, something like 63 per cent of all the additional taxes raised between 1793 and 1815 fell on the consumption and income of the wealthy. On one hand the government showed it could raise such a colossal income, but on the other it could not prevent the mass mobilization of a powerful backlash accusing the government of not spending it on the defence of the nation but, instead, rewarding corrupt private interests.31 The national debt in 1792 was approximately £237,400,000. The costs of all former eighteenth-century wars combined did not even add up to a third of the total cost of the great war about to be embarked upon with France. The final price was to be something like £831 million of which £622 million would be added to the national debt.32 Although the argument that necessaries should only be lightly taxed, if at all, still carried a powerful moral punch, when the fiscal demands of the state were desperate, such concerns were quickly forgotten. The equitable view that everyone should pay tax had increasingly become absorbed into the sponge of British political life, aided by war and fiscal necessity. Pitt reiterated this view in 1798 in an attempt to double the salt tax: ‘I am still more confirmed in the justice of this tax, and 1 am still more persuaded that the very order of people I am speaking of will be satisfied of that truth, when they are informed that Page 14 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests persons of the highest rank are not, either with respect to their property, their liberty, or their happiness, so interested in the preservation of this country and the happy constitution under which they live as the lower and labouring classes of the community. If they want to be convinced of this truth, let them look to the situation of these countries which have been overrun by the French’.33 Pitt’s evangelical pursuit of trying to redeem the national debt via the sinking fund, when there was no budgetary surplus and the nation was at war, added (p. 356) greatly to fiscal problems. It is fair to say that under the extraordinary pressures of the ongoing war, Pitt and his administration had so far proved they were less tax innovators and more tax multipliers. By 1798 Pitt’s tax policy had basically hit its maximum reach and a new direction was desperately required. In addition, the huge growth in loans depressed the price of government stock, interest rates rose, and the government had to suspend convertibility after a ran on the banks. It was against this dead end that Pitt turned decisively to those people who possessed property, culminating in the introduction of the crucial but short-lived triple assessment—what Holland Rose described as ‘a rather cumbrous form of graduated Income Tax’,—which was quickly replaced the following year by an emergency income tax of two shillings in the pound. A major shift was made from the traditional axiom that taxes should only occur on expenditure to one that now included direct assessment. The initial targets of this approach were the middling ranks and the rich, those with incomes of over £60 per year. Incomes below this figure were exempt, those situated between £60 and £200 were graduated, and those over £200 paid a flat rate of 10 per cent.34 The introduction of the triple assessment and income tax of 1798/9–1816 was only made possible by the national emergency of the Napoleonic Wars, dire financial straits, an unstable socio-political context, and the fear of revolution, which allowed parliament to convince the propertied public that they should have their incomes taxed. This move was further fuelled by three events that all closely coincided. In February 1797 1,000 French troops landed at Fishguard, thus exposing the vulnerability of Britain; in April sailors mutineered off Spithead; and, as we have just noted, the Bank of England suspended the convertibility of paper currency into gold. After five years of war the national debt had almost doubled, reaching an astounding £407 million.35 Under this dark cloud the intensity of attacks on ‘Old Corruption’ intensified. In March 1801 Pitt left office and Henry Addington took over as prime minister. Addington set to work trying to address the widespread public perception that the state’s administrative structure was still riddled with corruption and negligence. He was able to put the reform of administration back on centre stage thanks to the Peace of Amiens agreed in October 1801; in particular, improving the process of collecting the new income tax, reforming the Royal Dockyards, and destroying the notorious abuses characterizing the Irish Page 15 of 20

 

Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests administration. Consequently, when Pitt returned in May 1804 administrative reform was firmly reinstalled on the political agenda. However, despite Pitt’s personal standing, many of his ministers soon regained their reputations as parasites living off the spoils of war. This came to a dramatic climax when Henry Dundas (Lord Melville) was accused of misappropriating funds from the navy. Popular radicals (p.357) were now more than ever convinced that the only way to cleanse the state’s administration was through constitutional reform. By the time Pitt died in January 1806, the system of government associated with him had become synonymous with a form of government now widely despised.36 The huge administrative expansion and expense of the Napoleonic Wars had pumped the fiscal-military state to the point of bursting. The public was angry and no longer willing to shoulder such a burden through taxation. This was coupled with a strong sense that much of the revenue was being squandered and that they were powerless to rectify the situation because they wielded no power. A whole array of people from diverse political backgrounds started voicing their concerns. This groundswell had far-reaching political, economic, and institutional implications. As Hading and Mandler have convincingly argued, it was this widespread public hostility, and not simply fears of social revolution from a particular section of society, which fuelled the post-war Liberal Tory rationalizing of the fiscal-military state. Ultimately, their administrative reforms were ‘to halt government growth’ and ‘to usher in the minimal, laissez-faire state of the nineteenth century’—a more compact state and one which was much more closely regulated.37 Notes:

(1) I. Kramnick, ‘Introduction’ to T. Paine, Common Sense (1776; repr. Harmondsworth, 1976), 49–51 and 81; T. Paine, The Rights of Man, Part II (1792), in Thomas Paine; Political Writings, ed. B. Kuklick (Cambridge, 1989), 145–203, on 196–7; G. Claeys, ‘Republicanism Versus Commercial Society: Paine, Burke and the French Revolution Debate’, BSSLH 54 (1989), 4–13; W. Christian, ‘The Moral Economics of Tom Paine’, JHI 34 (1973), 367–80. (2) W. Doyle, The Oxford Companion to the trench Revolution (Oxford, 1990), 11, 23–7, and 40–1. The French system of venality is succinctly described in G. T. Matthews, The Royal General Farms in Eighteenth-Century Trance (New York, 1958), 30–3. (3) ‘Order in Council Forbidding the Purchase or Sale of any Place or Employment in the Revenue’, 3 Sept. 1711, in A. L. Cross (ed.), Eighteenth Century Documents Relating to the Royal Forests, the Sheriffs and Smuggling (London, 1928), 261. For France see esp. J. F. Bosher, The Single Duty Project: A Study of the Movement for a French Customs Union in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1964).

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests (4) H. Tomlinson, ‘Financial and Administrative Developments in England, 1660– 1688’, in J. R. Jones (ed.), The Restored Monarchy 1660–1688 (London, 1979), 94–117, on 96–104; J. Brewer, ‘The English State and Fiscal Appropriation, 1688– 1789’, P&S 16 (1988), 288–385, on 359–60; G. Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982), 252–3. For offices as property in late 18th-cent. England see N. Chester, The English Administrative System 1780–1870 (Oxford, 1981), 18–20. (5) J. A. Downie, ‘The Commission of Public Accounts and the Formation of the Country Party’, EHR 358 (1976), 33–51; Brewer, ‘The English State’, 59–60; A. Hcsscnbruch, ‘The Spread of Precision Measurement in Scandinavia 1660– 1800’, in K. Gavroglu (ed.), The Sciences in the European Periphery during the Enlightenment (Dordrecht, 1999), 179–224, on 195–8. For influence and patronage in the British system see W. R. Ward, ‘Some Eighteenth Century Civil Servants: The English Revenue Commissioners, 1754–1798’, EHR 70 (1955), 25– 54. (6) P. Mathias and P. O’Brien, ‘Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810’, JEEH 5 (1976), 601–40, on 626–9; Bosher, Single Duty Project, 75. For an overview of French taxes and accompanying administration see Matthews, Royal General Farms, pt. 2. Sir James Steuart wrote, ‘In France, the collecting of the branches of cumulative taxes, such as the general receipts, comprehending the taille, polltax, &c. costs the state no less than 10 per cant, or two sols in the livre, which is superadded to those impositions, in order to defray that expense. Whereas in England the expense of collecting the excise administered by Commissioners, who act for the public, not by farmers who act for themselves, does not cost above 5£. us. 6d. in the 100£.’ See his An Inquiry into the Principles of Political Oeconomy, ed. and introd. A. S. Skinner, 2 vols. (1767; repr. London, 1966), ii. 697. (7) A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (London, 1776; repr. Indianapolis, 1981), ii. 883. (8) J. Brewer, Party Ideology and Poular Politics at the Accession of George III (Cambridge, 1976), 215; J. E. P. Binney, British Public Finance and Administration 1774–1792 (Oxford, 1958), 11. (9) ‘Thirteenth Report of the Committee Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’ (1785), HCSP 44. 38–9; J. Torrance, ‘Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation: The Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts 1780–1787’, P&P 78 (1978), 56–81, on 60; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 100–3 and ‘The English State’, 359. (10) ‘Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Finance’ (1797), HCSP 107. 203–4.

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests (11) J. R. Breihan, ‘William Pitt and the Commission on Fees, 1785–1801’, HJ 27 (1984), 59–81, on 72–81; Marling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 73–4; G. E. Aylmer, ‘From Office-Holding to Civil Service: The Genesis of Modern Bureaucracy’, TRHS, 5th ser., 30 (1980), 91–108, on 106; Chester, English Administrative System, 124; Binney, British Public Finance, 14–15. (12) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 80; Chester, English Administrative System, 127. (13) S. E. Finer, ‘Patronage and the Public Service’, PA 30 (1952), 329–60, on 352; Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 22; H. Roseveare, The Treasury, 1660– 1870: The Foundations of Control (London, 1973), 62; P. Hading and P. Handler, ‘From Fiscal-State to Laissez-faire State, 1760–1850, JBS 32 (1993), 44–70, on 54–5;9 Chester, English Administrative System, 123–68. (14) ‘Thirteenth Report of the Committee Examining the Public Accounts’, 42–4. (15) ‘First Report of the Committee Examining the Public Accounts’ (1780), HCSP 41. 13; ‘Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Finance’, 211. (16) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 38 and 44. (17) J. Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (London, 1969), 240–2; W. O. Henderson, ‘The Anglo-French Commercial Treaty of 1786’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 10 (1957–8), 104–12, on 105. (18) H. Mui and L. II. Mui, ‘William Pitt and the Enforcement of the Commutation Act, 1784–1788’, EHR 76 (1961). 447–65; Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 5; J. H. Rose, William Pitt and National Revival (London, 1911), 184–5. (19) Mui and Mui, ‘William Pitt’, 450–3, and Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1989), 162. (20) Cheung and Mui, ‘William Pitt’, 453–63; Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 243–5. (21) Charles Pox is quoted in W. Kennedy, English Taxation 1640–1799: An Essay on Policy and Opinion (London, 1913), 161. (22) Henderson, ‘Anglo-French Commercial Treaty’, 111; Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 245–6. (23) Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 250; W. R. Ward, ‘The Administration of the Window and Assessed Taxes, 1696–1798’. EHR 67 (1952), 523–42, 534–42; S. Dowel, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr. London, 1965), ii, 189. (24) Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 246.

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests (25) Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 252–3; J. M. Morris, ‘Samuel Garbett and the Early Development of Industrial Lobbying in Great Britain’, EcHR, NS 10 (1958), 450–60, on 453 and 458–9. See also Rose, William Pitt, 186–7. For the ill-fated shop tax see Mui and Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping, 34–6 and 73–85. The context, interests, and reasons fuelling early industrial lobbying and the formation of manufacturing associations is usefully examined in V. E. Dietz, ‘Before the Age of Capital: Manufacturing Interests and the British State, 1780–1800’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 1991). (26) W. Bowden, ‘The Influence of the Manufacturers on some of the Early Policies of William Pitt’, AHR 29 (1924), 655–74, on 656, and Industrial Society in England towards the End of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1925; 2nd edn., London, 1965), 170. Josiah Wedgwood is quoted in Dietz, ‘Before the Age of Capital’, 106–7. (27) Bowden, ‘The Influence of the Manufacturers’, 656–8 and 665. (28) Ibid. 666–72, and Industrial Society, 172–5. (29) W. Bowden, ‘The English Manufacturers and the Commercial Treaty of 1786 with France’, AHR 25 (1919), 18–35, on 22–4 and 29–35; Dietz, ‘Before the Age of Capital’, 178–80 and 186. For the French perspective on the treaty sec M. Donaghay, ‘Calonne and the Anglo-French Treaty of 1786’, JMH 50 3 (suppl.) (1978), D1157–D1184, and esp. ‘The Exchange of Products of the Soil and Industrial Goods in the Anglo-Trench Commercial Treaty of 1786’, JEEH 19 (1990), 377–401. (30) William Aytoun is quoted in A. Gambles, Protection and Politics: Conservative Economic Discourse 1815–1852 (Suffolk, 1999), 207. (31) C. B. Cone, ‘Richard Price and Pitt’s Sinking Hind of 1786’, EcHR, 4 (1951), 243–51, on 251; Breihan, ‘William Pitt’, 76; P. O’Brien, ‘The Political Economy of British Taxation, 1660–1815’, EcHR 41 (1988), 1–32, on 13; Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 53–6. (32) Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 209. (33) William Pitt is quoted in Kennedy, English Taxation, 165–71. (34) R. A. Seligman, Progressive Taxation in Theory and Practice (New York, 1894), 31–3 and 114–15; M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty; An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1830 (Oxford, 1995), 518; R. Cooper, ‘William Pitt, Taxation and the Needs of War’, JBS 22 (1982), 94–103, on 101. (35) O’Brien, ‘Political Economy’, 21–2; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 221–2; Cooper, ‘William Pitt’, 100–3.

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Revenue, ‘Old Corruption’, and Manufacturing Interests (36) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 80–95. (37) Harling and Mandler, ‘From ‘Fiscal-State’, 46 and 52–3. The adverse spectre of the 18th-cent. ‘fiscal-military’ state loomed large in the forging of taxation in 19th-cent. Britain; see M. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain (Cambridge, 2001). For the discontent of the middling ranks see S. E. Brown, ‘“A Just and Profitable Commerce”: Moral Economy and the Middle Classes in Eighteenth-Century London’, JBS 32 (1993), 305–32, on 326–8.

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0020

Abstract and Keywords This chapter shows how tax reform was a process that began half a century earlier, with the gradual modelling of the state's administrative structure along the lines of the excise, and the gradual removal of the sinecures and placement that characterized ‘Old Corruption’. Actual tax reform also needed to be presented and seen in the clothes of a new and fairer state, which required the creation of legitimacy via retrenchment and construction of norms of probity and transparency in the management of state finances. Keywords:   accountability, state, taxation, tax reform

The Excise, Accountability, And The State An anonymous commentator in 1707 reflected: ‘It is remarkable of England, and I mention it to the Honour of Free born Nations in general, That no People in the World pay their Taxes with more Freedom and cheerfulness’. This was achieved, he claimed, by ensuring taxes were ‘Legally Exacted’ and ‘Equally Collected’. ‘To have a Tax or Duty Legally Enacted, requires but one established Qualification, known and understood by all Men. VIZ . That it be consented to in Parliament, passed into an Act by the Lords and Commons duly assembled, and obtain the Royal Assent, in due Form; when thus it becomes no English Man will open his Mouth, but immediately opens his Purse, and frankly parts with his Money’. Although painfully exaggerated, there was a grain of truth in his comments. Controversy over any tax in parliament was typically accompanied by reams of various accounts available to the legislative. The documents, in effect, became ‘public’ information. This, John Brewer claims, persuaded contemporaries that England’s fiscal system was fairer because it was passed by some form of Page 1 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ elected chamber—a point fundamental to its survival. This culture of accessible knowledge helped create, to a certain extent, compliant taxpayers, which, in turn, reassured investors and therefore public credit.1 It was also the case, as Martin Daunton points out, that the actual impact of indirect tax was far less visible. The land tax targeted the landowner and not the farmers and labourers; customs was perceived as a tax on foreigners paid at a port and disappearing before entering domestic trade; the excise was concentrated primarily on a few large producers, meaning excise officers dealt predominantly with manufacturers rather than the general population. Further, since there were no internal tax boundaries as in France, there were no officers collecting duties in domestic trade: ‘The result was that taxes in France were lighter and less regressive, but also more visible and contentious’. Decision making may have (p.359) appeared more visible in Britain, but the incidence and location of taxation were not.2 Despite its fairer appearance, there were numerous homegrown critics who dug a little deeper and challenged this notion. Once again Thomas Paine’s sharp tongue caught the brooding suspicion that lurked close to the socio-political surface. If you wanted to see true political and economic visibility, he argued, you should cast your eyes across the Atlantic to North America: in France, and also in England, the expense of the civil list only, for the support of one man, is eight times greater than the whole expense of the federal government of America … the representative system diffuses such a body of knowledge throughout the nation, on the subject of government, as to explode ignorance and preclude imposition. The craft of courts cannot be acted on that ground. There is no place for mystery; nowhere for it to begin. Those who are not in the representation know as much of the nature of business as those who are. An affectation of mysterious importance would there be scouted. Nations can have no secrets; and the secrets of courts, like those of individuals, are always their defects. In, the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly appear … It can only be by blinding the understanding of man, and making him believe that government is some wonderful mysterious thing, that excessive revenues are obtained. Monarchy is well calculated to ensure this end. It is the popery of government; a thing kept up to amuse the ignorant, and quiet them into paying taxes.3 Paine’s idealized vision of the American system sought to undermine British applause for its own claims to constitutional virtue and supposed political visibility.

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ Being publicly accountable and thence transparent to the civic gaze is a comparatively recent development. During the seventeenth century, agreement about what constituted a piece of credible information or knowledge was reached through unspecified processes based on a set of social conventions. This was equally the case, for example, in the agreement processes that functioned in the organizational set-up of the customs and its dealings with merchants. Social testimony lay at the core of economic truth-telling and was therefore implicit in relations of trust. Calling an individual or an organization to account in earlymodern England was not through a strict set of rules and ledger books, but through a less formal code of economic behaviour played out in mainly face-toface encounters. Fundamental to this world was oath taking as the dominant process of verification, which gained its power out of godly fear and state terror. The controversy over oath taking had been a heated issue since at least the days of the Commonwealth. Samuel Butler had long ago described oaths as vacuous: ‘Oaths and obligations in the affairs of the world are like ribbons and knots in dressing, that seem to tie something, but do not at all. For nothing but interest (p.360) does really oblige’ For one anonymous commentator in 1659, the excise rather than the trader had in fact corrupted oath taking. He claimed that these Viperous locusts’ would falsely accuse under oath some trader of not paying his tax in order to reap the rewards of a seizure: ‘by their arbitrary Power they have half whatever they can Swear Men out of, and so erect their own Decays by others Ruins … like an invenomed Serpent, it hath engendered a most abhorred and detestable spawn of careless swearing; what now grown to such a dangerous and desperate Monster of wilful Perjury, that the Custom of this sin hath taken away the conscience of it, esteeming others but Ignis Fatui, Bugbears, and By-words, to the great dishonour of God, scandal of Religion, and Infamy of this Nation; so that if not stopped, (like a Cancer) it will eat out the Life of Grace, and Spirit of Fidelity from amongst us’. For those traders who were still bonded to God, enforcement of ‘Oaths impossible to be taken’ meant they lost their trade rather than break this sacred bond. By contrast ‘others (stretching their consciences to the Extent of the Excise Man’s Tainter) carry away the Trade from them’.4 With increasing urbanization, commerce, and state expansion, trust took a new turn. Christopher Hill captures the juncture: ‘The supernatural sanction backing the oath of loyalty and the judicial oath—God the supreme overlord—was succeeded in capitalist society by the discovery that it paid a man to make his word his bond because of the rise in social importance of credit, reputation, respectability’. But as the force of capital became even more powerful, slippery, and corrupting, the integrity of personal reputation also became questionable. Some form of neutral check was quickly deemed necessary to ensure the trustworthiness of the merchant or manufacturer or indeed revenue officer. A process of trust that did not rest on the fear of God or simply the credibility of the person was needed; a process of bookkeeping and diaries characterized by Page 3 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ ledger books and, eventually, systematic procedures was the new order of the day. Daniel Defoe caught this emerging transfer of trust in his Review: ‘My text shall be taken out of no book, no not the Bible, but in the foot of the account, or as the merchants call it, the net produce of the present state of the world’. God was now relegated below the bottom line.5 By the early eighteenth century it seems that most traders had comfortably severed this godly bond. In 1703 the customs counsel complained: ‘The two East India Comp.s do import great quantities of goods which pay’d ad valorem ye oath of ye value having been affirmed by a servt. or agent of their own & there is of late (p.361) several instances those agents or servts. have notoriously under valued goods upon ye oath’. A commentator writing just after the Hanoverian succession complained; ‘If Masters of Merchant ships would make a true & Faithful Report of their ships lading to the best of their knowledge, as their oath by ye law obliges you to do it would be a good security to ye Revenue, But daily experience shews how little a Customhouse Oath is regarded’. Matthew Decker despaired that so great was the ‘Multitude of false oaths, which are clearly made at the Custom-House and Excise Office … that it is a long Time ago passed into a Proverb in the city to say, It is but a Custom-House Oath: In such a slight Manner are they taken, and now many are proved to be false, Westminster-Hall may best tell’. He further warned, ‘since an oath was in nature an appeal to God as a witness to our veracity, God would seek a vengeance on Britain’. Six years later God plucked Decker from his earthly fears. In a resigned and melancholy tone, Henry Crouch declared in 1732 that such oaths were ‘but too frequently committed at the Custom-House, viz. That it is but a Custom-House Oath; as if God who is omnipresent, did not see, and was not equally offended at profaning his Name there, as at any other Place whatsoever’. He reminded the perjures master, common sailors, and porters that they should ‘remember the Punishment which is denounced against them in the third Commandment’. Such biblical warnings, however, meant little either to the men who took oaths or to the experienced merchant whose only bible was his secret account book. By the close of the century such personal techniques of trust were not suited to the voluminous, busy, and lucrative stakes of international trade and revenue evasion.6 In 1831 a staggering 194,612 trade oaths and affirmations were delivered to the revenue bodies. Such frequency was slammed in the House of Commons as depriving the process of all meaning: ‘the reverence and respect which should attach to such solemn obligations’, as one commentator mourned, had all but been extinguished. The Treasury also despaired at the situation, claiming ‘with a view to the Interests of Religion and Morality, as well as to the due administration of the duties of the Officers in these two Departments, that all unnecessary Oaths should be dispensed with’. Oath taking was finally abolished during the 1830s and early 1840s, and replaced by the implementation of anonymous standardized double-entry bookkeeping. In this instance the model Page 4 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ for reform came from Europe, especially France, where merchant double-entry bookkeeping had already been successfully applied to public offices.7 (p.362) The emphasis on good bookkeeping had been stressed increasingly since the investigation into the public accounts during the 1780s. The following condemnation of a part of state administrative practice was typical of the venom flowing from the ink of the influential investigative commissioners. The commissioners damned the auditors of imprest and officers of the Exchequer for their role in checking and controlling public revenue. The office had become a lucrative sinecure filled with high-ranking gentlemen who collected the fees and passed the work onto poorly qualified deputies. The Imprest Rolf was written in an ‘Abridgement of the Latin language. The sums are both expressed in characters that are, in general, corruptions of the Old Text, and are in use no where that we can find, but in the Exchequer’. The sums were cast twice first in ‘common Figures’ and then in Latin. All this had led to confusion in the records for the collection and spending of public revenue. The commissioners concluded: ‘It does not seem reasonable that this should be the only Court whose Proceedings are to remain in Mystery and Obscurity’. They then prescribed their general axiom: ‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity, are qualities of Excellence in every Account, both Public and Private; and Accounts of Public Money, as they concern all, should be intelligible to all’.8 Individual responsibility was also creeping into the new reforms. In an attempt to ensure everyone was doing their work, the customs minutes for 14 December 1819 recorded: ‘That with a view to ensure the efficient Performance of Duty by every Officer and Clerk employed in the service of this Revenue in the Port of London, and more particularly on the part of those who are placed in subordinate situations, the Principal of every Office do, at least once in every Week, examine the Books directed to be kept by each Person in his Department’. The commissioners wanted the principal of every office ‘clearly to understand that he will be deemed responsible for the Misconduct or Neglect of Duty of any Person employed under him’. The first report of the committee appointed to inquire into the departments of the customs and excise wanted the customs to adopt a far more transparent excise-oriented approach to internal management, characterized by better communications between management and those lower down the scale: ‘The regular attendance of all officers and clerks should be enforced by Appearance-books, to be kept under the inspection of the principal officer in each department, and laid by such Officer weekly before the Board’.9 (p.363) During this period the term accountability was coming to be associated with the idea of making a minister and decision-making body of government answerable to the people, or a joint-stock company responsible to its shareholders. The Excise Department, the traditional object of vociferous condemnation and perceived threat to an Englishman’s liberty, can be seen at the forefront of such an evolution. Perhaps because of its unpopular status with Page 5 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ most of the public, the excise had from its inception sought ways, as we saw earlier, to neutralize the virulent emotions and distrust it generated. This manifested itself in the development of systematic procedures, an emphasis on instrumentation, anonymity, and rigorous internal and external methods of surveying. As we have seen in earlier chapters, the excise was also one of the first bodies to move from a culture of unconstrained judgement to one of rulebound procedures. Merchant, industrial, and civil suspicion of state-defined devices to measure commodities had to be overcome by an impersonal method. In other words, don’t trust us but trust in our procedures and instruments. This increasingly meant grounding practices in the realm of nature and the language of science. Whether, of course, this actually replaced much of the need for personal trust is another matter, but it gave the appearance of doing so. Moreover, these characteristics, in turn, were used to reform the very state that created them. ‘Modern’ bureaucracy would evolve out of the most successful part of the creaking fiscal-military state. Indeed from where else could a tried and tested model and language of administrative reform come?10 An indication, perhaps, of the increased efficiency of the excise over the course of the long eighteenth century is demonstrated in S. E. Fine’s figures for the cost of excise collection in England/Britain. In 1684 the gross produce of the collection was £635,605 and management costs were £1.00,252 (15.8 per cent); by 1.730 gross produce was £2,934,720 and management charges were £227,412 (7.7 per cent); in 1760 gross produce was £4,303,009 and administrative charges were £279,496 (6.5 per cent); and in 1787 gross produce was £7,649,411 and. charges of management were £382,002 (5 per cent). However, this could equally be interpreted as a result of the monopolizing impact of the excise. As Henry Parnell pointed out in 1831, ‘a large proportion of this revenue is paid by a few individuals, or operations carried upon a. large scale, and. requiring the attendance of few officers in proportion to the sums derived from the duties of which they have the charge’.11 Nonetheless, the highly critical commissioners examining the public accounts claimed in their second report of 1785 that the structure and administration of the excise ‘leaves us no Room to suggest any Alteration’. Slightly earlier, in 1781, Lord (p.364) North told the House of Commons that the Excise Department was ‘the best managed branch of the public revenue’. Five years later in 1786 Pitt declared that it was ‘the most effectual and the least expensive method’. Charles Abbott’s select committee on finance in 1797 claimed, in their investigation of the excise, that since the commissioners examining the public accounts had reported, the Excise Department ‘appears to have been conducted with the same Regularity and Vigilance as then received from the Commissioners their unqualified commendation’. William Huskisson described it in 1809 as ‘A system of collection hitherto remarkable for its regularity and purity’.12 Page 6 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ A ‘Cloud of Complicated Materials, and Abstruse Science’: the Consolidation and Eradication of Duties The hugely expensive wars with France during the 1790s made it much more urgent to review the notorious situation in customs. The sheer number and complexity of articles taxed led to more concerted and more determined calls to consolidate and simplify customs laws. The committee formed in 1783 to investigate illicit practices claimed: ‘Your Committee cannot dismiss these general Considerations, without recommending such Measures as may be necessary to assist in simplifying and consolidating the several Branches of the Customs, and in reforming the Book of Rates … That the Encouragements to which Merchants are entitled, the Duties to which they are subject, and the Penalties to which they are exposed, ought not to be involved in a Cloud of Complicated Materials, and abstruse Science’.13 The objective of efficient comprehension through uniformity and simplicity was not historically confined to the excise or the late eighteenth century. Henry Couch had long ago attempted to apply such an aim in his authoritive customs manual of 1732: ‘And as Form and Method are essential for the due Execution of all Business in general; So Uniformity is absolutely necessary in the Business of the customs, because it is to be performed at different Places, and by different Persons … and therefore I have here proposed such Instructions and Examples, as I humbly apprehend willfully shew the Method of Executing the Business of each respective officer … I was encouraged in this Undertaking, by a complaint … that at present, the Methods were almost as various, as the Ports were numerous’.14 Shortly (p.365) before becoming a customs commissioner, Adam Smith fiercely condemned the customs system: ‘The [customs] book of rates is extremely comprehensive and enumerates a great variety of articles, many of them little used, and therefore not well known. It is upon this account frequently uncertain under what article a particular sort of good ought to be classed, and consequently what duty they ought to pay. Mistakes with regard to this sometimes ruin the customhouse officer, and frequently occasion much trouble, expense, and vexation to the importer’. As a result he, and numerous others, recommended a drastic reduction in the number of customs duties to something comparable to that of the excise. It was also a question of administrative practice. Smith claimed that the excise was far superior in obstructing the operations of the smuggler. ‘By introducing into the customs a system of administration as similar to that of the excise as the nature of the different duties will admit, the difficulty [for illicit trade] might be very much increased’ In this Smith was merely echoing the arguments made by numerous state officials, perhaps none more so than. Walpole earlier and his own contemporary, Pitt.15 In 1785 the public accounts committee pointed to the fact that two particular customs duties were not ever brought to the account of the public, but were instead ‘the Property of Subjects, under ancient Grants for the Crown. Every Page 7 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ Duty levied upon the Subject, implies a Right in the Public to that Duty; and ought, uniformly, to be collected by public Officers, and applied to public Purposes’. The cult of visibility and its close link to the newly evolving notion of a ‘public’ had well and truly reached administrative levels. The axiom that had defined so much of eighteenth-century state administration was completely reversed. The commissioners warned, ‘the private Right may interfere with that of the Public; or the Duties’. The same argument was applied to redundant sinecure offices: ‘The present Age has the strong Pleas of Necessity and Justice, to demand, that such Portions of their Revenue as have been applied to the support of such offices, should be hereafter dedicated to the service of the Public’.16 What really vexed the commissioners when it came to the customs was ‘the Intricacy and Perplexity that involve the Collection and Accounts of this Part of the Public Revenue’. The whole process was confusing and messy: ‘the Number of Rules required in the Computation, and the number of Branches under which the Accounts of these Duties are kept, are the principal sources of this Evil’. The solution, they claimed, was clear: ‘to reduce the Number of these Rules and (p. 366) Branches, as near as Circumstances will admit, to Unity, and to introduce a systematic Simplicity and Uniformity into the Manner of keeping the Accounts’. The situation had become increasingly urgent since the number of accounts was multiplying during every session of parliament (some items required five different rules of computation). As a result the merchant was frequently totally ignorant of the duties he owed, leaving the arduous labour of calculating them to the customs officers—for a fee. Added pressure was also growing in the press. The Times claimed that ‘an entire revolution’ was needed to reform the process: ‘The merchants in general would be very much obliged to the Minister if these duties were consolidated’.17 As things stood, all new duties levied were allocated to a particular fund. In turn, they would typically be accompanied by new rules of computation, leading to an accumulative problem of computational diversity and therefore yet further complexity. This became particularly problematic when it came to the payment of drawbacks, which frequently involved the comprehension of anything up to twenty-five articles imported by the same or different merchants simultaneously or at different times. It was also the case that some items received all their duty back, some commodities were eligible for just a portion, and still others were entitled to just parts of different duties upon the same article. This last aspect was compounded by the fact that a merchant could put in a claim for the legislated item that, however, had been imported prior to the Act, the problem being that the drawback upon that commodity had been altered by the law since being imported. The commissioners examining the public accounts took a long breath and sighed: ‘Every one of these circumstances requires a different Rule of computation’.18 Page 8 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ The maze a merchant faced for an imported good, in this case 2,000 ells of Russian linen in 1784, is shown in Table 19.1, and is, in fact, one of the simplest examples of its kind. Half of the £9 levied as old subsidy and additional duty was used to service particular annuities founded in 1708, the other half was paid into the aggregate fund used since 1714 for satisfying the interest on, and paying off, particular exchequer bills—some was also used for the civil list and other public services. The £6 taken as new subsidy was used in a similar way, while the £2 paid as one-third subsidy was mainly used to service annuities created in 1706 and 1709, with the surplus—if there was any—going to the aggregate fund. The £12 from the subsidy of 1747 and 1759 was paid into the sinking fund, while the £4.10s. collected as impost (1690) went to the South Sea Company’s annuities. The massive £30 collected under the Act of 1767 was also appropriated to the sinking fund. And finally, the £3. 3s. 6d. paid as impost, 1779, was used for the payment of annuities created in 1779, with the same sum from the impost, 1782, used for annuities started that year.19 (p.367)

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’

TABLE 19.1. Tax and Act levying it

By the Additional Duty, 12 Chas. II. By the New Subsidy, 9 and 10 Will. III., c. 23 By the One-third Subsidy, 2 and 3 Anne, c. 9

% age

, on the rate

5, on the rate

of 5, on the rate

Amount £

s.

d.

By the Old Subsidy, 12 Chas, II.

5, on the rate

6

3

0

0

6

0

0

2

0

0

By the Subsidy, 1747, 21 C3eo. II., c. 2

5, on the rate

6

0

0

By the Subsidy, 1759, 32 Geo. II., c. 10

5, on the rate

6

0

0

4

10

0

By the Impost, 1690, 2. Will. And Mary, c. 4

, on the rate

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0

0

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’

Tax and Act levying it

% age

By the Act, 1767, 7 Geo. III., c. 68 By the Impost, 1779,19 Geo. III., c. 25

Amount £

s.

d.

 

30

0

0

5, on former duties

3

3

6

By the Impost, 5, on former 1782, 22 Geo. III., duties except the c. 66 Impost, 1779

3

3

6

TOTAL MET DUTY

69

17

0

 

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ After suggesting a number of ways to systematize the computations, the commissioners finally came to the conclusion that all the distinct branches of the customs should be abolished, and that a single ‘intire Sum only be the Duty to be collected upon each defined subject of Duty, and One Head of Customs comprehend the Whole of this Revenue. There will then be no longer a Necessity for that Multiplicity of Computations and Entries’. In addition, if the duty produced excess revenue or not enough, it was important to know where to put the surplus or where revenue could be taken to aid deficiencies. Matters were further complicated by the fact that ‘Many of the Branches of the customs are connected, in the Exchequer, with Branches of the Excise, and other Duties of different Denominations, and form together Compound Funds, appropriated in some Instances to One, in others to various Services’.20 The commissioners took the recent consolidation of five spirit duties as an ideal type for other prominent commodities such as wine, tea, sugar, tobacco, linen, salt, coals, and all imported products. Through the consolidation, of spirit articles, the officer was ‘relieved from all Computation upon this Article; and his Entries will be rendered simple. One Sum may be paid into the Exchequer, under the same Head of Subsidy on Spirits, and the Whole carried, as the Produce of Five of the Branches is now, to the Aggregate Fund’. The commissioners had aims beyond the customs and they ultimately hoped to form ‘One Fund, into which shall flow every stream of the Public Revenue, and from whence shall issue the supply for every Public Service’. This fund, in effect, would be the sinking fund, and would provide ‘ample security to every Public Creditor’.21 (p.368) In addition to rationalizing the accounts, the consolidation of duties was all about suppressing prevalent customs practices, most notably fee taking, and improving the regularity, size, and disciplining of a salary. The aim was to make redundant the need for merchants to employ customs officials to calculate the complex figures that made up the duty and, instead, enable them to know at a glance what they were. The prevailing situation, as we saw in Chapter 9, gave ample opportunity to exploit merchants by deciding the values, and then speeding up or slowing down the proceedings. Pitt summed up the situation for trade as one ‘loaded’ with ‘clogs and fetters’, while the revenue worked in ‘obscurity’ instead of being ‘clear and distinct’.22 A customs committee set up in 1781 led the task of consolidating duties and was headed by the Pittite commissioner of customs James Hume. From the committee’s findings a Bill was introduced in 1787 with the objective of repealing all existing Acts and values, and to reintroduce a new duty article by article. The Bill therefore legislated that all revenues should be channelled into one fund only: the consolidated fund. This required the House of Commons to pass 2,615 resolutions for the simplification of duties. T. J. Pittar, employed at the Custom House Statistical Office, later wrote in 1897 that for the first time since

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ 1660 customs and excise taxation was reduced ‘into such a codified form as could be understood by ordinary men’.23 The timing was deliberate: with the sinking fund having recently been successfully restored and the 1786 commercial treaty just signed with France, a consolidation of duties was necessary to complement the new comprehensive settlement of rates hammered out between the two countries. The 1787 Act had the impact of reducing the Treasury account books from nearly seventy folios to about twelve, while the exchequer’s tallies with the receiver-general of the customs were reduced from 1,700 to something like 200 a year. However, the civil list annuities and the land and malt taxes still required their own accounting within the consolidated accounts, and the dates upon which the different accounts were settled had to wait a further sixteen years before being properly reconciled. In addition, the basic content—the level of duties, exemptions, prohibitions, drawbacks, and bounties—remained unaltered.24 The Act, in short, reformed the duties and accounts but not the procedures for the introduction of new and additional duties. Consequently by 1797 another eight branches of duties had been established, leading to the creation of numerous (p.369) new and distinct accounts. That year the select committee on finance reported: ‘Out of the Total Number of 1,200 Articles, upon which the Duties of Customs attach, there are not more than 160 which appear upon the Annual Accounts presented to Parliament, as yielding the sum of £1,000 and upwards; the remaining 1,040 fall under the general Head of “Sundry small Articles”, and do not produce, in the whole, more than from £85,000 to £110,000 per Annum; each of these Articles, nevertheless, has some special Regulation belonging to it, and the accumulated Mass of these Details has rendered the whole System much too complex’. The ‘six large volumes’ that contained all the customs statutes had no index, leading the committee to advise that once the country was at peace again, ‘a Consolidation and Simplification of the Laws of the Customs, would greatly contribute to secure and increase the Collection of the Revenue’. In 1793 military conflict with France commenced, with customs revenue standing at something like £3,557,00 at the Exchequer. By 1799 the exigencies of war had pushed this figure up to £y,056,000.25 Not surprisingly, a new consolidation (not a simplification of the laws) of the duties was for a second time needed, followed again in 1803 (now including the excise), 1809, 1813, and 1819. The laws and rules governing customs procedures were still very confusing and filled some six volumes of meandering and tedious detail. The collector at Wells, Nicholas Jickling and the late chairman of the Board of Customs, Richard Frewin were encouraged to create a digest of them in 1810. The subsequent publication in 1815 was 1,375 pages long, but despite its unprecedented comprehension, the laws still demanded a great deal of careful study and knowledge. Jickling remarked, in a restrained tone: ‘The officers of the Customs whose Duty it is to Page 13 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ execute these Laws, are in a different, but in some respects better situation, than those who are to obey them’. His objective, clothed in the now familiar language of the age, was to produce a digest that ‘contemplated’ all the customs statutes ‘as a Whole, as a System, and one which embraces the great Considerations of the Commerce and Revenue of the Empire’. Jickling’s method to achieve these aims was to divide the different statutes into categories and, importantly, to provide an index to navigate the array of laws. In the event 500 copies of the Digest were ordered and distributed followed by a number of additional orders.26 The commission set up to investigate the customs and excise departments urged in 1820 the need to consolidate and simplify The Laws of the Customs, and a judicious arrangement of the duties under specific heads’ In 1822 an officer from the Long Room of the London Custom House, James Deacon Hume—the son of the earlier great consolidator James Hume—began work on repealing all the extant laws, consolidating them, and re-enacting the operative sections into a (p.370) series of new statutes. It took Hume three years to produce and write the appropriate Bill: ‘for the first time, neither the meaning nor the application of the customs laws can be no longer mistaken’, he optimistically declared. The end product was an arrangement of the laws under ten different headings: repeal, management, regulation, smuggling, navigation, registry, duties, warehousing, bounties and allowances, British possessions, Isle of Man, and passenger trade— each forming a separate Act in 1825. Huskisson was thrilled with the result, claiming that it was ‘the perfection of codification’, which translated to £6,000 for Hume’s intellectual labour and £450 expenses, while an additional £2,000 went to the second assistant solicitor, a Mr Thackery, who had helped him. Unfortunately Hume blew his fortune in an ‘unfortunate investment’.27

Free Trade And Fiscal Reform ‘Who is to say—This manufacture is this day commenced, and if the manufacturers cannot, at the end of so many years, sell at as low a rate as those of other nations, it must be abandoned?’ This was a crucial question that emerged in the 1780s and came to a head, especially, in the early nineteenth century as the cult of free trade started to practically inform industrial and commercial policy. The same disgruntled commentator who penned these words went on to warn: ‘Our cotton manufacture at one period gave no hope that we should excel in it as we do … Under the new doctrines, no new manufacture must be established in this country, unless the manufacturers can, in the first moment, produce as good and cheap an article as foreign ones; and history shows this to be an impossibility. Of course, we must never have any additional manufactures; and, moreover, our old ones are all to be lost if ever foreigners can surpass us’. The eighteenth-century fiscal-industrial policy that had successfully served the country was now really under threat. The impulse had,

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ as we saw in Chapter 18, set in during the 1780s with the rise of the new industries, primarily cotton, that had little foreign competition to worry about.28 The movement characterizing the politics of protection or laissez-faire, which greeted the close of the Napoleonic Wars, was less a product of overwhelming economic ideology than an imperative for social survival.29 The year 1.819 saw the return of the gold standard and the movement towards resumption (an attempt to return to a pre-Napoleonic natural state in the economy); it also witnessed great hardship and a perceived problem in home demand. The years immediately (p.371) following the war were some of the harshest to ever hit Britain and much of Europe. Initially, members of Lord Liverpool’s government denied that there was shrinking demand and paraded an array of excise statistics as proof that domestic consumption of certain commodities such as tea and malt had actually increased. Indeed, they argued, wartime prices and capitalization had caused overproduction. Speculation, cheap money, and overtrading had to be expunged and the best policy for economic recovery was for the government, or so they thought, to leave things to find their natural state. As Boyd Hilton has argued, the government’s inaction and reluctance to interfere with the economy was not evidence of a free-trade commitment but, literally, a policy for doing nothing, the premiss being that left to itself the economy would naturally recover from the post-war slump and reach a natural equilibrium. The crucial input of confidence, namely that convertibility had returned in the shape of cash payments and clear consistent government policy (i.e. inactivity), was now in place.30 For genuine free traders the only way to pluck the economy out of crisis was through the systematic destruction of trade barriers. The free-trade wing of the Whigs found themselves on the side of the government as opposed to the protectionist demands of the agriculturists. For different reasons, ministers were able to harness Ricardian free-trade political economy as a replacement or at least to aid its policy of passive neutrality. Both saw the removal of trade obstacles as necessary for getting the economy into its natural state.31 The 1815 Corn Law was in some sense a bribe by the Liberal Tory government to secure parliamentary support to extend the wartime income tax. The move, however, failed, culminating in the severing of the tax and the acceptance of the Corn Law. Landowners rejoiced, the labouring masses interpreted it as a blatant piece of class legislation, and the government was forced to introduce more draconian and coercive laws in an attempt to crush swelling social protest. Many wanted the government to do a great deal more and put down all political agitation by force. Conversely, many staunch Tories, most notably Lord Kenyon, wanted to reimpose the property tax and subdue popular clamour by reducing indirect tax in an attempt to woo the working ranks. Following this line of reasoning, George Harrison told Lord Liverpool that such a move would ‘arrest the progress of those sentiments which if not arrested, must inevitably overturn Page 15 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ the constitution and government … A modified Property Tax upon the Income of all realised Capital only to such an extent or percentage as might enable a Reduction of other Taxes to a corresponding amount, which may bear hardly or inconveniently upon the Income of labour.—Such a measure would be the best of the calumnies of the Demagogues against the Rich’. Despite such appeals the government rejected such a measure and opted to pass six Acts of repression.32 (p.372) The agriculturists, who had formerly blamed a lack of economic protection for their misery, now started to blame high taxation for cutting consumer spending and the gold standard for curtailing the circulation of money. By the end of 1821 the movement for tax cuts to liberate the people’s purse was well under way. The tax on agricultural horses was lifted that year at a loss to the Treasury of £450,000. In 1822 almost the whole of the additional duty put on malt in 1819 was repealed, while Vansittart’s deeply unpopular double duty on leather stemming from 1812 was reduced by a moiety at a loss to the revenue of £300,000 per year. The tax on salt was subsequently reduced to two shillings a bushel from a huge fifteen shillings and legislated to terminate as a tax in 1825 —the loss to the Treasury was estimated at £1,400,000. A further loss of £150,000 was pencilled in with the repeal of the tonnage tax on shipping. The replacement of this revenue was to be provided by the conversion of navy debt and other 5 per cent stock into 4 per cents, and by reducing the salaries of state employees by 10 per cent with the claim that this figure would instead go toward their superannuations.33 The mere pruning of patronage was never going to be enough to enable substantial tax reductions. Therefore a new target had to be found and eyes soon fell upon the sinking fund as a possible solution. Lord John Russell underlined the need to end this highly symbolic fund, and remove taxes totally on necessaries like salt, leather, candles, soap, and malt. Radical MPs, especially Joseph Hume, were now promoting the traditional emotive argument that taxation was the device, along with bullionism, that had enabled landed property to be confiscated by fundholders. Large capitalists could afford to pay tax while the small competitor was being trampled underfoot. For the Whigs to win over the gentry they had to somehow shift the burden of tax onto the fundholders, but this did not make much headway in parliament till 1830. Rather, as Hilton underlines, the importance of trust and public credit still lay at the heart of ministerial concerns: ‘The vital precondition of a self-correcting laissez-faire mechanism was public confidence in the economy, and the sinking fund was the outward and visible sign of public credit and trust’. Tariffs had accelerated since Pitt’s era primarily due to the high costs of war, and protection again increased after 1815, reaching a peak in 1822 on the eve of tariff reform. The shift in pressure onto tariffs to bear the increased fiscal burden resulting from the loss of the property tax in 1816 had culminated in additional duties, especially the extra sixpence per pound on wool in 1819. The situation was compounded by delation, which raised the value of certain duties in relation to the goods on Page 16 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ which they were levied. Hence indirect taxation increased as a proportion of both public revenue and commodity prices.34 During this whole period the problem of smuggling was once again propelled to centre stage. Could the income of the state be improved by decreasing the level (p.373) of duties in the Custom House and therefore snatching a significant portion of the common economy? Charles Long, a Treasury commissioner, claimed in the twelfth report of the commissioners of inquiry into the regulations of the customs and excise in 1822 that ‘the difficulty of protecting the Revenue while the present high duties continue’ made it very difficult to prevent smuggling. Consequently tariff reform was applied as the most effective way of fighting illicit trade. Equally, if not more, important in fuelling the free trade movement was the agricultural debate, since it was now realized by most ministers that Britain could not feed itself and would therefore need grain imports. The problem was the strength and resolve of the agricultural protectionists who aggressively opposed and challenged such a policy. They pointed to the protection that characterized manufactured goods as their main defence. Huskisson moaned: ‘Unnecessary and excessive protection [on manufactured goods] is constantly thrown in our teeth by the Disciples of Webb Hall and the advocates of extravagant duties on the productions of Foreign Agriculture’.35 With the state’s finances too depressed to allow effective cuts in the excise and assessed taxes, the government sought to expand foreign trade—as long as it was stable and not speculative trade. It was believed that freer trade would generate more genuine trade, in which foreign countries would be able to sell more to Britain and, in turn, increase their income to purchase British manufactures. With an extremely sensitive currency controlled by convertibility under a metallic standard, such trade had to be made regular and solid. This was the drive behind the idea that the market should find its natural state to ensure that trade was real. In February 1822 Huskisson slammed the ‘mercantile system, with its balance of trade, its balance of protections, and checks and bounties, and all the complicated and confused machinery by which the interests of commerce have been impeded instead of being promoted’. The issue of complexity had, as we have seen, been partly dealt with by the codification and consolidation of mercantile law. Smoothly running natural trade could not happen without a smoothly running, easily understood fiscal and administrative system. Genuine trade and currency could not be established if there was an artificial wall of tariffs.36 Huskisson sought a uniform tariff and ‘to lower, almost generally, the scale of our protectionary duties, so as to make them really protectionary, instead of prohibitory’. All nations should be treated the same by being given equal facilities of commerce and navigation, and inducements to bring goods to British ports— either in transit or consumption. It was the aim of Liverpool’s Page 17 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ government to consolidate Britain as the world’s entrepôt—the centre for all the world’s goods. This process had already begun under Walpole and especially in 1803 with the Great Warehouse Act. It would enable British merchants to fix world prices and capital would be attracted into the country, while manufacturers would benefit, (p.374) since foreign merchants could make up gaps in their cargo with local products. This was further enhanced in 1823 with the hrst substantial attack on the Navigation Act by Huskisson’s Reciprocity of Duties Act, which empowered the king in council to let the ships of any nation, which would respond in kind, transport goods to Britain on the same terms as British ships.37 These measures coincided with a significant change in the policy of taxation. In 1825 former import excise taxes on wine, foreign spirits, coffee, cocoa, pepper, and tobacco were transferred to customs. This process continued throughout the 1830s until the customs accounted for 43 per cent of all tax receipts between 1841 and 1845 and the excise a much-reduced rate of 27 per cent. Since the consolidation and reform of tariffs meant that customs duties were by 1825 only 38 per cent of the total value of imports, as opposed to 63 per cent in 1822, the consumer now also paid less for domestic goods and imports.38 Tariff reform and the removal or reduction of excise duties obviously demanded careful thought and timing. Huskisson, for one, would only support the reduction of excise duties on malt and beer if it were part of a coherent ‘system’. There was, as yet, simply too little revenue to allow the government to sufficiently lower taxes to relieve distress, to stimulate consumption, and to properly fuel a new political economy. Thus another source of revenue had to be found. As things stood, something like three-quarters of the national revenue came from customs and excise as opposed to ‘realized wealth’. Future taxation therefore had to concentrate on fundholders, landlords, mortgagees, and annuitants, as opposed to the distressed productive part of the population; the labourers. In addition, the commercial and manufacturing depression, which had begun in 1826, suggested that the taxing of consumption and trade may not have been as predictable a source of revenue as once thought. Trust in the fiscal future of the state needed something else. In 1828, Goderich, Huskisson, and Merries were all agreed that a property tax should replace certain indirect taxes. However, another economic slump, the question of Catholic emancipation, and the appointment of the duke of Wellington as prime minister put a temporary end to this view. Of equal importance, as the work of Anna Gambles has shown, was the fact that a powerful defence of the ‘old system’ of protection had emerged. The political commentator David Robinson warned in 1825 that free-trade policies would be a disaster for British industry and dismissed the idea that foreign competition would improve domestic industry by forcing it to innovate: The greatest improvements have been made in our manufactures when they have been the most free from such [foreign] competition. Our cotton manufacturers have made the greatest varieties in their articles, and the Page 18 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ greatest reductions in their prices, when it has (p.375) been perfectly unknown. Our iron and several other articles, which a few years since were greatly inferior to those provided in other countries, have been brought to equal, and in some cases to surpass those of all other parts, entirely without such competition. Under a system which studiously prevented such competition, which jealously excluded the foreigner from, our home market, we have far outstripped all other nations in manufactures … we have rendered ourselves the first manufacturing nation in the universe.39 Despite the block on the possibility of an income tax. and the removal of all trade restrictions, such proposals were still bandied about and regularly put forward in parliament over the following three sessions in which Wellington was premier. By January 1830 Huskisson was advocating a move to bimetallism and further tax cuts. He privately told E. J. Denison in January 1830 that the prevailing system of indirect taxation ‘press[es] too hard on labour, and the capitals employed in productive industry’. In the budget that year some £3.4 million was made in tax cuts, of which a chunk was specifically aimed at reducing the agricultural and manufacturing classes through the ending of duties on beer, cider, and leather. Such a loss of revenue had to, sooner or later, be made up. Meanwhile the simmering alliance between tax and constitutional reform was making headway. The government had, as yet, failed to rip the issue of tax from the clutches of political reformers or to soothe the angry protests of the lower orders.40 In his treatise On Financial Reform, Henry Parnell codiled the views that he had crystallized through his work on the finance committee: ‘Our national productions of iron, coal, and other articles of raw materials will preserve our superiority in manufactures over other nations’. He argued that any duties on raw materials used for all types and aspects of manufactures should be repealed. This included such items as hemp, barilla, bricks, tiles, silk, hides, skins, leather, timber, and so on. Certain manufactured goods and fuel, which were beneficial to other manufactures, should also have their duties removed—including coal, tallow candles, and soap. ‘If all materials were free of duty, the consequences would be, that our woollens, cottons, silks, hardware, and other manufactures, might be sent to foreign markets two or three per cent cheaper than at present’. In other words, domestic industries that relied on protection could compensate for tariff reform through further reductions on raw material costs. By also lowering the price of coal the consumer would have more money to buy addictive taxed items ‘such as sugar, tea, beer, spirits, tobacco &c.’. This would give a boost to employment—‘miners, sailors &c, in carrying on an increased trade’. In addition, excise regulations that now seemingly hampered innovation —such as those on glass, paper, and printed goods—should also be repealed. To tackle smuggling he simply reiterated the old argument that tax on commodities like spirits and tobacco should be reduced. To replace the lost revenue, he recommended that (p.376) an income tax should be reintroduced. These Page 19 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ themes became a central part of the Whig platform of reform during the 1830s.41 In the short term the reform governments of the 1830s actually cut taxes too much in their attempt to meet the aim of cheap government. The Whigs gambled and used surplus revenue to make tax cuts instead of servicing the national debt. The former golden rule that no tax should be totally repealed was severed. In the past, all-round reductions had been traditional policy, since it gave the option of increasing them again at a later date with all the necessary staff and administrative infrastructure in place. This choice was now gone.42 Peel and the conservatives condemned the Whigs for running the government into debt. In an attempt to tackle the growing deficit, the new chancellor of the Exchequer, Francis Baring, reversed previous government policy and put a large duty on spirits, increased all remaining excises by 5 per cent and all assessed taxes by 10 per cent, and took out a loan. This was followed by a powerful onslaught in the House of Commons by opposition MPs who continued to undermine an already weak Whig parliamentary standing. They were faced with two options: either they could introduce an income tax or make substantial reductions in the duties for sugar and timber. The latter was based on the hope that consumption for such products would increase by so much that the government would gain in income. Lord Russell also added a proposal for a sliding scale for the importation of foreign corn, with the final objective of replacing it with a fixed duty. By attacking the vested interest of the landed elite in this way, Russell hoped the Whigs would mobilize popular support by seeming to have the people’s interest at heart. As a result the policies over tariff reform and especially the Corn Laws had the impact of substantially reducing the attacks from the middling and lower ranks over elite greed and parasitism. Conservatives typically hit back, as Gambles has shown, by condemning the Whigs for sacrificing sound fiscal policy to the clamours of the urban middle class electorate.43 A select committee on import duties in 1840, chaired by fames Deacon Hume, did much to put the Whigs in the vanguard of the free-trade movement. The report criticized high tariffs as an obstacle to production, consumption, and consequently the free circulation of money into the Treasury. It advised that restrictions should therefore be lifted in order to promote trade and prevent industrial slumps and thereby aid the welfare of the ‘industrious classes’.44 The argument that higher taxation required protection was dismissed: it was ‘not only groundless’, claimed Hume, ‘but that the opposite is the true proposition. A highly (p.377) taxed people cannot afford to give protection: an individual whose necessary expenses are great cannot be generous’. He further claimed that protective duties were actually a ‘direct tax upon the community’ and acted as a check on British industry: ‘I think it cannot add to the wealth of the country, because it is clear that we consume commodities at a greater price than the Page 20 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ necessary price; and, consequently, we waste labour and capital in the production, and waste can never ultimately do good, at best to a nation, although some individuals may thrive upon it’ Hume believed that the protective system exceeded the total amount of taxation paid to the state; that some excise duties were ‘more injurious in their regulations than they are in the sum which is taken from the people’. In most cases, he claimed, a reduction in protective duties would increase the production of the item and in this way lead to even more revenue. Not only that but protective duties actually had an adverse effect on the morals of the people. By keeping duties like coffee and sugar at a high rate, they were preventing the alcohol-loving masses from changing their drinking tastes from beer and spirits. If coffee houses were more popular, they would woo the masses from the labour-debilitating impact of beer and spirit, into their more sober and literary environment, full of informative and quality newspapers, journals, and magazines.45 Although generating popular mass appeal, the Whig proposals for reducing the duties on sugar, timber, and corn had too many powerful opponents. The Whigs were subsequently defeated after a vote of no confidence in 1841, which was followed by a Peel-led Conservative victory with a majority of 75. It was Peel who emerged as the most powerful advocate of tax reform. In 1842 a severe trade slump, a series of terrible harvests, and Chartist agitation erupted in the Plug Riots that were ruthlessly squashed. Peel’s fiscal policy, regardless of ideology and other motivations, was at this point totally focused on trying to quel social agitation. Central to his administration’s economic and social policies was the reintroduction of the income tax. When this direct tax was reintroduced later that year, all incomes below £150 were exempted, but unlike its predecessor of 1799, there was no graduated system above this level. Through this measure Peel was able to reduce duties on articles of popular consumption, dampen popular expectations recently encouraged by Whig actions, and shift the heart of Old Corruption attacks away from the landed political elite. It was within this volatile arena that the duties on 1,200 articles were reduced. These included a 5 per cent reduction or less on raw materials, the removal of all prohibitory duties, a reduction of 12 per cent or less on partly manufactured goods, and a general reduction on manufactures and colonial products.46 (p.378) The policy of tariff reform continued in the budget of 1844, when excise duties on flint glass and vinegar were reduced, coupled by a reduction in customs duties 011 coffee and currants. The government then turned its attention to reducing the duties for sugar and therefore risking the might of the strong West India lobby. After a heated and difficult battle Peel’s ministry were able to get their way after threatening to resign. A year later they reduced the duties again. With a surplus of over £3 million, the government went on to abolish half of the 813 duties on imports, and all the export duties on British goods. Between 1841 and 1846, customs and excise revenue was reduced from 74 to 63 per cent of the total revenue. The shift from indirect tax to direct Page 21 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ taxation enabled the government to escape attacks on alleged parasitic agendas of top ministers, while actually generating more revenue. The key to these reforms was to reduce indirect tax and therefore improve the life of the labouring classes, quell the overwhelming opposition to the structure of the fiscal-military state, and prevent possible revolutionary social turmoil. As Peel told the House of Commons in 1846, after five years of bulldozing through his fiscal reforms, ‘It is not, in my mind, inconsistent with true conservative policy, that we have extinguished agitation and discouraged sedition, not by stringent coercive laws, but by encouraging the idea amongst the great body of people, that we, the rich and powerful, are willing to take a more than ordinary share of the public burdens, and to remove those burdens from the people as far as possible’. Many Conservatives initially supported the reintroduction of the income tax, as it strengthened and underlined the interests of property with that of the state, and stemmed the tyranny of democracy.47 The motor of all these reforms had commenced over half a century earlier with the gradual remodelling of the state’s administrative structure along the lines of the excise, and the gradual removal of sinecures and placemen that characterized ‘Old Corruption’. Actual tax reform also needed to be presented and seen in the clothes of a new and fairer state. This meant, as Martin Daunton has recently argued, ‘the creation of legitimacy by means of retrenchment and, more importantly, the construction of norms of probity and transparency in the management of state finances’. The tools used were new ‘administrative and accounting practices, and creating an ethos of ‘balance‘ and fairness through political language and culture’. Office was now a public trust and virtuous political behaviour a necessary criterion for MPs to demonstrate that they were disinterested.48 Notes:

(1) Anon., An Impartial Account of some Late Transactions in the Office of Excise; with an Historical Collection of Matters of Fact (London, 1706), 1; J. Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (London, 1989), 127–32; N. Chester, The English Administrative System 1780– 1870 (Oxford, 1981), 160. (2) M. Daunton, Progress and Poverty; An Economic and Social History of Britain 1700–1850 (Oxford, 1995). 529. (3) T. Paine, Rights of Man, Part II (1792), in Thomas Paine; Political Writings, ed. B. Kuklick (Cambridge, 1989), 172–3. (4) ‘Samuel Butler is quoted in C. Hill, Society and Puritanism in PreRevolutionary England (Har-mondsworth, 1991), on 401; Z.G., Excise Anatomiz‘d. Declaring That Unequal Imposition of Excise to be the only Guise of

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ the Rain of Trade, the universal Impoverishment, and destructive to the Liberties of the whole Nation (London, 1659), 7 and 14. (5) Hill, Society and Puritanism, 405, Daniel Defoe is quoted in J. R. Moore, Daniel Defoe: Citizen of the Modern World, (Chicago, 1958), 309. The importance of social testimony in the production of knowledge during the 17th cent, has been well documented; see S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life (Princeton, 1985), and S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Sevenleailh-Cenlnry England (Chicago, 1994). For the rise in new numerically based techniques of trust see T. Porter, Trust in Numbers: ‘The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life (Princeton, 1995). (6) ‘Customs Copies of Counsel’s Opinions 1701–1897’, 21 May 1703, PRO CUST 41/1; ‘The Remarks on ye Practice of the Com15’ of ye Customs & are Examined’, 1714?, BL Add. MS 18903, fo. 40; M. Decker, Serious Considerations on the several High Duties which the Nation … Labours Under (London, 1743), 27–8; H. Crouch, A Complete Guide to the Officers of His Majesty’s Customs in the OutPorts (London, 1732), 143. (7) ‘Copy of a Minute of the Board of Treasury, dated 24 Dec, 1830, relative to the Discontinuance of Unnecessary Oaths in the Departments of the Customs and Excise’, PP 10 (1830); J. Owens, Plain Papers Relating to the Excise Branch of the Inland Revenue Department from 162.1 to 1878: or A History of the Excise (Linlithgow, 1879), 373; ‘Eleventh Report of the Commissioners of Excise Inquiry’ (London, 1835). (8) E. W. Cohen, The Growth of the British Civil Service 1780–1939 (London, 1941), 31 and 37. Even the most superficial scan of the customs correspondence to the Treasury or a quick flick through Walpole’s papers reveals how difficult it was to get national comparable accounts due to the wide diversity in the bookkeeping practices performed at various ports and the method adopted by the inspector-general of imports and exports, let alone just getting ports to send you their accounts; see e.g. CUL Ch(H) 27/19/1. The problem was even greater further afield, such as in the colonies; see e.g. PEO CUST 21/16 Customs Letters Outwards, Boston, USA, 1768 to 1775—although considering the events unravelling in Boston this is not surprising. Although customs and excise were farmed out in the Scandinavian countries, it seems that they also increasingly turned to precision instruments and quantifying techniques; see A, Hessenbruch, ‘The Spread of Precision Measurement in Scandinavia 1660–1800’, in K. Gavioglu (ed.), The Sciences in the European Periphery During the Enlightenment (Dordrecht, 1999), 179–224. (9) Customs Minutes 1732–1841, 14 Dec. 1819, PRO CUST 29/1; ‘First Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Inquire into the Departments of the Customs Page 23 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ and Excise’ (1820), PP5 (1820), 6. The aim of visibility and individual responsibility could also be seen in the reforms being implemented at the state managed Royal Dockyards, see W. J. Ashworth, ‘“System of Terror”: Samuel Bentham, Accountability and Dockyard Reform during the Napoleonic Wars’, SoH 23 (1998), 63–79. (10) Cohen, Growth of the British Civil Service, 21; J. Torrance, ‘Social Class and Bureaucratic Innovation; The Commissioners for Examining the Public Accounts 1780–1787’, P&P 78 (1978), 56–81, on 64–5 and 68, The rise of ministerial political accountability is discussed in English Administrative System, 120–2. (11) S. E. Fine, ‘Production and Excise in England, 1643-1825’ (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1937), 162; H. Parnell, On financial Reform 13rd edn., London, 1831), 115. (12) ‘Fifth Report from the Select Committee on Finance’ (1797). HCSP 107.334; Owens, Plain Papers, 9–10. (13) P. Mathias and P. O’Brien, ‘Taxation in Britain and France, 1715–1810’, JEEH 5 (1976), 601–40, on 611; ‘The First Report from the Committee to Inquire into Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1783), HCSP 38. 16–17. (14) H. Couch, A Complete Guide to the Officers, pp. iii–iv. Revenue reform was just one area during the 1770s being targeted by a concerted political force determined to apply the scalpel, sharpened partly by the harbingers of a new political economy. e.g. the food market in general had been targeted with most of the old statutes legislating against forestallers, regratters and engrosses having been reformed. Similarly, the old laws regulating and protecting workers within the woollen industry were repealed in 1809, The same objective of removing ‘Old Corruption’ and making the subsequent political structure visible and efficient, was also being applied in certain industries in an attempt to demystify the labour process and make it porous: to remove the capacity of the workers to guard their skills. Revenue reforms should also be situated within this general context. (15) A. Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, 2 vols. (Indianapolis, 1981), ii. 883–4. (16) ‘Thirteenth Report from the Commissioners Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’ (1785), HC5P 44 39; ‘Fourteenth Report from the Commissioners Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’ (1786), ibid. 238. (17) Thirteenth Report from the CommisMoners Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’, 44–5; The Times, 28 Jan. 1786. (18) ‘Thirteenth Report from the CommisMoners Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’, 24. Page 24 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ (19) Customs Tariffs of the United Kingdom, from 1800 to 1897. With Some Notes Upon the History of the More Important Branches of Receipt From the Year 1660 (London, 1897), 14. (20) ‘Thirteenth Report from the Commissioners Appointed to Examine the Public Accounts’, 47–8 and 58. (21) Ibid. 59–60. (22) ‘First Report from the Committee Appointed to Enquire into Illicit Practices used in Defrauding the Revenue’ (1783), HCSP 38. 16–17; J. E. D. Binney, British Public Finanee and Administration 1774– 1792 (Oxford, 1958), 31 and 39; Brewer, Sinews of Power, 211–16; J. Ehrman, The Younger Pitt: The Years of Acclaim (Oxford, 1969), 269–70; M. Braddick, The Nerves of State: luxation and the Financing of the English State, 1558–1714 (Manchester, 1996), 58; Chester, English Administrative System, 59–60. The idea to consolidate the customs duties originated in a proposal made by the Customs Board in 1777 and meetings between North and Sir William Musgrave; see W. R. Ward, ‘Some Eighteenth Century Cavil Servants: The English Revenue Commissioners, 1754– 98’, EHR 70 (1955), 25–54, on 53. (23) Customs Tariffs, 15. (24) Ehrman, The Younger Pitt, 271 and 273; R, Davis, ‘The Rise of Protection in England, 1689–1786’, EcHR, 2nd ser., 19 (1966), 306–17, on 315; Chester, English Administrative System, 178–9. (25) ‘Fourth Report from the Select Committee on Finance’ (1797), HCSP 107. 210 and 214; Custom Tariffs, 16. (26) ‘Fourth Report from the Select Committee on. Finance’, 210; W. Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts from, the Minutes and Orders Issued by the Commissioners of the Customs for the Instruction and Government of their Officers, 1696–1829’, 4 and 13 May 1814, PRO CUST 29/7; N. Jickling, A Digest of the Laws of the Customs (London, 1815), pp. xv–xvi. (27) ‘First Report of the Commissioners appointed to Inquire into the Departments of the Customs and Excise’ (1820), PP v. 8; C. Badham, The Life of James Deacon Hume, Secretary of the Board of Trade (London, 1859), 21–8; ‘The Consolidation of Customs Laws 1825’, C.EMS 25,000/54; B. R. Leftwich, Customs: The Story of a Great Department, unpublished typed MS, NMGM Customs and Excise Museum, 208. (28) Anon., ‘Mr Huskisson’s Speech in Defence of Free Trade’, BEM 19 (1826), 474–88, on 479.

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‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ (29) But see C. P. Kindleberger, ‘The Rise of Free Trade in Western Europe, 1820–1875’, JEH 35 (1975), 20–55, on 36. (30) B. Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce; The Economic Policies of the Tory Governments 1815–1830 (Oxford, 1980), 71–4. (31) Ibid. 76, 79, and 117; G. S. Jones, ‘Rethinking Chartism’, in id., Languages of Class: Studies in the English Working Class History 1832–1982 (Cambridge, 1983), 90–178, on 115. (32) Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 519 and 549–51; Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 80–2. (33) S. Powell, A History of Taxation and Taxes in England, 4 vols. (3rd edn., London, 1888; repr, London, 1965), ii. 268–70. (34) Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 143–7, 164, and 176. (35) Ibid. 177–8. For Webb Hall see P. Spring and T. L. Crosby, ‘George Webb Hall and the Agricultural Association’, JBS 2 (1962), 115–31. (36) Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 178–80; Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 551. (37) Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 183–6 and 198; P. Harling, The Waning of ‘Old Corruption’: The Politics of Economical Reform in Britain, 1776–1846 (Oxford, 1996), 182–3. (38) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption, 183–4. For details of the cuts made on specific items see Musgrave, ‘Notes and Extracts’, 7 Oct. 1823, 26 Jan. and 22 Feb. 1825, PRO CUST 29/7; Powell, History of Taxation, ii. 276–80; Fine, ‘Production and Excise’, 143; Studies in Administration and Finance, 1358–1825 (Manchester, 1934), 481–2. (39) Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 259–61; A. Gambles, Protection and Politics: Conservative Economic Discourse, 1815–1852 (Suffolk, 1999); D. Robinson, ‘The Silk Trade’, BEM 18(1825), 736–50, on 743. (40) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 152–3. 161–3, and 180–93; Powell, History of Taxation, ii. 288–92. (41) Parnell, On Financial Reform, 20–5; Hurling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 214–15; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 188–9, An emphasis on access to cheaper and more abundant raw materials is evident throughout the various reports made by the commissioners of inquiry into the excise establishment (1835). (42) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 220; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 311–12,; Hughes, Studies in Administration and Finance, 504–5. Page 26 of 27

 

‘Simplicity, Uniformity, and Perspicuity’ (43) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 222–3; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 313–14; Gambies, Protection and Politics, 60. (44) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’, 223–4; Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 533 (45) Badham, Life of James Deacon Hume, 247–77, (46) Hading. Waning of ‘Old Corruption, 225–9 and 241–2; Daunton, Progress and Poverty, 520; Hilton, Corn, Cash and Commerce, 261; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 326–7. In 1853 the process of graduation was once again adopted but the exemption limit was reduced to £100, ‘those with incomes between £100 and £450 paid 5d. in the pound and those with incomes over £150 paid a flat rate of 7d. In effect Britain adopted a proportional—as opposed to progressive— system of taxation, with some measure provided from the lowest incomes (making it regressive); see E. R. A. Seligman, Progressive luxation in Theory and Practice (New York, 1894), 33–4. tor the reception to the income tax, initially implemented as a temporary measure, see M. Daunton, Trusting Leviathan: The Politics of Taxation in Britain 1799– 1914 (Cambridge, 2001), ch. 4. (47) Harling, Waning of ‘Old Corruption’ 246 and 252–3; Dowell, History of Taxation, ii. 330; Hilton, Corn, Cash, Commerce, 267. Peel is quoted in P. Harling and P. Mandler, ‘From Fiscal-State to Laissez- Faire State, 1760–1850’, JBS (1993), 44–70, on 70; Gambles, Protection and Politics, 61. (48) Daunton, Trusting Leviathan, 28, 59–61, and 75.

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‘The Calico Millennium’

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

‘The Calico Millennium’ WILLIAM J. ASHWORTH

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.003.0021

Abstract and Keywords This chapter argues that throughout the book, the issues of fiscal policy, employment, and political power have been deeply immersed in the preservation of social authority. Eventually, the fiscal-military state could no longer continue in its current form with the accompanying distribution of power. Throughout the Great Reform Act of 1832, a significant proportion of the middling ranks were assimilated. This was crucial in providing the base for future income tax: no taxation without representation was a critical factor. Keywords:   taxation, tax reform, excise, industrial policy, Great Reform Act

Britain’s leading political exponent of free trade, Henry Parnell, was absolutely convinced that ‘nothing can be more opposite to the truth than the statement in the Report of the late French Commission of Inquiry, that “England has only arrived at the summit of prosperity by persisting for centuries in the system of protection and prohibition”’.1 However, perhaps the French had a point. In 1640, England was a weak second-rate power with a small and backward industrial base. Just over two hundred years later it was the world’s foremost industrial and imperial power. An industrial policy revolving upon protection and the excise, coupled with the extraordinary rise of the lightly taxed or untaxed goods of cotton, iron, and pottery, and with rich resources of coal, had put Britain into a seemingly invincible industrial and commercial position. A dramatic restructuring of tax policy was only made possible by a general confidence in Britain’s entire industry—old and new—to now thrive in the world without a protective barrier. So successful had been the former combination of Page 1 of 6

 

‘The Calico Millennium’ protection and nurturing domestic industries that the fact many of these manufactures would not have existed if it had not been for high tariffs was fairly much ignored by leading politicians. Indeed, while Britain was knocking down its industrial enclosure other nations—most notably Germany and the USA—were intensifying or erecting theirs. None of this, of course, was unknown to contemporaries. One commentator sighed in April 1830: ‘The Political Economists promised those whom they deluded into the folly of countenancing their experiments, that other nations would be induced to follow the example which we set them, and abolish all restrictions upon the importation of foreign commodities’. He further scoffed: ‘The French, the Dutch, the Prussians, all, in their turn, laughed at the simplicity of the Free Traders, when proposing that foreign commodities should be permitted to compete with the productions of native industry; nay, the Americans went so far as to establish a propitiatory system at the very moment we were relaxing our own’. Foreign nations, in other words, were doing anything but removing reciprocal tariffs. Edwin Stillingfeet Cayley, the economic writer and MP for North Riding, underlined the need to maintain an array of manufactures for security as opposed to risking all for competitive specialization. Alfred Mallalien of the Foreign Office emphasized the importance of protecting infant industries: ‘Were general restrictive imposts on foreign manufactures no protection? Was the (p.380) virtually prohibited importation of the cotton fabrics of India no boon? Of India root and branch sacrificed for the advancement of Manchester’. William Edmonstoune Aytoun, professor of rhetoric and belles-lettres at Edinburgh University, despaired: ‘There is no greater fallacy than the proposition, that it is best to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market’. British industry was being sacrificed for the interests of ‘one or two of the leading manufactures of the empire’. The future of the economy was being reduced to the exportation of textiles. As Aytoun pithily put it: ‘The home trade is a thing altogether kept out of the account in the … splendid vision of the calico millennium’. Conservative protectionists also boiled much of the prevailing social turbulence and growth in poverty down to the impact of free trade. Aytoun went as far as claiming that it ‘has been the great incentive to Chartism’.2 For the proponents of free trade the issue was less about a balance of trade, and more about labour and providing the conditions to nurture domestic wealth (suitable for an income tax). The increase of the excise on domestic manufactures beyond the prohibiting or equalizing of tariffs on foreign equivalents from the 1770s on, had forced manufacturers to squeeze labour— assisted this time through the legislation of the Combination Acts. The subsequent social problems were predominantly a product of fiscal demands and state assistance to industrial employers. There was already an evident shift in industrial policy alter 1786, accompanying the rise of cotton and the other new industries. Classical political economy emerged with an emphasis on labour as Page 2 of 6

 

‘The Calico Millennium’ the basis of wealth (as opposed to bullion and an advantageous balance of trade). This left the road open to a belief that savings in labour costs, and equally raw materials and inland taxes, would compensate for the loss of the tariffs. The change in industrial policy, fuelled by the self-confident new manufacturers, coupled with the excise increases on domestic—predominantly non-exporting— industries beyond the tariff-protecting barrier, certainly made free trade look more attractive. In addition, the impact of the excise on the final prices of these goods vastly increased the illicit trade and adulteration of such goods. To release distressed consumers from these higher prices (or from the enlarged common economy) ideally needed the repeal of excises and certain customs. This, however, required an alternative source of revenue, and realistically the only potential one was an income tax. This, in turn, required the increase and expansion of real wealth. A higher rent from productive land through a reduction in the agricultural use of marginal land was one possibility, while the enlargement of the middling ranks was another crucial factor (both within the service sector and successful manufacturers). Thus, the nurturing of the landed, monied, and competitive industrial ranks would provide a basis for an income tax. To tax the middling ranks, however, would require a dilution of the prevailing status quo (p.381) in the sense of an expansion of the franchise. This, of course, occurred in 1832 with the Great Reform Act. Throughout this book the issues of fiscal policy, employment, and political power have been deeply immersed in the preservation of social authority. Eventually the fiscal-military state could no longer continue in its current form with the accompanying distribution of power. This could either change dramatically through revolution and constitutional upheaval or conservatively through an expansion of social authority. Through the Great Reform Act of 1832, the latter route was chosen, and a significant proportion of the middling ranks were assimilated. This was crucial in providing the base for a future income tax: no taxation without representation was a critical factor. Let us look more closely at Parnell’s claim: ‘Contrary to every sound principle of trade, the manufactures of paper, glass, and printed calicoes have been selected as subjects of taxation’. In justifying his comments on glass he wrote that the ‘duties on all kinds of glass manufactures are so high, that they necessarily have a most injurious effect in limiting the extent of the market for them, and thereby diminishing the employment of capital and labour’. It is true, as the thirteenth report of the commissioners of inquiry into the excise establishment, chaired by Parnell, revealed, that the regulation and process of gauging glass were now severely handicapping any innovation in production. For example, ‘an improved mode of working’ pioneered in France, involved ‘the two operations of fusing the materials and working them up into wares’ being carried on at different times. However, in England the ‘manufacturer is prevented from adopting this course Page 3 of 6

 

‘The Calico Millennium’ in consequence of our Excise regulations, which compel him under all circumstances to carry on the operations of fusing and working simultaneously, or at least within the same week’. The former policy of nurturing an infant industry, such as glass, and bringing it to a certain quality had now reached a static state. To change and hopefully prosper now, so the argument went, required glass to be let loose unregulated. In the event the glass industry greatly struggled. No one, for example, adequately predicted the impact of competition from the Belgian infant glass industry. The excise on window glass was removed in 1845, followed by a reduction in import duties till they were completely abolished in 1857. The result was the sudden importation of cheaper Belgian window glass with imports rising from zero during the 1840s, to 28,000 cwt in 1856, to 370,000 cwt in 1.860, and 780,000 cwt in 1870. Then came German glass, culminating in a. serious depression for British domestic glass industries in general.3 Consider too the case of paper. When the customs duty on foreign paper was removed in 1860, the industry struggled to compete with foreign paper imports. The Continent and USA retained prohibitive tariffs, and an export duty on rags (p.382) (the raw material at the time needed for making paper, constituting between 30 and 50 per cent of the cost of paper production). One paper maker reflected in 1860: ‘The French are allowed to import paper into England but we’re not allowed by the French tariff to import Rags, so as to give them plenty of cheap material for making paper & while with us it would be more expensive’. Another commentator could barely restrain his anger: ‘To ask us to sustain a competition with foreign manufacturers under conditions such as these is to place before us a task more hopeless of accomplishment and more cruel in its exactions than that of which the Israelites complained during their bondage’.4 The trail of industrialization has a bumpy trajectory, involving an. array of domestic and transnational factors. For English glass there was no technological way out of competing on the international stage, but for paper there was a brief respite with the successful refinement of the French paper-making machine devised by Nicolas-Louis Robert.5 If there was a unique English/British pathway of industrialization, it was less a distinct entrepreneurial and technocentric culture than one predominantly defined within an institutional framework spearheaded by the excise and a wall of tariffs. This process reached its peak by the end of the 1770s. Then the structure quickly started to crumble under the weight of the fiscal-military state, and Pitt’s calculated policy of concentrating industrial policy around cotton (with the decimation of the Indian cotton industry British manufacturers had almost a global monopoly), potteries, and iron—at the expense of other taxed industries. Central to the construction of industrial capitalism in England was the development of two economies: one legal and one illicit. The latter was not a moral economy, but a vast alternative economy temporarily and grudgingly Page 4 of 6

 

‘The Calico Millennium’ accepted by social authority as inevitable. Nor was the fiscal state a world of amateurs and placemen. Its vanguard institution, the excise, was characterized by a well-trained army of officers subject to strict regulations, within a clearly structured hierarchy, characterized by an element of merit, a regular wage, and an emphasis on a technical method of revenue collection. The relationship between the common and legal economy was always taut and frequently bloody. Tensions periodically flared up as in the 1720s and 1730s when Walpole sought to bolster public credit in the aftermath of the South Sea Company fiasco; in the 1780s when Pitt the younger faced a dire fiscal crisis; and in the aftermath of the hugely expensive (p.383) Napoleonic Wars. A major breakthrough of the new political economy was the erosion of the common economy; the smugglers’ free trade now became the state’s most powerful weapon in the war against nonlegal trade. If at the beginning of the period covered by this book state administration was predominantly deregulated and industry regulated, by the close the reverse was the case. Notes:

(1) H. Parnell, On Financial Reform (3rd edn., London, 1831), 82. (2) Anon., ‘The Influence of Free Trade upon the Condition of the Labouring Classes’, BEM 27 (1830), 553–68, on 565; A. Gambles, Protection and Politics: Conservative Economic Discourse, 1815–1852 (Suffolk, 1999), 69, 74–5, 207–8, 216–20. For the European differences toward free trade, see C. P. Kindleberger, ‘The Rise of Free Trade in Western Europe,‘1820–1875’. JEH 35 (1975), 20–55. (3) Parnell, On Financial Reform, 28–30; ‘Thirteenth Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Excise Establishment: Glass’ (London, 1835), 35; T. C. Barker, An Age of Glass: The Illustrated History (London, 1994), 25–6; P. Pilbin, ‘External Relations of the Tyneside Glass Industry’, EG 13 (1937), 301–14, on 314; T. C. Barker, ‘The Glass Industry’, in D. H. Aldcroft (ed.), The Development of British Industry and Foreign Competition 1875–1914 (London, 1968), 307–25, on 318. (4) A. Crocker and M. Kane, The Diaries of James Simmons: Papermakcr of Haslemere 1831–1868 (Oxshot, 1990), 141; T. Wrigley, Wr Miiner Gibson and the Papermakers (Manchester, 1864), 5, and Manchester Chamber of Commerce and the Paper Trade, Tree trade: What is it? Bury, 1865), 3–4. It is also the case that rival leather manufacturers in Germany and the USA continued to be protected by formidable tariffs to the detriment of British producers. See R. A. Church, ‘The British Leather Industry and Foreign Competition, 1870–1914’, EcHR, NS 24 (1971), 543–70, on 563–4. A useful comparison of British economic policy to its main industrial competitors can be found in P. A, Gourevitch, ‘International Trade, Domestic Coalitions and Liberty: Comparative Responses to the Crisis of 1873–1896’, JIH 8 (1977), 281–313.

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‘The Calico Millennium’ (5) L. N. Rosenband, ‘The Competitive Cosmopolitanism of an Old Regime Craft’, FHS 23 (2000), 455–76, on 475; ‘Fourteenth Report of the Commissioners of Inquiry into the Excise Establishment: Paper’ (London, 1835), 10–12.

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Index

Customs and Excise: Trade, Production, and Consumption in England 1640-1845 William J. Ashworth

Print publication date: 2003 Print ISBN-13: 9780199259212 Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010 DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199259212.001.0001

(p.384) Index Abbott, Charles (1757–1829), first Baron Colchester, speaker of House of Commons (1802) 364 absolution 45, 80, 341 accountants 345 accounts 358, 366 accountability 358–64 Accural, Frederick (1769–1838), chemist and lecturer at the Surrey institute 279, 309 accuracy 7, 276, 277, 294, 295 paradox of 278–9 Act: Additional (1665) 18 Anti-combination (1799) 123 Beer house (1830) 308 Black (1723) 67 Cider (1763) 319 City elections (1725) 68 Colonial debts (1732) 75 Combination (1799) 380 Commutation (1784) 182,348,350 Consolidation (1787) 368 Declaratory (1765) 327, 328 Dock (1811) 304, 305 Gin (1736) 228 Hydrometer (1817) 278 indemnifying persons (1736) 156 Malt (1697) 219 Molasses (1731) 324, 325 Navigation 35, 36, 134, 323, 374 Paper (1712) 247 Quarterly (1765) 329 Reciprocity of ditties (1823) 374 Page 1 of 24

 

Index Recoinage (1697) 28,114 Reform (1832) 381 Revenue (1724) 231, 267 (1758) Riot (1736) 67, 228 Septennial (1716) 67 Spirit (1825) 224 Stamp (1765) 326, 327, 329, 330 Tobacco (1699) 170 Triennial (1694) 20 Tonnage (1694) 27 Tontine (1693) 26 Townsend (1767) 329–30 Union; (1707S 25, 75,175, 214, 273 (1802) 284 Warehouse (1803) 301, 302 Weights and measures (1835) 288, 289 Winchester bushel (1670) 282 Wine (1668) 107 Wool (1698) 167–8 Adams, George (d.1772) mathematical instrument maker to George III 267 Addington, Henry (1757–1844), first Viscount Sidmouth, speaker of House of Commons (1789–1801), first lord of Treasury and Chancellor of Exchequer (1801–4) 356 additional excise (1671–7) 18 adulteration 10,11, 299, 307, 309, 312, 380 beer 310, 312, 314. 350 chicory 312 coffee 309, 310, 311, 312–13, 314 hops 309 leather 310 malt 309,312 paper 310 pepper 309 soap 310 spirits 268, 269, 270, 272, 309, 310, 313,314, 350 sugar 309,314 tea 213, 308, 309, 310–11, 313, 314 tobacco 79,171,175, 309, 314 wine 79,309,310,314 American war of independence 5,11, 175, 269, 331, 332,348, 355 see also North America Anne (1665–1714), queen of Britain and Ireland 5, 24,168 anonymity 118 annuities 26, 28, 32, 33, 34, 92 army, see military assessed taxes 333, 351 Atterbury and Layer plots (1722) 67 audit: of accounts 346 exchequer auditors 348 office 345 Page 2 of 24

 

Index Aylmer, G. E. 101 Aytoun, William (1813–65), Edmonstoune professor of rhetoric and belles–lettres at Edinburgh University 354, 380 Bacon, Francis (1561–1626), first Baron Veralam and Viscount St Albans, lord chancellor 91 balance of trade 38, 41, 42, 59, 373, 380 Banks, Joseph Sir (1743–1820), natural historian and president of the Royal Society 286 Bank of England 27, 33, 349, 356 bankers 23, 24,109 see also goldsmiths (p.385) Barber, John, lord mayor of London 78 Barbon, Nicholas (d. 1698), wealthy speculative builder and one of the founders of the Insurance Office for Houses 45, 46 Barebones parliament 16, 45,101 barilla 375 Baring, Francis (1796–1866), MP for Portsmouth, lord of Treasury (1830–4) and chancellor of exchequer (1839–41) 376 Barnard, Sir John (1685–1764), merchant and MP for City of London (1722–61) 59, 334 Barrow, John Sir (1764–1848), secretary of the admiralty and topographer of South Africa 287 Bate, Robert, instrument maker to the excise 277, 287 Bateman, Joshua, excise–gauging authority 288, 295 Bath Journal 320 Bathurst, Allen (1684–1775), first earl Bathurst, MP for Cirencester (1705–12) 58 Beckett, J. V. 47, 48, 51 beer 23, 25, 27, 40, 49, 51, 47, 48, 82, 96, 101,102, 107,108,113,114, 216, 219, 225s, 264, 282, 292, 293, 307, 308, 310, 332, 336, 375, 376 beer shops 309 beer tax versus malt tax 220–1 porter (type of beer) 219 production and surveying of 210–14 Berkeley, George (1685–1713), bishop of Cloyne and philosopher 62 Bernard, Sir Thomas (1750–1818), philanthropist and founder oi numerous societies lor relief of the poor 50 Best, Richard 103 Bill of rights 20 bill: of exchange 27, 41,129,145,152 exchequer 30, 115 of lading 139 bimetallism 375 Birch, Col. John, auditor of the excise 282 Bird, John (1709–76), mathematical instrument maker 285, 288 Blackstone, William Sir (1723–80), judge and solicitor–general to the queen 151 Blagden, Charles Sir (1748–1820), physician and secretary of the Royal Society 272–3, 287 Board: Page 3 of 24

 

Index of taxes 351 of trade 74,322, 323 Bolingbroke, Viscount, see Saint–John, Henry Bold, Thomas, mayor of Liverpool 302 bonded warehouses, see warehouses Bonell, Robert 147 bonds 69, 75, 140 on tobacco and wine 73, 74 bookkeeping 19, 20, 90, 91, 117,118,158, 223, 261, 360, 361–2 bounties 48,145, 368, 373 colonial 322 corn 36 stimulation 37 Boscher, J. F. 44, 344 Bostock, Edmund, restoration financier 108 bottles: stone 40 Bowden, Witt 353 Boyes, David 77 Boyle, Robert (1627–91), natural and experimental philosopher 266 Braddick, Michael 16, 43, 97–9 brandy, see spirits bread 307 Breihan, John R. 355 Brewer, John 3, 20, 22, 331, 342, 344. 358 bricks 351, 375 Brisco, Norriss 8,76 Bristol Journal 321 British Merchant, The 354 Brougham, Henry (1778–1868), Baron Brouglian and Vaux, lord chancellor 50 Bucknall, William restoration revenue farmer and financier 106,107 financial cartel 108 bullion 28, 29, 38, 40, 41, 43 bullionism 372 gold 29,38 silver 38 Burke, Edmund (1729–97), philosopher and statesman 5,344 Burnett, John 307, 308, 309, 312 Bute, earl of, see Stuart, John Butler, Samuel (1612–80), satirist, clerk to various puritan justices of the peace, secretary to the lord president of Wales (1660) 359 calicoes, see textiles calliper (customs and excise cask gauging instrument) 298 cross 296 head 296 long 296 stave 296 Calverd, Peter 108 candles 10, 23, 28, 47, 48, 51, 64, 88, 92,117, 332, 334, 350, 372 Page 4 of 24

 

Index production and surveying of 235–7 tallow 49, 375 Cannon, John, excise officer 127–8 Cary, John (d.1720?) Bristol merchant and economic writer 57, 58 (p.386) Carlile, Richard (1790–1843), journeyman tinsmith, London mechanic, political radical, writer, and distributor of prohibited papers 339 carriages 351 carrying trade 35 Carter brothers, smugglers 201 Carteret, John (1690–1763), earl of Granville and secretary of state (1742–4) 65 Cashier: of customs 139–42,169,171,175, 184,191,195, 198,199, 201 of excise 119, 128–30 Catholic emancipation 374 Cayley, Edwin Stillingfeet, MP for North Riding and economic writer 379 cider 10, 96,107,117, 282, 290, 293, 375 imported 108 protest 319–22 City’s common council 68 City’s corporation 81 Civil list 344, 359, 368 Chandaman, Cecil 45,104,108, 110 Channel Islands 70,177, 200 charity fund, see pensions Charles I (1600–49), king of Britain and Ireland 16, 21, 94 Charles II (1630–85), king of Britain and Ireland 16,17,18, 20, 21, 45,104,111 Chartists 340, 377 chartism 380 Chater, Daniel, shoemaker, smuggler, and informer 194–5 Chatham, earl of, see Pitt the elder, William Chester, Norman 333 chocolate 10, 45, 67, 69, 79, 230 cocoa 42,104,183, 234 surveying and production of 234 Churchill, John (1650–1722), first duke of Marlborough, captain–general of the forces (1702–11) and master–general of the ordnance (1702–11) 31,143 Clarke, John, instrument maker, turner, and engine maker 266–79 Clarke, Richard, instrument maker and son of John Clarke 267 Clerk of the Pells 17 Clerk, George, lord of Admiralty 287 Clerk of Warrants 140 Clifford, Sir Thomas (1630–73). first Baron Clifford of Chudleigh, of Ugbrooke, Devonshire, secretary of state (1672) 107, 108 clock and watchmakers 354 coal 23, 92, 114, 282, 288, 289, 333, 336, 351, 367, 375, 379 Coast guard 205 Coats, W. 62 Cobbett, William (1763–1835), agriculturist and radical political journalist 1, 3, 4, 6, 336, 338 Page 5 of 24

 

Index cocket 146, 173 office 140 cocoa, sec chocolate coconuts 37 coffee 10,37,42,45, 48, 51,67,69,79,104,182,198, 230, 300, 302, 305, 306, 308, 336, 374,377, 378 houses 89,104, 232 surveying of 232–4 Coleman, D. C. 251 Collector: customs 303 excise 250 Collier, John, surveyor-general of Kent riding officers 191 Colquhoun, Patrick (1745–1820), Virginian merchant and metropolitan police magistrate (1792–1818) 202 combinations 61 anti-combination act, see Act combination act, see Act committees: customs fraud 172 customs and excise departments (1820) 362 excise establishment (1835) 243 finance (1797) 163, 301, 345, 346, 364, 369, 375 import duties (1840) 376 illicit practices 7,180–81, 202, 212, 224, 227, 300, 348, 364 improvement and trade of the port of London 301 indemnity 97 London coal and corn meters (1792) 336 long–term borrowing 27 weights and measures 285, 287, 288, 292, 293 see also public accounts Comptroller of customs 139,140,152,175 Cone, Carl B. 355 consolidation of duties 161, 364–70, 374 of mercantile law 373 consolidated fund 368 consumption 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 57, 59, 65, 66, 87, 107, 113, 166, 173, 174, 178, 182, 211, 216, 219, 221, 225, 240, 247, 262, 264, 300, 320, 332, 333, 334, 336, 339, 371, 374, 376 consumer revolution 8, 336 Controller, see Comptroller Coombs, Douglas 55 coopers 73, 79,157, 288 copperas 102 corn 92, 376, 377 laws (1663, 1670, and 1689! 36,314,(1815) 371, 376 see also bounties Corncwall, Velters, Herefordshire knight of the Shire 322 cotton, see textiles Page 6 of 24

 

Index (p.387) Council of Trade 58 Cowperthwaite, George, excise supervisor 126 Crafts, Nicholas 48 Craftsmen, The 64 Crayford, Lord, Irish peer and lord of the Admiralty 285 committee 285, 286, 288, 291, 292 creeper (smuggling device) 189 Cromwell, Oliver (1599–1658) 35, 100,103 Cromwell, Richard (1626–1712), third son of Oliver Cromwell and lord protector (1659–60) 103 Crouch, Henry, customs authority 152, 210, 282, 361, 364 Crouzet, François 168 currants 95, 378 Customer of customs 152,160 customary practices: classification of taxed goods 242, 245–6, 247, 249, 250, 254 gauging 295 leather trade 246 ports 154–7,170 spirits 264–5 weights and measures 287 Dauby, first earl, see Osbourne, Sir Thomas Danvers, John, excise commissioner 115 Dalrymple, John (1673–1747), second earl of Stair, army general and vice–admiral of Scotland (1720–33) 76 Dashwood, Francis (1708–81), Baron Les Despencer, chancellor of the Exchequer 319, 320 Dashwood, George, restoration revenue farmer and financier 106, 108 Dashwood, William, restoration revenue farmer and financier 106 Dashwood group (financiers) 109–11 Daunton, Martin 43, 45, 332, 336, 358, 378 Davenant, Charles (1656–1714), excise commissioner, economic writer and commissioner of imports and exports 22, 23, 26, 38, 40, 55, 56, 57, 58, 87, 89, 91, 92, 104, 111, 112–13, 115, 120, 130, 209, 220 Davies, David (1742–1819), rector of Barkham and writer on poor laws 52 Deal 196 debentures 160–1,173 Decker, Sir Matthew (1679–1749), director of the East India Company and economic writer 59, 60 Deeds, Julius, smuggler and mayor of Hythe 167 Defoe, Daniel (1661?–1731), merchant, economic journalist and novelist 1, 35, 43, 74, 89, 91, 92, 360 DeGrey, Lord Justice, probably William de Grey (1719–81) 294 Delacy, Lord Chief 83 demesne revenues 15,16 Denison, E, J., probably Edward Denison the elder (1801–54) 375 deputies: of customs 140,141,160,161, 345

Page 7 of 24

 

Index Desaguliers, John Theophilus (1683–1744), natural and experimental philosopher 266, 267 Dicas, John, instrument maker 278 Dickinson, H. T. 331 Dodd, George (1808–81) industrial journalist 299 Doner, John, ‘mcthodiscr’ of the excise 25 Dowdeswell, William (1721–75), MP for Worcester (1761–75) and chancellor of the Exchequer 321 Dowel1, Stephen 52 Downing, George Sir (1623?–84), first baronet, scoutmaster–general of Cromwell’s army in Scotland, MP for Morpeth (1699–70), resident at the Hague (1671–2), and financial reformer 17,18,19,105 dragoons, see military drawbacks 10, 41, 42, 43, 49, 69, 70,145,171,172, 174,176–7, 216, 225, 252, 255, 257, 287, 300, 301, 314, 366, 368 Dring, John, instrument maker 267 D’Sena, Peter 154,156 Duncombc, Charles Sir (d.1711), London goldsmith and restoration receiver of the customs 27, 111, 115,129 Dundas, Henry (1742–1811), first Viscount Melville, secretary of war (1794–1801) and first lord of Admiralty (1804–5) 2, 356 Dunkirk 177, 180 Dutch war: first (1652) 35 second (1665–7) 17,107,108 third (1673) 18 East India Company 29,33,37,38,39,79,168,231, 308, 330, 339, 348, 349, 360 tea auctions 178,181,182 East Indies 38 economic growth: national 48 Eden, William (1744–1814), first Baron Auckland, established National Bank of Ireland, vice- treasurer of Ireland (1783), negotiated commercial treaty with France (1786) 354 Edgar, Miles, excise commissioner 121–2 emoluments 159 employment 28, 41, 42, 43, 46, 333, 339 enclosed docks 156 English Civil War 4,15, 28, 53, 54, 55, 66, 78, 94, 96, 99,100,104 enumerated goods 36, 324 (p.388) entrepôt 373 equity 7, 15, 57, 58, 65, 261, 262, 280, 283, 325,332, 333, 355 essential oils 96, 290 Everard, Thomas, excise commissioner, mathematician, and gauging authority 115, 122, 290 Exchange Alley 89 Exchequer 17, 26, 17, 112,141, 345, 362, 367, 369 auditors, see audit bill, see bill chancellor of 19, 27, 32, 274 Page 8 of 24

 

Index court of 143,167, 205, 292 stop of 18, 21, 108 excise laboratory 11 Exclusion crisis 18, 110 execution dock 134 export duties 37 extramen 142 extraordinary revenues 15, 16 Parish, William (1759–1837), Jacksonian professor of natural and experimental philosophy at Cambridge University 274 farm: excise 100–11, 115,193 Fauquier, Frauds (1704?–68), director of the South Sea Company and lieutenantgovernor of Virginia 59, 334 Financial Reform Association 6 Fine, S. E. 88,102,108, 223, 245, 247, 251, 252, 257. 363 Finer, S. E. 346 fire: of London 17,105,106 London custom house 135–6 Fishguard 356 Fitzroy, Augustus Henry (1735–1811), third duke of Grafton, head of the Chatham administration (1768) 328 Flamsteed, John (1646–1719), first Astronomer Royal 291 Flanders 70 Fleet prison 77, 200 flour 307 Foche, Sir John 115 Fog’s Weekly Journal 192 Foster, John (1787?–1846), dock surveyor at the port of Liverpool 303, 304 Fox, Sir Stephen (1627–1716), paymaster–general, MP for Westminster and a commissioner of the Treasury 109 Fraser’s Magazine 338 fraud 79 beer 211–14 bookkeeping 158 candles 235–7 cask gauging 297 coffee 232 customs 158,159,163,172–73 excise 212 glass 256 leather 245–6 linen 252–4 malt 217, 218, 220 paper 247–51 re–exportation 300 salt 237–8 silk 237–8 Page 9 of 24

 

Index soap 239–43 spirits 204, 225, 226, 228 starch 244–5 tea 182, 204, 231 tobacco 170,175, 204 see also adulteration Freeport 42, 69 free trade 370–83 Frewin, Richard, chairman of the Board of Customs 369 fruit 47, 282 foreign excise 39 fustians, see textiles Galley, William, riding officer 194–5 Gambles, Anne 374, 376 General Chamber of Manufacturers 352 general excise 23, 26, 28, 66, 71, 80,107 General Surveyor of excise 119 George I (1660–1727), king of Britain and Ireland, elector of Hanover 30, 31, 42,149 Gideon, Samson (1699–1762), city underwriter 34 Gilbert, Davies (1767–1839), MP for Bodmin and president of the Royal Society (1827– 30) 286 Gilpin, George, clerk of the Royal Society 272–3 Glanville, Sir John (1586–1661), MP for Plymouth and then Oxford University during the Commonwealth 94 Glasgow 75 glass to, 37, 40, 96,116, 299, 354,375,378, 381, 382 surveying and production of 254–7 Glorious Revolution 4, 8,19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 28, 45, 55, 112–16, 231, 264 Goderich, Viscount, see Robinson, Frederick John Godfrey, Michael (d.1695), financier and first deputy governor of the Bank of England 27 Godolphin, Sidney (1645–1712), irst earl of Godolphin and lord high treasurer 284 gold, see bullion gold standard 370, 372 goldsmiths 109 see also bankers Gooch, lieutenant–governor of Virginia 72 Grafton, duke of, see Fitzroy, Augustus Henry (p.389) Granville, earl of, see Carteret, John, gratuities 151,161, 162, 163,174, 263 Gray, Arthur, smuggler and leader of the Hawkhurst gang 191 Great Plague 17 Grenville, George (1712–70), irst lord of Treasury and chancellor of Exchequer 320, 326, 327 Groves, Thomas, turnkey of Fleet Prison 200 Groves, Thomas, port excise officer 269,270,275, 278, 279 Guernsey 197 Hackney carriages 40

Page 10 of 24

 

Index Hales, Stephen (1677–1761), physiologist, inventor of artificial ventilators, and trustee of the colony of Georgia 135 Halley, Edmund (1656–1742), Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford University and astronomer Royal 291 Hanoverian succession 8, 30,134,190 Harhord, Sir Charles 107 Hardie, David 336 Hardress, Sir Thomas (1610–81), barrister, king’s sergeant and MP for Canterbury (1664–79) 167 Hardwicke, first earl of, see Philip Yorke Hardwicke, second earl of, see Charles Yorke Harley, Robert (1661–1724), earl of Oxford and chancellor of Exchequer 30 Harling, Philip 339, 346, 357 Harriott, John (1745–1817), magistrate at Thames police court 202 Harris, Joseph (1702–64), assay master of the mint 293 Harrison, George 371 Hassall, Dr Arthur Hill 309 hats 351, 354 making of 48 Hearth tax 17,106,121 hemp 375 Henderson, W. O. 350 hereditary excise 21 Herries, John Charles (1778–1855), chancellor of Exchequer (1827–8) 374 Herring, Benjamin, excise officer 125,126,127 herrings 282 Hervey, John (1696–1743), Baron Hervey of Ickworth, MP for Bury St. Edmunds 81 Hessenbruch, Arne 281 hides, see leather Higgins, Bryan (1737?–1820), adviser to manufacturers and founder of the School of Chemistry at Soho, London 242 Hill, Christopher 360 Hilton, Boyd 371–2 holidays 164 Holyoake, George Jacob (1817–1906), cooperator 307 honey 290 Hoppitt, Julian 282, 284 hops 10, 28,102, 211, 220, 308, 336, 351 surveying of 221–2 Horniman, John, tea retailer 308 Horrell, Sara 51 Houghton, John (d.1705), writer on agriculture and trade 57 House of Correction 203, 228 Huguenots 116,168 Hughes, Edward 27, 50, 94,100,111,123 Hume, David (1711–76), philosopher and historian 334 Hume, James, customs officer 368 Hume, James Deacon (1774–1842), son of fames Hume, customs officer, and joint secretary to the Board of Trade (1828–40) 369–70 Page 11 of 24

 

Index Hume, Joseph (1777–1855), radical MP 372, 377 Hunt, Henry (1773–1835), radical politician and public orator 337 Hunt, Philip A. 4, 20 Huskisson, William (1770–1830), MP for Liverpool (1823–30), president of Board of Trade (1823–7), and colonial secretary (1827–8) 364, 370, 373, 374, 375 Hutch, John, smuggler 77 Hutton, Charles (1737–1823), professor of mathematics at Woolwich Military Academy (1773–1807) 298 Hyde, Lawrence (1641–1711), first earl of Rochester, MP for Oxford University (1661– 79), commissioner of Treasury (1679), and lord high Treasurer (1685) 110,111 hydrometer 203, 211, 227 development and application of 263–79 Ibeson, James 102 imitation of products 232–3, 311 Imperial system of weights and measures 285, 287 impressments 166 income tax 1, 5, 11, 312,314, 338, 356, 371, 375,376, 377, 378, 380, 381 individual responsibility 362 industrial: revolution 8, 47, 48 policy 8, 11, 166, 352, 354, 370, 379, 380 informers 77,155,185,194–5, 200–1 Inspector–general of imports and exports 151 Inspector of manufactured tobacco 175 integrated market 281 interest rate 28 annual 34 long-term fixed 63 redeemable low 63 reduction of 32 Interregnum 4,16, 35, 54, 66 (p.390) Ireland: market 35 linen 37 Pitt the younger policies 353 ports and trade to England 36 protectorate policies 54 salt 237 wool manufacturers 37 Ireton, Henry (1611–51), anti–Leveller and Cromwell’s second–in–command in Ireland (1649) 54 iron 48, 71, 351, 354, 375, 379, 382 founders 353 Isle of man 70,197–200, 370 Jacobite 30, 31, 32, 64, 78, 79,115,128 jacobitism 66–7,190–200 Jaincs II (1633–1701), king of Britain and Ireland 21, 22, 45, 55,111,120,142 Jekyll, Sir Joseph (1663–1738). MP for Rye and master of the Rolls 228 Jerquer 140,147, 164 Page 12 of 24

 

Index Jenkinson, Robert Banks (1770–1828), second earl of Liverpool and prime minister (1812–27) 4,8,204,339,371 Jersey 197 Jickling, Nicholas, customs collector at Wells 369 Jonas, Peter, excise supervisor and gauging authority 295 Jones, D. W. 28 Journeymen 58 Judicial power: Justices of the peace 72, 81,106,114,130,158, 202, 307 Kater, Henry (1777–1835), army surveyor and man of science 287 Keech, Thomas, excise officer 124–5 Kent, Richard, restoration financier, receiver- general, and cashier if excise 109,111 King, Gregory (1648–1712), herald, genealogist and registrar of the College of Arms (1684–94) 26, 104 Kingsmill, William, smuggler and leader of the Hawkhurst gang 191 Kramnick, Isaac 341 Kula, Witold 283 laboratory: excise 314 labour 38, 58, 59, 339, 380 labouring ranks 49, 51, 325 port of London 158 see also employment lace, see textiles Laing, David (1774–1856), architect 133, 134,136, 138 Lancet, The 309 Land carriage men 167 land tax 8, 23, 24, 29, 30, 57, 58, 64–5, 67, 76, 77, 81, 94,107,118, 319, 328, 347, 358, 368 Land: surveyor, see Surveyor waiter 140,143–4, 147,152,172,173,174 Lane, Sir Richard, merchant and MP for Worcester 76 Langford, Paul 57, 67, 76, 78 lead 102, 351 Leadbetter, Charles, excise officer, astronomer and gauging authority 209–10, 216, 223, 240, 246, 248, 262, 282 leather 88, 92,116, 332, 333, 354. 372, 375 hides 23 tanning 48 Lemisch, Jessie 329 Lennox, Charles (1701–50), second duke of Richmond and lieutenant-general (1745) 192, 194–5 Levellers 53, 54 liberty 8, 22, 50, 54, 56, 61, 66–8, 78, 80, 81, 82–4, 94, 96,102,111,112,320,321,325, 326,328,353, 355, 363 libertarianism 66–7 lighters 144 Lightermen 155,172 Page 13 of 24

 

Index lighterage 73 Linebaugh, Peter 76, 154, 170, 326, 331 linen, see textiles Liverpool: warehousing 301, 302–6 Liverpool, Lord, see Jenkinson, Robert Banks loans: long-term 25, 28, 34, 92 short-term 26, 34 Locke, John (1632–1704), political philosopher 58 London Corresponding Society 2 London Journal 80 Long, Charles (1761–1838), lord commissioner of Treasury (1804) and paymaster– general (1807–26) 373 Long Parliament 94 lotteries 26, 27, 28 million lottery (1694) 27 Lumley, Richard (1650?–1721), first earl of Scarborough and lieutenant-general (1694) 142 lumpers 150,155, 305, 306 luxuries 6,39, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 51, 53, 56, 67, 311, 332, 333, 334, 350 Macclesfield, earl of: lord chancellor 46 McCloud, Lord Chief Baron 197 (p.391) Macdonald, Chief Baron, probably Sir Archibald Macdonald (1747–1826), lord chief baron of the Exchequer (1793–1813) 218 Macdonagh, Oliver 219 McKendrick, Neil 47 Maclaurin, Colin (1698–1746), professor of mathematics at Edinburgh University 398 Magihn, William 338 Mallalien, Alfred, foreign office employee 379 malt 1,10, 40, 48, 49, 91,113,116,127, 211, 212, 213, 225, 264, 282, 293, 296, 308, 319, 332, 336, 350, 368, 371, 372 malt tax versus beer tax 220–1 production and surveying of 214–19 Mandler, Peter 357 Marlborough, duke of, see Churchill, John Mandell, William, secretary of the Royal Society 275 Mandeville, Bernard (1670?–1733), 46 Marshall, Dorothy 76 Marshall, Thomas, representative of the Society for Improving the British Salt Trade 238 Martin, Benjamin (1704–82), public lecturer and instrument maker 267 Martin, Robert M., botanist and member of the court of the East India Company 339 Mary (1662–94), queen of Britain and Ireland 20, 21, 23, 24, 71,111 Mathias, Peter 46, 49, 211, 218, 220, 343 meat 95, 98–9 mercantilism 43 see also prohibition and protection Page 14 of 24

 

Index meritocracy 342, 345, 382 Michelson, John, tea wholesaler 308 Midford, John, tobacco merchant 173 Million Bank 33 military 201 army 176, 191,195, 197, 202,. 204, 205, 261, 262, 326, 329, 330 Mintz, Sidney W. 47 mohair yarn 42 molasses 211, 323, 324 Monmouth, duke of, see Scott, James rebellion 121 Monod, Paul 190 Montagu, Charles (1666?-1722), first duke of Manchester, raised troop for William prince of Orange, ambassador- extraordinary at Venice: chancellor of the exchequer 27 customs collector-outwards 141, 142 Montague, Sir James (1666–1723), attorney- general (1708–10), first baron of Exchequer (1722) 141 monthly assessment 15 Mudge, William (1762–1820), lieutenant- governor of Woolwich Military Academy (1809), director of the ordinance survey (1798), and commissioner of Board of Longitude (1818) 287 Musgrave, Sir William, commissioner of customs 142,145, 146, 150,153, 162,169,185 nails 295 Napoleonic wars 163, 204, 308, 339, 346, 356, 357, 370, 383 National debt 5, 21, 27, 28, 32,33, 49, 63, 88, 91, 93,143, 319, 325, 332, 346, 348, 354, 355, 356, 376 Navigation acts, see Act necessaries 6, 47, 51, 53, 55–62, 74, 239, 245, 311, 331, 333, 337, 340, 350, 355 New Bailey Prison 229 Newcastle, duke of, see Pelham–Holles, Sir Thomas new monied interest 29, 64, 88–9, 338 Nine Years War (1688–97) 22, 25 Noel, Martin, West Indian shipper, revenue farmer and leading financier to the Protectorate 101,103 North America 359 English emigration 55 independence 36,330 relationship to England 322–32 North, Sir Edward 292 North, Frederick (1732–92), second earl of Guildford better known as Lord North, chancellor of Exchequer (1767), and first lord of Treasury (1770) 330, 332, 344, 364 Northampton Mercury 78 oaths 71–2, 76,139, 158, 159, 171,194, 234, 359–61 objectivity 8,118, 261, 269, 283 O’Brien, Patrick 4, 20,44,46,49, 211,332,343,355 Ogborn, Miles 130 Old Corruption 3,143, 333, 339,346,348,356,377, 378 Oliver, Andrew, stamp distributor in North America 327 ordinary revenues 15, 16 Page 15 of 24

 

Index Osbourne, Sir Thomas (1631–1712), first earl of Danby and lord high Treasurer 18,109, 110 Ostcnd 177,180 outports 151–3 owling 166–8 Paine, Thomas (1737–1809) political radical and excise officer 2, 3, 5, 6, 49, 331, 336, 337, 341, 358 paper 10, 28, 37, 40, 48, 87,116, 354, 375, 381 surveying and production of 247–52 Parnell, Henry Brooke (1776–1842), fourth baronet and irst Baron Congleton, free trader and financial reformer 363, 375, 379, 381 Parry, Francis, restoration revenue farmer 116 (p.392) Partridge, Richard, Rhode Island colonial agent 325 Patent offices: customs 141,142,146,152 Paterson, William (1658–1719), Scottish projector and founder of the Bank of England 27 Patlenden, W. D. 288 patriotism 64, 68 Paymaster of the army 109 Peace of Amiens (1801) 356 Peel, Sir Robert (1788–1850), prime minister (1834–5, 1841–6) 346, 353, 376, 377, 378 Pelham, Henry (1696–1754), first lord of Treasury and chancellor of Exchequer (1743) 68,178 Pelham–Holles, Sir Thomas (1693–1768), first duke of Newcastle, first lord of Treasury (1754), formed coalition with Pitt the elder (1756) 325 pension: charity fund 119 superannuation 120 pepper 300, 306, 374 Perceval, Sir John (1683–1748), first Viscount Perceval, MP for Harwich (1727–34) 81 permits: excise 181, 249 Perry, Micajah, London tobacco merchant 72, 75 perquisites 141,154–5, 157,162, 262 Peterloo 1 Phillips, Catherine 336 Phillips, George, excise chemist 314 Petty, Sir William (1623–87), economic writer, exponent of political arithmetic and Irish land surveyor 36, 55,104 Petty, Sir William (1737–1805), first marquis of Lansdowne and second earl of Shelburne, president of the Board of Trade (1763), and first lord of Treasury (1782) 344, 348 Pike, Abraham, general–surveyor of riding officers 169 Pitt the elder, William (1708–78), first earl of Chatham 43, 320, 327, 328 Pitt the younger, William (1759–1806), prime minister (1784–1801,1804–6) 11, 48, 93, 186, 272, 333, 346, 348, 349, 350, 351, 353, 354, 355, 356, 357, 364, 365, 368, 382 Pittar, T. J., London custom house statistician 36, 368 plague: Page 16 of 24

 

Index London 105,106 plantations 36,174, 322 planters: Virginian 72, 74–5 Playfair, John (1748–1819), professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh University (1805) 286 Plumb, J. H. 76 Pocock, J. G. A. 88 police 202, 203, 261, 307 Liverpool 304, 306 Manchester 229 Thames 156 political: arithmetic 104 representation 8, 54–5, 322–40, 337, 344, 359, 381 poll tax 26 Popery 22, 24, 28, 32, 66 Popish plot 110 Porter, Theodore 118, 283 porterage 73 porters 155,156, 303 Postlehwayt, Malachy (1707?–67), economic writer 59, 61, 62,198, 334 pottery 48, 353, 354, 379, 382 Poulsum, Isaac 77 power looms 338 Powys, Sir Thomas (1649–1719), attorney–general (1687), judge of the Queen’s Bench (1713) 291 precision 7, 263, 275, 276, 292, 294 Presbyterians 53 Prescott, Daniel, excise sub–commissioner 97–8 Preventative officers 188 see also Riding officers Price, Jacob M. 43, 45, 73, 75 primage 73 Pritchard, Joshua, excise officer 229–30 privateers: French 28,168 Privy council 73,106 prohibition 59,107, 368, 377 calico cloth (1721) 38 French goods (1693–6) 37, 225 glass 255 paper 249 printed Asian cloth (1701) 37 property 8, 9, 53, 68, 81, 88, 94,154,156,165, 202, 209, 306, 325, 327, 346, 353, 355, 356, 378 office 142–3 tax 371,372, 374 protection 43, 44, 247, 353, 373, 377, 379 Page 17 of 24

 

Index Protectorate 54, 80,100, 101, 104, 158 Protestantism 22 anxiety 30 polity 29 rights and liberties 111 Prynne, William (1600–69), puritan pamphleteer, controversial political commentator, and MP for Bath in the Convention parliament (1660) 96 public accounts 344, 347, 348, 355, 362, 363, 364, 365, 366 report of various commissions 9, 20, 24, 40,130, 140, 143,146, 160,162, 288, 345–8 public duty 203 (p.393) public health 11, 308 Pulteney, Sir William (1684–1764), earl of Bath, MP for Hedon (1705–34) and Middlesex (1734–42) 64,80 Pym, John (1584–1643), MP for Tavistock and leading advocate of the excise tax 94 quality 7, 48,118,166, 211, 212, 214, 225, 226, 227, 250, 254, 261, 307, 312, 350, 381 quantification 7, 279 Rainsborough, Thomas (d.1648), soldier, Leveller and MP for Droitwich (1646) 54 raisons 95 Ramsden, Jessie (1735–1800), instrument maker 275 raw materials 41, 47, 255, 322, 353, 375, 377, 380 Receiver: of customs 115,140, 347 of excise 109,115 recoinage (1696–7) 26, 28,114 Rediker, Marcus 154, 326, 331 re-exportation 28, 29,36,37,39,40, 41, 43, 70, 73, 75, 95, 171, 232, 300, 301, 314 reflexivity: of the excise method 118–19 relanding goods 175 Remembrancer: king’s 17 lord treasurer’s 17 Rennie, John (1761–1821), civil engineer 304 rent 58, 68, 106, 220, 340 Republican, The 339 Restoration 4, 15, 35, 45, 96,103–11,167, 230, 231 ribbons 351, 354 Richardson, William, deputy-accountant of the East India Company 349 Ricardo, David (1772–1823), financier, political economist and MP 339 Richmond, duke of, see Lennox, Charles Riding officers 168, 169–70, 184,185,190,191,192, 194, 204 riots: anti–Irish 228 Derby 100 Gordon 83 Leeds 106 Monmouth 106 Nottingham 100 Plug 377 Page 18 of 24

 

Index Smithfield 98–100 Spitalfields 61, 228 Stafford 100 Worcester 100, 105 Ripley Thomas (d.1758), architect 134 Risby, Esan, Interregnum revenue farmer 103 River Inspectors 149 Robert, Nicholas-Louis, French papennaker and machine inventor 382 Robertson, William (1721–93), historian and principal of Edinburgh University 202 Robin, Isaac 166 Robinson, Frederich John (1782–1859), Viscount Goderich, prime minister (1828), and president of the Board of Trade (1841) 374 Rockingham administration 328 rod (customs and excise gauging instrument): bung 298 diagonal 296 head 296 Romney Marsh men, wool smugglers 167 Rose, George (1744–1818), secretary to Treasury (1782–1801), vice–president of Board of Trade (1804–6) 204 Rose, Holland 356 Roseveare, Henry 17, 20 Royal exchange 46 Royal Society 57, 91, 92, 267, 272, 274, 285 Transactions of 90, 91, 267, 275 Russell, John (1792–1878), first earl Russell, home secretary (1835), colonial secretary (1839), and first lord of Treasury (1846) 372, 376 Sacheverell, Henry (1674?–1724), fervent high-church and Tory preacher 31 riots 78 Saint–John, Henry (1678–1751), first Viscount Bolingbroke and statesman 64 salary, see wages salt 10,23,24,25,40,49,50,57,58, 65,67,68,92,94,97, 98,101,103,125,282,289,322,343, 355,367,372 office 346 production and surveying of 237–8 Schaffer, Simon 281 Schumpeter, Joseph 5 science: public science 90 Scott, George Lewis (1708–80), excise commissioner and leading mathematician 130 Scott, James (1649–85), duke of Monmouth, son of Charles II 120,142 Scotland: excise 50 fishing industry 25 protectorates policies 54 rebellion (1715–16) 190 revenue 25 tobacco smuggling 175 Scott, Jonathan 3,16, 22 Page 19 of 24

 

Index scriveners 23 Searchers 145–6,152,160,161,164,170,173, 175, 345 Seignoret, Etienne, wealthy Huguenot refugee, illicit trader, and financier 168 Seligman, Edwin 7 (p.394) Seven Years War (1756–63), 11, 34,178,319,325,354 sequestration 15 servants 351 Shapin, Steven 118 Shelbourne, lord, see Petty, Sir William shipmoney 53 Shirtchiffe, Robert, customs gauging authority 295 Sikes, Bartholomew, excise assayer of spirits 270–1, 275, 276, 279 Sikes, Mary, daughter of Bartholomew Sikes 275, 276, 277 silk, see textiles silver, see bullion sinecures 9,143, 346, 362, 365, 378 criticism of 345 of customs 142,145,146 of Exchequer 141 single tax: on land 58, 60 on land and horses 60 sinking fund 32, 80, 354, 355, 367, 368, 372 72 establishment of 65 Skynner, Lord Chief Justice, probably Sir John Skynner (1724?–1805), chief baron of the Exchequer (1777–86) 82, 272 Smith, Adam (1723–90}, moral philosopher, economic writer, and Scottish customs commissioner 43, 82,162,165, 202, 203, 211, 220, 333, 334, 336, 344, 365 Smith, George 53 smuggling gangs 190–200 Groombridge 192 Hawkhurst 191,194 Mother Gregson’s 176 soap 10, 28,37, 47,48, 51,82–3,88, 92, 96, 102 171 282, 299, 332, 334, 350, 372, 375 surveying and production of 238–43 solicitor: customs 172 South sea company 32, 33, 64, 382 bubble 67 Southwick, Albert B. 324 Spanish succession: war of 29, 247 Speer, William, supervisor and assayer at the port of Dublin 263, 273–4, 275 Spence, Thomas (1750–1814), bookseller, political radical and exponent of land nationalization 339 Spenceans, followers of Thomas Spence 339 spices 37, 40 spirits 1, 40, 47, 48, 49, 51, 102,107,108, 193, 195, 216, 220, 263, 264, 295, 350, 367

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Index brandy 40,58, 69,82,107,117,165,176, 186, 187, 188,189,190, 195,196,197, 198, 201, 203, 211, 228, 229, 264,269,290, 333,348, 350, 374, 375, 376, 377 gauging of spirits 261–79 geneva 196,197 gin 229,351 production and surveying of 223–30 rum 197,198, 229, 304, 324, 350 strong waters 95, 228, 290 Spitalfields, see weavers Stair, lord, see Dalrymple, John stamp duties 332 standards 261, 263, 265, 268, 269, 271, 272, 273, 279,282,284,285,286, 287,289,290, 291,292, 293 abstract 283 standardization 280, 281, 285 Standing army 80, 88,111, 325 starch 10, 28, 48,102, 212 surveying and production of 243–5 Steuart, Sir James (1712–80), economic writer 49 Stock exchange 34,179 Stone, Thomas, inspector of tobacco 175 Stop of the Exchequer, see Exchequer Stuart, John (1713–92), third earl of Bute, secretary of state (1761), first lord of the Treasury (1763) 319, 320, 327 sugar 28, 45, 47, 48, 51, 95,133, 155,157, 230, 231, 302, 304, 306,324, 333, 334, 350, 367, 375, 376, 377, 378 superannuation, see pension supernumerary officer 119,123 Supervisor: diary 126 excise 250 Surveyor: customs 139,142,152, 161 excise 119,125 land 144–5,150,172,173, 297 riding officers 190–1 tide 148–9,163,173,188 Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), satirical writer, political journalist, and dean of St Patrick’s 91 Swynfen, John (1612–94), MP for Tarnworth (1659,1661–70,1679–81) and Beeralston (1690–4) 23 tallies 26, 109, 368 tallow, see candles tanning, see leather Tate, Francis 279 tea 1, 9,10, 37, 42, 45, 47, 48, 51, 69, 79,104, 133,155, 300, 330, 333, 336, 348–50, 367, 371, 375 Bohea 179,182 Congou 178,179 Page 21 of 24

 

Index smuggling 176–83,186,189,191, 192,193,195, 196, 200, 201, 211 surveying of 230–1 (p.395) Temple, William, west country cloth manufacturer 60, 61, 138, 334 temporary excise 21 textiles 380 calicoes 37, 38, 39,149,189, 253, 351, 381 cambric 198 cotton 39, 40,. 48, 253–4, 351, 353, 354, 374, 375, 379, 380, 382 fustians 39 gold and silver cloth 95 lace 40 lawns 198 linen 10, 37, 39, 40, 95, 103, 252–4,351, 367 silk 10, 37, 38, 39, 40, 42, 95,116,168,190,198, 211, 252–3, 300, 351, 354, 375 wool 37,38,39, 40, 48,102, 116, 166–8,190,353, 354, 372, 375 Thelwall, John (1764–1834), political reformer and leader of the working classes 2, 6 Tidesmen 142,146–50,155,172 Tidewaiters 303 tiles 351, 375 timber 375, 376, 377 Times, The 299, 366 tin 166, 102 tobacco 1, 8, 9, 28, 40, 42, 45, 47, 49, 51, 58, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 74, 76, 79, 103, 133, 155, 157, 230, 295, 300, 301, 304, 306, 343, 367, 374, 375 smuggling 170–6,186,193,197,198, 211 Tomlinson, Howard 19 tontines 26 Torrance, John 44 Townsend, Charles (1725–67), chancellor of Exchequer 328 transportation to North America 165,166,168, 185 Treasury 5, 17,18, 20, 30, 31, 75,106,108, 110, 114, 115,123,129,130,135,139,150,168, 193,198, 216, 221, 273, 274, 276, 289, 302, 303,305, 312, 342, 343, 345. 348, 361, 368, 372, 376 bookkeeping practices 19 Treaty: Anglo French (1786) 350, 353, 368 of Dover (1670) 18 of Utrecht (1713) 41,323 Trevers, Joseph 167 triple assessment tax 356 trust 91, 359, 360, 363, 372, 374 Turner, M. 47, 48, 51 Twinning, Richard, tea dealer 349 ullage 297 usher: London custom house 139,160 Vaugn, Gwynn, Scottish customs commissioner 75

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Index Vanderlint, Jacob (d.1740), Dutch emigrant, economic writer and London timber merchant 49, 59–62 Vansitart, Nicholas (1766–1851), chancellor of Exchequer (1812–23) 274 Vernon, Edward (1684–1757), admiral 192 vessels: barges 184 brigs 204 cruisers 184,185,186,196,198,199, 204, 205 cutters 184, 186,196, 204 frigates 204 galleys 184, 193, 196 guard boats 188 hoy 301 lighter 301 luggers 186,192,196 pinnacles 184 rowing boats 186,192 schooners 186 shallops 186 sloops 184,185,186,188 smacks 184,185 wherries 184, 188,192,198,301 Vincent, Samuel, restoration revenue farmer 108 vinegar 290,378 Virginia: council and house of burgesses 72, 74 governor of 72, 74 virtue 88–90, 91 Vries, Jan de 50, 51 Waddell, D. 55 wages 58, 120,151,159–60, 162, 163, 164, 185, 262, 263, 333, 334, 344, 346, 368, 372, 382 Wallaston, William Henry, experimental natural philosopher and commissioner of the Board of Longitude 274, 277, 279, 286, 287 Walpole, Sir Robert (1676–1745), first earl of Orford, prime minister and chancellor of Exchequer (1721–42) 8, 41, 42, 43, 49, 58–60, 63–81,147, 150, 155–6,171, 172, 174,175, 178, 191, 220, 228, 285, 296, 300, 301 Walsh, David 321 Walwyn, William, London merchant and Leveller 53 warehouses: bonded 10, 69, 231, 300, 301, 307 fire 304 see also Liverpool watchmen 150,172 waterguard 149, 167,184, 202, 204, 205 watermen 149–50,163 weavers: handloom 339 Leeds stuff 338 Page 23 of 24

 

Index see also Spitalfield Riots Wedgwood, fosiah (1730–95), pottery manufacturer 242 weekly assessment 15 Weighing department 144 weighers 145, 151,172,174, 303 Wellesley, Arthur (1769–1852), first duke of Wellington 374, 375 West Indies 38, 41 trade 323, 324 wharfage 73 wharfingers 144, 156 Whatman, James (papermaker) 251 Wheeler, James Scott 15,103 Whig junta 29 Wilkes, John (1727–97), MP for Middlesex, libellous writer and publisher, expelled from House of Commons 322 and liberty 326 William III (1650–1702), prince of Orange, king of England, Scotland and Ireland 5, 20, 21, 23, 24, 31, 71,112, 115,142, 168 Wilmslow, Cal 195 Wilson, Kathleen 66, 67, 68 Winchester bushel 10, 285, 288 window tax 40, 81, 349 wine 8,18, 28, 42, 47,49, 63, 65, 67, 69, 70,77,79, 95, 96, 102,191,197,198,203,211,228, 290,292, 293, 295, 298, 299, 300, 336,343, 350, 367, 374 Woodland, Patrick 320 wool, see textiles workhouses 38 Wren, Sir Christopher (1632–1723), architect, Savilian professor of astronomy at Oxford (1661–73) 134 Wyndham, Sir William (1687–1740), 64–6, 77 chancellor of exchequer (1713–14) 32 Yorke, Charles (1722–70), earl of Hardwicke and lord chancellor (1770) 321 Yorke, Philip (1690–1764), earl of Hardwicke and lord chancellor (1737) 156 Young, Thomas (1773–1829), natural philosopher and secretary of the Board of Longitude 286, 298

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