subjects, it is but reasonable that private contributions should supply the public service. Which, though it may perhaps fall harder upon some individuals, whose ancestors have had no share in the general plunder, than upon others; yet, taking the nation throughout, it amounts to nearly the same, provided the gain by the extraordinary should appear to be no greater than the loss by the [*307] ordinary revenue. And, perhaps, if every gentleman in the kingdom was to be stripped of such of his lands as were formerly the property of the crown; was to be again subject to the inconveniences of purveyance and pre-emption, the oppression of forest laws, and the slavery of feudal tenures; and was to resign into the king's hands all his royal franchises of waifs, wrecks, estrays, treasure-trove, mines, deodands, forfeitures, and the like; he would find himself a greater loser than by paying his quota to such taxes as are necessary to the support of government. The thing therefore to be wished and aimed at in a land of liberty is by no means the total abolition of taxes, which would draw after it very pernicious consequences, and the very supposition of which is the height of political absurdity. For as the true idea of government and magistracy will be found to consist in this, that some few men are deputed by many others to preside over public affairs, so that individuals may the better be enabled to attend their private concerns; it is necessary that those individuals should be bound to contribute a portion of their private gains, in order to support that government, and reward that magistracy, which protects them in the enjoyment of their respective properties. But the things to be aimed at are wisdom and moderation, not only in granting, but also in the method of raising the necessary supplies; by contriving to do both in such a manner as may be most conducive to the national welfare, and at the same time most consistent with economy and the liberty of the subject; who, when properly taxed, contributes only, as was before observed, (y) some part of his property, in order to enjoy the rest. These extraordinary grants are usually called by the synonymous names of aids, subsidies, and supplies; and are granted, we have formerly seen, (z) by the commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled: who, when they have voted a supply to his majesty, and settled the quantum of that supply, usually resolve themselves into what is called a committee of ways and means, to consider the ways and means of raising the supply so voted. And in this committee every *member, (though it is looked upon as the peculiar province of the [*308] chancellor of the exchequer,) may propose such scheme of taxation as he thinks will be least detrimental to the public. The resolutions of this committee, when approved by a vote of the house, are in general esteemed to be, as it were, final and conclusive. For, though the supply cannot be actually raised upon the subject till directed by an act of the whole parliament, yet no monied man will scruple to advance to the government any quantity of ready cash, on the credit of a bare vote of the house of commons, though no law be yet passed to establish it. The taxes, which are raised upon the subject, are either annual or perpetual. The usual annual taxes are those upon land and malt. 1. The land-tax, in its modern shape, has superseded all the former methods of rating either property, or persons in respect of their property, whether by tenths or fifteenths, subsidies on land, hydages, scutages or talliages; a short explication of which will, however, greatly assist us in understanding our ancient laws and history. Tenths, and fifteenths, (a) were temporary aids issuing out of personal property, and granted to the king by parliament. They were formerly the real tenth or fifteeth part of all the movables belonging to the subject; when such movables, or personal estates, were a very different and a much less considerable thing than what they usually are at this day. Tenths are said to have been first granted under Henry the Second, who took advantage of the fashionable zeal for croisades, to introduce this new taxation, in order to defray the expense of a (z) Page 169. (a) 2 Inst. 77. 4 Inst. 34. (y) Page 282. pious expedition to Palestine, which he really or seemingly had projected against Saladine, emperor of the Saracens; whence it was originally denominated the Saladine tenth. (b) But afterwards fifteenths were more usually granted than tenths. Originally the amount of these taxes was uncertain, being [309] levied by assessments new made at every fresh grant of the commons, a commission for which is preserved by Matthew Paris: (c) but it was at length reduced to a certainty in the eighth year of Edward III, when, by virtue of the king's commission, new taxations were made of every township, borough, and city in the kingdom, and recorded in the exchequer; which rate was, at the time, the fifteenth part of the value of every township, the whole amounting to about 29,000l., and therefore it still kept up the name of a fifteenth, when, by the alteration of the value of money, and the increase of personal property, things came to be in a very different situation: so that when, of later years, the commons granted the king a fifteenth, every parish in England immediately knew their proportion of it; that is, the same identical sum that was assessed by the same aid in the eighth of Edward III; and then raised it by a rate among themselves, and returned it into the royal exchequer. The other ancient levies were in the nature of a modern land-tax for we may trace up the original of that charge as high as to the introduction of our military tenures; (d) when every tenant of a knight's fee was bound, if called upon, to attend the king in his army for forty days in every year. But this personal attendance growing troublesome in many respects, the tenants found means of compounding for it, by first sending others in their stead, and in process of time by making a pecuniary satisfaction to the crown in lieu of it. This pecuniary satisfaction at last came to be levied by assessments, at so much for every knight's fee, under the name of scutages; which appear to have been levied for the first time in the fifth year of Henry the Second, on account of his expedition to Toulouse, and were then, I apprehend, mere arbitrary compositions, as the king and the subject could agree. But this precedent being afterwards abused into a means of oppression, (in levying scutages on the landholders by the royal authority only, whenever our kings went to war, in order to hire mercenary troops and pay their contingent expenses) it became [*310] thereupon a matter of national complaint; and King John was obliged to promise in his magna carta, (e) that no scutage should be imposed without the consent of the common council of the realm. This clause was indeed omitted in the charters of Henry III, where (f) we only find it stipulated, that scutages should be taken as they were used to be in the time of King Henry the Second. Yet afterwards, by a variety of statutes under Edward I, and his grandson, (g) it was provided, that the king shall not take any aids or tasks, any talliage or tax, but by the common assent of the great men and commons in parliament. Of the same nature with scutages upon knight's fees were the assessments of hydage upon all other lands, and of talliage upon cities and burghs. (h) But they all gradually fell into disuse upon the introduction of subsidies, about the time of King Richard II, and King Henry IV. These were a tax, not immediately imposed upon property, but upon persons in respect of their reputed estates, after the nominal rate of 4s. in the pound for lands, and 2s. 8d. for goods; and for those of aliens in a double proportion. But this assessment was also made according to an ancient valuation; wherein the computation was so very moderate, and the rental of the kingdom was supposed to be so exceeding low, that one subsidy of this sort did not, according to Sir Edward Coke, (i) amount to more than 70,000l., whereas a modern land-tax, at the same rate, produces two millions. It was anciently the rule never to grant more than one subsidy, and two fifteenths at a time; but this rule was broken through for the first time on a very pressing occasion, the Spanish invasion in 1588; when the parliament gave Queen Elizabeth two subsidies and four fifteenths. After (b) Hoved. A, D. 1188. (c) A. D. 1232, (f)9 Hen. III, c. 37. (h) Madox, Hist. Exch. Carte. 1. 719. Hume, 1. 329. (d) See the second book of these Commentaries. 480. (e) Cap. 14. wards, as money sunk in value, more subsidies were given; and we have an instance in the first parliament of 1640, of the king's desiring twelve subsidies of the *commons, to be levied in three years; which was looked upon [*311] as a startling proposal: though Lord Clarendon says, (k) that the speaker, Serjeant Glanville, made it manifest to the house, how very inconsiderable a sum twelve subsidies amounted to, by telling them he had computed what he was to pay for them himself; and when he named the sum, he being known to be possessed of a great estate, it seemed not worth any farther deliberation. And indeed, upon calculation, we shall find that the total amount of these twelve subsidies, to be raised in three years, is less than what is now' raised in one year, by a land-tax of two shillings in the pound. The grant of scutages, talliages, or subsidies, by the commons, did not extend to spiritual preferments; those being usually taxed at the same time by the clergy themselves in convocation: which grants of the clergy were confirmed in parliament, otherwise they were illegal, and not binding: as the same noble writer observes of the subsidies granted by the convocation, which continued sitting after the dissolution of the first parliament, in 1640. A subsidy granted by the clergy was after the rate of 4s. in the pound, according to the valuation of their livings in the king's books; and amounted, as Sir Edward Coke tells us, (1) to about 20,000l. While this custom continued, convocations were wont to sit as frequently as parliaments; but the last subsidies thus given by the clergy were those confirmed by statute 15 Car. II, cap. 10, since which another method of taxation has generally prevailed, which takes in the clergy as well as the laity; in recompence for which the beneficed clergy have from that period been allowed to vote at the election of knights of the shire; (m) and thenceforward also the practice of giving ecclesiastical subsidies hath fallen into total disuse. The lay subsidy was usually raised by commissioners appointed by the crown, or the great officers of state; and therefore in the beginning of the civil wars between Charles I and *his parliament, the latter having no other suffi[*312] cient revenue to support themselves and their measures, introduced the practice of laying weekly and monthly assessments (n) of a specific sum upon the several counties of the kingdom; to be levied by a pound rate on lands and personal estates; which were occasionally continued during the whole usurpation, sometimes at the rate of 120,000l., a month, sometimes at inferior rates. (0) After the restoration, the ancient method of granting subsidies, instead of such monthly assessments, was twice and twice only, renewed; viz., in 1663, when four subsidies were granted by the temporalty, and four by the clergy; and in 1670, when 800,000l. was raised by way of subsidy, which was the last time of raising supplies in that manner. (22) For the monthly assessments being now established by custom, being raised by commissioners named by parliament, and producing a more certain revenue; from that time forwards we hear no more of subsidies, but occasional assessments were granted, as the national emergencies required. These periodical assessments, the subsidies which preceded them, and the more ancient scutage, hydage and talliage, were to all intents and purposes a land-tax; and the assessments were sometimes expressly called so. (p) Yet a popular opinion has prevailed, that the land-tax was first introduced in the reign of King William III; because in the year 1692 a new assessment or (k) Hist. b. 2. (7) 4 Inst. 33. (n) 29 Nov., 4 Mar. 1642. (m) Dalt. of Sheriffs. 418. Gilb. Hist. of Exch. c. 4. (0) One of these bills of assessment, in 1656, is preserved in Scobell's Collection, 400. (p) Com. Journ. 26 June, 9 Dec. 1678. (22) [No subsidies were granted either by the laity or clergy after 1663. 15 Car. II, c. 9 and 10. The learned judge has been misled by the title to the act of the 22 and 23 Car. II, c. 3, in the year 1670, when he declares it was the last time of raising supplies by way of subsidy; for the title of it is, "An act to grant a subsidy to his majesty for supply of his extraordinary occasions." All the material clauses of which are copied verbatim in that of the 4 W. and M. c. 1 (the land-tax act); the act of Charles is not printed in the common edition of the Statutes at Large, but it is given at length in Keble's edition. The scheme of taxing landed property was not a novelty, for it was first introduced in time of the commonwealth.] valuation of estates was made throughout the kingdom; which, though by no means a perfect one, had this effect, that a supply of 500,000l. was equal to 18. in the pound of the value of the estates given in. And according to this enhanced valuation, from the year 1693 to the present, a period of above fourscore years, the land-tax has continued an annual charge upon the subject; above half the time at 4s. in the pound, sometimes at 3s., sometimes at 2s., twice (q) at 1s., but without any total intermission. The medium has been 3s. 3d. in the pound, being equivalent with twenty-three ancient subsidies, and amounting annually *to more than a million and a half of money. The method of raising it, is by charging a particular sum upon each county, according to the [*313] valuation given in A. D. 1692; and this sum is assessed and raised upon individuals (their personal estates, as well as real, being liable thereto) by commissioners appointed in the act, being the principal landholders of the county, and their officers. II. The other annual tax is the malt-tax; which is a sum of 750,000l., raised every year by parliament, ever since 1697, by a duty of 6d. in the bushel on malt, and a proportionable sum on certain liquors, such as cider and perry, which might otherwise prevent the comsumption of malt. This is under the management of the commissioners of the excise; and is, indeed, itself no other than an annual excise, the nature of which species of taxation I shall presently explain; only premising at present, that in the year 1760 an additional perpetual excise of 3d. per bushel was laid upon malt; to the produce of which a duty of 15 per cent. or nearly an additional halfpenny per bushel, was added in 1779; and that in 1763 a proportionable excise was laid upon cider and perry, but so new-modelled in 1766, as scarce to be worth collecting. The perpetual taxes are, (23) I. The customs; or the duties, toll, tribute, or tariff, payable upon merchandize exported and imported. The considerations upon which this revenue (or the more ancient part of it, which arose only from exports,) was invested in the king, were said to be two: (r) 1. Because he gave the subject leave to depart the kingdom, and to carry his goods along with him. 2. Because the king was bound of common right to maintain and keep up the ports and havens, and to protect the merchants from pirates. Some have imagined they are called with us customs, because they were the inheritance of the king by immemorial usage and the common law, and not granted him by any statute: (8) but Sir Edward Coke hath clearly_shewn, (t) that the king's first claim to them was by *grant of parliament 3 Edw. I, though the record thereof is not now [ *314] extant. And indeed this is in express words confessed by statute 25 Edw. I, c. 7, wherein the king promises to take no customs from merchants with out the common assent of the realm, "saving to us and our heirs, the customs on wool, skins and leather, formerly granted to us by the commonalty aforesaid." These were formerly called the hereditary customs of the crown; and were due on the exportation only of the said three commodities, and of none other; which were styled the staple commodities of the kingdom, because they were obliged to be brought to those ports where the king's staple was established, in order to be there first rated, and then exported. (u) They were denominated, in the barbarous Latin of our ancient records, custuma, (v) not consuetudines, which is the language of our law whenever it means merely usages. The duties on wool, sheep-skins, or woolfells, and leather, exported, were called cus (q) In the years 1732 and 1733. (r) Dyer, 165. (8) Dyer, 43, pl. 24. (t) 2 Inst. 58, 59. (u) Dav. 9. (v) This appellation seems to be derived from the French word coustum or coutum, which signifies toil or tribute, and owes its own etymolgy to the word coust, which signifles price, charge, or, as we have adopted it in English, cost. (23) The land and malt taxes are now perpetual also. An income tax of ten per cent was introduced by Mr. Pitt, in 1798, which was removed in 1802, but again imposed under the name of property tax in 1803, and continued in force till 1816. It was re-imposed by Sir Robert Peel in 1842, and from that time has been continued to the present, though the rate has varied. tuma antiqua sive magna: and were payable by every merchant, as well native as stranger; with this difference, that merchant strangers paid an additional toll, viz.: half as much again as was paid by natives. The custuma parva et nova were an impost of 3d. in the pound, due from merchant strangers only, for all commodities, as well imported as exported; which was usually called the alien's duty, and was first granted in 31 Edw. I, (w) But these ancient hereditary customs, especially those on woll and woolfells, came to be of little account, when the nation became sensible of the advantages of a home manufacture, and prohibited the exportation of wool by statute 11 Edw. III, c. 1. There is also another very ancient hereditary duty belonging to the crown, called the prisage or butlerage of wines, which is considerably older than the customs, being taken notice of in the great roll of the exchequer, 8 Ric. I, still extant. (x) Prisage was a right of taking two tons of wine from *every [*315] ship (English or foreign) importing into England twenty tons or more, one before and one behind the mast; which by charter of Edward I, was exchanged into a duty of 28. for every ton imported by merchant strangers, and called butlerage, because paid to the king's butler. (y) Other customs payable upon exports and imports were distinguished into subsidies, tonnage, poundage, and other imposts. Subsidies were such as were imposed by parliament upon any of the staple commodities before mentioned, over and above the custuma antiqua et magna; tonnage was a duty upon all wines imported, over and above the prisage and butlerage aforesaid: poundage was a duty imposed ad valorem, at the rate of 12d. in the pound, on all other merchandize whatsoever; and the other imposts were such as were occasionally laid on by parliament, as circumstances and times required. (z) These distinctions are now in a manner forgotten, except by the officers immediately concerned in this department; their produce being in effect all blended together under the one denomination of the customs. By these we understand, at present, a duty or subsidy paid by the merchant at the quay upon all imported as well as exported commodities, by authority of parliament; unless where, for particular national reasons, certain rewards, bounties, or drawbacks, are allowed for particular exports or imports. Those of tonnage and poundage, in particular, were at first granted, as the old statutes (and particularly 1 Eliz. c. 10,) express it, for the defence of the realm, and the keeping and safeguard of the seas, and for the intercourse of merchandize safely to come into and pass out of the same. They were at first usually granted only for a stated term of years: as, for two years in 5 Ric. II; (a) but in Henry the Sixth's time they were granted him for life by a statute in the thirty-first year of his reign; and again to Edward IV, for the term of his life also: since which time they were regularly granted to all his successors for life, sometimes at the first, sometimes at other subsequent, parliaments, till the reign of Charles the *First; when, as the noble historian expresses it, (b) his ministers were not [*316] sufficiently solicitous for a renewal of this legal grant. And yet these imposts were imprudently and unconstitutionally levied and taken, without consent of parliament, for fifteen years together; which was one of the causes of those unhappy discontents, justifiable at first in too many instances, but which degenerated at last into causeless rebellion (24) and murder. For as in (w) 4 Inst. 29. (x) Madox, Hist. Exch. 526, 532. (y) Dav. 8. 2 Bulst. 254. Stat. Estr. 16 Edw. II. Com. Journ. 27 April, 1689. (b) Hist. Rebell. b. 3. (2) Dav. 11, 12. (a) Dav. 12. (24) [The causes of resistance were numerous, and to the last hour of the pending treaty of Uxbridge some of them existed. Not one of the supposed prerogatives, against the future exertion of which security was sought by the treaty, but had operated some grievance upon the subject. The king, at a meeting on the occasion of that treaty, had actually agreed to sign it; but, as the discussion of its several items had been long and late, the mere signing was adjourned to eight o'clock the next morning. The unfortunate king appeared to part with the commissioners in excellent temper and with seeming good will towards them; they anticipating nothing else than the completion of the treaty. But the event showed that they were not justified in placing any reliance upon the monarch, who, it appears, could not rely |