"Excise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... very numerous, and carry on the greatest trade here, farming most of the excise and customs, being allowed to live according to their own laws, and to exercise their idolatrous worship. They have a chief of their own nation, who manages their affairs with the company, by which they are allowed great privileges, having even a representative in the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... of policy, it was objected that the assumption would impose on the United States a burden, the weight of which was unascertained, and which would require an extension of taxation beyond the limits which prudence would prescribe. An attempt to raise the impost would be dangerous, and the excise added to it would not produce funds adequate to the object. A tax on real estate must be resorted to, objections to which had been made in every part of the Union. It would be more advisable to leave this source of revenue untouched in the hands of the State governments, who could apply ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the latter five dollars per bushel, at Pittsburg. The still was therefore the necessary appendage of every farm, where the farmer was able to procure it; if he was not he carried his grain to the more wealthy to be distilled. To the large majority of these farmers excise laws were peculiarly odious. The State of Pennsylvania made some attempt, during and just after the Revolution, to enforce an excise law; but without effect. A man named Graham, who had kept a public house in Philadelphia, accepted the appointment of Collector for the western ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... measures of defense and in other improvements of various kinds since the late war, are conclusive proofs of this extraordinary prosperity, especially when it is recollected that these expenditures have been defrayed without a burthen on the people, the direct tax and excise having been repealed soon after the conclusion of the late war, and the revenue applied to these great objects having been raised in a manner not to be felt. Our great resources therefore remain untouched for any purpose which may affect the vital interests of the nation. For all ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... and in contemporary pamphlets and newspapers—form another variety of the class. Their general character may be estimated from Johnson's classification of the "Scribbler for a Party" with the "Commissioner of Excise," as the "two lowest of all human beings." "Ralph," says one of the notes to the Dunciad, "ended in the common sink of all such writers, a political newspaper." The prejudice against such employment has scarcely died out in our own day, and may be still traced in the account of Pendennis and ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... number of persons in the State of Pennsylvania refused to pay a tax ordered by Congress, called an excise tax, which was a certain sum on every barrel of whiskey made in the country. When Washington learned of this, he sent word to these people that if they did not obey the laws, he should have to compel them to; and as they took no notice of this warning, he got together an army of ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on the Brocken, becomes poetic. The palace of the Prince of Pallagonia never contained such absurdities as are to be found in this book. Those who shine in it with especial splendor are Messrs. the excise collectors, with their moldy "high inspirations;" counter-jumpers, with their pathetic outgushings of the soul; old German revolution dilettanti with their Turner-Union phrases, and Berlin school-masters ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... feared. The internal table is widely comminuted, and there is possibly injury to the dura mater. We must excise a small portion of the bone. The scalpel, please." Then, after laying back with a few swift, dexterous movements the scalp from about the wounded parts: "The saw. Yes, the saw. The removal of a section," he continued, in his gentle monotone, beginning to saw, "will allow ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... after exercising the functions of judge at Port Phillip (1803), returned home, and received the appointment, many years after, of inspector of excise, at Port Jackson.] ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... to repeat with pleasure an anecdote of her friends Mr. and Mrs. Douglas. Mr. Douglas was a tallow-chandler, and furnished candles for Lady Glenorchy's chapel. The excise-tax was very high on making those articles, and many persons of the trade were accustomed to defraud the revenue by one stratagem or another. Religious principle would not permit Mr. Douglas to do so. Mrs. Graham one evening ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... thing in the Pentateuch of which Moses had been an eye or ear-witness, and which he set down from his own personal knowledge, may be eliminated from the Bible, as not inspired. According to the principle already enunciated by yourself, I call upon you to excise from the Book of GOD'S Law, Exodus, and Leviticus, and Numbers, and Deuteronomy: those passages only excepted which are prophetical,—as the xxxiiird of Deuteronomy. Joshua must go of course: for if the son of Nun ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... want to go abroad, and they keep forcing me to attend to these silly things. Vodka, oats . . ." she muttered, half closing her eyes, "oats, bills, percentages, or, as my head-clerk says, 'percentage.' . . . It's awful. Yesterday I simply turned the excise officer out. He pesters me with his Tralles. I said to him: 'Go to the devil with your Tralles! I can't see any one!' He kissed my hand and went away. I tell you what: can't your cousin wait two ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... air of deference bordering on irony; he appeared to make some unpleasant request which he affected to urge with an earnestness beyond the rules of gallantry or good breeding, and which she refused with an appearance of haughtiness I had never before seen her excise. He than respectfully addressed the Queen, and entreated her intercession with Lady Greville for a favourite Italian air, one, he said, which her Majesty had probably never enjoyed the happiness of hearing—but before the Queen could ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore
... and put up at Mackenzie's inn. Mr Keith, the collector of Excise here, my old acquaintance at Ayr, who had seen us at the fort, visited us in the evening, and engaged us to dine with him next day, promising to breakfast with us, and take us to the English chapel; so that we were at once ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... (25 cents) per pound, together with 25 per cent of the gross price. The selling price immediately dropped, and British consumption in 1846 rose to 2,358,589 lbs. The use of tea has often been checked by excessive duties or excise tax. From 1784 to 1787 British consumption rose from five million pounds to seventeen millions of pounds, consequent upon a reduction of duties. Twenty years after, under the imposition of exorbitant duties, British consumption was only ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... what is required of us, we guard this edifice, perform our evolutions, and help the excise; I am frequently called up in the dead of night to go to some wild place or other in quest of an illicit still; this last part of our duty is poor mean work, I don't like it, nor more does Bagg; though without it we should not see much active service, for the neighbourhood is quiet; ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... a duty but a refreshment and an inspiration. Every Sunday morning, between four and five, and two or three nights in the week, after his pupils were asleep, he used to go out into the meadows, or on to the banks of the Severn, to meet an Excise Officer, a servant, and a poor widow. These four would pour out their whole souls to God in prayer, and wonderful were the manifestations of Divine love and grace vouchsafed ...
— Fletcher of Madeley • Brigadier Margaret Allen
... victorious party to Broadway, sent a telegram to the Superintendent of Police at Evesham, who met the returning procession and took down their names, with the ultimate result of a substantial haul in fines for the excise! ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... prosperous days of Fleury and in the finest region in France, the peasant hides "his wine on account of the excise and his bread on account of the taille," convinced "that he is a lost man if any doubt exists of his dying of starvation."[5104] In 1739 d'Argenson writes in ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... recipient: although Guam receives no foreign aid, it does receive large transfer payments from the general revenues of the US Federal Treasury into which Guamanians pay no income or excise taxes; under the provisions of a special law of Congress, the Guamanian Treasury, rather than the US Treasury, receives federal income taxes paid by military and civilian ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... band of lawless men, whose lives were spent in violating the laws of their country, I was fully aware, but in what manner I knew not, unless that, by our sauntering about the rocks, they had suspected us to belong to the excise. In such cases I had heard that they were apt to do deeds of violence; but Malcolm's escape prevented me from speaking a word, or requesting an explanation. At length the sound of oars pulled steadily and with caution, fell upon my ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... country, to compete at the Sub-Intendant's auction sales, with every probability of being outbid in the end, and having his long-deposited money returned to him after all his pains. Lieutenant-Governor Des Voeux told the Legislature of Trinidad that the monstrous Excise imposts of the Colony were an incentive to smuggling, and he thought that the duties, licenses, &c., should be lowered in the interest of good and equitable government. Sir Henry Turner Irving, however, besides raising the duties on spirituous liquors, also enacted that every distillery, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... information. You can give it to us if you like. We don't ask for too much. We don't even ask for the name of the man who committed these crimes. But we do want to know the nature of those papers, exactly what position Mr. Hamilton Fynes occupied in the Stamp and Excise Duty department at Washington, and, finally, what the mischief you are doing over here ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... than 1,200,000. Towards this, the existing sources of revenue, with the deduction of the Feudal dues and wardships, which it was proposed to abolish, would not contribute more than one-half, or 600,000. The remaining half was to be supplied from Excise—a new device, as we have seen, contrived by Parliament during the Civil War, and destined, as Hyde foresaw, to become a permanency. But, as a fact, the assigned resources did not reach this amount of 1,200,000. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... state. He preserved his integrity, and discharged the duty of an upright magistrate. Zealous for the rights of his fellow citizens, he opposed all attempts against them; and, being lord mayor in the year 1733, he defeated a scheme of a general Excise, which, had it succeeded, would have put an end to the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... freedom from the dull tedium of responsibility, and not remarkable for religious temperament, were appointed, to whom all sermons and public addresses on religious subjects must be submitted before delivery, and whose duty after perusal should be to excise all portions not conformable to their private ideas of what was at the moment suitable to the Public's ears, we should be far on the road toward that proper preservation of the status quo so desirable if the faiths and ethical standards of the less exuberantly spiritual ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... great ulcer in the heart of London a deadly poison passes far and wide into the national organism. The ulcer is there still for the knife of some strong man to excise, for there is little doubt that though restrictions will not prevent vice, it is equally true that making vice open, enticing ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... on England, where the brewing capital is estimated at more than fifteen millions sterling; and the gross annual revenue, arising from this capital, at seven million five hundred thousand pounds sterling, including the hop, malt, and extract duties. Notwithstanding this enormous excise of 50 per cent. on the brewing capital, what immense fortunes have been made, and are daily making, in that country, as well as in Ireland and Scotland, by the intelligent and judicious practice of this more than useful art. Yet how much stronger inducements for similar ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... sample of a modern tribune I will add a specimen of a modern legislator. Baptiste Cavaignae was, before the Revolution, an excise officer, turned out of his place for infidelity; but the department of Lot electing him, in 1792, a representative of the people to the National Convention, he there voted for the death of Louis XVI. and remained a faithful associate ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... smoked geese and kippered fish, and he was apparently in a very great passion. Before John could mention his own matters, Peter burst into a torrent of invectives against another of his sailors, who, he said, had given some information to the Excise which had cost him a whole cargo of Dutch specialties. The culprit was leaning against a hogshead, and was listening to Peter's intemperate words with a ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... of customs and excise Laws.] The Customs and Excise Laws of each Province shall, subject to the Provisions of this Act, continue in force until altered by the ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous
... after the success of his poems, were beginning to be doubtful about the wisdom of his going abroad, and were doing what they could to secure for him a place in the Excise. For his fame had gone beyond the bounds of his native county, and others than people in his own station had recognised his genius. Mrs. Dunlop of Dunlop was one of the first to seek the poet's acquaintance, and she became an almost ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... equality and easy levying of taxes. It is too certain that London hath at some time paid near half the excise of England, and that the people pay thrice as much for the hearths in London as those in the country, in proportion to the people of each, and that the charge of collecting these duties have been about a sixth part of the duty itself. Now in this great city the excise alone according to the present ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... the great Licensing Bill of last year, by their association with the brewers and with the liquor traffic generally, they have done all they could—I do them the justice to admit it—to maintain the Customs and Excise from alcoholic liquors at the highest level. If the habits of the people, under the influences of a wider culture, of variety, of comfort, of brighter lives, and of new conceptions, have steadily undergone a beneficent elevation and amelioration, ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... seized by the sheriff. He had the satisfaction of beating the officer nearly to death; but the cow was sold notwithstanding, and he took a month's exercise on the treadmill, whilst his wife spent the time with her friend the excise-officer, and drank to his better health and ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... which was unwise or oppressive, or the result of the enforcement of which might be to indirectly affect subjects not within the powers delegated to Congress, nor can the judiciary inquire into the motive or purpose of Congress in adopting a statute levying an excise tax within its ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... alderman of Baynard Castle ward, Barber filled the office of Sheriff, and in 1733 became Lord Mayor of the City of London. As Lord Mayor, he gained great popularity from his opposition to the Excise Bill, and by permitting persons tried and acquitted at the Old Bailey to be discharged without any fees. He died on the ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... married; afterwards he became a grocer and an exciseman, at Lewes, in Sussex. This situation he lost through some misdemeanor. After this, however, so well were the public authorities of his native country disposed to serve him, that one of the Commissioners of Excise gave him a letter of recommendation to Dr. Franklin, then a colonial agent in London, who recommended him to go to America. At this period he had first exercised his talents as a writer by drawing up a pamphlet recommending the advance ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... now,—first a Chief Constableship of Police; next, a County Inspectorship; and thirdly, a Stipendiary Magistracy. It is aisy to run you through the two first in ordher to plant you in the third—eh? As for me I'm snug enough, unless they should make me a commissioner, of excise or something of that sort, that would not call me out upon active duty but, at all events, there's nothing like having one's eye to business, and being on ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... plane of duty the poet surrendered, and as a result we have Addison's poem, "The Campaign." It was considered a great literary feat in its day, but like all things performed to order, comes tardy off. Only work done in love lives. But Addison slid into the Excise office, taking it as legal tender. This brought him into relationship with Godolphin, who one day exclaimed, "I thought that man Addison was nothing but a poet—I'm a rogue if he isn't really a great man!" Lord ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... "Excise Court.—An information was laid against Mr. Killpack, for selling spirituous liquor. Mr. James (the counsel for the defendant) stated that there was a club held there, of which Mr. Keeley, the actor, was treasurer, and many others of the theatrical profession ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... wonders Tennyson could have had the heart to excise the beautiful couplet which in ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... I had prought Chorge inshtead of you, shtupid fool, he should have fount dat voman," said he to the servant, while the excise officers ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... private company could govern, clean, sprinkle, and teach the City by contract, taking as compensation only the fair revenue to be derived from its property. Take one item as an illustration: under the old excise system, the liquor licenses yielded twelve thousand dollars per annum; under the new, they yield one million and a quarter. Take another: the corporation own more than twenty miles of wharves and water-front, the revenue from which does not keep the wharves ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... of a court in the Strand, laid a tempting bribe of L1,000 before him, on the very day when he had been compelled to borrow a guinea, were all lost upon the inflexible patriot. He stood up manfully, in an age of persecution, for religious liberty, opposed the oppressive excise, and demanded frequent Parliaments and a fair representation ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... which is here faintly but still faithfully sketched, the rapid diminution of the revenue was inevitable, and of course that decline mainly occurred in the two all-important branches of the customs and excise. ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... by philosophers. Paine had had the advantage of close contact with men and affairs in both hemispheres. Not even Cobbett, his literary successor, passed through more varied experiences. Born in 1737 at Thetford in Norfolk, Paine divided his early life between stay-making, excise work, the vending of tobacco, and a seafaring life. His keen eyes, lofty brow, prominent nose, proclaimed him a thinker and fighter, and therefore, in that age, a rebel. What more natural than that he, a foe to authority ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... the table in the room [THE ROOM—the principal room in the house], drinking with the excise-man and the gauger, who came up to see his honour, and we were standing over the fire ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... wages of the week, which was always reduced to two or three working days, were completely dedicated by him to the worship of this god of the Barriers,—[The cheap wine shops are outside the Barriers, to avoid the octroi, or municipal excise.]—and Genevieve was obliged herself to provide for all the wants ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre
... many things that plead strongly against it [seeking a place in the Excise]: the uncertainty of getting soon into business; the consequences of my follies, which perhaps make it impracticable for me to stay at home; and, besides, I have been for some time pining under secret wretchedness, from causes which ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... interest in Brooklyn reforms, had gained the confidence of our tax-payers and our philanthropists. The police force was too small for a city of 5,000,000 people. The taxes were not big enough to afford an adequate equipment. There was a constant depreciation of our police and excise officials in the churches. City officials should not be caricatured—they should be respected, or dismissed. It was about this time a mounted police department was started in Brooklyn, and though small it was needed. What the miscreant community ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... that he was once at a consultation of the Opposition, in which it was proposed to have Sir Robert murdered by a mob, of which the earl had declared his abhorrence. Such an attempt was actually made in 1733, at the time of the famous excise bill. As the minister descended the stairs of the House of commons on the night he carried the bill, he was guarded on one side by his second son Edward, and on the other by General Charles Churchill; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... essential to good order. They have sent the spirit of discord through the land, and I will prophesy, that it will never be extinguished, but by the extinction of their power. Is the spirit of concord to go hand in hand with the Peace and Excise, through this nation? Is it to be expected between an insolent Excisemen, and a peer, gentleman, freeholder, or farmer, whose private houses are now made liable to be entered and searched at pleasure? The spirit of concord hath not gone forth ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... those dependent on him must have bread; and since he saw no reasonable prospect of earning it with his head, he must earn it with his hands. They were strong and willing. So he leased a farm at Ellisland in Dumfriesshire, and obtained an appointment from the Board of Excise: then, poet, farmer, and exciseman, he went back to Mauchline and was married to Jean. Leaving her and her child he repaired to Ellisland, where he was obliged to build a cottage for himself. He dug the foundations, collected stone and sand, carted lime, and generally assisted the masons and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... which engaged the attention of Mr. Sheridan during this session, the principal was a motion of his own for the repeal of the Excise Duties on Tobacco, which appears to have called forth a more than usual portion of his oratory,—his speeches on the subject occupying nearly forty pages. It is upon topics of this unpromising kind, and from the very effort, perhaps, to dignity and enliven them, that the peculiar characteristics ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... on the other side; and was now organizing a little scheme for smuggling tobacco into London, which must bring thirty thousand a year to any man who would advance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer of the Excise who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who had been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie-ship which had been sunk in the first year of the war, with three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, and ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the loft door, mounted quickly, saying: 'Now I am safe—I can get to the roofs of the adjoining houses.' As he turned to descend he missed his step and fell, dislocating his right arm severely. At this time he was engaged upon the portrait of the king for the Excise-office. With extraordinary courage he managed to finish the picture, working most painfully, and supporting as he best could his right arm with his left. He declared it to be the finest portrait he had ever painted; and his friends echoed his opinion. But it was the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Anglicus of 1645, and said there were many scandalous passages therein against the Commissioners of Excise in London. He produced one passage, which being openly read by himself, the whole committee adjudged it to signify the errors of sub-officers, but had no relation to the Commissioners themselves, which I affirmatively maintained to be the true ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... are desirous of engaging in the management of an Academy. Are you in low circumstances? Are you a broken attorney, or excise-man? A disbanded Frenchman, or superannuated clerk? Offer your service for a trifling consideration; declaim on the roguery of requiring large sums, and make yourself amends in the inferior articles; quills, paper, ink, books, candles, fire, extraordinary ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... gentleman who merits praise oftener than he is named, did the little that was done or attempted to be done for him: nor was that little done on the peer's part without solicitation:—"I wish to go into the excise;" thus he wrote to Glencairn; "and I am told your lordship's interest will easily procure me the grant from the commissioners: and your lordship's patronage and goodness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... long bamboo poles into the bed of the stream, walk along the ledge to the stern, thus propelling the barge, and repeating the operation as often as they have traversed the length of the planks. A number of excise posts and custom-houses are established along the route from the tea regions to Canton, for the purpose of levying duties on the teas, none being allowed to be sent to that city by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... of the growth of tobacco in England, for fiscal purposes, and is, morally and economically, neither better nor worse. The salt monopoly which we so long maintained in India was in much worse. As long as we keep up a system of excise and customs on articles of daily use, which requires an elaborate array of officers and coastguards to carry into effect, and which creates a number of purely legal crimes, it is the height of absurdity for us to affect indignation ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... whole continent of North America. A law, that they carried in opposition to the all-dreaded Mr. Pitt, on the one hand, and on the other, against the inclination of those secret directors, from whose hands they receive their delegated power. They repealed the excise upon cyder. They abolished general warrants. And after having been the authors of these and a thousand other benefits in the midst of storms and danger; they quitted their places with a disinterestedness, that ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... this be touched with lunar caustic, or any other astringent application, or let pressure be employed, still it will bleed,—not freely or in a stream, but there will be a constant drain from the part, and the infant, as a consequence, will waste, and be brought to death's door. Excise it, it will only make matters worse. The treatment in this case consists in simply winding a piece of very narrow tape round the growth, and then leaving it untouched. The bleeding will soon cease; the fungus will sprout over the upper ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... of one hundred and ten thousand pounds, by a tax upon a few commodities, it is plain you are either naturally or affectedly ignorant of our present condition: or else you would know and allow, that such a sum is not to be raised here, without a general excise; since, in proportion to our wealth, we pay already in taxes more than England ever did in the height of the war. And when you have brought over your corn, who will be the buyers? Most certainly not the poor, who will not be able to purchase the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... that horrid situation of at any time going down, in a losing bargain of a farm, to misery, I have taken my excise instructions, and have my commission in my pocket for any emergency of fortune. If I could set all before your view, whatever disrespect you in common with the world, have for this business, I know you would ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... to be assembled in it, when it ceased to be the necessary residence of the principal nobility and gentry of Scotland, it became a city of some trade and industry. It still continues, however, to be the residence of the principal courts of justice in Scotland, of the boards of customs and excise, etc. A considerable revenue, therefore, still continues to be spent in it. In trade and industry, it is much inferior to Glasgow, of which the inhabitants are chiefly maintained by the employment of ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... still at Albemarle Street. There was also a silver cup and cover, nearly thirty ounces in weight, elegantly chased. These articles realised L723 12s. 6d., and after charging the costs, commission, and Excise duty, against the sale of the books, the balance was handed ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... that in addition to the five per cent called for on articles imported, and on prizes and prize goods, it would be proper to appropriate to the payment of the public debts, a land tax, a poll tax, and an excise on spirituous liquors. I readily grant that neither of these taxes would be strictly equal between the States, nor indeed can any other tax be so, but I am convinced, that all of them taken together, would be as nearly equal as the fluctuating nature of human ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... guidman did not feel himself entitled to curb the glib tongue of his dame, or close up her ears with prudential maxims against the bad effects of darling, heart-stirring, soul-inspiring scandal. On that day there was no excise of the commodities of character. They might be bought or sold at a wanworth, or handed or banded about in any way that suited the tempers of the people. The bottle and the bicker had already, even in the forenoon, been, to a certain extent, employed as a kind of outscouts of the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... of one per cent, is to be levied upon the income of corporations. In effect this provision of the law merely continues the corporation or "excise" tax which was already in existence. But that tax now becomes an integral part of the income tax, covering the income which accrues to the stockholder and is distributable in the form of dividends. On the theory that this income is reached at the source by the tax upon the net ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... The England which sent James II upon his travels may be, as Hume pointed out, reduced to a pathetic fragment even of its electorate. The masses were unknown and undiscovered, or, where they emerged, it was either to protest against some wise reform like Walpole's Excise Scheme, or to become, as in Goldsmith and Cowper and Crabbe, the object of half-pitying poetic sentiment. How deep-rooted was the notion of aristocratic control was to be shown when France turned into substantial fact Rousseau's demand for freedom. The protest of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... In the subsequent year Parliament exempted New England from all taxes "until both houses should otherwise direct;" and, in 1646, all the colonies were exempted from all talliages except the excise, "provided their productions should be exported only in ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... the custom house or excise vessels, that may be commissioned with letters of marque, turning their attention from the smugglers to the more attractive adventure of privateering, all interest in their prizes is reserved ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... that of an amiable man and accomplished writer, Mr. B. Simmons, whose name will be recollected as that of a frequent contributor of lyrical poems of a high order to Blackwood's Magazine, and to several of the Annuals. Mr. Simmons, who held a situation in the Excise office, died July 19th.——GUIZOT, the eminent historian, on the marriage of his two daughters recently to descendants of the illustrious Hollander De WITT, was unable to give them any thing as marriage portions. Notwithstanding the eminent positions he has filled for so much of his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... brewer, have farmed the customs. They have signed and sealed ten thousand pounds a year more to the Duchess of Cleveland; who has likewise near ten thousand pounds a year out of the new farm of the country excise of Beer and Ale; five thousand pounds a year out of the Post Office; and they say, the reversion of all the King's Leases, the reversion of places all in the Custom House, the green wax, and indeed ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... agriculturist has little or nothing to do, but which may appear equally objectionable to isolated interests. Such is the proposal to allow foreign manufactured papers to be admitted at a nominal duty, in the teeth of the present excise regulations, which, of themselves, have been a grievous burden upon this branch of home industry—the reduction of the duties upon manufactured silks, linens, shoes, &c.—all of which are now to be brought into ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... tirade against that race of serpents, plunderers, robbers, net weavers, and spiders—the fair sex. Still, he cannot refrain from giving us a graphic picture of the presumptuous she-rascal who fell in love with Hugh, and although most of his copyists excise his thirty-nine graphic lines of Zuleika's portrait, the amused reader is glad to find that all were not of so edifying a mind. Her lovely hair that vied with gold was partly veiled and partly strayed around her ivory neck. Her little ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... who devote themselves to cheating the Spanish excise by smuggling cigars and English goods across the border, the Scorpions live by and on the garrison, and therefore do I name their habitat Sutlersville. "Scorpion," I should add, for the benefit of the uninitiated, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... his Dictionary, defines EXCISE "a hateful tax, levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid;" and, in the Idler (No. 65) he calls a commissioner ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 572, October 20, 1832 • Various
... tax was levied by Act of Congress on all lands and houses; excise officers were to ascertain their value. The "Alien and Sedition Laws" were also passed the same year. The execution of the law relative to the direct tax was resisted in Northampton county, Penn., ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... feelings or politics, to color the meaning. For instance, he disliked the Scots, so for the meaning of Oats he gave, "A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." He disliked the Excise duty, so he called it "A hateful tax levied by wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid." For this last meaning he came very near ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... eyes Behold the fount of Freedom in excise, Whose 'patriot' logic possibly maintains The 'identity' of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... We kneel and kiss the consecrated earth; In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew, And call Britannia's glories back to view; Behold her cross triumphant on the main, The guard of commerce, and the dread of Spain; Ere masquerades debauch'd, excise oppress'd, Or English honour grew a ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... on the question of Civil Service Reform, where he sincerely felt that I showed doctrinaire affinities, that I sided with the pharisees. We got back again into close relations as soon as I became Police Commissioner under Mayor Strong, for Joe was then made Excise Commissioner, and was, I believe, the best Excise Commissioner the city of New York ever had. He is now a farmer, his boys have been through Columbia College, and he and I look at the questions, political, social, and industrial, which confront us in 1913 ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... in which Mr. Dunning sustained his high and rare character of a patriot lawyer;—the bold proposal of Mr. Thomas Pitt, that the Commons should withhold the supplies, till pledges of amendment in the administration of public affairs should be given;—the Bill for the exclusion of Excise Officers and Contractors from Parliament, which it was reserved for a Whig Administration to pass;—these and other great constitutional questions, through which Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox fought, side by side, lavishing at every step the inexhaustible ammunition of their intellect, seem ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... years the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of every debate in the house of commons. He opposed the standing army; he opposed the excise; he supported the motion for petitioning the king to remove Walpole. His zeal was considered by the courtiers not only as violent, but as acrimonious and malignant; and, when Walpole was at last hunted from his places, every effort was made by his friends, and many ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... these three things. First, give me thy purse; for besides that thy money is marked with crosses, and the cross is an enemy to charms, the same may befall to thee which not long ago happened to John Dodin, collector of the excise of Coudray, at the ford of Vede, when the soldiers broke the planks. This moneyed fellow, meeting at the very brink of the bank of the ford with Friar Adam Crankcod, a Franciscan observantin of Mirebeau, promised him a new frock, ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... legislative work that resulted in the closing of the New York State exhibit at the World's Fair on the Sabbath, and in the passage of the bill prohibiting the employment of barmaids in saloons. She also led in the protest against the excise bill which resulted in the modification of some of its worst features, and in the protest against the infamous bill to legalize the social evil, preventing ...
— Two Decades - A History of the First Twenty Years' Work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of the State of New York • Frances W. Graham and Georgeanna M. Gardenier
... engaged in procuring this luxury a man entered the room and told Popanilla that he had walked that day two thousand five hundred paces, and that the tax due to the Excise upon this promenade was fifty crowns. The Captain stared, and remarked to the excise-officer that he thought a man's paces were a strange article to tax. The excise-officer, with great civility, answered that ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... the public revenue is through the late civil wars dilapidated, the excise, being improved or improvable to the revenue of L1,000,000, be applied, for the space of eleven years to come, to the reparation of the same, and for the present maintenance of the magistrates, knights, deputies, and other officers, ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... is the Conductor of Roads and Bridges; then I have the Receiver of Registrations, the First Clerk of Excise, and the Perceiver of the Impost. That is our dinner party. I am a sort of hovering government official, as you see. But away - away from ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... do, with a non-nutritious inflation; and that's his intellectual enjoyment; bearing a likeness to the horrible old torture of the baillir d'eau; and he's doomed to perish in the worst book-form of dropsy. You, my dear Colney, have offended his police or excise, who stand by the funnel, in touch with his palate, to make sure that nothing above proof is poured in; and there's your misfortune. He's not half a bad fellow, you find when you haven't ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... am never startled at paradoxes, nor shocked at absurdities; I can now hear with great tranquillity an harangue upon the necessity of placemen in this house, upon the usefulness of standing armies, and the happiness of a general excise. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... there were no back rooms; environed by a narrow paved yard, hemmed in by high walls duly spiked at top. Itself a close and confined prison for debtors, it contained within it a much closer and more confined jail for smugglers. Offenders against the revenue laws, and defaulters to excise or customs who had incurred fines which they were unable to pay, were supposed to be incarcerated behind an iron-plated door closing up a second prison, consisting of a strong cell or two, and a blind alley some yard and a half wide, which formed the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Davie was not much molested by the representatives of the excise. A gauger was indeed stationed in a town ten miles distant, but he was elderly, and not over energetic. He would make a formal visit now and again to suspected districts, and content himself with ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... tapestry of country town life: London jokes worn threadbare; third rate accomplishments infinitely prized; scandal removed from Dukes and Duchesses to the Parson, the Banker, the Commissioner of Excise, and the Attorney. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... department of the French excise which holds the monopoly for the manufacture and sale of tobacco, cigars, cigarettes and ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... he ought to be made into a sargent, an he said "he wor determined to extinguish hissen i' sich a way woll they couldn't be off promotionin' him, an if they didn't he'd nobscond." Soa th' furst thing he did wor to goa an ligg information agen owd Molly sellin' ale baght license. Th' excise chaps sooin had him an two or three moor off to cop th' owd lass ith' act, for they said, "unless they could see it thersen they could mak nowt aght." It wor a varry nice day, an' off they ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... allowed to exist; and there are praties in the fields, and fruit and vegetables in the garden; but there is a scarcity of flour and groceries, and instead of the claret which, in the good old days, flowed freely at table, we are reduced to drink whisky, of which the excise has not always had an opportunity of taking due cognisance. My father does not quite see the matter in the light I do, and was inclined to be offended when I ordered down a cask of the cratur from Dublin, as a salve to my conscience, ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... their Excise, which riseth with their charge, the more money they pay, the more they receive again, in that insensible but profitable way: what is exhaled up in clouds, falls back again in showers: what the souldier receives in pay, he payes in Drink: their very enemies, though they hate the State, yet ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... articles should be imported free of all duty, and that the revenue derived from import duties should be raised exclusively from the unprotected articles, or that whenever a duty is imposed upon protected articles imported an excise duty of the same rate shall be imposed upon all similar articles manufactured in the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... the estate is retailed out. One man, who has five of these shops in the city of Mexico, keeps his carriage; and is reckoned, among the magnates of the land, deriving from this source alone, it is said, $25,000 a year. The excise which Government derives from the sale of this liquor, which, in taste, resembles sour butter-milk, amounted to $817,739 in ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... of the slaves, they had been found almost a dead letter. Besides, by what law would you enter into every man's domestic concerns, and regulate the interior economy of his house and plantation? This would be something more than a general excise. Who would endure such a law? And yet on all these and innumerable other minutiae must depend the protection of the slaves, their comforts, and the probability of their increase. It was universally allowed, that the Code Noir had been utterly neglected ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... All-Ireland Parliament may be delegated, inter alia, the powers involving direct taxation, Customs and Excise, commercial treaties (with possible exceptions), land purchase, and education. The delegation may take place ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Parliament for leave to pull it down and to erect another building on its site. The proposal, however, was not entertained, but in the year 1767 an Act was passed vesting Gresham House in the Crown for the purpose of an Excise Office, and providing for the payment by the Crown to the City and Company of a perpetual annuity of L500 per annum. For some time the lectures ceased to be delivered for lack of accommodation. When they were next delivered it was at the City of London School, where they continued until Gresham ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... wine, whiskey, or beer, and the producers of tobacco, in its manufactured forms, have to pay an excise tax in proportion to the amount ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun
... person giving security and taking out a licence may make malt in a malt-house approved by the Excise for the purpose; and all malt so made and mixed with linseed-cake or linseed-meal as directed, shall ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... learn it all in a single lifetime, even a lifetime of five hundred years, much less to pass that knowledge on to another. So only the most important events are reported. And that means that each historian must also be an editor. He must excise those portions ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... branches of the Anglo-Saxon race than the extreme impatience with which they submit to any direct interference of the government in the private affairs of the citizens; and no form of such interference has ever been so generally odious as the excise, and, by consequence, no officer so generally detested as the exciseman. This feeling, on account of the very large number of persons engaged in distilling, was then formidably strong in Kentucky,—all the more so that this form of taxation was a favorite measure ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... for trade, ain't it? And we thought, Deakin, the Badger and me, that coins being ever on the vanish, and you not over sweet on them there lovely little locks at Leslie's, and them there bigger and uglier marine stores at the Excise Office.... ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... policy. Laurier would not go so far, and the policy of unrestricted reciprocity was made the official programme in 1888. Commercial union had involved not only absolute free trade between Canada and the United States but common excise rates, a common tariff against the rest of the world, and the division of customs and excise revenues in some agreed proportion. Unrestricted reciprocity would mean free trade between the two countries, but with each left free to levy what rates ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... for the better regulating of pilots, for the conducting of ships and vessels from Dover, Deal, and the Isle of Thanet, up the River Thames and Medway; and for the permitting rum or spirits of the British sugar plantations to be landed before the duties of excise are paid thereon; and to continue and amend an Act for preventing fraud in the admeasurement of coals within the city and liberties of Westminster, and several parishes near thereunto; and to continue several laws for preventing exactions of occupiers ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... was like an oven. The afternoon sun blazed with such energy that even the thermometer hanging in the excise officer's room lost its head: it ran up to 112.5 and stopped there, irresolute. The inhabitants streamed with perspiration like overdriven horses, and were too lazy ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the late destruction, the old houses opposite were not altogether pulled down, but were sliced, as it were, through their roofs and rooms, at a safe angle; and there, no doubt, are still standing portions of Vanozza's inn, while far below, the cellars where she kept her wine free of excise, by papal privilege, are still as cool and ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... head of receipt was the excise, which, in the last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred and eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The net proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to five hundred and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did not lie very heavy on the nation. The tax on chimneys, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lives and property of the Canadian subjects of Her Majesty resident in that country who are engaged in legitimate business pursuits, it was evident that the revenue justly due to the Government of Canada, under its customs, excise and land laws, and which would go a long way to pay the expenses of government, was being lost for the want of adequate machinery for ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue
... 'News-Letter,' first, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, was returned for the ministerial borough of Barterfaith; next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had taken a distinguished part in the debate upon the Excise Bill in the support of government; and, lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been honoured with a seat at one of those boards where the pleasure of serving the country is combined with other important gratifications, which, to render them the more acceptable, occur regularly ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... the other there are three Yams (post-stations) established. The length of the chief streets is three parasangs, and the city contains 64 quadrangles corresponding to one another in structure, and with parallel ranges of columns. The salt excise brings in daily 700 balish in paper-money. The number of craftsmen is so great that 32,000 are employed at the dyer's art alone; from that fact you may estimate the rest. There are in the city 70 tomans ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... President or College appertaining, not exceeding the value of five hundred pounds per annum, shall from henceforth be freed from all civil impositions, taxes, and rates; all goods to the said Corporation, or to any scholars thereof, appertaining, shall be exempted from all manner of toll, customs, and excise whatsoever; and that the said President, Fellows, and scholars, together with the servants, and other necessary officers to the said President or College appertaining, not exceeding ten,—viz. three to the ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... that draw in bubbles for old gamesters to rook; also a sergeant's yeoman, or bailiff's follower; also an excise-officer. ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... Saint That vouch'd the Bulls o' th' Covenant: Others for pulling down th' high-places Of Synods and Provincial Classes, 280 That us'd to make such hostile inroads Upon the Saints, like bloody NIMRODS Some for fulfilling prophecies, And th' expiration of th' excise And some against th' Egyptian bondage 285 Of holy-days, and paying poundage: Some for the cutting down of groves, And rectifying bakers' loaves: And some for finding out expedients Against the slav'ry of obedience. 290 Some were for Gospel Ministers, And some ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... this is a scandalous place, for they say your Honour was but a broken Excise-Man, who spent the King's Money to buy your Wife fine Petticoats; and at last not worth a Groat, you came over a poor Servant, though now a Justice of the Peace, and of ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn
... was Washington's duty to remain at the helm and keep an eye to windward. This unhappy condition of affairs, he said, had all come from the course pursued by the secretary of the treasury, and was the natural consequence of the acts of Congress in relation to the public debt, the Bank, excise, currency, and other important measures passed in accordance with the secretary's policy. Whether this policy was meant to destroy the Union, subvert the republic, and establish a monarchy upon its ruins, at any rate such ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... immediately gets very drunk, thereby affording another proof of the horribly adulterated condition of the liquor used on the stage, which infallibly intoxicates an actor within two minutes after it is imbibed. [Let the Excise authorities see to this matter.] Finally JACK falls, and the curtain immediately follows ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... p. 517.).—Though I am unable to answer your correspondent Mac's inquiry as to the antiquity of this dance, it may interest him as well as others of the readers of "NOTES AND QUERIES" to know, that when Walpole made up his mind to abandon his Excise bill (which met with a still fiercer opposition out of doors than in the House of Commons), he signified his intention to a party of his adherents at the supper-table, by quoting the first ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various
... slatternly, with two dirty children at her side. She wept very much when she saw me, called me 'Sir,' and 'Mr. Lyndon,' at which I was not sorry, and begged me to help her husband; which I did, getting him, through my friend Lord Crabs, a place in the excise in Ireland, and paying the passage of his family and himself to that country. I found him a dirty, cast-down, snivelling drunkard; and, looking at poor Nora, could not but wonder at the days when I had thought her a divinity. ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... connected with the Excise was returning home from one of his professional journies. His way lay across a range of hills, the road over which was so blocked up with snow as to leave all trace of it indiscernible. Uncertain how to proceed, he ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... document President Jackson said of Nullification: "If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy. The Excise law in Pennsylvania, the Embargo and Non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the Carriage-tax in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but fortunately, ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... the protection of commerce has become more indispensable. The discovery is completely made, that it is from commerce that the revenue is to be drawn which is to support this government, A direct tax, a stamp act, a carriage tax, and an excise, have been tried; and I believe, sir, after the lesson which experience has given on the subject, no set of men in power will ever repeat them again, for all they are likely to produce. The burden must be pretty light upon the people of this country, or the rider is in great ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... by positive infirmity. He is very adventurous, and fond of excitement; it is not, therefore, singular that he should be a hardy smuggler, so cunning and adroit that he contrives to evade the officers of the excise in a surprising manner. If, however, a smuggler falls beneath the shot of one of the guardians of right, all the natives become at once his deadly enemy, and he has no safety but in leaving the country instantly. The women assist their relations in this dangerous traffic, and perform ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... very active crew, very obedient to their captain, who lost as little time as possible. He had scarcely been a week at Leghorn before the hold of his vessel was filled with printed muslins, contraband cottons, English powder, and tobacco on which the excise had forgotten to put its mark. The master was to get all this out of Leghorn free of duties, and land it on the shores of Corsica, where certain speculators undertook to forward the cargo to France. They sailed; Edmond ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... in the operation considerable care is required. The operator must remember that close beneath him, and more particularly in front, is the pedal articulation. It is better, therefore, to excise the cartilage piecemeal, and to do it carefully, than to attempt, at the risk of injury to the joint, to make ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... with earthy particles, and surcharged with muriate and sulphate of magnesia. Since the province of Cumana has become dependent on the intendancia of Caracas, the sale of salt is under the control of the excise; and the fanega, which the Guayquerias sold at half a piastre, costs a piastre and a half.* (* The fanega of salt is sold to those Indians and fishermen who do not pay the duties (derechos reales), at Punta Araya for six, at Cumana for eight reals. The prices to the other ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... having searched his curate's house, he pursues them so energetically on horseback that they hardly escape him by fording the Durance. Whereupon, "he wrote to demand the dismissal of the officers, declaring that unless this was done every person employed in the Excise should be driven into the Rhine or the sea; some of them were dismissed and the director himself came to give him satisfaction." Finding his canton sterile and the settlers on it idle he organized ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... Coach routes direct from London, with the hours of their arrival at the principal towns, is completeness itself: but how will these items be deranged by Steam Coaches? Among the Useful Tables, one of Excise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 405, December 19, 1829 • Various
... to trade, customs, and the excise, shall be the same in Scotland as in England. But all the other laws of Scotland shall remain in force; but alterable by the parliament of Great Britain. Yet with this caution; that laws relating to public policy are alterable at the discretion of the parliament; laws relating to private ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... greatest poet the world had seen for ages; the people huzza'ed for Marlborough and for Addison, and, more than this, the party in power provided for the meritorious poet, and Addison got the appointment of Commissioner of Excise, which the famous Mr. Locke vacated, and rose from this place to other dignities and honors; his prosperity from henceforth to the end of his life being scarce ever interrupted. But I doubt whether he was not happier in his garret in the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... transmute into terms of drama, and that the later plays, full of successful stage tricks though they are, did not come out of his knowledge of Irish life. Knowledge of Ireland he ought to have, for he is said to have lived for comparatively long periods in various places in country as an excise officer. As such Mr. Boyle was himself one of the principal types, that of the official, that exist in Ireland, and in a position to learn much of many other types, surprisingly few of which he has realized with any depth ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... consequence of the Civil War. The climatic conditions here are certainly not more unfavourable to such an experiment in agriculture than they were at first supposed to be in the Pennsylvanian counties of York and Lancaster. Of course the Imperial excise would deal with it as harshly as it is now dealing with a similar experiment in England. But the Irish tobacco-growers would not now have to fear such hostile legislation as ruined the Irish linen industries in ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... the rowboats, and then they are easily frightened into abandoning the risky venture altogether. On the settlers who have come as clerks to the Company Governor MacDonell can keep a strong hand, for they have been paid their wages in advance and are seized if they attempt to desert. Then the excise officer here is a friend of the Nor'westers, and he creates {383} endless trouble rowing round and round the boats, bawling . . . bawling out . . . to know "if all who are embarking are going of their own free will," till the ship's hands, looking over ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... branch of this latter description. In America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it, excises must be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses and lands; and personal property is too precarious and invisible a fund to be laid hold of in any ...
— The Federalist Papers
... a zollverein between Canada and the United States, involved absolute free trade between the two countries, common excise rates, a common customs tariff on the seaboard, and the pooling and dividing according to population of the revenue. This was not a new proposal; it had been suggested time and again in both countries, ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... distillery of arrack is entirely in their hands. They are the carriers of eastern Asia, and even the Dutch often make use of their vessels. They keep all the shops and most of the inns of Batavia, and farm all the duties of excise and customs. Generally speaking, they are well-made men, of an olive complexion, their heads being peculiarly round, with small eyes, and short flat noses. They do not cut their hair, as all in China are obliged to do since the Tartars conquered the country; and whenever ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... limited; and in some cases there are symptoms referable to pressure on the median nerve. By keeping the hand in the dorsiflexed position for a week or ten days, the bone may become fixed in its place and the function of the wrist be restored, but it is often necessary to excise the bone. ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... into habitations and lecture-rooms for seven professors or lecturers on seven liberal sciences, who were to receive a salary out of the revenues of the Royal Exchange. Gresham College was subsequently converted into the modern general excise-office; but the places are still continued, with a double salary for the loss of apartments, and the lectures are delivered gratuitously twice a day in a small room in the Royal Exchange, during term-time. The will of the founder has not, however, been actually carried into ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... in 1803, she married Mr John Inglis, only son of John Inglis, D.D., minister of Kirkmabreck, in Galloway. By the death of Mr Inglis in 1826, she became dependent, with three children by her second marriage, on a small annuity arising from an appointment which her late husband had held in the Excise. She relieved the sadness of her widowhood by a course of extensive reading, and of composition both in prose and verse. In 1838 she published, at the solicitation of friends, a duodecimo volume, entitled "Miscellaneous Collection of Poems, chiefly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... rich, he was poor, and his father before him was poor, and he was raised a sailmaker, a very lowly profession, and yet that man became one of the mainstays of liberty in this world. At one time he was an excise man, like Burns. Burns was once—speak it softly—a gauger—and yet he wrote poems that will wet the cheek of humanity with tears as long as the world travels in its orb ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... There is an excise on all articles of consumption brought to the towns; but the officers are not strict, and it would be reckoned invidious to enter a house to search, ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... looser growths they may be snared by a fine, spring wire passed as a loop through a fine tube (like a teat tube open at each end) and introduced into the teat. When this can not be done, the only resort is to cut in and excise it ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... precinct winked at it. The officers of the precinct looked upon the religious leaders as "easy marks"—every one of them. The detectives of the Society for Prevention of Crime went through my parish and discovered wholesale violations of excise laws and city ordinances by the existence of bawdy-houses and the selling of liquor in prohibited hours and on Sundays. The captain of the precinct came out with a public statement that these men were liars; that the law was observed and prostitution did not exist. ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... loving friends the Commissioners, for managing His Majesty's Revenues of Customs and Excise, now and for the time being, and to all other ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... the sexton, trembling more than ever, for he had bought it of the smugglers, and he thought his questioner might be in the excise department of ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... have not seized the opportunity of making my escape with the others. The height of imprudence may become the height of security. I have as yet no plan—but it will come. My luck shall not fail me now! who knows: nothing perhaps is damaged but an excise man's crown. Thank heaven, the wind cannot fail ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... seems intent upon glorious achievements, a knight-errant. The ridicule among us runs strong against laudable actions; nay, in the ordinary course of things, and the common regards of life, negligence of the public is an epidemic vice. The brewer in his excise, the merchant in his customs, and, for aught we know, the soldier in his muster-rolls, think never the worse of themselves for being guilty of their respective frauds towards the public. This evil is come to such a fantastical height, that he ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... and it is moreover tolerably well known that Somerset House is a nest of public offices, which are held to be of less fashionable repute than those situated in the neighbourhood of Downing Street, but are not so decidedly plebeian as the Custom House, Excise, and Post Office. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... of the United Kingdom," they will find the very first article on the list is "Mum." "Berlin white beer" follows this. One of the few occasions when I have ever known Mr. Gladstone nonplussed for an answer, was in a debate on the Budget (I think in 1886) on a proposed increase of excise duties. Mr. Gladstone was asked what "Mum" was, and confessed that he had not the smallest idea. The opportunity for instructing the omniscient Mr. Gladstone seemed such a unique one, that I nearly jumped up in my place to tell him ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... even ships allowed to unload at Cadiz could do so only on condition that their cargoes be transported directly to Seville. A particularly crushing tax was the alcabala, or 10 per cent. impost on all sales. Other import duties, royalties on metals, excise on food, monopolies, and petty regulations finally handicapped Spain's merchants so effectually that they fell behind those of other countries in the race ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... heard that I was a smuggler. People do say so; but, gentlemen, I now pay customs and excise—my tea has paid duty, and so has my tobacco; so does everything—the king has his own. The Bible says, 'Render under Caesar the things which are Caesar's.' Gentlemen, I stand by the Bible. I am a poor, sinful ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... necessity of throwing an equitable proportion of the public burden upon Rome and Italy. [961] In the prosecution of this unpopular design, he advanced, however, by cautious and well-weighed steps. The introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise, and the scheme of taxation was completed by an artful assessment on the real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted from any kind of contribution above ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... or injured, producing offspring with the same parts ill-formed; but as it is not very rare for similar malformations to appear spontaneously, all such cases may be due to coincidence. It is, however, an argument on the other side that "under the old excise laws the shepherd-dog was only exempt from tax when without a tail, and for this reason it was always removed" (12/60. 'The Dog' by Stonehenge 1867 page 118.); and there still exist breeds of the shepherd-dog which are always ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... stupendous array of indirect taxes, which, under the influence of similar partial but fierce agitations, have been abandoned by successive conceding administrations to purchase temporary popularity, we feel convinced that the time is not far distant when the remaining customs and excise, producing, at present, about thirty millions of revenue, will share the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... assembles merely to listen to a political debate. But then he remembered, as they dodged from in front of the horses, what it was not merely a political debate: The pulse of nation was here, a great nation stricken with approaching fever. It was not now a case of excise, but of existence. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill |
