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Excise   /ɛksˈaɪs/  /ˈɛksaɪz/   Listen
Excise

verb
(past & past part. excised; pres. part. excising)
1.
Remove by erasing or crossing out or as if by drawing a line.  Synonyms: expunge, scratch, strike.  "Scratch that remark"
2.
Levy an excise tax on.
3.
Remove by cutting.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Excise" Quotes from Famous Books



... together. The master of the house usually sat in his study on a leather couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman, usually a colleague from our office or some other department. I never saw more than two or three visitors there, always the same. They talked about the excise duty; about business in the senate, about salaries, about promotions, about His Excellency, and the best means of pleasing him, and so on. I had the patience to sit like a fool beside these people for four hours at a stretch, listening to them without ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky

... 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, and a few dozen of claret, as a remembrance of days gone ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... argued, and being put on the 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 Godolphin was needing a good ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... surrounded by a well-armed escort to various receivers in the remoter parts of the wild country north-west of Wimborne. The leaders of this attack were afterwards found to be members of a famous Sussex band and the incident led to tragedy. An informer named Chater, of Fordingbridge, and an excise officer—William Calley—were on their way to lay an information, when they were seized by a number of smugglers and cruelly done to death. For this six men suffered the full penalty and three others were hanged for ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... 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 Federal ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... gossip; and even the 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 array ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... central figure this evening. You must be among the laughers, and then you can tell us something of the cock-fights and the boxing-bouts in England. That sort of amusement pleases me mightily, and I would permit it to come into this country without excise or other duty. Very well, then, the Smoker is at eight o'clock. Your pardon for this queer audience of dismissal. Bring a brave thirst with you. For in the matter of drinking we pay no attention to the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... bounties. The natural corollary of the first theory was that the colonies ought at least to support the troops thus generously sent them; and various suggestions looking to this end were made by royal governors. Thus Shirley in 1756 devised a general system of taxation, including import duties, an excise, and a poll-tax; delinquents to be brought to terms by "warrants of distress and imprisonment of persons." When, in 1762, Governor Bernard of Massachusetts promised 400 pounds in bounties on the faith of the colony, James Otis protested that he had "involved their most ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable article—tobacco, ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... after the appointed day there shall be an Irish Exchequer and Consolidated Fund separate from those of the United Kingdom. (2) The duties of customs and excise and the duties on postage shall be imposed by Act of Parliament, but subject to the provisions of this Act the Irish Legislature may, in order to provide for the public service of Ireland, impose any other taxes. (3) Save as in this Act mentioned, all matters relating to the taxes in ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... compromise of the Zollverein, and advocate a tariff of a decidedly protective character. Great dissatisfaction has been manifested in Hungary, on account of the newly imposed tax on tobacco, which is one of the principal productions of the country. In consequence of this opposition the excise corps has been greatly enlarged, and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... The excise young fellows, They are tremendously wild: They shave their beards, And ride on horses, Wear overshoes, And eat with ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... W. Bicknell, the 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 what not? All promotions spiritual and temporal ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy

... and what was this man, and why was he performing these laborious journeys? Robert Dick, born in 1811, was the son of an excise officer, who gave his children a hard stepmother when Robert was ten years old. The boy's own mother, all tenderness and affection, had spoiled him for such a life as he now had to lead under a woman who loved him not, and did not understand his unusual cast of character, his ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... 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 while the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... necessary to check the evil. The first is necessary for the public health, and to support repressive laws. As a helpful means of repression it is proposed that the social evil, along with questions of social morals, like gambling, excise, and amusements, shall be taken out of the hands of the municipal police and the politicians, and lodged with an unpaid morals commission, which shall have its own special corps of expert officers and a morals court for the trial of cases appropriate to its jurisdiction. This experiment actually ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... jail was stormed. At Nottingham the castle was burned, and of nine men subsequently convicted of riot, three were hanged. At Bristol, the jail, the Mansion House, the Customs House, the Excise Office, and the Bishop's Palace were burned, and twelve lives were lost ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton

... adopted the proposal. The orders were immediately printed, and I was one of the committee directed to sign and dispose of them. The fund for paying them was the interest of all the paper currency then extant in the province upon loan, together with the revenue arising from the excise, which being known to be more than sufficient, they obtain'd instant credit, and were not only receiv'd in payment for the provisions, but many money'd people, who had cash lying by them, vested it in those orders, which they found ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin

... 23rd.—I am much obliged to you for your interesting article. I think the best heading would be 'Russia on the Pacific.' As I am much pressed for room, I have ventured to excise some of your introductory remarks, which are not essential to the main objects of the paper; but when you come to positive business at Vladivostock, all that you say is most excellent and important. I believe the Siberian ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton

... defines Excise: 'A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid.' The Commissioners of Excise being offended by this severe ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... 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 ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... Man's a Man for a' that. His sympathy with the Revolution led him to send four pieces of ordnance, taken from a captured smuggler, as a present to the French Convention, a piece of bravado which got him into difficulties with his superiors in the excise. The poetry which Burns wrote, not in dialect, but in the classical English, is in the stilted manner of his century, and his prose correspondence betrays his lack of culture by his constant lapse into ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... and sea for all the high contracting powers is an altogether practicable step. Disarmament is not a dream; it is a thing more practicable than a general hygienic convention and more easily enforced than custom and excise. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the lady is to be comprehensible. Lucien's introduction came about oddly enough. In the previous winter a newcomer had brought some interest into Mme. de Bargeton's monotonous life. The place of controller of excise fell vacant, and M. de Barante appointed a man whose adventurous life was a sufficient passport to the house of the sovereign lady who had her ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... 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, provided that in the transporting ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... sea-life again lured Paine away from the shop-board. He shipped in another privateer, and this time actually served out the cruise. In 1759, we find him living at Sandwich, a staymaker and a married man. In 1761, he was a widower and an officer of the excise. From this position he was dismissed, for some reason which escaped both Cobbett and Cheetham, and eleven months afterward was reinstated on his own petition. In the interval, he found employment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... hitherto lain upon the people that the very name of excise was unknown to them; and among the other evils arising from these domestic wars was the introduction of that impost into England. The parliament at Westminster having voted an excise on beer, wine, and other commodities, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume

... bought at one price, theology declares that no such thing can be ordered. If it is decreed that the Indians, in order that they may cultivate and weave their cotton, since it is so abundant in the country, should not wear silks and Chinese stuffs, nothing could be worse. No sooner is the excise, or the merchant's peso, or the two per cent duty imposed for the wall, than it is against conscience and the bull De cena Domini ["of the Lord's supper"]. If I undertake to appoint magistrates to govern in peace and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... show Blackbeard's diamond gleaming inside, I had stumbled on the Mohune's vault, and found it to be nothing but a cellar of gentlemen of the contraband, for surely good liquor would never be stored in so shy a place if it ever had paid the excise. ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner

... 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 ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... man from a general to a drummer, every officer of a ship, every judge, every King's counsel, every lord-lieutenant of a county, every justice of the peace, every ambassador, every minister of state, every person employed in the royal household, in the custom-house, in the post-office, in the excise, would have been a Catholic. The Catholics would have had a majority in the House of Lords, even if that majority had been made, as Sunderland threatened, by bestowing coronets on a whole troop of the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... opinions, and even prejudices, under general definitions of words, while at the same time the original meaning of the words is not explained, as his Tory, Whig, Pension, Oats, Excise,* and a few more, cannot be fully defended, and must be placed to the account of capricious and humorous indulgence. Talking to me upon this subject when we were at Ashbourne in 1777, he mentioned a still stronger instance of the predominance of his private ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... 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 these ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... 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 old ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... theological writers, Horatius Bonar, is likewise favourably known as a sacred lyric poet. He is a native of Edinburgh, where his father, the late James Bonar, Esq., a man of eminent piety and accomplished scholarship, held the office of a Solicitor of Excise. His ancestors for several successive generations were ministers of the Church of Scotland. He was educated at the High School and the University of his native city. After engaging for some time in missionary labour at Leith, he was ordained ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... themselves securely at Pittsburgh, they made requisition on Philadelphia for six thousand kegs of flour and three thousand kegs of whisky—a disproportion as startling as Falstaff's intolerable deal of sack to one half-penny-worth of bread. Congress, in 1791, passed an excise law to assist in paying the war debt. The measure was very unpopular, and its operation was forcibly resisted, particularly in Pittsburgh, which was noted then, as now, for the quantity and quality of its whisky. There were distilleries on ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church

... 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 expences, ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous

... The Edinburgh period had come and gone, and all that his intercourse with his influential friends had brought him was the four or five hundred pounds of profit from his poems and an opportunity to enter the excise service. With part of the money he relieved his brother Gilbert from pressing obligations at Mossgiel by the loan of one hundred and eighty pounds, and with the rest leased the farm of Ellisland ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson

... about the manner of levying a tax. The revolution of the American colonies began in the same way; and it is generally at the manner that nations enjoying a certain degree of freedom make objection. The excise had very nearly proved fatal to the government of this country, as the stamp duties did to that of France, and as the general amount and enormity of taxes did ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... by references to Dona Isabel and Don Carlos, to Mr. Villiers and Lord Palmerston. But cut these dates out, and they might be travels of the last century. His Welsh book proclaims itself as written in the full course of the Crimean War; but excise a few passages which bear directly on that event, and the most ingenious critic would be puzzled to "place" the composition. Shakespeare, we know, was for all time, not of one age only; but I think we may say of Borrow, without too severely or conceitedly marking ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... ago, as a 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 the last century. The "Moonlighters" ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert

... one day know, Job,' answered Mr. Trumbull,—'the comfort of a conscience void of offence, and that fears neither gauger nor collector, neither excise nor customs. The business is to pass this gentleman to Cumberland upon earnest business, and to procure him speech with the Laird of the Solway Lakes—I suppose that can be done? Now I think Nanty Ewart, if he sails with the brig this morning tide, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... 1646 the Parliament passed another ordinance, exempting the colonies for three years from all tollages, "except the excise," provided their productions should not be "exported but only in English vessels." While this Act also asserted the parliamentary right of taxation over the Colonial plantations, it formed a part of what was extended and executed by the famous Act of Navigation, first passed by the Puritan Parliament ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson

... gray chill day and the laird's dying. Curiosity faintly stretched herself. He turned into the inn, took a seat by a corner table, and called for a bottle of wine. In addition to the soldiers the room had a handful of others—farmers, a lawyer's clerk from Stirling, a petty officer of the excise, and two or three village nondescripts. From this group there now disengaged himself Robin Greenlaw, who came ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... four each; and so on. The Bundesrath is presided over by the Imperial Chancellor. At the beginning of each yearly session it appoints eleven standing committees to deal with the following matters: (1) Army and fortifications; (2) the Navy; (3) tariff, excise, and taxes; (4) commerce and trade; (5) railways, posts and telegraphs; (6) civil and criminal law; (7) financial accounts; (8) foreign affairs; (9) Alsace-Lorraine; (10) the Imperial Constitution; (11) Standing Orders. Each committee ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... of the wrist are 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

... seeking cannot be accomplished without the continuing every-day effort of the Executive and Legislative Branches to keep expenditures under control. It will also be necessary to continue all of the present excise taxes without any reduction and the corporation income taxes at their present rates for another ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower • Dwight D. Eisenhower

... contributed nothing to the state. This is a great mistake. They certainly did not contribute equally with each other, nor either of them equally with the commons. They both, however, contributed largely. Neither nobility nor clergy enjoyed any exemption from the excise on consumable commodities, from duties of custom, or from any of the other numerous indirect impositions, which in France, as well as here, make so very large a proportion of all payments to the public. The noblesse ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... Caller, cool. Canna, cannot. Cannie, careful, crafty. Cannilie, craftily. Cantie, canty, cheerful, jolly. Cantraip, magic, witchcraft. Capernoity, ill-natured. Carlin, old woman. Cates, dainties. Cauld, cold. Caup, cup. Celness, coldness. Cess, excise, tax. Chafe, chafing. Change-house, tavern. Chapman, peddler. Chapournelie, hat. Chelandri, goldfinch. Cheres, cheers. Cheves, moves. Chirm, chirp. Church-giebe-house, grave. Claes, clothes. Claithing, clothing. Clamb, climbed. Claught, catch up. Clinkin, smartly. Clinkumbell, the bell-ringer. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum

... [Footnote: For an explanation of this point, see Section 214 of this chapter.] In 1919 a new Federal law was enacted. In order to avoid the charge of unconstitutionality, this measure attacks child labor indirectly. The law levies an excise tax of ten per cent on the entire net profits received from the sale of all the products of any mine, quarry, mill, cannery, workshop, factory, or manufacturing establishment, which employs children contrary to certain age and hour ...
— Problems in American Democracy • Thames Ross Williamson

... Guthries, Ralphs, and Amhersts, whose names meet us in the notes to the Dunciad 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 ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen

... my knowledge of him is confined to other matters, we will say he is the noblest Roman of them all. He likewise had a dig at the Custom-house officials; I know not whether he was wiping off old scores. Appointed by the I.N.C. as director of the Excise office, he communicated with the resident officials—Franjo Jakov[vc]i['c], Ivan Mikuli[vc]i['c] and Grga Ma[vz]uran—on December 5, and told them to clear out by the following Saturday, they and their families, so ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... invitation, into her parlour, I desired to know if she were acquainted with a young country clergyman of the name of Brand. She hesitatingly, seeing me in some emotion, owned that she had some small knowledge of the gentleman. Just then came in her husband, who is, it seems, a petty officer of excise, (and not an ill-behaved man,) who owned a fuller ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... Commission of Fine Arts, selected probably and appropriately from the consideration that home-produced savonnerie may lead to clean ideas of taste, and who, in his own interest, would be a capital Commissioner of Excise; and Bowring, so well qualified to be chairman of a general board of Commissioner Tourists, from his multifarious practice—come we at last to Cobden, of corn and colonial fame, fiercely struggling with gaunt O'Connell himself ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... accomplishments are such as do not well endure the fierce white light that beats upon the throne. The sin of over-vivid reminiscence is the one most persistently imputed to him, and not without cause. While I see no reason to accuse him of deliberate imitation, I think he is a little too loth to excise from his music those things of his that prove on consideration to have been said or sung before him. Instead of crying, "Pereant qui ante nos nostra cantaverunt," he believes in a live-and-let-live policy. But ah, if De ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... discovery that the further he proceeded on the road the more he saw his utter incapacity to understand and to master the subjects. His friend and guide, John Turnill,—subsequently promoted to a post in the excise—was equally unable to throw light into the darkness of plus and minus, and after a few last convulsive struggles to get through the 'known quantities' into the unknown regions of x, y, and z, he gave it up as a hopeless effort. The spare hours henceforth ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... my declaring my willingness to deal with themselves in preference to their master; it was clear that they had resolved that I should, in the most expeditious and advantageous way, turn my goods into money, that they might excise upon me to the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... 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 Parliament ...
— The British North America Act, 1867 • Anonymous

... articles. There was a back way from the river-side, up a covered entry, to the yard-door of the Fosters, and a peculiar kind of knock at this door always brought out either John or Jeremiah, or if not them, their shopman, Philip Hepburn; and the same cake and wine that the excise officer's wife might just have been tasting, was brought out in the back parlour to treat the smuggler. There was a little locking of doors, and drawing of the green silk curtain that was supposed to shut out the shop, but really all this was done very ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... drawing-room windows. The Sacheverell outrage was wildest in this chosen quarter of noblemen and blackguards; and in George II.'s reign, when Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls, made himself odious to the lowest class by his Act for laying an excise upon gin, a mob assailed him in the middle of the fields, threw him to the ground, kicked him over and over, and savagely trampled upon him. It was a marvel that he escaped with his life; but with characteristic good humor, he soon ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... alcohol, whether as wine, whiskey, or beer, and the producers of tobacco, in its manufactured forms, have to pay an excise tax in proportion to the amount and ...
— Business Hints for Men and Women • Alfred Rochefort Calhoun

... are assessed by authority of the Assembly,—generally a land tax, of 6, 12, 18 pence up to 2-1/2 shillings on the pound of rent, and incomes of professions and offices are taxed. There are no taxes on exports and imports or excise. There is a small light house tax on shipping. The Stamp Tax acts met universal opposition,—the Colonies claimed the right to deal with their own finances,—they had accepted all other Acts of Parliament ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall

... Closely connected with the federal idea was the question of finance. There was lively speculation as to what measure of control over taxation the Bill would confer on the Irish Parliament, and especially whether it would be given the power to impose duties of Customs and Excise. Home Rulers themselves were sharply divided on the question. At a conference held at the London School of Economics on the 10th of January, 1912, Professor T.M. Kettle, Mr. Erskine Childers, and Mr. Thomas Lough, M.P., declared themselves in favour of Irish ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... 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 ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various

... Theodorick Bland, and took his seat in the third session of the First Congress. The assumption bill had been passed, but that was only the first of the series of financial measures proposed by Hamilton, and Giles followed Madison's lead in unsuccessful resistance to the excise and to the national bank. Giles was re-elected to the Second Congress, which opened on October 24, 1791. In the course of this session he became the leader of the opposition, not by supplanting Madison but ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... said, "that wasn't no excise officer. I know him well—I was drinking with him at the Royal last night afore we went to bed, an' had a nip with him this morning afore we started. Why! that's Bobby Howell, Burns and Bridges' traveller, an' a good sort when he wakes up, an' willin' ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... a tumor is an imprisoned and undeveloped ovum which has grafted itself on the fetus. These are usually sacculated, and may contain skin, hair, muscle, bone, and other natural tissues. The only course to be pursued in such cases is to excise the tumor, or, if this is not feasible, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... Timothy Trickle, is a distant relation of yours, being the son of the cousin of your aunt Margery, and is not over and above well as to worldly matters. He thinks of going to London, to see for some post in the excise or customs if so be that you will recommend him to some great man of your acquaintance, and give him a small matter to keep him till he is provided. I doubt not, nephew, but you will be glad to serve him, if it was no more but for the respect you bear to me, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett

... which we cannot feel. His Grace, who smarts, may bellow if he please, But must I bellow too, who sit at ease? By custom safe, the poet's numbers flow Free as the light and air some years ago. 270 No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains To tax our labours, and excise our brains. Burthens like these, vile earthly buildings bear; No tribute's laid on castles in the air. Let, then, the flames of war destructive reign, And England's terrors awe imperious Spain; Let every venal clan[95] and neutral tribe Learn to receive conditions, not prescribe; Let each new year ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... said Hulot, fancying that his uncle saw more clearly than was the fact. "As to our excise dealings, your character will not be impugned. Everything depends on the authority at your back; now I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sure of them. This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... am upon this subject, to mention my opinion, 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 affairs will permit. ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various

... my men, this," he said, "where a meddlesome tipstaff will not let a true-blooded Englishman pay toll to his Majesty's excise. But old Sour-chops is gone, and we will have 'tother bottle now to drink better manners to him; so bear a hand, Nettle, Thistle, or whatever ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams

... the Excise Office, which cost his life, was contrived with appalling clumsiness. The Deacon of the Wrights' Guild, who could slash wood at his will, who knew the artifice of every lock in the city, let his men go to work with no better implements than the stolen coulter of a plough and ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... suppressed and some are to rule, and that there are degrees of importance in men's pursuits, and that where the lower interfere and clog the operations of the higher, there they are harmful. And so the only wisdom is to excise and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... March, 1843. Sir Robert Peel, who had obliged Wordsworth the year before, by transferring the post in the excise, which he had so long held, to the poet's son, and substituting a pension for its salary, testified further his respect for the Bard of Rydal by tendering him the laurel. It was not to be refused. Had the office been hampered ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... was 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 ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor

... free up to the fourteenth century, became, from that period, the subject of repeated taxation. The levying of these taxes was a frequent cause of tumult amongst the people, who saw with marked displeasure the exigencies of the excise gradually raising the price of an article of primary necessity. We have already mentioned times during which the price of salt was so exorbitant that the rich alone could put it in their bread. Thus, in the reign of Francis I., it was almost as dear ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... of 15s. each—and strongly resenting the spirit which brought the 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

... 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 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 you pretty well know—the pang of disappointment, ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... the sons and daughters of the muse,—the whole "school of the prophets," the lustres of the poetry and the science of England! L1200 a-year for the only men of their generation who will be remembered for five minutes by the generation to come. L1200 a-year, the salary of an Excise commissioner, of a manipulator of the penny post, of a charity inspector, of a police magistrate, of a register of cabs, of any thing and every body: and this, reduced to decimals, is to be the national prize, the luxurious provision, the brilliant prospect, the illustrious tribute ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... 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, ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley

... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... left Congress was hardly more than that of the deliberative head of a league. For the most fundamental of all the attributes of sovereignty—the power of taxation—was not given to Congress. It could neither raise taxes through an excise nor through custom-house duties; it could only make requisitions upon the thirteen members of the confederacy in proportion to the assessed value of their real estate, and it was not provided with any means of enforcing these requisitions. On this point ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... acquainted also with Somerset House; 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

... government.... Adjournment of congress.... Treaty with the Creek Indians.... Relations of the United States with Great Britain and Spain.... The President visits Mount Vernon.... Session of congress.... The President's speech.... Debates on the excise.... On a national bank.... The opinions of the cabinet on the law.... Progress of parties.... War with the Indians.... Defeat of ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall

... 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 ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... stage, I mind, the meeting was put into great good humour by the action of an elderly gentleman on the platform. Stepping to the front he said "I believe I am the only man in Scotland to-day that ever shook hands with Bobby Burns. He was then—over seventy years ago—an excise man at Dumfries, and I acted as his post-boy, taking his letters." These remarks had scarcely been made than several of the people came forward and grasped the old fellow by the hand, and, indeed, some ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End

... $50,000,000 of said notes should be in lieu of the demand treasury notes authorized by the act of July 17, 1861, and that said demand notes should be taken up as rapidly as practicable. It provided that the treasury notes should be receivable in payment of all taxes, duties, imports, excise, debts and demands of all kinds due to the United States, and all debts and demands owing by the United States to individuals, corporations and associations within the United States, and should be lawful money and a legal tender, in payment of all debts, public and private, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... a Universal Free Trade and to make every port in England a free port, it would be necessary to raise by direct taxation about L40,000,000 annually, because the excise on beer, etc., would have to be abandoned with the Customs duties. We will consider the possibility of raising this L40,000,000 by direct taxation before we dilate on the advantages which would follow ...
— Speculations from Political Economy • C. B. Clarke

... explain. It can, however, be quite easily explained, though never explained away. He had simply failed to make the Lisbon Expedition pay—a heinous offence in days when the navy was as much a revenue department as the customs or excise. He had also failed to take Lisbon itself. The reasons why mattered nothing either to the disappointed government or to the ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... impressive certainty, "or where 'ud be the use o' parsons praichin' up 'bout heaven and hell? Why, now, us likes good liquor cheap to Fowey; and wance 'pon a time us had it too, but that ha'n't bin for twenty year. Our day's gone by, and so 'ull theirs be now; and th' excise 'ull come, and revenoos 'ull settle down, and folks be foaced to take to lousterin' for the bit o' bread they ates, and live quiet and paceable, as good neighbors should. So try and take heart; and if so be that Adam can give they Bailey chaps the go-by, tell un to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various

... transplanted. But even though it was English rulers who had "planted" them there the Scots were soon put to all sorts of trials and persecution. They resented heartily the King's levy of tax upon the poteen which they had learned to make from their adopted Irish brothers. Resentment grew to hatred of excise laws, hatred of authority that would enforce any such laws. These burned deep in the breast of the Scotch-Irish, so deep that they live to this day in the hearts of their descendants ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... Congress, whereupon some extremists raised the cry of impeachment; but the majority hastened to amend the Act so as to meet the views of the judges.*** Four years later, in the Carriage Tax case,**** the only question argued before the Court was that of the validity of a congressional excise. Yet as late as 1800 we find Justice Samuel Chase of Maryland, who had succeeded Blair in 1795, expressing skepticism as to the right of the Court to disallow acts of Congress on the ground of their unconstitutionality, though at the same time admitting that the prevailing opinion among bench ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin

... seemed a something dumfoundered with what they heard; and I began to think them, if they were highway robbers, a wee slow at their trade; when, what think ye did they turn out to be—only guess? Nothing more nor less than two excise officers, that had got information of some smuggled gin, coming up in a cart from Fisherrow Harbour, and were lurking on the ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir

... a rather well-known all-night cafe which managed to survive the excise vicissitudes by dint of having no cabaret ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... brandy jeroboam in a frosty morning, without license from a commissioner of excise," said ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... when the great Philistine host on opportune occasions, such as this 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 with their unsuccessful efforts at enthusiasm. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... you in the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to the feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to partiality, to friendship, or to what is called interest: write it on your heart, that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions. Think not, neither, of ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... smart pamphlet came out, called A Short History of Prime Ministers, which was generally believed to be written by our author; and in the same year he published A Letter to the Merchants and Tradesmen of London and Bristol, upon their late glorious behaviour against the Excise Law. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber

... elbow; and the aged man vanished away, and so they engaged Dominie Sampson to be with him morn and night. But even that godly minister had failed to protect the child, who was last seen being carried off by Frank Kennedy on his horse to see a king's ship chase a smuggler. The excise-man's body was found at the foot of the crags at Warroch Point, but no one knew what ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various



Words linked to "Excise" :   vat, scratch, excise tax, sales tax, delete, indirect tax, ad valorem tax, expunge, cancel, tax, value-added tax, cut out, nuisance tax, excision, gasoline tax



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