"Excise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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, ...
— The Academy Keeper • Anonymous
... 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 all but hugged him. I was prompted to shake ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... at Kroppenstaedt, near Halberstadt, in the kingdom of Prussia, on September 27th, 1805. In January 1810 my parents removed to Heimersleben, about four miles from Kroppenstaedt, where my father was appointed collector in the excise. As a warning to parents I mention, that my father preferred me to my brother, which was very injurious to both of us. To me, as tending to produce in my mind a feeling of self-elevation; and to my brother, by creating in him a dislike both ...
— A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself, First Part • George Mueller
... 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 Guards. Catholics would have had, we believe, the chief ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great Cood that you for hur have done, Would you wou'd made Peace with our King, and let hur come home, Put off the Military Charge, Impost, and Excise, Ay, and free Quarter too. Then Cot shall bless you Master Roundhead, and ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... humor, 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
... the crown in this respect has been greatly diminished. First of all, there has been a large reduction of all such kinds of offices; and in the next place, in consequence of the different constitution and regulations of the customs and excise, and other public departments; and thus the influence formerly possessed by the Crown ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... situation; anything to put sons into, will do—a cadetship in India, a tide-waitership, a place in the Post-office, or a commission in the army. From a small Scotch country town, which we have in our eye, as many as fourteen lads in one year received appointments in the Excise; everybody knew what for: an election was in expectation. No money, however, being passed from hand to hand, the fathers of these said lads would look with horror on such cases of bribery as have given renown and infamy to Sudbury and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... once a chantry of the Grey Friars," Mr Sharnall answered, "and afterwards was used for excise purposes when Cullerne was a real port. It is still called the Bonding-House, but it has been shut up as long as I remember it. Do you believe in certain things or places being bound up with certain men's destinies? because I have a presentiment that this broken-down old chapel ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... the girl felt slightly faint, then a rush of angry blood stung her face in the darkness. Except for game and excise violations the stories they told about Clinch ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Glencairn alone, aided by Alexander Wood, a 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, wretchedness, and exile, emboldens ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... 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 ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, for it was appealed to the House of Commons—now I should have voted ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... 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; ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Lords 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 ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... 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 no other set of men have imitated. ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin
... none but Whigs were appointed deans and bishops. In every county, opulent and well-descended Tory squires complained that their names were left out of the commission of the peace, while men of small estate and mean birth, who were for toleration and excise, septennial Parliaments and standing armies, presided at quarter sessions, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 1882 I recommended the abolition of all excise taxes except those relating to distilled spirits. This recommendation is now renewed. In case these taxes shall be abolished the revenues that will still remain to the Government will, in my opinion, not only suffice to meet its reasonable ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Chester A. Arthur • Chester A. Arthur
... 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 President and seven to the College belonging,—shall be exempted from ...
— Readings in the History of Education - Mediaeval Universities • Arthur O. Norton
... years 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 a few casual ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... 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
... travel all your life, and fill your memory with nothing but views from mountain-tops, and yet not have seen a tenth of the world. Or you may spend your life upon the religious history of East Rutland, and plan the most enormous book upon it, and yet find that you have continually to excise and select from the ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... to 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 of ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... connected with land, excise, and income tax administration the Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner are subject to the control of the Financial Commissioners, who are also the final appellate authority in revenue cases. As chief district revenue officer the Deputy Commissioner's ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... not willing to offer special inducements for renewal without fair concessions in return; I was not willing that the canals and inland waters of Canada should be made the joint property of the United States and Canada and be maintained at their joint expense; I was not willing that the custom and excise duty of Canada should be assimilated to the prohibitory rates of the United States; and very especially was I unwilling that any such arrangement should be entered into with the United States, dependent on the frail tenure of reciprocal legislation, repealable at any moment at the caprice of either ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... - recipient: Guam receives large transfer payments from the US Federal Treasury ($143 million in 1997) into which Guamanians pay no income or excise taxes; under the provisions of a special law of Congress, the Guam Treasury, rather than the US Treasury, receives federal income taxes paid by military and civilian Federal employees stationed ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... great force, and the general expenses of the government, were derived from the public domains, from direct taxes, from mines and quarries, from salt works, fisheries and forests, from customs and excise, from the succession to ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... Swiss canton peopled 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 ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ranging, in their number of members, from thirteen down. As regards party representation, their constitution is similar to that of the Senate Committees. The Committee of "Ways and Means," which regulates customs duties and excise taxes, is by far the ...
— Government and Administration of the United States • Westel W. Willoughby and William F. Willoughby
... elsewhere," says one Historian; "and some of them, in Preussen, for example, used to be rather loud, and inclined to turbulence, till the curb, from a judicious bridle-hand, would admonish them. But, for a long while past,—especially since the Great Elector's time, who got an 'Excise Law' passed, or the foundations of a good Excise Law laid; [Preuss, iv. 432; and Thronbesteigung, pp. 379-383.] and, what with Excise, what with Domain-Farms, had a fixed Annual Budget, which ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... before by one "Jack the Blaster," who had performed a series of excavations, and amongst them a huge round perforation from the high land above to the beach below, through which it is said many a cargo has passed ashore without being entered in the books of the excise. Here the cliff is formed of hard magnesian limestone, and rises perpendicularly from the beach more than a hundred feet. When Peter set to work, the only habitable portions were two wild caves opening to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... the highest stations. When it is recollected that no poll tax can be imposed on five negroes, above what three whites shall be charged; when it is considered, that the imposts on the consumption of Carolina field negroes must be trifling, and the excise nothing, it is plain that the proportion of contributions, which can be expected from the southern states under the new constitution, will be unequal, and yet they are to be allowed to enfeeble themselves by the further importation of negroes ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... of all was against the illegal operations of the saloons. The excise law forbade the sale of liquor on Sunday. But the police, under orders from "higher up," enforced the law with discretion. The saloons which paid blackmail, or which enjoyed the protection of some powerful Tammany chieftain, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... about sixty pounds a year belonging to Westminster Abbey, which, like other sharers of the plunder of rebellion, he was afterwards obliged to return. Two thousand pounds, which he had placed in the excise-office, were also lost. There is yet no reason to believe that he was ever reduced to indigence. His wants, being few, were competently supplied. He sold his library before his death, and left his family fifteen hundred pounds, on which his widow laid hold, and only gave one hundred ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... given if Lucien's position with regard to 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 share of ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... regiment he continued a private, corporal, and sergeant for seven years, was present at the siege of Belleisle, and saw service in Portugal, Gibraltar, and Minorca. At the end of the war he returned home as a supernumerary excise-man. About 1761 his friends placed him in the King's Head inn at Canterbury where he soon failed. Parker went upon the stage in Ireland, and in company with Brownlow Ford, a clergyman of convivial habits, strolled over the greater part of the island. On his return to London ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... 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 that in the heart of winter ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... you Foxes, be you Pitts, You must write to silly chits. Be you Tories, be you Whigs, You must write to sad young gigs. On whatever board you are— Treasury, Admiralty, War, Customs, Stamps, Excise, Control;— Write ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... money he received for a series of blocks for a work called Walks about Dorchester, he printed and published his first book, Orra, a Lapland Tale, in 1822. In the same year he became engaged to Julia Miles, the daughter of an excise officer. In 1823 he took a school at Mere in Wiltshire, and four years later married and settled in Chantry House, a fine old Tudor mansion in that town. The school grew in numbers, and Barnes occupied ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... rough in Scotland.' Sir Eyre said to him, 'You must change your name, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'Ay, to Dr. M'Gregor[403].' We got safely to Inverness, 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... replied the sexton, trembling more than ever; for he had bought it of the smugglers, and he thought that perhaps his questioner might be in the excise department of the goblins. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... recision; curtailment &c. 201; minuend, subtrahend; decrease &c. 36; abrasion. V. subduct, subtract; deduct, deduce; bate, retrench; remove, withdraw, take from, take away; detract. garble, mutilate, amputate, detruncate[obs3]; cut off, cut away, cut out; abscind[obs3], excise; pare, thin, prune, decimate; abrade, scrape, file; geld, castrate; eliminate. diminish &c. 36; curtail &c. (shorten) 201; deprive of &c. (take) 789; weaken. Adj. subtracted &c. v.; subtractive. Adv. in deduction &c. n.; less; short of; minus, without, except, except for, excepting, with ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... 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, ...
— The Prospector - A Tale of the Crow's Nest Pass • Ralph Connor
... what a figure he was! His trowsers were rent both at the knees and elsewhere, and were kept together solely by means of whip-cord. His shirt had evidently not benefited by the removal of the excise duties upon soap, and was screened from the scrutiny of the beholder by an extempore paletot, fabricated out of sail-cloth, without the remotest ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... white or black day in the family calendar—inasmuch as it indicated either marriage or funeral, the approach of the Royal Judges or the execution of a state prisoner, the drawing for the militia, or a county address to both Houses of Parliament on the crying grievance of the Excise. It doubtless took some days to prepare the imperator's chariot for a Roman triumph: it must have employed nearly as many to clean and furbish the capacious body of the modern vehicle. There was moreover a whole armoury of harness ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... Sir Everard learned from the public 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, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... Colony, all other taxes 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 touching their manufactures and trade, limiting their freedom, ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... 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 ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... trade.] These inept excise laws, hampered with a hundred suspicious forms, frightened away the whole carrying trade from the port; and its commission merchants were frequently unable to dispose of the local produce. So trifling was the carrying trade that the total yearly average ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... easy. The king is not unsatisfied of me; the duke has often promised me his assistance; and your lordship is the conduit through which their favours pass. Either in the customs, or the appeals of the excise, or some other way, means cannot be wanting, if you please to have the will. 'Tis enough for one age to have neglected Mr. Cowley, and starved Mr. Butler; but neither of them had the happiness to live till your lordship's ministry. In the meantime, be pleased to give me a gracious ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... figure in Tarbolton church, with the only tied hair in the parish, "and his plaid, which was of a particular colour, wrapped in a particular manner round his shoulders." Ten years later, when a married man, the father of a family, a farmer, and an officer of Excise, we shall find him out fishing in masquerade, with fox-skin cap, belted great-coat, and great Highland broadsword. He liked dressing up, in fact, for its own sake. This is the spirit which leads to the extravagant ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 Scriptural Pieces." Of the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... 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, who am,—Loving nephew, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... roadless 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, however ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... 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, is the sobriquet conferred by Tommy Atkins on the natives of the Rock, ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... water were then indeed alive with exultant crowds. The streets were like a fair, and a noisy one at that. Soldiers, sailors, and civilians drank standing toasts the whole night through. The commissioner of excise recorded, not without a touch of proper pride, that, quite apart from all illicit wines and spirits, no less than sixty thousand gallons of good Jamaica rum were drunk in honour of the fall of Louisbourg. In higher circles, where wine was commoner than spirits, ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... the Spiritual Quixote; in essay from the Tatler to the Mirror; in Lord Chesterfield and Lady Mary and Horace Walpole; in Pope and Young and Green and Churchill and Cowper, in Boswell and Wraxall, in Mrs. Delany and Madame d'Arblay, seems to me to deserve warrant of excise and guarantee of analysis as it lies in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... duty paid on any imported article, in the moment of its importation, and of course, it is collected in the sea-ports only. Excise is a duty on any article, whether imported or raised at home, and paid in the hands of the consumer or retailer; consequently, it is collected through the whole country. These are the true definitions of these words as used in England, and in the greater part of the United States. But in Massachusetts, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... several million pounds owed to American colonies as reimbursement for maintaining troops during the war, British taxpayers, rich and poor alike, expected relief. In fact, these war debts forced parliament to impose additional taxes in 1763, including a much-despised excise tax on cider. It is hardly surprising to find most Britons agreed that in the future the Americans should be responsible for those expenses directly attributable to maintaining the empire in America. That future costs were to be shared seemed politically expedient and the reasonable ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... the assessment was based on the market-price at the chief town of the district, instead of the value at the place of growth, this tax, instead of being about 12.5 per cent., in reality amounted to over 20 per cent. Then again when the wine was made, an excise duty of 10 per cent. was levied, and on export, a tax of 8 per cent. had to be paid. The natural consequence of these excessive impositions has been the diminution of a culture for which the island is particularly adapted. Consul Lang suggests that it might be wise to free this production ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... 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 road-side, looking out ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... rocks and sparkling shells. Every child had his own place; my place was, like Jeremy's, Rafiel, and a better, more beautiful place, in the whole world you will not find. And each place has its own legend: at Rafiel the Gold lured Pirates, and the Turnip-Field; at Polwint the Giant Excise Man; at Borhaze the Smugglers of Trezent Rock; at St. Borse the wreck of "The Golden Galleon" in the year 1563, with its wonderful treasure; and at St. Maitsin Cove the famous Witch of St. Maitsin Church Town who turned men's bones into water and ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... Trade there in 1765. The strict monopoly of salt commenced in 1780, under a System of agencies. The System introduced in 1780 continued in force with occasional modifications till 1862, when the several salt agencies were gradually abolished, leaving the Supply of salt, whether by importations or excise manufacture, to private enterprise. Since then, for Bengal Proper, the supply of the condiment has been obtained chiefly by importation, but in part by private manufacture under a System of excise.' (Balfour, ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... delegated bodies, 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... all passed unanimously except in one case, at Stellenbosch where a minority opposed the resolution. The spokesman of the minority, however, based his opposition not on Frere's general policy, still less on his character, but as a protest against an Excise Act, which was one ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... swelling, which he's obliged to 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
... 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 them into groups, women and children, and, in the foulest weather, puts himself at their head, with ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... life into the royalists; Catholic-royalist rebels mastered all of Ireland except Dublin. Under these circumstances, the Commonwealth would have perished but for three sources of strength: (1) Its financial resources proved adequate: customs duties were collected, excise taxes on drinks and food were levied, and confiscated royalist estates were sold; (2) its enemies had no well-drilled armies; and (3) its own ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... his ear that nobody should bring a salad from his garden without paying 'gabel,' or kill a hen without excise; who suggests that, if a prince wants a sum of money, he may make impossible demands from a city and exact arbitrary ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... the precinct, saying boldly that they were going to vote "agin the —— women." The women workers testified with remarkable unanimity that their opposition was chiefly "riffraff and illiterate negroes and that it was under the direction of well-known 'wets.'" Even an excise commissioner under pay of the National Government worked against woman suffrage all day ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... 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
... had kindly undertaken to wield the baton, while the Chief Tormentor (or whatever his proper title may have been) charged himself anew at the refreshment counter. A popping of corks in the supper-room apprised me of the fact that my guests were doing their best, at my expense, to make the Excise Returns a more cheerful feature of ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... success was attained. In eight years after Rosee had opened his establishment the consumption of coffee in England had evidently increased to a notable extent, for in 1660 the House of Commons is found granting to Charles II for life the excise duty on coffee "and other outlandish drinks." But it is a curious fact that while the introduction of tea was accepted with equanimity by the community, the introduction of coffee was strenuously opposed for more than a decade. Poets and pamphleteers combined to decry the new beverage. The ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... and sugar producing colonies, with the effect which results from a thorough acquaintance with a subject; he had promulgated distinct principles with regard to our financial as well as to our commercial system; he had maintained the expediency cf relieving the consumer by the repeal of excise in preference to customs' duties, and of establishing fiscal reciprocity as a condition of mercantile exchange. On subjects of a more occasional but analogous nature he had shown promptitude and knowledge, as in the instances of the urgent condition of Mexico and of our carrying trade with ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... in 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 Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... required would be obtained by an increase in the cotton duties there was a notable cooling of enthusiasm among Members from Lancashire. Mr. RUNCIMAN at once sounded the alarm on behalf of Manchester by asking if there would be a corresponding excise duty on Indian cottons. "All India is against it," replied Mr. CHAMBERLAIN, who is finding, as his father did before him, how difficult it is to get Englishmen to "think imperially" where their own particular trade ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... upon the importation of goods into Portugal from foreign countries, an exemption existed until the 1st of February instant, according to information received from our charge d'affaires at Lisbon, in favor of various articles when imported from Great Britain, from an excise duty which was exacted upon the same articles when imported from other foreign countries or produced or manufactured at home. This exemption was granted in pursuance of the construction given to a stipulation contained in the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... you will 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, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... discredited rank. Mr. Bolton, his other sister's husband, though a gentleman of great abilities also, and with a considerable family, had a very inadequate fortune; and his lordship was particularly desirous to have beheld him, at least, a Commissioner of the Excise or Customs. This, in fact, was what had been repeatedly promised; but his lordship experienced not the happiness of seeing it performed. The present Earl Nelson, indeed, his lordship's only surviving brother, had been presented to a prebendal stall at Canterbury; ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... peculiarity more marked in all the 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... conceit, to choose the manner of thine own death, which is indeed only another sort of self-murder. We therefore consider thee as a cause of scandal, and a rotten and creaking branch, to be excised by the spiritual arm, and do hereby excise thee, and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... 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 lookout for ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... obtain from it. They exact twelve reals from every passenger; and since the poor are usually by that time drained so dry that most of them go on board without a single real—having spent everything on expenses in port, the king's fees, and the ingenious exactions of the custom-house officers and excise-men—they suffer more from this than from everything else that they have previously spent. In my case they did me the honor to excuse me from the fees for the religious, but refused to do so for the servants ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... 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
... 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
... women go about with the guilty look of plotters in their worried eyes. If one of them fails to slip something in without paying duty on it she will be disappointed for life. All women are natural enemies to all excise men. Dirk, the Smuggler, was ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... threats against the officers employed. From a belief that by a more formal concert their operation might be defeated, certain self-created societies assumed the tone of condemnation. Hence, while the greater part of Pennsylvania itself were conforming themselves to the acts of excise, a few counties were resolved to frustrate them. It is now perceived that every expectation from the tenderness which had been hitherto pursued was unavailing, and that further delay could only create an opinion of impotency or ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... would be exposed to the Teutonic insolence of the dominant race, and would probably be turned out by some German official. Public buildings would be erected in the German style. English manufacturers and all industries would be hampered by an elaborate system of excise which would flood our markets with German goods. Such art as England possesses would disappear. Arms would be prohibited. The common people, especially in Scotland and the North-West Provinces, would be encouraged ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... 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
... some of the provinces had capitulated and joined forces with France and Austria, the insurgent leaders having been promised places in the excise—the compromise hastened no doubt by cold and hunger. Garibaldi's own force was much reduced and he took to the mountains, abandoning his cavalry equipment. Orders were out that he, or any of his band, caught should be shot, without trial, by fours in presence of their companions ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... imitate the petty thought, Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, For all the glory your conversion brought, Since gold alone should not have been its price, You have your salary; was't for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise! You're shabby fellows—true—but poets still, And duly seated ...
— English Satires • Various
... delegated by the Constitution should be reserved to the several States to be exercised by them! How profitless fate was to make the stipulations of New York that Congress should never lay any kind of excise except on ardent spirits, and that the clauses in the Constitution forbidding Congress to do certain things should not be construed into a permission to do anything except that which was named in the ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks
... security and safety of the 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
... fifty thousand pounds, that London would be twice as large and twice as populous, and that nevertheless the rate of mortality would have diminished to one-half of what it then was, that the post-office would bring more into the exchequer than the excise and customs had brought in together under Charles the Second, that stage coaches would run from London to York in twenty-four hours, that men would be in the habit of sailing without wind, and would be beginning to ride without horses, our ancestors ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... proportion of the public debt and the execution of such extensive and important operations in so short a time a just estimate may be formed of the great extent of our national resources. The demonstration is the more complete and gratifying when it is recollected that the direct tax and excise were repealed soon after the termination of the late war, and that the revenue applied to these purposes has been derived ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... to 50 places of decimals. In 1848, I repeated the proposal, requesting that 50 places might be exceeded: I obtained answers of 75, 65, 63, 58, 57, and 52 places. But one answer, by Mr. W. Harris Johnston,[144] of Dundalk, and of the Excise Office, went to 101 decimal places. To test the accuracy of this, I requested Mr. Johnston to undertake another equation, connected with the former one in a way which I did not explain. His solution verified the former one, but he was unable to see the connection, even when his result ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... estimate what the world of Europe, as well as the world of Asia, had to dread from Genghiz Khan, upon a contemplation of the resources of the cold and barren spot in the remotest Tartary from whence first issued that scourge of the human race? Ought we to judge from the excise and stamp duties of the rocks, or from the paper circulation of the sands of Arabia, the power by which Mahomet and his tribes laid hold at once on the two most powerful empires of the world, beat one of them totally to the ground, broke to pieces ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... knife far more freely. Every 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 did ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... 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 liberties of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... dared to encounter with me the terrors of the darkness. Our fire has often startled the benighted boatman as he came rowing round some rocky promontory, and saw the red glare streaming seawards from the cavern mouth, and partially lighting up the angry tumbling of the surf beyond; and excise-cutters have oftener than once altered their tack in middle Firth, and come bearing towards the coast, to determine whether the wild rocks of Marcus were not becoming a haunt ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... 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. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... and conscious to himself of an upright intention, or at most of only a wish to promote innocent cheerfulness, he was too stubborn in retracting what he had thus advanced. Hence, when menaced with a prosecution for his definition of Excise in his Dictionary, so far from offering apology or promising alteration, he called, in his Idler, a Commissioner of Excise the lowest of human beings, and classes him with the scribbler for a party[11]. So strange a definition and still ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... office, where the money was again expected from the Excise office, but none brought, but was promised to be sent this afternoon. I dined with Mr. Sheply, at my Lord's lodgings, upon his turkey-pie. And so to my office again; where the Excise money was brought, and some of it told to soldiers till it was dark. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... 'Mercator, or Commerce Retrieved.' Martyn's paper is said to have been a principal cause of the rejection of the Treaty, and to have procured him the post of Inspector-General of Imports and Exports. He died at Blackheath, March 25, 1721, leaving one son, who became Secretary to the Commissioners of Excise. As an intimate friend of Steele's, it has been thought that Henry Martyn suggested a trait or two in the Sir Andrew Freeport ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... minutes of the last meeting, while the chairman surreptitiously poked the fire with a piece of wood from the lower works of a chair, and then the chairman, as he signed the minutes with a pen dipped in an excise ink-bottle that stood on the narrow mantelpiece, said in ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Benjamin Hawes, junior, of the 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... and Alsace-Lorraine 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 is presided over by a chairman. ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... 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; but the crowd behind endeavoured to throw him down, as he was a bulky man, and trample him to death; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... everywhere. In my city the women did not crusade the streets, but they said they would help the men to execute the law. They held meetings, sent out committees, and had testimony secured against every man who had violated the law, and when the board of excise held its meeting those women assembled, three or four hundred, in the church one morning, and marched in a solid body to the common council chamber where the board of excise was sitting. As one rum-seller after another brought in his petition for a ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... 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 ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... exchange for some of the King's party-:* and he was exchanged for the right Honourable Montague, Earl of Lindsey (heir of the General.) Since the restoration, he was made one of the commissioners of the excise office in London. He did protest that Kenilworth castle was the very castle he saw in ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... endless woe, They ply their former arts below; And as they sail in Charon's boat, Contrive to bribe the judge's vote; To Cerberus they give a sop, His triple-barking mouth to stop; Or in the ivory gate of dreams Project Excise and South-Sea schemes, Or hire their party pamphleteers To set Elysium ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed at a shadow. The society called upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the excise; and it is certain that the society was obeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland. The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon the people not to purchase the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of Prussia, having ordered some silks from Lyons, they were stopped for duties by an excise officer, whom she ordered to attend her with the silks, and receive his demand. On his entrance into her apartment, the princess flew at the officer, and seizing the merchandise, gave him two or three hearty cuffs on the face. The mortified exciseman complained to the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... their protests against Peel's and Huskisson's financial policy. They failed to effect their object, but Goulburn, the chancellor of the exchequer, initiated a considerable reduction of expenditure and remission of taxes. The excise duties on beer, cider, and leather were now totally remitted, those on spirits being somewhat increased. The government even deliberated on the proposal of a property tax, and, stimulated by a motion of Sir James Graham, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... penetrating eyes Behold the fount of Freedom in excise, Whose 'patriot' logic possibly maintains The 'identity' of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... was supposed that only in his last few years or so of life did he undertake this occupation which ruined him. Mr. Reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck Hill quotes Croker, who hinted that Johnson's famous definition of Excise as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the Common Judge of Property but by wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid," was inspired by recollections of his father's constant disputes with the Excise officers. Mr. Reade has unearthed documents concerning ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter |
