comptroller and auditor-general, whose functions as comptroller-general of the exchequer have been already described.
The ancient name of the national banking account has been attached to two of the forms of unfunded national debt. Exchequer bills, which date from the reign of William and Mary (they took the place of the tallies, previously used for the same purpose), became extinct in 1897, but exchequer bonds (first issued by Mr Gladstone in 1853) still possess a practical importance. An exchequer bond is a promise by government to pay a specified sum after a specified period, generally three or five years, and meanwhile to pay interest half-yearly at a specified rate on that sum. Government possesses no general power to issue exchequer bonds; such power is only conferred by a special act, and for specified purposes; but when the power has been created, exchequer bonds issued in pursuance of it are governed by general statutory provisions contained in the Exchequer Bills and Bonds Act 1866, and amending acts. These acts create machinery for the issue of exchequer bonds and for the payment of interest thereon, and protect them against forgery.
Some traces may be mentioned of the ancient uses of the name exchequer which still remain. The chancellor of the exchequer still presides at the ceremony of “pricking the list of sheriffs,” which is a quasi-judicial function; and on that occasion he wears a robe of black silk with gold embroidery, which suggests a judicial costume. In England the last judge who was styled baron of the exchequer (Baron Pollock) died in 1897. In Scotland the jurisdiction of the barons of the exchequer was transferred to the court of session in 1856, but the same act requires the appointment of one of the judges as “lord ordinary in exchequer causes,” which office still exists. In Ireland Lord Chief Baron Palles was the last to retain the old title. A street near Dublin Castle is called Exchequer Street, recalling the separate Irish exchequer, which ceased in 1817. The old term also survives in the full title of the treasury representative in Scotland, which is “The King’s and the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer in Exchequer,” while his office in the historic Parliament Square is styled “Exchequer Chambers.” (S. E. S.-R.)
Bibliography.—For the early exchequer Thomas Madox’s History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (London, 1711) remains the standard authority, and in it the Dialogus de Scaccario of Richard the Treasurer (1179) was first printed (edited since by A. Hughes, C. G. Crump and C. Johnson, Oxford, 1902). The publications of the Pipe Roll Society (London, 1884 et seq.), the Pipe Rolls and Chancellor’s Roll, printed by the Record Commission (London, 1833 and 1844), and H. Hall’s edition of the Receipt Roll of the Exchequer 31 Henry II. (London, 1899) should also be consulted. A popular account is in H. Hall’s Court Life under the Plantagenets (London, 1901), and a careful study in Dr Parow’s thesis, Compotus Vicecomitis (Berlin, 1906). For the 13th and 14th centuries H. Hall’s edition of the Red Book of the Exchequer (London, Rolls Series, 1896) is essential, as also the Public Record Office List of Foreign Accounts (London, 1900). Later practice may be gathered from the similar List and Index of Declared Accounts (London, 1893), and from such books as Sir T. Fanshawe’s Practice of the Exchequer Court, written about A.D. 1600 (London, 1658); Christopher Vernon’s The Exchequer Opened (London, 1661), or Sir Geoffrey Gilbert’s Treatise on the Court of Exchequer (London, 1758), as well as from the statutes abolishing various offices in the exchequer. H. Hall’s Antiquities of the Exchequer (London, 1891) gives many interesting details of various dates. For the Scottish exchequer The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1878 et seq.) should be consulted, while Gilbert’s book noted above gives some details on that of Ireland. See also Appendix 13 to the great account of Public Income and Expenditure from 1688 to 1869, in three volumes, prepared for parliament by H. W. Chisholm (1869); and for sidelights on the working of the office from 1825 to 1866 the reminiscences of the same author (the last chief clerk of the exchequer) in Temple Bar (January to April 1891).
EXCISE (derived through the Dutch, excijs or accijs, possibly
from Late Lat. accensare,—ad, to, and census, tax; the word
owes something to a confusion with excisum, cut out), a term now
well known in public finance, signifying a duty charged on home
goods, either in the process of their manufacture, or before their
sale to the home consumers. This form of taxation implies a
commonwealth somewhat advanced in manufactures, markets
and general riches; and it interferes so directly with the
industry and liberty of the subject that it has seldom been
introduced save in some supreme financial exigency, and has as
seldom been borne, even after long usage, with less than the
ordinary impatience of taxation. Yet excise duties can boast
a respectable antiquity, having a distinct parallel in the vectigal
rerum venalium (or toll levied on all commodities sold by
auction, or in public market) of the Romans. But the Roman
excise was mild compared with that of modern nations, having
never been more than centesima, or 1%, of the value; and it
was much shorter lived than the modern examples, having been
first imposed by Augustus, reduced for a time one-half by
Tiberius, and finally abolished by Caligula, A.D. 38, so that the
Roman excise cannot have had a duration of much more than
half a century. Its remission must have been deemed a great
boon in the marts of Rome, since it was commemorated by the
issue of small brass coins with the legend Remissis Centesimis,
specimens of which are still to be found in collections.
The history of this branch of revenue in the United Kingdom dates from the period of the civil wars, when the republican government, following the example of Holland, established, as a means of defraying the heavy expenditure of the time, various duties of excise, which the royalists when restored to power found too convenient or too necessary to be abandoned, notwithstanding their origin and their general unpopularity. On the contrary, they were destined to be steadily increased both in number and in amount. It is curious that the first commodities selected for excise were those on which this branch of taxation, after great extension, had again in the period of reform and free trade been in a manner permanently reduced, viz. malt liquors, and such kindred beverages as cider perry and spruce beer. The other excise duties remaining are chiefly in the form of licences, such as to kill game and to use and carry guns, to sell gold and silver plate, to pursue the business of appraisers or auctioneers, hawkers or pedlars, pawnbrokers or patent-medicine vendors, to manufacture tobacco or snuff, to deal in sweets or in foreign wines, to make vinegar, to roast malt, or to use a still in chemistry or otherwise. It may be presumed that the policy of the licence duties was at first not so much to collect revenue, though in the aggregate they yielded a large sum, as to guard the main sources of excise, and to place certain classes of dealers, by registration and an annual payment to the exchequer, under a direct legal responsibility. The excise system of the United Kingdom as now pruned and reformed, however, while still the most prolific of all the sources of revenue, is simple in process, and is contentedly borne as compared with what was the case in the 18th, and the beginning of the 19th century. The wars with Bonaparte strained the government resources to the uttermost, and excise duties were multiplied and increased in every practicable form. Bricks, candles, calico prints, glass, hides and skins, leather, paper, salt, soap, and other commodities of home manufacture and consumption were placed, with their respective industries, under excise surveillance and fine. When the duties could no longer be increased in number, they were raised in rate. The duty on British spirits, which had begun at a few pence per gallon in 1660, rose step by step to 11s. 814d. per gallon in 1820; and the duty on salt was augmented to three or fourfold its value.
The old unpopularity of excise, though now somewhat out of date, must have had real enough grounds. It breaks out in English literature, from songs and pasquinades to grave political essays and legal commentaries. Blackstone, in quoting the declaration of parliament in 1649 that “excise is the most easy and indifferent levy that can be laid upon the people,” adds on his own authority that “from its first original to the present time its very name has been odious to the people of England” (book i. cap. 8, tenth edition, 1786); while the definition of “excise” gravely inserted by Dr Johnson in the Dictionary, at the imminent risk of subjecting the eminent author to a prosecution for libel—viz. “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”—can hardly be ever forgotten.
The duties of excise in the United Kingdom were, until the passing of the Finance Act 1908, under the control of the
