6io POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



property were recognized in England. At the outset and for a 

 long period they were also not regarded in the light of taxes, but 

 rather as dues personal to the sovereign, which he had the right 

 to regulate and collect independent of any statute, and which car- 

 ried with it the further right to restrain at pleasure the import 

 or export of any commodity.* Thus, until the reign of Edward 

 II (1272-1307) the right to tax the export of wool was exclu- 

 sively a royal privilege ; and the enactment of a statute by Par- 

 liament in 1275, limiting the amount that the king could take 

 in respect to the export of wool, skins, and leather but not 

 denying the privilege is regarded as the first legal foundation 

 in England of the customs revenue. The controversy between 

 the king and Parliament over customs duties went on, how- 

 ever, with varying phases until finally settled in 1G82 ; and 

 from these circumstances, and also from the fact that customs 

 and duties are unseen by those who finally bear their burden 

 because they are embodied in the prices of commodities, has pos- 

 sibly come about the curious idea that tariffs, or taxes on im- 

 ports, are not taxes on any one or are any burden on property, 

 but rather some sort of a business contrivance for the raising 

 of revenue, and, if they are taxes at all, then that the foreigner 

 pays them. 



The term impost is a general expression for any tax, duty, or 

 tribute, but is seldom now applied to any but indirect taxes on 

 imports. 



The term excise, though used in the Constitution of the United 

 States, is now almost entirely restricted in use to the tax system 

 of Great Britain; and even there has acquired a far different 

 meaning and application from what it possessed originally. 

 Thus the term was first applied in England to taxes on manufac- 

 tured commodities produced and consumed in the kingdom, as 

 beer, cider, soap, glass, paper, and the like, and in contradistinc- 

 tion to duties or customs on commodities of foreign manufacture 

 and importation ; and this distinction is still officially recognized 

 in the fact that special care has always been taken in all British 

 legislation on this subject to make the excise tax as nearly equal 



* It is a curious fact that the old idea that imposts and customs, or the right to impose 

 exactions on trade, were, when first imposed, not regarded in the light of taxes but as dues 

 personal to the sovereign, which he had the right to regulate and collect independent of 

 any statute, has recently found reassertion and indorsement in the United States Senate by 

 a leading member of that body from New England, that he did not regard the levying of 

 imposts or customs dues on imported commodities as in the nature of taxes; for, if such 

 levies on trade are not taxes, they are simply exactions of a despotic form of government, 

 represented immaterially either by one man or a collection of men, and for whom or for 

 which no rightful claim of representing or being a government by the people or for the 

 people can be preferred. 



