TAXATION AND FINANCE. 167 



ten per cent, on offices, and five per cent, on land. On the 

 accession of James, that monarch, relying on the panic caused 

 by the surrender of the charters and the new modelling of the 

 corporations, collected the customs which were not granted 

 him. His pliant Parliament condoned the offence, gave him 

 the life interest in excise and customs,-imposed some additional 

 customs on tobacco and sugar, and in short conferred such a 

 revenue on James, as might have made him independent of all 

 Parliaments for his natural life, if he had acted with the com- 

 monest prudence. Davenant calculates the revenue of the 

 Crown in 1688 at rather over two millions. 



The Revolution and the war which followed it necessitated 

 the adoption of a new system of finance. But the finance 

 ministers of the time were exceedingly in the dark as to the 

 expedients which they should adopt in order to meet the 

 emergencies which the Revolution had to face. The excise 

 was unpopular; a rigorous custom-house system was impossible. 

 There is nothing I presume more difficult than to extemporise 

 a preventive service in a country like England, which swarms 

 with creeks and harbours into which vessels of light draught 

 can readily run. The owler, as our forefathers ingeniously 

 called the smuggler, had the start of the preventive, and knew 

 the country intimately. More than a century after the times 

 on which I am commenting, organised bands of smugglers, 

 armed to the teeth and safe in their hiding-places, successfully 

 baffled exciseman and revenue officer 1 . Macpherson states, 

 though without comment, that during the eighteenth century 

 the Scotch customs did not amount to the cost of collection. 

 The Government determined on excluding French goods, and 

 the London merchants in sheer self-defence were in collusion 

 with the owlers. The Government could not check smuggling 

 effectually, and the dealer who paid customs was seriously 

 handicapped by those who could evade duties. 



1 My father told me that in the early part of the present century he had often 

 seen such a band ride through the Hampshire villages in the south. The peasantry 

 sympathised with them, and they* were not unwelcome to the gentry. 



