PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 731 



explicitly reaffirmed and embodied in the form of law by a Parlia- 

 ment in 1297, which enacted that no tax should be levied by the 

 king without the consent of the knights, burgesses, and citizens 

 in Parliament assembled. 



Again, in the earlier periods of English history, and probably 

 also in the history of the other states of Europe, when the reve- 

 nues from the property, fees, and perquisites of the crown, supple- 

 mented as they were from time to time by special parliamentary 

 grants, benevolences, and subsidies, and the plunder of special 

 classes as the Jews were found inconvenient and unreliable, 

 and were replaced by more regular systems of contribution, the 

 idea of taxation was, as centuries before in Rome, simply to ob- 

 tain the necessary revenue, without much regard to the incidence 

 of the tax or the interest of the producer, consumer, or trader. 

 The end was alone considered, and not the means ; and this policy, 

 pervading all schemes and experiences of taxation, was then, as it 

 ever has been, the most fertile source of bad taxes. The objects 

 from which contributions at the period under consideration could 

 be obtained were almost exclusively tangible and readily visible, 

 as lands, hearths (representing houses), cattle, slaves or serfs, 

 and the crudest of agricultural products. But as trade, or the 

 business of exchanging, increased, it soon came to be looked upon 

 as a proper subject for exaction. Customs, or taxes upon trade, 

 were accordingly very early established, and at first were prob- 

 ably confined to domestic or internal trade. But with the rise 

 and growth of foreign commerce the practice very naturally ex- 

 tended to foreign trade, and the terms " customs " and " duties," 

 which had an antecedent origin and meaning, eventually became 

 restricted in their application to " taxes " or " exactions " on ex- 

 ports and imports. But yet so slowly did the customs in this 

 sense become an important source of English revenue, that the 

 entire amount collected in 1603 was but 127,000, or but little in 

 excess of $600,000. Such taxes at the outset were furthermore 

 held to be the king's private or personal dues, to be levied by him 

 independently of any statute, according to his discretion, or, 

 rather, according to his necessities; and it was not until the 

 reign of Edward I that Parliament undertook to interfere with 

 what had been considered an hereditary right of the crown, by 

 providing in 1275, that for the purpose of correcting irregular 

 seizures and exactions, a limitation should be established on the 

 amount of duty that the king might take on the exports of wool 

 and leather; and the duties thus regulated by statute on these 

 two articles are regarded as the first legal foundation of the Eng- 

 lish customs revenue. But before the close of the reign of 

 Edward III, or in 1353, the exclusive right of Parliament to au- 

 thorize or control every form of indirect taxation was fully estab- 



