732 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lished, and for the time fully exercised; and the right thus 

 achieved by the representatives of the people of participating in 

 the levy of indirect or customs taxation, also necessarily drew 

 with it the right to participate in general legislation, or upon all 

 subjects which Parliament might deem proper. 



It is also interesting to recall in connection with this subject, 

 that when the old English kings began to levy tolls on ships 

 entering into harbors, in common with tolls on transportation by 

 roads and navigable streams, the tax was on the ship directly, 

 and not specifically upon its contents. And in early charters 

 instances occur of grants to individuals or monasteries of an 

 exemption from toll for one ship of burden ; and in the event of 

 the destruction of the particular ship, the privilege was extended 

 to another ship. But with such tolls or taxes once established, 

 the idea soon developed that like forms of exaction might be 

 made to serve a commercial purpose as well as produce revenue ; 

 and, as might have been expected, they therefore early became 

 instrumentalities for fiscal oppression ; and, with a view of ad- 

 vancing the interests of English merchants, or of protecting 

 native industries, they were especially directed against the com- 

 merce of foreigners. And while the crown, as early as 1275, was 

 deprived of much of its arbitrary power of levying customs for 

 revenue, its prerogative of restraining trade and imposing oner- 

 ous burdens on exchanges with foreigners remained not only un- 

 disturbed but undisputed. Foreign merchants, or trading com- 

 panies, frequently purchased immunity from such exactions ; but 

 yet, according to Mr. Hall, in his History of the English " Cus- 

 toms," " to the ' custos ' of the ports, to the riverside baron, to 

 the wayside outlaw and the town apprentice, the Lombard or 

 Flemish peddler or merchant appeared as fair game for violence 

 and extortion of every kind." And in the earlier records of Eng- 

 land's customs experience, their oppressive features are of higher 

 interest than their revenue or fiscal characteristics. English pro- 

 ducers and traders, furthermore, having secured immunity from 

 arbitrary taxation themselves, were quite willing to see this in- 

 strument of restraint and oppression turned against their foreign 

 competitors ; and, accordingly, during the whole of the sixteenth, 

 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, and the first quarter of the 

 nineteenth century, the whole commercial policy of England was 

 based on the theory of the so-called "mercantile system"; the 

 fundamental principle of which was that commerce could benefit 

 one country only to the extent that it injured another; and that 

 it was the part of wisdom always to secure a favorable balance of 

 trade by selling as much and buying as little as possible, and 

 receiving pay for what was sold, not in other useful products, but 

 in gold. 



