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 carried with it the further right to restrain at pleasure the import or export of any commodity.[1] Thus, until the reign of Edward II (1272-1307) the right to tax the export of wool was exclusively a royal privilege; and the enactment of a statute by Parliament 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, however, with varying phases until finally settled in 1682; 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 possibly come about the curious idea that tariffs, or taxes on imports, 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 manufactured commodities produced and consumed in the kingdom, as beer, cider, soap, glass, paper, and the like, and in contradistinction 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.
