"Excise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... D.D., minister of Kirkmabreck, in Galloway. By the death of Mr Inglis in 1826, she became dependent, with three children by her second marriage, on a small annuity arising from an appointment which her late husband had held in the Excise. She relieved the sadness of her widowhood by a course of extensive reading, and of composition both in prose and verse. In 1838 she published, at the solicitation of friends, a duodecimo volume, entitled ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and in other improvements of various kinds since the late war, are conclusive proofs of this extraordinary prosperity, especially when it is recollected that these expenditures have been defrayed without a burthen on the people, the direct tax and excise having been repealed soon after the conclusion of the late war, and the revenue applied to these great objects having been raised in a manner not to be felt. Our great resources therefore remain untouched for any purpose which ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... believe that I have not seized the opportunity of making my escape with the others. The height of imprudence may become the height of security. I have as yet no plan—but it will come. My luck shall not fail me now! who knows: nothing perhaps is damaged but an excise man's crown. Thank heaven, the ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... cents per pound, the latter five dollars per bushel, at Pittsburg. The still was therefore the necessary appendage of every farm, where the farmer was able to procure it; if he was not he carried his grain to the more wealthy to be distilled. To the large majority of these farmers excise laws were peculiarly odious. The State of Pennsylvania made some attempt, during and just after the Revolution, to enforce an excise law; but without effect. A man named Graham, who had kept a public house in Philadelphia, accepted the appointment of Collector for the western counties. ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... keep forcing me to attend to these silly things. Vodka, oats . . ." she muttered, half closing her eyes, "oats, bills, percentages, or, as my head-clerk says, 'percentage.' . . . It's awful. Yesterday I simply turned the excise officer out. He pesters me with his Tralles. I said to him: 'Go to the devil with your Tralles! I can't see any one!' He kissed my hand and went away. I tell you what: can't your cousin wait ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... drawing-room windows. The Sacheverell outrage was wildest in this chosen quarter of noblemen and blackguards; and in George II.'s reign, when Sir Joseph Jekyll, the Master of the Rolls, made himself odious to the lowest class by his Act for laying an excise upon gin, a mob assailed him in the middle of the fields, threw him to the ground, kicked him over and over, and savagely trampled upon him. It was a marvel that he escaped with his life; but with characteristic good humor, he soon made a joke ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the prophets," the lustres of the poetry and the science of England! L1200 a-year for the only men of their generation who will be remembered for five minutes by the generation to come. L1200 a-year, the salary of an Excise commissioner, of a manipulator of the penny post, of a charity inspector, of a police magistrate, of a register of cabs, of any thing and every body: and this, reduced to decimals, is to be the national prize, the luxurious provision, the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... or so of life did he undertake this occupation which ruined him. Mr. Reade shows that he had been for thirty years engaged in this trade in parchment. Brother Birkbeck Hill quotes Croker, who hinted that Johnson's famous definition of Excise as "a hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the Common Judge of Property but by wretches hired by those to whom Excise is paid," was inspired by recollections of his father's constant disputes with the Excise officers. Mr. Reade has unearthed documents concerning ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... Revolution led him to send four pieces of ordnance, taken from a captured smuggler, as a present to the French Convention, a piece of bravado which got him into difficulties with his superiors in the excise. The poetry which Burns wrote, not in dialect, but in the classical English, is in the stilted manner of his century, and his prose correspondence betrays his lack of culture by his constant lapse into rhetorical affectation and ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... hitherto lain upon the people that the very name of excise was unknown to them; and among the other evils arising from these domestic wars was the introduction of that impost into England. The parliament at Westminster having voted an excise on beer, wine, and other ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... married; afterwards he became a grocer and an exciseman, at Lewes, in Sussex. This situation he lost through some misdemeanor. After this, however, so well were the public authorities of his native country disposed to serve him, that one of the Commissioners of Excise gave him a letter of recommendation to Dr. Franklin, then a colonial agent in London, who recommended him to go to America. At this period he had first exercised his talents as a writer by drawing up a pamphlet recommending the advance ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... The excise young fellows, They are tremendously wild: They shave their beards, And ride on horses, Wear overshoes, And ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... after 1589 seems a contradiction that nothing can explain. It can, however, be quite easily explained, though never explained away. He had simply failed to make the Lisbon Expedition pay—a heinous offence in days when the navy was as much a revenue department as the customs or excise. He had also failed to take Lisbon itself. The reasons why mattered nothing either to the disappointed government or ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... the early days of the republic the Democratic party protested even in armed insurrection in Pennsylvania against the inquisitorial excise tax, which, to use the language of that day, "penetrated a sphere of taxation reserved to the State." Today this party has placed upon the statute books the most inquisitorial tax ever laid in the history of our country by the act of April 9, 1912—a tax on white ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... receives large transfer payments from the US Federal Treasury ($143 million in 1997) into which Guamanians pay no income or excise taxes; under the provisions of a special law of Congress, the Guam Treasury, rather than the US Treasury, receives federal income taxes paid by military and civilian Federal employees stationed in Guam ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... rollers in wet gardens grow } Heavy with dirt, and gathering as they go. } May none, who have so little understood, To like such trash, presume to praise what's good! And may those drudges of the stage, whose fate Is damned dull farce more dully to translate, Fall under that excise the state thinks fit To set on all French wares, whose worst is wit. French farce, worn out at home, is sent abroad; And, patched up here, is made our English mode. Henceforth, let poets, ere allowed to write, Be searched, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... the custom house or excise vessels, that may be commissioned with letters of marque, turning their attention from the smugglers to the more attractive adventure of privateering, all interest in their prizes is ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... countries, an exemption existed until the 1st of February instant, according to information received from our charge d'affaires at Lisbon, in favor of various articles when imported from Great Britain, from an excise duty which was exacted upon the same articles when imported from other foreign countries or produced or manufactured at home. This exemption was granted in pursuance of the construction given to a stipulation contained in the late treaty between Portugal and Great Britain, and ceased, together ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... you in the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to the feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to partiality, to friendship, or to what is called interest: write it on your heart, that you will depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions. Think not, neither, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... British tea tax was reduced to 1 shilling (25 cents) per pound, together with 25 per cent of the gross price. The selling price immediately dropped, and British consumption in 1846 rose to 2,358,589 lbs. The use of tea has often been checked by excessive duties or excise tax. From 1784 to 1787 British consumption rose from five million pounds to seventeen millions of pounds, consequent upon a reduction of duties. Twenty years after, under the imposition of exorbitant duties, British consumption was only nineteen and ...
— Tea Leaves • Francis Leggett & Co.
... "I used to do so on the gutters when I was a boy . . . but I hav'nt done such a thing these thirty years." This was said in 1828. He resided in Goswell Street—now Goswell Road—with a widow lady, whose husband had been in the Excise. He cannot have paid more than a pound a week, if so much, for two rooms on the first floor. There was no servant, and the hardworking landlady, Mrs. Martha Bardell, performed all the duties of her household single-handed. ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... "frequently my duty to protect preventive men, and if that duty were ever to bring me this way, you would feel that I had informed upon you." "No, no," was the answer in chorus, "you only protect the excise men, that forming part of your duty; you are not an informer but a protector, and we know you won't tell." They were good enough to emphasise this vote of confidence with an invitation that I should try their poteen. Naturally I declined, but in a manner, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... patriot lawyer;—the bold proposal of Mr. Thomas Pitt, that the Commons should withhold the supplies, till pledges of amendment in the administration of public affairs should be given;—the Bill for the exclusion of Excise Officers and Contractors from Parliament, which it was reserved for a Whig Administration to pass;—these and other great constitutional questions, through which Mr. Burke and Mr. Fox fought, side by side, lavishing at every step the inexhaustible ammunition ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... sad. Gifted but poor, and doomed to hard work, he was given a place in the excise. He went to Edinburgh, and for a while was a great social lion; but he acquired a horrid thirst for drink, which shortened his life. He died in Dumfries, at the early age of thirty-seven. His allusions to his excesses are frequent, and many ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... be uneasy," said Hulot, fancying that his uncle saw more clearly than was the fact. "As to our excise dealings, your character will not be impugned. Everything depends on the authority at your back; now I myself appointed the authorities out there; I am sure of them. This, Uncle Fischer, is a dead secret between ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... and joviality of all faces till the afternoon, when I went up to the council-chamber in the tolbooth, to meet the other magistrates and respectable characters of the town, in order to drink the king's health. In going thither, I was joined, just as I was stepping out of my shop, by Mr Stoup, the excise gauger, and Mr Firlot, the meal-monger, who had made a power of money a short time before, by a cargo of corn that he had brought from Belfast, the ports being then open, for which he was envied by some, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... thrones in the German Empire, especially of Prussia. These men, after about twelve years of service in an army where discipline, obedience, and efficiency are the first and last word, are then drafted into all the minor administrative officers of the state, such as minor railway, post, excise, municipal, and police. The reader will see the significance of this when it is pointed out that not only the Empire but the War Machine has these well-trained men at its beck and call. The same thing applies to the drafting of officers to hold the highest administrative ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... born at Thetford, in Norfolk, in January, 1737, and sailed for America in 1774, then being thirty-seven years of age. Up to this date he was a rank failure. His trade was staymaking, but he had tried his hand at many things. He was twice an Excise officer, but was twice dismissed the service, the first time for falsely pretending to have made certain inspections which, in fact, he had not made, and the second time for carrying on business in an excisable article—tobacco, to ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... agriculturist has little or nothing to do, but which may appear equally objectionable to isolated interests. Such is the proposal to allow foreign manufactured papers to be admitted at a nominal duty, in the teeth of the present excise regulations, which, of themselves, have been a grievous burden upon this branch of home industry—the reduction of the duties upon manufactured silks, linens, shoes, &c.—all of which are now to be brought into direct competition with our home productions. ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... to live under it, which I could not do among Presbyterians. To be sure, every man values his livelihood first; that must be granted; and I warrant, if you would confess the truth, you are more afraid of losing your place than anything else; but never fear, friend, there will be an excise under another government as well as ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... dominions. His fleet, which numbered 500 ships, was stationed chiefly at Misenum and Ravenna. His revenues arose from the contributions of the provinces, from various taxes, and from the rent of the public domain. An excise was imposed upon all goods exposed for sale, and there was also a tax ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... almost a dead letter. Besides, by what law would you enter into every man's domestic concerns, and regulate the interior economy of his house and plantation? This would be something more than a general excise. Who would endure such a law? And yet on all these and innumerable other minutiae must depend the protection of the slaves, their comforts, and the probability of their increase. It was universally allowed, that the Code Noir ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... the Excise was returning home from one of his professional journies. His way lay across a range of hills, the road over which was so blocked up with snow as to leave all trace of it indiscernible. Uncertain how to proceed, he resolved to trust to his horse, and throwing loose the reins, ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... off with a comic scene, where the Excise patrol vessel is cruising near an area suspected of being heavily involved with smuggling. Suddenly a large object is seen swimming in the water, and it turns out to be a cow. Then there's all the business of milking the cow on the deck of ...
— Cutlass and Cudgel • George Manville Fenn
... had performed a series of excavations, and amongst them a huge round perforation from the high land above to the beach below, through which it is said many a cargo has passed ashore without being entered in the books of the excise. Here the cliff is formed of hard magnesian limestone, and rises perpendicularly from the beach more than a hundred feet. When Peter set to work, the only habitable portions were two wild caves opening to the sea, into which at high tide the breakers ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 218, December 31, 1853 • Various
... improvements, but an impost on being alive. Accustomed as we had been to war taxes which never came off, this was a sanctioned way of "passing the buck" such as we had never known. The advantage is that when we pay 14 cents for a box of matches that used to cost five cents, we can read "5 cents War Excise Tax Paid" on ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... toil and inconvenience of his late occupation, Paine now renounced it forever, to apply himself to the profession of Exciseman. After fourteen months' study he obtained the appointment of supernumerary in the Excise, which he held, with intervals, till 1768, when he settled as Exciseman at Lewes, in Sussex, and married, 1771, Elizabeth Olive, daughter of a tobacconist, whose business he succeeded to. About this time ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... return; I was not willing that the canals and inland waters of Canada should be made the joint property of the United States and Canada and be maintained at their joint expense; I was not willing that the custom and excise duty of Canada should be assimilated to the prohibitory rates of the United States; and very especially was I unwilling that any such arrangement should be entered into with the United States, dependent on the frail tenure of reciprocal legislation, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... list is "Mum." "Berlin white beer" follows this. One of the few occasions when I have ever known Mr. Gladstone nonplussed for an answer, was in a debate on the Budget (I think in 1886) on a proposed increase of excise duties. Mr. Gladstone was asked what "Mum" was, and confessed that he had not the smallest idea. The opportunity for instructing the omniscient Mr. Gladstone seemed such a unique one, that I nearly jumped up in my place to tell ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... by the introduction of a more extensive system of public leases. Above the rank and file of tavern keepers, both rural and urban, there had arisen a class of wealthy tax-farmers, who kept a monopoly on the sale of liquor or the collection of excise in various governments of the Pale. They functioned as the financial agents of the exchequer, while the Jewish employees in their mills, store-houses, and offices acted as their sub-agents, forming a class of "officials" of their own. The ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... exact twelve reals from every passenger; and since the poor are usually by that time drained so dry that most of them go on board without a single real—having spent everything on expenses in port, the king's fees, and the ingenious exactions of the custom-house officers and excise-men—they suffer more from this than from everything else that they have previously spent. In my case they did me the honor to excuse me from the fees for the religious, but refused to do so for the servants whom we brought with us. Finally, however, we brought them to the point of ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XIV., 1606-1609 • Various
... it? And we thought, Deakin, the Badger and me, that coins being ever on the vanish, and you not over sweet on them there lovely little locks at Leslie's, and them there bigger and uglier marine stores at the Excise Office ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson
... articles should be imported free of all duty, and that the revenue derived from import duties should be raised exclusively from the unprotected articles, or that whenever a duty is imposed upon protected articles imported an excise duty of the same rate shall be imposed upon all similar articles manufactured ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... reasonable prospect of earning it with his head, he must earn it with his hands. They were strong and willing. So he leased a farm at Ellisland in Dumfriesshire, and obtained an appointment from the Board of Excise: then, poet, farmer, and exciseman, he went back to Mauchline and was married to Jean. Leaving her and her child he repaired to Ellisland, where he was obliged to build a cottage for himself. He dug the foundations, collected ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... suppress. But the secret society annoyed and crippled the government in other modes, which it was not easy to parry; and all blows dealt in return were dealt in the dark, and aimed at a shadow. The society called upon Irishmen to abstain generally from ardent spirits, as a means of destroying the excise; and it is certain that the society was obeyed, in a degree which astonished neutral observers, all over Ireland. The same society, by a printed proclamation, called upon the people not to purchase the quitrents of the crown, which ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... th' revenuers," he said frankly. The mountaineers of the old Cumberland, to this day, make no secret of their deadly hatred for the agents of the government excise. "They're snoopin' 'round th' mountings, an' if they find my still I plan to blow it into ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... the Opposition, in which it was proposed to have Sir Robert murdered by a mob, of which the earl had declared his abhorrence. Such an attempt was actually made in 1733, at the time of the famous excise bill. As the minister descended the stairs of the House of commons on the night he carried the bill, he was guarded on one side by his second son Edward, and on the other by General Charles Churchill; but the crowd behind endeavoured to throw him down, as he was a bulky man, and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... became rapid. Sir Everard learned from the public NEWS-LETTER,—first, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, was returned for the ministerial borough of Barterfaith; next, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had taken a distinguished part in the debate upon the Excise bill in the support of government; and, lastly, that Richard Waverley, Esquire, had been honoured with a seat at one of those boards, where the pleasure of serving the country is combined with other important gratifications, ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... in England were filled with men whom the jealousies and fears of the ruling party had represented as dangerous.[*] The taxes continued by the new government, and which, being unusual, were esteemed heavy, increased the general ill will under which it labored. Besides the customs and excise, ninety thousand pounds a month were levied on land for the subsistence of the army. The sequestrations and compositions of the royalists, the sale of the crown lands, and of the dean and chapter lands, though they ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... to be with him morn and night. But even that godly minister had failed to protect the child, who was last seen being carried off by Frank Kennedy on his horse to see a king's ship chase a smuggler. The excise-man's body was found at the foot of the crags at Warroch Point, but no one knew what had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... who was Commissioner of the Admiralty, always voted with the Court. For many years the name of George Lyttelton was seen in every account of every debate in the House of Commons. He opposed the standing army; he opposed the excise; he supported the motion for petitioning the king to remove Walpole. His zeal was considered by the courtiers not only as violent but as acrimonious and malignant, and when Walpole was at last hunted from his places, every effort ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... for all the great Cood that you for hur have done, Would you wou'd made Peace with our King, and let hur come home, Put off the Military Charge, Impost, and Excise, Ay, and free Quarter too. Then Cot shall bless you Master Roundhead, and ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... position with regard to the lady is to be comprehensible. Lucien's introduction came about oddly enough. In the previous winter a newcomer had brought some interest into Mme. de Bargeton's monotonous life. The place of controller of excise fell vacant, and M. de Barante appointed a man whose adventurous life was a sufficient passport to the house of the sovereign lady who had ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Rebellion.—The political agitation of the Anti-Federalists was accompanied by an armed revolt against the government in 1794. The occasion for this uprising was another of Hamilton's measures, a law laying an excise tax on distilled spirits, for the purpose of increasing the revenue needed to pay the interest on the funded debt. It so happened that a very considerable part of the whisky manufactured in the country was made by the ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... among them, may, generally speaking, be too truly said to have derived their birth and education from criminals and outcasts. In the midst of a people thus constituted, a press "unshackled by stamps, paper-excise, advertisement duty, or censorship," is doing its daily or weekly work of enlightening the minds of the people respecting their grievances; and where, as in Van Diemen's Land, there is said to be a newspaper for every 1666 free ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... earth; In pleasing dreams the blissful age renew, And call Britannia's glories back to view; Behold her cross triumphant on the main, The guard of commerce, and the dread of Spain; Ere masquerades debauch'd, excise oppress'd, Or English honour grew ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... numerous, and carry on the greatest trade here, farming most of the excise and customs, being allowed to live according to their own laws, and to exercise their idolatrous worship. They have a chief of their own nation, who manages their affairs with the company, by which they are allowed great privileges, having even a representative in the council, who has a vote when ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... Licenses, at six hundred thousand pounds a year, to begin this Michaelmas. You may be sure they have covenants not to be losers. They have signed and sealed ten thousand pounds a year more to the Duchess of Cleveland, who has likewise near ten thousand pounds a year out of the new farm of the country excise of Beer and Ale, five thousand pounds a year out of the Post Office, and, they say, the reversion of all the King's leases, the reversion of places all in the Custom House, the green wax, and indeed, what not? All promotions, spiritual and temporal, ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... hinted at his long-cherished scheme of a National Bank, and a possible excise law, and gave considerable space to the miserable condition of landed property and the methods by which it might be ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... some of the provinces had capitulated and joined forces with France and Austria, the insurgent leaders having been promised places in the excise—the compromise hastened no doubt by cold and hunger. Garibaldi's own force was much reduced and he took to the mountains, abandoning his cavalry equipment. Orders were out that he, or any of his band, caught should be shot, without trial, by fours in presence of their companions ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Dream Chapter 17. Tammany's Patriotism Chapter 18. On the Use of Money in Politics Chapter 19. The Successful Politician Does Not Drink Chapter 20. Bosses Preserve the Nation Chapter 21. Concerning Excise Chapter 22. A Parting Word on the Future Party in America Chapter 23. Strenuous Life of the Tammany ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt
... who was very kind was Dr. Bateman, the Queen's Assistant Solicitor of Excise. He took me to several assemblies, at one of which, besides a number of the great ones of the land, I was introduced to a New Zealand chief, a strong-built, broad-set, large-headed, lion-looking man. It was hinted that he knew the taste of human flesh, and was ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the majority hastened to amend the Act so as to meet the views of the judges.*** Four years later, in the Carriage Tax case,**** the only question argued before the Court was that of the validity of a congressional excise. Yet as late as 1800 we find Justice Samuel Chase of Maryland, who had succeeded Blair in 1795, expressing skepticism as to the right of the Court to disallow acts of Congress on the ground of their unconstitutionality, though at the same time admitting that the prevailing ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... petty thought, Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, For all the glory your conversion brought, Since gold alone should not have been its price. You have your salary; was 't for that you wrought? And Wordsworth has his place in the Excise.[5] You're shabby fellows—true—but poets still, And duly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... one day know, Job,' answered Mr. Trumbull,—'the comfort of a conscience void of offence, and that fears neither gauger nor collector, neither excise nor customs. The business is to pass this gentleman to Cumberland upon earnest business, and to procure him speech with the Laird of the Solway Lakes—I suppose that can be done? Now I think Nanty Ewart, if he sails with the brig this morning ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... in England. But by talking so familiarly of one hundred and ten thousand pounds, by a tax upon a few commodities, it is plain you are either naturally or affectedly ignorant of our present condition: or else you would know and allow, that such a sum is not to be raised here, without a general excise; since, in proportion to our wealth, we pay already in taxes more than England ever did in the height of the war. And when you have brought over your corn, who will be the buyers? Most certainly not the poor, who will not be able to purchase ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... acquainted with a young country clergyman of the name of Brand. She hesitatingly, seeing me in some emotion, owned that she had some small knowledge of the gentleman. Just then came in her husband, who is, it seems, a petty officer of excise, (and not an ill-behaved man,) who owned a fuller ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... to me," said the Clergyman, "that our municipal regulations ought, on this subject, be much improved. Our Excise officers enter the cellars of the wholesale and retail spirit-dealers, only to gauge the strength of the spirit, and to ascertain how much it may be overproof, which alone regulates the Government ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... men of fifty thousand pounds, that London would be twice as large and twice as populous, and that nevertheless the rate of mortality would have diminished to one-half of what it then was, that the post-office would bring more into the exchequer than the excise and customs had brought in together under Charles the Second, that stage coaches would run from London to York in twenty-four hours, that men would be in the habit of sailing without wind, and would be beginning to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... careful, crafty. Cannilie, craftily. Cantie, canty, cheerful, jolly. Cantraip, magic, witchcraft. Capernoity, ill-natured. Carlin, old woman. Cates, dainties. Cauld, cold. Caup, cup. Celness, coldness. Cess, excise, tax. Chafe, chafing. Change-house, tavern. Chapman, peddler. Chapournelie, hat. Chelandri, goldfinch. Cheres, cheers. Cheves, moves. Chirm, chirp. Church-giebe-house, grave. Claes, clothes. Claithing, clothing. Clamb, climbed. Claught, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... eyes Behold the fount of Freedom in excise, Whose 'patriot' logic possibly maintains The 'identity' of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... surviving cow was seized by the sheriff. He had the satisfaction of beating the officer nearly to death; but the cow was sold notwithstanding, and he took a month's exercise on the treadmill, whilst his wife spent the time with her friend the excise-officer, and drank to his ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... of excise duties has never commended itself to the favor of the American people, and has never been resorted to except for supplying deficiencies in the Treasury when, by reason of special exigencies, the duties on imports have proved inadequate ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... loving friends the Commissioners, for managing His Majesty's Revenues of Customs and Excise, now and for the time being, and to all other officers ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... yours. It is owing to this neglect on the part of your German translators that you are not aware of the works of William Wordsworth, who has a baronet in London[C] who draws him frontispieces and leads him about to dinners and to the play; and a Lord in the country,[D] who gave him a place in the Excise—and a cover at his table. You do not know perhaps that this Gentleman is the greatest of all poets past—present and to come—besides which he has written an 'Opus Magnum' in prose—during the late election for Westmoreland.[E] His principal publication is entitled 'Peter ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 616 and 866.) but the salt was extremely impure, grey, mixed with earthy particles, and surcharged with muriate and sulphate of magnesia. Since the province of Cumana has become dependent on the intendancia of Caracas, the sale of salt is under the control of the excise; and the fanega, which the Guayquerias sold at half a piastre, costs a piastre and a half.* (* The fanega of salt is sold to those Indians and fishermen who do not pay the duties (derechos reales), at Punta Araya for six, at Cumana for eight reals. The prices ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... stories told us by the excise-officer who came to inspect the unloading of the vessel, of the frightful ravages of the cholera, by no means increased our ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... entry in an account-book, as to which she remembered that she had consulted the almanac that she might put down the right day. The day of the woman's presence in another place was identical with the presence of an Excise surveyor, and the statements of the witnesses were tested by the Excise entry-books. The position of the wanderers was in another instance connected with the posting of a letter, and the post-office clerks bore testimony to the fact, that from the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... elbows too, as the quarrel and battle which was not long in beginning went on; shouting fiercely; the lank faces distorted into the similitude of a cruel laugh. For they were darkened and hardened: long had they been the prey of excise-men and tax-men; of 'clerks with the cold spurt of their pen.' It was the fixed prophecy of our old Marquis, which no man would listen to, that 'such Government by Blind-man's-buff, stumbling along too far, would end by the General Overturn, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy. The excise law in Pennsylvania, the embargo and non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the carriage tax in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in their operation than any of ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... and took his seat in the third session of the First Congress. The assumption bill had been passed, but that was only the first of the series of financial measures proposed by Hamilton, and Giles followed Madison's lead in unsuccessful resistance to the excise and to the national bank. Giles was re-elected to the Second Congress, which opened on October 24, 1791. In the course of this session he became the leader of the opposition, not by supplanting Madison but through willingness to take responsibilities from which Madison, like Jefferson, shrank, ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... acts evince, would scarcely breed indolence in the Indian, yet this is with him an almost unconquerable weakness. It is, indeed, so ingrained within him, as to resist any attempt, on his own part, to excise it from his economy; and as to defy extirpating or uprooting process sought to be enforced by another. The Indian is, in truth, a supremely indolent being, and testifying to an utter abandonment of himself to the power of indolence over him, has often been ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... the later plays, full of successful stage tricks though they are, did not come out of his knowledge of Irish life. Knowledge of Ireland he ought to have, for he is said to have lived for comparatively long periods in various places in country as an excise officer. As such Mr. Boyle was himself one of the principal types, that of the official, that exist in Ireland, and in a position to learn much of many other types, surprisingly few of which he has realized with any depth of insight in ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... those of Homeric critics) this verse to Hogg and that to Scott. He would know that Scott did not interpolate a single stanza; that spelling, punctuation, and some slight verbal corrections, with an admirable emendation, were the sum of his industry: that he did not even excise two stanzas of, at earliest, ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... before had not Washington, sincerely anxious throughout these troubled years to hold the balance even between the parties, repeatedly exerted all his influence to dissuade him. The following year saw the "Whiskey Insurrection" in Pennsylvania—a popular protest against Hamilton's excise measures. Jefferson more than half sympathized with the rebels. Long before, on the occasion of Shay's insurrection, he had expressed with some exaggeration a view which has much more truth in it than those modern writers who exclaim in ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... sea for all the high contracting powers is an altogether practicable step. Disarmament is not a dream; it is a thing more practicable than a general hygienic convention and more easily enforced than custom and excise. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... native police force. Peace of Sarawak kept by the people. Cheap government. Absolute Monarchy. Nominated Councils. The 'Civil Service,' 'Residents.' Law, custom, equity and common sense. Slavery abolished. Sources of revenue—'Opium Farm' monopoly, poll tax, customs, excise, fines and fees. Revenue and expenditure. Early financial straits. Sarawak offered to England, France and Holland. The Borneo Company (Ltd.). Public debt. Advantages of Chinese immigration 'Without the Chinese we can do nothing.' Java an exception. Chinese ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... felt slightly faint, then a rush of angry blood stung her face in the darkness. Except for game and excise violations the stories they told about Clinch ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... the two parties: but the Whigs had the larger share. Some persons, indeed, who did little honour to the Whig name, were largely recompensed for services which no good man would have performed. Wildman was made Postmaster General. A lucrative sinecure in the Excise was bestowed on Ferguson. The duties of the Solicitor of the Treasury were both very important and very invidious. It was the business of that officer to conduct political prosecutions, to collect the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... real race came off when the victorious fleet and army returned in triumph. Land and water were then indeed alive with exultant crowds. The streets were like a fair, and a noisy one at that. Soldiers, sailors, and civilians drank standing toasts the whole night through. The commissioner of excise recorded, not without a touch of proper pride, that, quite apart from all illicit wines and spirits, no less than sixty thousand gallons of good Jamaica rum were drunk in honour of the fall of Louisbourg. In higher circles, where wine was commoner than spirits, the toasts were honoured ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... philosophers. Paine had had the advantage of close contact with men and affairs in both hemispheres. Not even Cobbett, his literary successor, passed through more varied experiences. Born in 1737 at Thetford in Norfolk, Paine divided his early life between stay-making, excise work, the vending of tobacco, and a seafaring life. His keen eyes, lofty brow, prominent nose, proclaimed him a thinker and fighter, and therefore, in that age, a rebel. What more natural than that he, a foe to authority and hater of oppression, should go to America to help on ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... house—from old Susie Two-to-the-Pound, down to the last born kitten. You keeps cats of course, and all that? Susie must be pleased to see me. Sich laughs, to be sure, we had about her and a young man of the Excise. He was about seven feet high, and she wa'n't above four and a half, so we always called him her young man of the extra size. Wasn't it funny? But he died of a decline; and I hear she's a broad as she's long. Well, we must ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... insensible but profitable way: what is exhaled up in clouds, falls back again in showers: what the souldier receives in pay, he payes in Drink: their very enemies, though they hate the State, yet love their liquor, and pay excise: the most idle, slothful, and most improvident, that selleth his blood for drink, and his flesh for bread, serves at his own charge, for every pay day he payeth his sutler, and he ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... respecting the stamp-duty, is equally wise and laudable with another maxim which has been long adopted by our financiers, namely, to connive at drunkenness, riot, and dissipation, because they inhance the receipt of the excise; not reflecting, that in providing this temporary convenience, they are destroying the morals, health, and industry of the people — Notwithstanding my contempt for those who flatter a minister, I think there is something still more despicable in flattering a mob. When I see ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... did not escape the all-seeing eye of the Chancellors of England. As early as 1660 we find amongst various custom and excise ...
— Cocoa and Chocolate - Their History from Plantation to Consumer • Arthur W. Knapp
... in the cottages above, until they had an opportunity of delivering their contraband articles into the hands of their agents; and this traffic had been carried for many years, without the government or excise having the slightest suspicion by what means the smuggling was accomplished. As we before observed, the great articles in request, and which were now smuggled from France, were alamodes and lute-strings. The attention of Government had been called to check the admission ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... America, it is evident that we must a long time depend for the means of revenue chiefly on such duties. In most parts of it, excises must be confined within a narrow compass. The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and peremptory spirit of excise laws. The pockets of the farmers, on the other hand, will reluctantly yield but scanty supplies, in the unwelcome shape of impositions on their houses and lands; and personal property is too precarious and invisible a fund to be laid hold of in any other ...
— The Federalist Papers
... three daughters, Ann, Mary and Hannah. Ann succeeds her uncle and aunt, for they are both dead. Mary and her husband live on a little farm at Brompton, and Hannah at Helmsley. My son James is in the Excise at London. William and John are with me at home and George has learned the business of Cabinet maker. Prudence keeps a farmer's house in Cleaveland and Betty is at home and she is Taller than her mother. Thanks ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... all these things. His Spanish travels are dated for us by references to Dona Isabel and Don Carlos, to Mr. Villiers and Lord Palmerston. But cut these dates out, and they might be travels of the last century. His Welsh book proclaims itself as written in the full course of the Crimean War; but excise a few passages which bear directly on that event, and the most ingenious critic would be puzzled to "place" the composition. Shakespeare, we know, was for all time, not of one age only; but I think we may say of Borrow, without too severely ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... no use in my declaring my willingness to deal with themselves in preference to their master; it was clear that they had resolved that I should, in the most expeditious and advantageous way, turn my goods into money, that they might excise upon me to the amount of ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Wood, a gentleman who merits praise oftener than he is named, did the little that was done or attempted to be done for him: nor was that little done on the peer's part without solicitation:—"I wish to go into the excise;" thus he wrote to Glencairn; "and I am told your lordship's interest will easily procure me the grant from the commissioners: and your lordship's patronage and goodness, which have already rescued me from obscurity, wretchedness, and exile, emboldens me to ask that interest. You have ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... twin brother of Hugh, third Earl of Marchmont, the friend of Pope, and one of his executors. They were sons of Alexander, the second earl, who had quarrelled with Sir Robert Walpole at the time of the excise scheme in 1733. Sir Robert, in consequence, prevented him from being re-elected one of the sixteen representative Scotch peers in 1734; in requital for which, the old earl's two sons became the bitterest opponents of the minister. They were both ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Canada no direct taxation for national purposes, except a mere trifle for the support of the provincial lunatic asylums, and for some other public buildings. The provincial revenue is derived from customs duties, public works, crown lands, excise, and bank impost. The customs duties last year came to 1,100,000l., the revenue from public works to 123,000l., from lands about the same sum, from excise about 40,000l., and from the tax on the current notes of the banks 30,000l. Every county, township, town, or incorporated ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... intelligence and attainments, Sir David, on the disembodiment of the regiment, actively sought his preferment; he procured him an agency at Ayr for the important manufacturing house of Finlay and Co., Glasgow, and in 1808, secured him an appointment in the Excise. In 1810, Train was sometime placed on service as a supernumerary in Perthshire; he was in the year following settled as an excise officer at Largs, from which place in 1813 he was transferred to Newton Stewart. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... seen a small political print on Sir Robert Walpole's administration, entitled, "Excise, a new Ballad Opera," of which this was unquestionably the basis. Beneath it is the following learned and ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... case of a domestic product, the manufacturer's transfer price (FOB the manufacturer, and exclusive of any direct sales taxes or excise taxes incurred in connection ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... shewn the incompatibility between the Muses and the Excise, which never agreed well together, or met in one seat, till they were unaccountably reconciled on Rydal Mount. He must know (no man better) the distraction created by the opposite calls of business and of fancy, the torment of extents, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... previously boasted of producing the best and finest paper in the world, and it had found a market not only throughout France, but all over Europe. There had been a time when this manufacture supported sixty mills; at the death of Lewis XIV. their number had fallen from sixty to sixteen. An excise duty at the mill, a duty on exportation at the provincial frontier, a duty on the importation of rags over the provincial frontier,—all these vexations had succeeded in reducing the trade with Holland, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... among men in the highest stations. When it is recollected that no poll tax can be imposed on five negroes, above what three whites shall be charged; when it is considered, that the imposts on the consumption of Carolina field negroes must be trifling, and the excise nothing, it is plain that the proportion of contributions, which can be expected from the southern states under the new constitution, will be unequal, and yet they are to be allowed to enfeeble themselves by the further ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois
... almost roadless country, to compete at the Sub-Intendant's auction sales, with every probability of being outbid in the end, and having his long-deposited money returned to him after all his pains. Lieutenant-Governor Des Voeux told the Legislature of Trinidad that the monstrous Excise imposts of the Colony were an incentive to smuggling, and he thought that the duties, licenses, &c., should be lowered in the interest of good and equitable government. Sir Henry Turner Irving, however, besides raising the duties on spirituous liquors, also enacted that every ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... the sexton, trembling more than ever; for he had bought it of the smugglers, and he thought that perhaps his questioner might be in the excise department ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... sole function of the administration now is that of directing the industries of the country. Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed no longer remain to be subserved. We have no army or navy, and no military organization. We have no departments of state or treasury, no excise or revenue services, no taxes or tax collectors. The only function proper of government, as known to you, which still remains, is the judiciary and police system. I have already explained to you how simple is our judicial system as compared with ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... and countries. This was supplemented by a series of the reports of the bureau. The State department of health furnished an exhibit of the blanks generally used in the administration of the department of health and graphically showed the work under its jurisdiction. The State excise department furnished a series of graphic charts upon the receipt and disbursement of the excise ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... of the Roman people, [78] and Nicholas the Fifth, the last who was importuned by the presence of a Roman emperor. [79] I. The conflict of Eugenius with the fathers of Basil, and the weight or apprehension of a new excise, emboldened and provoked the Romans to usurp the temporal government of the city. They rose in arms, elected seven governors of the republic, and a constable of the Capitol; imprisoned the pope's nephew; besieged his person in the palace; and shot volleys of arrows into his bark as he escaped ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... had before him. BOSWELL. 'Considering what he has said of us, we must make him feel something rough in Scotland.' Sir Eyre said to him, 'You must change your name, Sir.' BOSWELL. 'Ay, to Dr. M'Gregor[403].' We got safely to Inverness, and put up at Mackenzie's inn. Mr. Keith, the collector of Excise here, my old acquaintance at Ayr, who had seen us at the Fort, visited us in the evening, and engaged us to dine with him next day, promising to breakfast with us, and take us to the English chapel; so that we were ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... gentry who devote themselves to cheating the Spanish excise by smuggling cigars and English goods across the border, the Scorpions live by and on the garrison, and therefore do I name their habitat Sutlersville. "Scorpion," I should add, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is the sobriquet conferred by Tommy Atkins on the natives of the ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... condenser, and gave some account of what was done by Mons. Du Tremblay in this direction. It so happened that I had occasion to investigate the matter at the time of Du Tremblay's experiments; very little was effected here in England, one difficulty being the excise interference with the manufacture of ether. Chloroform was used here, and it was also suggested to employ bisulphide of carbon. In France, however, a great deal was done. Four large vessels were fitted with the ether engines, and I went over to Marseilles ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... times, when excise officers were not so sharp, there was a good deal of smuggling carried on at Ramsgate. Sir Thomas Dick Lauder[242] tells an anecdote of an Irishman there, who being asked to name the hardest wrought creature in existence, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... essay from the Tatler to the Mirror; in Lord Chesterfield and Lady Mary and Horace Walpole; in Pope and Young and Green and Churchill and Cowper, in Boswell and Wraxall, in Mrs. Delany and Madame d'Arblay, seems to me to deserve warrant of excise and guarantee of analysis as it lies in ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pulling down th' high-places Of Synods and Provincial Classes, 280 That us'd to make such hostile inroads Upon the Saints, like bloody NIMRODS Some for fulfilling prophecies, And th' expiration of th' excise And some against th' Egyptian bondage 285 Of holy-days, and paying poundage: Some for the cutting down of groves, And rectifying bakers' loaves: And some for finding out expedients Against the slav'ry of obedience. 290 Some were for Gospel Ministers, And some for Red-coat ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... tax of one per cent, is to be levied upon the income of corporations. In effect this provision of the law merely continues the corporation or "excise" tax which was already in existence. But that tax now becomes an integral part of the income tax, covering the income which accrues to the stockholder and is distributable in the form of dividends. On the theory that this income is reached ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... provided that $50,000,000 of said notes should be in lieu of the demand treasury notes authorized by the act of July 17, 1861, and that said demand notes should be taken up as rapidly as practicable. It provided that the treasury notes should be receivable in payment of all taxes, duties, imports, excise, debts and demands of all kinds due to the United States, and all debts and demands owing by the United States to individuals, corporations and associations within the United States, and should be lawful money and ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, for it was appealed to the House of Commons—now I should have voted there for the ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... his integrity, and discharged the duty of an upright magistrate. Zealous for the rights of his fellow citizens, he opposed all attempts against them; and, being lord mayor in the year 1733, he defeated a scheme of a general Excise, which, had it succeeded, would have put an end to the liberties ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... government of the Union had any strength inherent in itself, the physical situation of the country would render the excise of that strength very difficult. [See Note 2.] The United States cover an immense territory; they were separated from each other by great distances; and the population is disseminated over the surface of a country which is still half a wilderness. If the Union were to undertake to enforce the ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat) |
