EXCISE (derived through the Dutch, _excijs_ or _accijs_, possibly from Late Lat. _accensare_,--ad, to, and census, tax; the word owes something to a confusion with _excisum_, cut out), a term now well known in public finance, signifying a duty charged on home goods, either in the process of their manufacture, or before their sale to the home consumers. This form of taxation implies a commonwealth somewhat advanced in manufactures, markets and general riches; and it interferes so directly with the industry and liberty of the subject that it has seldom been introduced save in some supreme financial exigency, and has as seldom been borne, even after long usage, with less than the ordinary impatience of taxation. Yet excise duties can boast a respectable antiquity, having a distinct parallel in the _vectigal rerum venalium_ (or toll levied on all commodities sold by auction, or in public market) of the Romans. But the Roman excise was mild compared with that of modern nations, having never been more than _centesima_, or 1%, of the value; and it was much shorter lived than the modern examples, having been first imposed by Augustus, reduced for a time one-half by Tiberius, and finally abolished by Caligula, A.D. 38, so that the Roman excise cannot have had a duration of much more than half a century. Its remission must have been deemed a great boon in the marts of Rome, since it was commemorated by the issue of small brass coins with the legend _Remissis Centesimis_, specimens of which are still to be found in collections.
The history of this branch of revenue in the United Kingdom dates from the period of the civil wars, when the republican government, following the example of Holland, established, as a means of defraying the heavy expenditure of the time, various duties of excise, which the royalists when restored to power found too convenient or too necessary to be abandoned, notwithstanding their origin and their general unpopularity. On the contrary, they were destined to be steadily increased both in number and in amount. It is curious that the first commodities selected for excise were those on which this branch of taxation, after great extension, had again in the period of reform and free trade been in a manner permanently reduced, viz. malt liquors, and such kindred beverages as cider perry and spruce beer. The other excise duties remaining are chiefly in the form of licences, such as to kill game and to use and carry guns, to sell gold and silver plate, to pursue the business of appraisers or auctioneers, hawkers or pedlars, pawnbrokers or patent-medicine vendors, to manufacture tobacco or snuff, to deal in sweets or in foreign wines, to make vinegar, to roast malt, or to use a still in chemistry or otherwise. It may be presumed that the policy of the licence duties was at first not so much to collect revenue, though in the aggregate they yielded a large sum, as to guard the main sources of excise, and to place certain classes of dealers, by registration and an annual payment to the exchequer, under a direct legal responsibility. The excise system of the United Kingdom as now pruned and reformed, however, while still the most prolific of all the sources of revenue, is simple in process, and is contentedly borne as compared with what was the case in the 18th, and the beginning of the 19th century. The wars with Bonaparte strained the government resources to the uttermost, and excise duties were multiplied and increased in every practicable form. Bricks, candles, calico prints, glass, hides and skins, leather, paper, salt, soap, and other commodities of home manufacture and consumption were placed, with their respective industries, under excise surveillance and fine. When the duties could no longer be increased in number, they were raised in rate. The duty on British spirits, which had begun at a few pence per gallon in 1660, rose step by step to 11s. 8¼d. per gallon in 1820; and the duty on salt was augmented to three or fourfold its value.