contained Cartarum. position of taxes generally received parliamentary sanction, but not until the end of that period did the nation finally win a constitutional guarantee that they should never be imposed simply by the force of the royal authority. In the stress of a great emergency Edward I. so reasserted the taxing power of the crown as to alarm the nation; and the result was a counter-revolution which made all such future attempts upon. the part of the crown forever impossible. At the end of the Guarantees "Barons' War," Edward I., in the Confirmatio Cartarum, was in the Conmade to promise the clergy, the barons, and "all the com- firmatio monalty of the land, that for no business from henceforth will we take such manner of aids, tasks, nor prizes, but by the common assent of the realm, and for the common profit thereof, saving the ancient aids and prizes due and accustomed." In order to extend this limitation of the royal authority to indirect as well as to direct taxation, it was also provided that the right of the crown to tax wool should not in the future be exercised "without their common assent and good will; saving to us and our heirs the custom of wools, skins, and leather granted before by the commonalty aforesaid." Although Edward clearly conceded the chief subject of contention, he plainly indicated by the foregoing reservations that he did not consider his action at Ghent as a final and unconditional surrender of the right of the crown to still impose certain kinds of direct and indirect taxes. Under the terms of the first proviso-"saving the ancient aids and Right of prizes due and accustomed"-the crown for a long time to talliage claimed the right to talliage the towns upon the royal mesnes without the sanction of parliamentary authority. 1304 Edward himself ordered a talliage to be imposed on his cities and towns in demesne,2 and in the next year he authorized the great lords to talliage their ancient demesnes as he had talliaged his.3 In the sixth year of his reign, Edward II. also imposed a talliage on his cities, boroughs, and demesnes throughout the realm; and the command was to take "of their movables a fifteenth, and of their rents a tenth; and to send the assessment to the sheriffs of the city, to levy the talliage, and pay it into the exchequer." 4 The citizens of 2 W. Hemingburgh, ii. 233. Rot. Parl., i. 161, 162. Lords' Report, vol. i. p. 266. 1 For a full statement of this subject, with the authorities, see above, pp. 418-423. the crown de- the towns upon the In royal de mesnes. Right of talliage be comes ex tinct in the reign of Edward III. Parliamentary control over indi Toll originally imposed directly upon the ship. London, in resisting this impost, did not dispute the general right of the crown to impose it, but defended themselves under that clause of the Great Charter which guaranteed to them their ancient immunities.1 In 1332 Edward III. issued commissions for the collection of what was probably the last talliage ever demanded of the cities and towns. When the matter came up in the parliament of that year, a compromise was reached wherein it was agreed that the crown should recall the commissions, and accept in lieu of the talliage a grant of a fifteenth and tenth.2 While the principle was thus becoming settled that the crown could impose no kind of direct taxes — not even talrect taxes. liage upon ancient demesnes-without parliamentary authority, the royal right to impose indirect taxes in the form of customs became subject to the same limitation. The origin of indirect taxes has already been traced to the customary right of the Old-English kings to levy tolls in harbors, and upon transport by roads and navigable streams. Upon entering the harbor the toll was imposed directly upon the ship, and the tax thus paid was the equivalent given by the merchant for the right to bring wine and merchandise into the realm, and to trade under the king's protection. The nature of this toll or tribute is well illustrated by the ancient hereditary duty belonging to the crown called prisage, which consisted of the right of the crown to take from each wine ship, English or foreign, entering the realm, one cask out of every ten, at the price of twenty shillings the cask. The customs thus find their origin in the duties imposed upon imports, which are more ancient than those upon exports, the latter originating, as it is said, as a part of the general syson exports. tem of taxing personal property. The receipts from the customs, which during the reigns of Richard I. and John constituted a considerable item in the revenue,5 had become of sufficient importance in the reign of the latter to suggest Prisage. Origin of the duty - on mer on wool by par foundation of the cus enue, custuma. that provision of the Great Charter which forbade the levying of more than the ancient and lawful customs 1 chants entering and leaving the kingdom. When the production of wool increased to such an extent as to render it the leading element of national wealth, it soon became subject to an export tax which became an important item in the royal revenue. But not until after this tempting commodity had Export tax been for a long time the subject of all kinds of irregular first fixed seizures and exactions, was the export tax on wool definitely bent of fixed on a legal basis by the parliament of 1275, which gave 1275. to Edward I. a custom of half a mark on each sack of wool exported, three hundred woolfells, and a mark on the last of leather. The duty thus imposed by statute on wool, skins, First legal and leather (magna et antiqua custuma) is regarded as the first legal foundation of the customs revenue.3 As Edward's toms revreign drew to a close, the royal right of taxing wool became magna et subject, however, to a more positive limitation. A subject of antiqua bitter contention in the crisis of 1297 was "the maletote on wools, that is, to wit, a toll of forty shillings for every sack." As a remedy for such exactions it was provided in the Confirmatio Cartarum that the royal right of taxing wool should not in the future be exercised "without their common assent and good will; saving to us and our heirs the custom of wools, skins, and leather granted before by the commonalty aforesaid." Six years later (1303) Edward summoned to the exchequer at York an assembly of merchants, consisting of two or three burghers from each of forty-two towns, with the view of obtaining their consent to an increase of the customs on wool, wine, and other commodities to which the foreign merchants had already assented. This increase in the customs, to which the foreign merchants had already assented, but to which the mercantile representatives of towns refused to assent, was known as the nova or parva custuma, The nova as distinguished from the magna et antiqua custuma granted or parva in the parliament of 1275.5 Early in the reign of Edward II. 4 1 "Ad emendum et vendendum, sine omnibus malis toltis, per antiquas et rectas consuetudines."- Art. 41. 2 Parl. Writs, i. 2; Select Charters, P. 451. See Blackstone, Com., bk. i. p. 313. Statutes, i. pp. 124, 125; Select 5 Parl. Writs, i. pp. 134, 135; Select custuma. the new customs were declared illegal by the Ordainers, and their collection was suspended in 1311; but after the king's victory in 1322 they were promptly reestablished. In the year which followed the accession of Edward III. the customs, as reëstablished in 1322, were confirmed; and from that time they became a part of the king's ordinary revenue, and as such they received the sanction of parliament in the Statute of Before the Staples, enacted in 1353.1 Before the close of the reign of Edward III. the exclusive right of parliament to authorize every form of direct and indirect taxation was thus fully and finally established, not only in principle but in practice. As a principle, the doctrine could hardly have been more clearly of taxation announced than in the statute of 14th Edward III.,2 which fully estab- declared that the nation shall be "no more charged or grieved to make any common aid or sustain charge, except by the common assent of the prelates, earls, barons, and other magnates and commons of the realm, and that in parliament.' close of the right of parliament to control every form lished. Feudal taxation resting upon consent trans formed into national taxation resting upon general con sent. While the exclusive right of the nation to authorize taxation was being gradually established, the feudal councils individual which once gathered around the Norman and Angevin kings were silently transformed into national parliaments; and the older feudal taxes, which rested in a measure upon individual consent, were gradually supplanted by the new national taxes, which were the fruit of general consent expressed through representatives in a sovereign assembly. Even the right of each estate to assent separately to the quota of the general contribution to be borne by it gradually passed out of view. "The last instance of separate assent to taxes is in 18 Edward III. In later reports both houses are mentioned, in conjunction with the observation that they have advised in common.' " 3 In this process of transition from special to general taxation, the old feudal burdens of scutage, the tax on the three regu- knight's fee,— of talliage, — the feudal impost upon towns upon the royal demesnes, - together with the three regular feudal aids, gradually died out and became obsolete. But while the exchequer was thus being impoverished on the one hand by diminishing receipts from the old feudal burdens on land, it was being enriched upon the other by the new tax on personal Scutage, talliage, and the lar feudal aids be come obsolete. 1 Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. ii. p. 526. 8 Gneist, The English Parliament, p. 137, Shee's trans. tenths and ward III. sidy. property, which was first imposed in the reign of Henry II. The tax on personal property was at first levied in the form Tax on personal propof grants to the crown of actual tenths and fifteenths of all erty origmovables. The amount of a fifteenth, which was more usu- inally actual ally granted than a tenth, was finally reduced to a fixed basis fifteenths. by a careful assessment of every township, borough, and city, in the 8th Edward III. In this assessment the fifteenth part Assessment of the value of every township or parish was ascertained and of 8th Edrecorded in the exchequer. Whenever in later years a fifteenth was granted, every parish knew that the proportion which it was expected to raise by a rate was the sum imposed upon it in the assessment made in the 8th Edward III.1 A still more important and comprehensive form of taxation which must now be mentioned is that which came into use in the reigns of Richard II. and Henry IV. under the name of The subsubsidy, a tax not directly imposed upon property, real or personal, but upon persons in respect to both. When a subsidy was imposed, each tax-payer was rated according to the income supposed to be derived from his lands and goods; so many shillings in the pound for lands, so many for goods. During the later middle ages the older feudal taxes were thus Older feufinally supplanted by subsidies and fifteenths, which were suf- dal taxes ficiently comprehensive to embrace every form of direct tax- by subsiation then imposed upon real and personal property. The fifteenths. lineal successor of the subsidy and the fifteenth is the modern land-tax, which, embracing both real and personal estates, "has superseded all the former methods of rating either property, or persons in respect of their property, whether by tenths or fifteenths, subsidies on land, hydages, scutages, or talliages."2 Or, to sum up in the weighty words of a German scholar, "All the charges falling upon land get at last united A general into one general land-tax; supplanted dies and land-tax; a uniform income-tax tariff. "All personal charges, into a uniform income-tax; "And all customs and excise, into a general tariff, in such a general wise that the latter adapt themselves to a lasting revenue of the crown, which, since the reign of Henry V., gets assured to the king, by way of supplement to the diminishing revenues from the domain-lands. For a considerable time after, 1 Cf. Blackstone, Comm., bk i. p. 309; citing 2 Inst. 77, 4 Inst. 34. 2 Blackstone, Comm., bk. i. p. 307. |