Case of the Officers of Excise
Thomas Paine
[With remarks on the qualifications of officers, and on the
numerous evils arising to the revenue, from the insufficiency of the
present salary: humbly addressed to the members of both houses of
parliament. The Introduction]
As a design among the excise officers throughout the kingdom is on
foot for a humble application to Parliament next session, to have
the state of their salaries taken into consideration; it has been
judged not only expedient, but highly necessary, to present a state
of their case, previous to the presentation of their petition.
There are some cases so singularly reasonable, that the more they
are considered, the more weight they obtain. It is a strong evidence
both of simplicity and honest confidence, when petitioners in any
case ground their hopes of relief on having their case fully and
perfectly known and understood.
Simple as this subject may appear at first, it is a matter, in my
humble opinion, not unworthy a Parliamentary attention. 'Tis a
subject interwoven with a variety of reasons from different causes.
New matter will arise on every thought.
If the poverty of the officers of excise, if the temptations
arising from their poverty, if the qualifications of persons to be
admitted into employment, if the security of the revenue itself,
are matters of any weight, then I am conscious that my voluntary
services in this business, will produce some good effect or other,
either to the better security of the revenue, the relief of the
officers, or both.
The State of the Salary of the Officers of Excise
When a year's salary is mentioned in the gross, it acquires a
degree of, consequence from its sound, which it would not have if
separated into daily payments, and if the charges attending the
receiving and other unavoidable expenses were considered with it.
Fifty pounds a year, and one shilling and nine-pence farthing a day,
carry as different degrees of significancy with them, as My Lords
steward, and the stewards laborer; and yet an outride officer in the
excise, under the name of fifty pounds a year, receives for: himself
no mere than one shilling and nine-pence farthing a day.
After tax, charity and sitting expenses are deducted there remains
very little more than forty-six pounds; and the expenses of
horse-keeping in many places cannot be brought under fourteen pounds
a year, besides the purchase at first, and the hazard of life, which
reduces it to thirty-two pounds per annum; or one shilling and
nine-pence farthing per day.
I have spoken more particularly of the outrides, as they are by far
the most numerous, being in proportion to the foot-walks as eight is
to five throughout the kingdom. Yet in the latter the same
misfortunes exist; the channel of them only is altered. The
excessive dearness of house-rent, the great burden of rates and
taxes, and the excessive price of all necessaries of life, in cities
and large trading towns, nearly counter-balance the expenses of
horse-keeping. Every office has its stages of promotions, but the
pecuniary advantages arising from a foot-walk are so inconsiderable,
and the loss of disposing of effects, or the charges of removing
them to any considerable distance so great, that many
outride-officers with a family remain as they are, from an inability
to bear the loss, or support the expense.
The officers resident in the cities of London and Westminster are
exempt from the particular disadvantages of removals. This seems to
be the only circumstance which they enjoy superior to their country
brethren. In every other respect they lay under the same hardships,
and suffer the same distresses.
There are no perquisites or advantages in the least annexed to the
employment. A few officers who are stationed along the coast, may
sometimes have the good fortune to fall in with a seizure of
contraband goods, and yet, that frequently at the hazard of their
lives: but the inland officers can have no such opportunities.
Besides, the surveying duty in the excise is so continual that
without remissness from the real business itself there is no time to
seek after them. With the officers of the customs it is quite
otherwise; their whole time and care is appropriated to that
service, and their profits are in proportion to their vigilance.
If the increase of money in the kingdom is one cause of the high
price of provisions, the case of the excise officers is peculiarly
pitiable. No increase comes to them - they are shut out from the
general blessing - they behold it like a map of Peru. The answer of
Abraham to Dives is somewhat applicable to them, "
There is a great gulf fixed." To the wealthy and humane
it is a matter worthy of concern that their affluence should become
the misfortune of others. Were the money in the kingdom to be
increased double the salary would in value be reduced one-half.
Every step upward is a step downward with them. Not to be partakers
of the increase would be a little hard, but to be sufferers by it
exceedingly so. The mechanic and the laborer may in a great measure
ward off the distress by raising the price of their manufactures or
their work, but the situation of the officers admits of no such
relief.
Another consideration in their behalf (and which is peculiar to the
excise) is that, as the law of their office removes them far from
all their natural friends and relations, it consequently prevents
those occasional assistance from them, which are serviceably felt in
a family, and which even the poorest among the poor enjoys. Most
poor mechanics, or even common laborers, have some relations or
friends, who, either out of benevolence or pride, keep their
children from nakedness, supply them occasionally with perhaps half
a hog, a load of wood, a chaldron of coals, or something or other
which abates the severity of their distress; and yet those men thus
relieved will frequently earn more than the daily pay of an excise
officer.
Perhaps an officer will appear more reputable with the same pay
than a mechanic or laborer. The difference arises from sentiment,
not circumstances. A something like reputable pride makes all the
distinction, and the thinking part of mankind well knows that none
suffers so much as they who endeavor to conceal their necessities.
The frequent removals which unavoidably happen in the excise are
attended with such an expense, especially where there is a family,
as few officers are able to support. About two years ago, an officer
with a family, under orders for removing, and in rather embarrassed
circumstances, made his application to me, and from a conviction of
his distress I advanced a small sum to enable him to proceed. He
ingenuously declared, that without the assistance of some friend, he
should be driven to do injustice to his creditors, and compelled to
desert the duty of his office. He has since honestly paid me, and
does as well as the narrow ness of such circumstances can admit of.
There is one general allowed truth which will always operate in
their favor, which is, that no set of men under His Majesty earn
their salary with any comparison of labor and fatigue with that of
the officers of excise. The station may rather be called a seat of
constant work than either a place or an employment. Even in the
different departments of the general revenue they are unequalled in
the burden of business; a riding officer's place in the customs,
whose salary is sixty pounds a year, is ease to theirs; and the work
in the window-light duty, compared with the excise, is lightness
itself; yet their salary is subject to no tax, they receive
forty-nine pounds twelve shillings and sixpence, without deduction.
The inconveniences which affect an excise officer are almost
endless; even the land-tax assessment upon their salaries, which
though the Government pays, falls often with hardship upon them. The
place of their residence, on account of the land tax, has in many
instances, created frequent contentions between parishes, in which
the officer, though the innocent and unconcerned cause of the
quarrel, has been the greater sufferer.
To point out particularly the impossibility of an excise officer
supporting himself and family, with any proper degree of credit and
reputation, on so scanty a pittance, is altogether unnecessary. The
times, the voice of general want, is proof itself. Where facts are
sufficient, arguments are useless; and the hints which I have
produced are such as affect the officers of excise differently to
any other set of men. A single man may barely live; but as it is not
the design of the Legislature or the honorable Board of Excise, to
impose a state of celibacy on them, the condition of much the
greater part is truly wretched and pitiable.
Perhaps it may be said, why do the excise officers complain; they
are not pressed into the service, and may relinquish it when they
please; if they can mend themselves, why don't they? Alas! what a
mockery of pity would it be to give such an answer to an honest,
faithful old officer in the excise, who had spent the prime of his
life in the service, and was become unfit for anything else. The
time limited for an admission into an excise employment, is between
twenty-one and thirty years of age - the very flower of life. Every
other hope and consideration is then given up, and the chance of
establishing themselves in any other business becomes in a few years
not only lost to them, but they become lost to it. "There is a
tide in the affairs of men," which if embraced, leads on to
fortune - that neglected, all beyond is misery or want.
When we consider how few in the excise arrive at any comfortable
eminence, and the date of life when such promotions only can happen,
the great hazard there is of ill rather than good fortune in the
attempt, and that all the years antecedent to that is a state of
mere existence, wherein they are shut out from the common chance of
success in any other way: a reply like that can be only a derision
of their wants. 'Tis almost impossible after any longer continuance
in the excise that they can live any other way. Such as are of
trades would have their trade to learn over again; and people would
have but little opinion of their abilities in any calling who had
been ten, fifteen, or twenty years absent from it. Every year's
experience gained in the excise is a year's experience lost in
trade; and by the time they become wise officers they become foolish
workmen.
Were the reasons for augmenting the salary grounded only on the
charitableness of so doing, they would have great weight with the
compassionate. But there are auxiliaries of such a powerful cast
that in the opinion of policy they obtain the rank of originals. The
first is truly the case of the officers, but this is rather the case
of the revenue.
The distresses in the excise are so generally known that numbers of
gentlemen, and other inhabitants in places where officers are
resident, have generously and humanely recommended their case to the
members of the Honorable House of Commons: and numbers of traders of
opulence and reputation, well knowing that the poverty of an officer
may subject him to the fraudulent designs of some selfish persons
under his survey, to the great injury of the fair trader, and trade
in general, have, .from principles both of generosity and justice,
joined in the same recommendation.
Thoughts on the corruption of principles, and on the numerous
evils arising to the revenue, from the too great poverty of the
officers of excise
It has always been the wisdom of Government to consider the
situation and circumstances of persons in trust. Why are large
salaries given in many instances, but to proportion it to the trust,
to set men above temptation, and to make it even literally worth
their while to be honest? The salaries of the judges have been
augmented, and their places made independent even on the Crown
itself, for the above wise purposes.
Certainly there can be nothing unreasonable in supposing there is
such an instinct as frailty among the officers of excise, in common
with the rest of mankind; and that the most effectual method to keep
men honest is to enable them to live so. The tenderness of
conscience is too often overmatched by the sharpness of want; and
principle, like chastity, yields with just reluctance enough to
excuse itself.
There is a powerful rhetoric in necessity, which exceeds even a
Dunning or a Wedderburne. No argument can satisfy the
feelings of hunger, or abate the edge of appetite. Nothing tends to
a greater corruption of manners and principles than a too great
distress of circumstances; and the corruption is of that kind that
it spreads a plaster for itself: like a viper it carries a cure,
though a false one, for its own poison. Agur, without any
alternative, has made dishonesty the immediate consequence of
poverty. "Lest I be poor and steal." A very little degree
of that dangerous kind of philosophy, which is the almost certain
effect of involuntary poverty; will teach men to believe that to
starve is more criminal than to steal, by as much as every species
of self-murder exceeds every other crime; that true honesty; is
sentimental, and the practice of it dependent upon circumstances.
If the gay find it difficult to resist the allurements of pleasure,
the great the temptation of ambition, or the miser the acquisition
of wealth, how much stronger are the provocations of want and
poverty? The excitements to pleasure, grandeur or riches, are mere "shadows
of a shade" compared to the irresistible necessities of nature.
Not to be led into temptation is the prayer of Divinity itself; and
to guard against, or rather: to prevent, such in snaring situations
is one of the greatest heights of human prudence: in private life it
is partly religious; and in a revenue sense it is truly political.
The rich, in ease and affluence, may think I have drawn an
unnatural portrait; but could they descend to the cold regions of
want, the circle of polar poverty, they would find their opinions
changing with the climate. There are habits of thinking peculiar to
different conditions, and to find them out is truly to study
mankind.
That the situation of an excise officer is of this dangerous kind,
must be allowed by everyone who will consider the trust unavoidably
reposed in him, and compare the narrowness of his circumstances with
the hardship of the times. If the salary was judged competent a
hundred years ago, it cannot be so now. Should it be advanced that
if the present set of officers are dissatisfied with the salary
enough may be procured not only for the present salary, but for
less, the answer is extremely easy. The question needs only be put;
it destroys itself. Were two or three thousand men to offer to
execute the office without any salary, would the Government accept
them? No. Were the same number to offer the same service for a
salary less than can possibly support them, would the Government
accept them? Certainly no; for while nature, in spite of law or
religion, makes it a ruling principle not to starve, the event would
be this, that if they could not live on the salary they would
discretionarily live out of the duty.
Query, whether poverty has not too great an influence now? Were the
employment a place of direct labor, and not of trust, then frugality
in the salary would be sound policy: but when it is considered that
the greatest single branch of the revenue, a duty amounting to near
five millions sterling, is annually charged by a set of men, most of
whom are wanting even the common necessaries of life, the thought
must, to every friend to honesty, to every person concerned in the
management of the public money, be strong and striking. Poor and in
power are powerful temptations; I call it power, because they have
it in their power to defraud. The trust unavoidably reposed in an
excise officer is so great that it would be an act of wisdom; and
perhaps of interest, to secure him from the temptations of downright
poverty. To relieve their wants would be charity, but to secure the
revenue by so doing would be providence.
Scarce a week passes at the office but some detections are made of
fraudulent and collusive proceedings. The poverty of the officers is
the fairest bait for a designing trader that can possibly be; such
introduce themselves to the officer under the common plea of the
insufficiency of the salary. Every considerate mind must allow that
poverty and opportunity corrupt many an honest man. I am not at all
surprised that so many opulent and reputable traders have
recommended the case of the officers to the good favor of their
representatives. They are sensible of the pinching circumstances of
the officers, and of the injury to trade in general, from the
advantages which are taken of them.
The welfare of the fair trader and the security of the revenue are
so inseparably one, that their interest or injuries are alike. It is
the opinion of such whose situation gives them a perfect knowledge
in the matter that the revenue suffers more by the corruption of a
few officers in a county than would make a handsome addition to the
salary of the whole number in the same place.
I very lately knew an instance where it is evident, on comparison
of the duty charged since, that the revenue suffered by one trade
(and he not a very considerable one) upward of one hundred and sixty
pounds per annum for several years; and yet the benefit to
the officer was a mere trifle, in consideration of the trader's.
Without doubt the officer would have thought himself much happier to
have received the same addition another way. The bread of deceit is
a bread of bitterness; but alas! how few in times of want and
hardship are capable of thinking so: objects appear under new colors
and in shapes not naturally their own; hunger sucks in the deception
and necessity reconciles it to conscience.
The commissioners of excise strongly enjoin that no officer accept
any treaty, gratuity or, in short, lay himself under any kind of
obligation to the traders under their survey: the wisdom of such an
injunction is evident; but the practice of it, to a person
surrounded with children and poverty, is scarcely possible; and such
obligations, wherever they exist, must operate, directly or
indirectly, to the injury of the revenue. Favors will naturally
beget their likenesses, especially where the return is not at our
own expense.
I have heard it remarked by a gentleman whose knowledge in excise
business is indisputable that there are numbers of officers who are
even afraid to look into an unentered room, lest they should give
offense. Poverty and obligation tie up the hands of office and give
a prejudicial bias to the mind.
There is another kind of evil, which, though it may never amount to
what may be deemed criminality in law, yet it may amount to what is
much worse in effect, and that is, a constant and perpetual
leakage in the revenue: a sort of gratitude in the dark, a
distant requital for such civilities as only the lowest poverty
would accept, and which are a thousand per, cent. above the value of
the civility received. Yet there is no immediate collusion; the
trader and officer are both safe; the design, if discovered, passes
for error.
These, with numberless other evils, have all their origin in the
poverty of the officers. Poverty, in defiance of principle, begets a
degree of meanness that will stoop to almost anything. A thousand
refinements of argument may be brought to prove that the practice of
honesty will be still the same, in the most trying and necessitous
circumstances. He who never was an hungered may argue finely on the
subjection of his appetite; and he who never was distressed, may
harangue as beautifully on the power of principle. But poverty, like
grief, has an incurable deafness, which never hears; the oration
loses all its edge; and "Yo be, or not to be"
becomes the only question.
There is a striking difference between dishonesty arising from want
of food, and want of principle. The first is worthy of compassion,
the other of punishment. Nature never produced a man who would
starve in a well-stored larder, because the provisions were not his
own: but he who robs it from luxury of appetite deserves a gibbet.
There is another evil which the poverty of the salary produces, and
which nothing but an augmentation of it can remove; and that is
negligence and indifference. These may not appear of such dark
complexion as fraud and collusion, but their injuries to the revenue
are the same. It is impossible that any office or business can be
regarded as it ought, where this ruinous disposition exists. It
requires no sort of argument to prove that the value set upon any
place or employment will be in proportion to the value of it; and
that diligence or negligence will arise from the same cause. The
continual number of relinquishments and discharges always happening
in the excise, are evident proofs of it.
Persons first coming into the excise form very different notions of
it, to what they have afterwards. The gay ideas of promotion soon
expire. The continuance of work, the strictness of the duty, and the
poverty of the salary, soon beget negligence and indifference: the
course, continues for a while, the revenue suffers, and the officer
is discharged: the vacancy is soon filled up, new ones arise to
produce the same mischief and share, the same fate.
What adds still more to the weight of this grievance is that this
destructive disposition reigns most among such as are otherwise the
most proper and qualified for the employment; such as are
neither fit for the excise, or anything else, are glad to hold it by
any means; but the revenue lies at as much hazard from their want of
judgment as from the others' want of diligence.
In private life, no man would trust the execution of any important
concern to a servant who was careless whether he did it or not, and
the same rule must hold good in a revenue sense. The commissioners
may continue discharging every day, and the example will have no
weight while the salary is an object so inconsiderable, and this
disposition has such a general existence. Should it be advanced that
if men will be careless of such bread as is in their possession they
will still be the same were it better, I answer that, as the
disposition I am speaking of it not the effect of natural idleness,
but of dissatisfaction in point of profit, they would not continue
the same.
A good servant will be careful of a good place, though very
indifferent about a bad one. Besides, this spirit of indifference,
should it procure a discharge, is no ways affecting to their
circumstances. The easy transition of a qualified officer to a
counting-house, or at least to a school-master, at any time, as it
naturally supports and backs his indifference about the excise, so
it takes off all punishment from the order whenever it happens.
I have known numbers discharged from the excise who would have been
a credit to their patrons and the employment, could they have found
it worth their while to have attended to it. No man enters into
excise with any higher expectations than a competent maintenance;
but not to find even that, can produce nothing, but Corruption,
Collusion and Neglect.
Remarks on the Qualifications of Officers
In employments where direct labor only is wanted, and trust quite
out of the question, the service is merely animal or mechanical. In
cutting a river, or forming a road, as there is no possibility of
fraud, the merit of honesty is but of little weight. Health,
strength and hardiness are the laborers virtues. But where property
depends on the trust, and lies at the discretion of the servant, the
judgment of the master takes a different channel, both in the choice
and the wages. The honest and the dissolute have here no comparison
of merit. A known thief may be trusted to gather stones; but a
steward ought to be proof against the temptations of uncounted gold.
The excise is so far from being of the nature of the first that it
is all and more than can commonly be put together in the last: 'Tis
a place of
poverty, of trust, of opportunity, and temptation. A
compound of discords, where the more they harmonize the more they
offend. Ruin and reconcilement are produced at once.
To be properly qualified for the employment it is not only
necessary that the person should be honest, but that he be sober,
diligent and skilful: sober, that he may be always capable of
business; diligent, that he may be always in his business; and
skilful, that he may be able to prevent or detect frauds against the
revenue. The want of any of these qualifications is a capital
offense in the excise. A complaint of drunkeness, negligence or
ignorance, is certain death by the laws of the board.
It cannot then be all sorts of persons who are proper for the
office. The very notion of procuring a sufficient number for even
less than the present salary is so destitute of every degree of
sound reason that it needs no reply. The employment, from the
insufficiency of the salary, is already become so inconsiderable in
the general opinion that persons of any capacity or reputation will
keep out of it; for where is the mechanic, or even the laborer, who
cannot earn at least is 9¼d. per day? It certainly cannot be
proper to take the dregs of every calling, and to make the excise
the common receptacle for the indigent, the ignorant and the
calamitous.
A truly worthy commissioner, lately dead, made a public offer a few
years ago, of putting any of his neighbors' sons into the excise;
but though the offer amounted almost to an invitation, one only,
whom seven years' apprenticeship could not make a tailor, accepted
it; who, after a twelve-months' instruction, was ordered oft, but in
a few days finding the employment beyond his abilities, he prudently
deserted it and returned home, where he now remains In the character
of a husbandman.
There are very few instances of rejection even of persons who can
scarce write their own names legibly; for as there is neither law to
compel, nor encouragement to incite, no other can be had than such
as offer, and none will offer who can see any other prospect of
living. Everyone knows that the excise is a place of labor, not of
ease; of hazard, not of certainty; and that downright poverty
finishes the character.
It must strike every considerate mind to hear a man with a large
family faithful enough to declare that he cannot support himself on
the salary with that honest independence he could wish. There is a
great degree of affecting honesty in an ingenuous confession.
Eloquence may strike the ear, but the language of poverty strikes
the heart; the first, may charm like music, but the second alarms
like a knell.
Of late years there has been such an admission, of improper and
ill-qualified persons into the excise that the office is not only
become contemptible, but the revenue insecure. Collectors whose long
services and qualifications have advanced them to that station are
disgraced by the wretchedness of new supers continually. Certainly
some regard ought to be had to decency, as well as merit.
These are some of the capital evils which arise from the wretched
poverty of the salary. Evils they certainly are; for what can be
more destructive in a: revenue office, than CORRUPTION, COLLUSION,
NEGLECT AND ILL QUALIFICATIONS?
Should it be questioned whether an augmentation of salary would
remove them, I answer there is scarce a doubt to be made of it.
Human wisdom may possibly be deceived in its wisest designs; but
here every thought 2nd circumstance establish the hope. They are
evils of such a ruinous tendency that they must, by some means or
other, be removed. Rigor and severity have been tried in vain; for
punishment loses all its force where men expect and disregard it.
Of late years the Board of Excise has shown an extraordinary
tenderness in such instances as might otherwise have affected the
circumstances of their officers. Their compassion has greatly tended
to lessen the distresses of the employment: but as it cannot amount
to a total removal of them, the officers of excise throughout the
kingdom have (as the voice of one man) prepared petitions to be laid
before the Honorable House of Commons on the ensuing Parliament.
An augmentation of salary sufficient to enable them to live
honestly, and competently would produce more good effect than all
the laws of the land can enforce. The generality of such frauds as
the officers have been detected in have appeared of a nature as
remote from inherent dishonesty as a temporary illness is from an
incurable disease. Surrounded with want, children and despair, what
can the husband or the father do? No laws compel like nature-no
connections bind like blood.
With an addition of salary the excise would wear a new aspect, and
recover its former constitution. Languor and neglect would give
place to care and cheerfulness. Men of reputation and abilities
would seek after it, and finding a comfortable maintenance, would
stick to it. The unworthy and the incapable would be rejected; the
power of superiors be re-established, and laws and instructions
receive new force. The officers would be secured from the
temptations of poverty, and the revenue from the evils of it; the
cure would be as extensive as the complaint, and new health out-root
the present corruptions.
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