1708. May 1.
Previous to the Union, the Customs and Excise of Scotland were farmed respectively at £30,000 and £35,000 per annum,[[404]] which, after every allowance is made for smuggling, must be admitted as indicative of a very restricted commercial system, and a simple and meagre style of living on the part of the people. At the Union, the British government took the Customs and Excise of Scotland into its own hands, placing them severally under commissions, partly composed of Englishmen, and also sending English officers of experience down to Scotland, to assist in establishing proper arrangements for collection. We learn from Defoe that all these new fiscal arrangements were unpopular. The anti-union spirit delighted in proclaiming them as the outward symptoms of that English tyranny to which poor Scotland had been sold. Smuggling naturally flourished, for it became patriotic to cheat the English revenue-officers. The people not only assisted and screened the contrabandist, but if his goods chanced to be captured, they rose in arms to rescue them. Owing to the close of the French trade, the receiving of brandy became a favourite and flourishing business. It was alleged that, when a Dutch fleet approached the Scottish shores some months after the Union, several thousands of small casks of that liquor were put ashore, with hardly any effort at concealment.
Assuming the Excise as a tolerably fair index to the power of a people to indulge in what they feel as comforts and luxuries, the progress of this branch of the public revenue may be esteemed as a history of wealth in Scotland during the remarkable period following upon the Union. The summations it gives us are certainly of a kind such as no Scotsman of the reign of Queen Anne, adverse or friendly to the incorporation of the two countries, could have dreamed of. The items in the account of the first year ending at May 1, 1708, are limited to four—namely, for beer, ale, and vinegar, £43,653; spirits, £901; mum,[[405]] £50; fines and forfeitures, £58; giving—when £6350 for salaries, and some other deductions, were allowed for—a net total of £34,898, as a contribution to the revenue of the country.
The totals, during the next eleven years, go on thus: £41,096, £37,998, £46,795, £51,609, £61,747, £46,979, £44,488, £45,285—this |1708.| refers to the year of the Rebellion—£48,813, £46,649, £50,377. On this last sum the charges of management amounted to £15,400. After this, the total net produce of the Excise, exclusive of malt, never again came up to fifty thousand pounds, till the year 1749. The malt tax, which was first imposed in 1725, then amounted to £22,627, making the entire Excise revenue of Scotland in the middle of the eighteenth century no more than £75,987. It is to be feared that increase of dexterity and activity in the smuggler had some concern in keeping down these returns at so low an amount;[[406]] yet when large allowance is made on that score, we are still left to conclude that the means of purchasing luxuries remained amongst our people at a very humble point.
I am informed by a gentleman long connected with the Excise Board in Scotland, that the books exhibited many curious indications of the simplicity, as well as restrictedness, of all monetary affairs as relating to our country in the reigns of Anne and the first George. According to a recital which he has been kind enough to communicate in writing, ‘The remittances were for the most part made in coin, and various entries in the Excise accounts shew that what were called broad pieces frequently formed a part of the moneys sent. The commissioners were in the habit of availing themselves of the opportunity of persons of rank travelling to London, to make them the bearers of the money; and it is a curious historical fact, that the first remittance out of the Excise duties, amounting to £20,000, was sent by the Earl of Leven, who delivered £19,000 of the amount at the proper office in London, retaining the other thousand pounds for his trouble and risk in the service. As the Board in Scotland could only produce to their comptroller a voucher for the sum actually delivered in London, he could not allow them credit for more. The £1000 was therefore placed “insuper” upon the accounts, and so remained for several years; until at last a warrant was issued by the Treasury, authorising the sum to be passed to the credit of the commissioners.’
After the middle of the century, the progress is such as to shew that, whether by the removal of repressive influences, or the imparting of some fresh spring of energy, the means of the people were at length undergoing a rapid increase. In 1761, |1708.| including part of the first year of George III., the net total Excise revenue had sprung up to £100,985. It included taxes on glass (£1151), candles (£6107), leather (£8245), soap and paper (£2992), and wheel-carriages (£2308). The total had, however, receded fully fourteen thousand pounds by 1775. After that time, war increased the rate of taxation, and we therefore need not be surprised to find the Scottish Excise producing £200,432 in 1781. In 1790, when Robert Burns honoured this branch of the revenue by taking an office in it, it had reached but to the comparatively insignificant sum of £331,117. In 1808, being the hundredth year of its existence, it yielded £1,793,430, being rather more than fifty-one times its produce during the first year.[[407]]
June 1.
The Duke of Argyle resigning his place as an extraordinary Lord of Session, in order to follow his charge in the army, his younger brother, the Earl of Ilay, succeeded him, though under twenty-five years of age; not apparently that he might take part in the decisions of the bench, but rather that he might be a learner there, it ‘being,’ says Fountainhall, ‘the best school for the nobility to learn that is in Europe.’
June 26.
The election of a knight to represent Ross-shire in the British parliament took place at Fortrose, under the presidency of the sheriff, Hugh Rose, of Kilravock. There was much dissension in the county, and the sheriff, whose son was elected, had probably reasons of his own for appointing the last day of the week for the ceremony. This, however, having led to travelling on Sunday, was taken into consideration by the synod some months later, as a breach of decorum on the part of the sheriff, who consequently received a letter from one of their number who had been appointed to administer their censure. It set forth how, even if the meeting had been dissolved on the Saturday evening, many could not have got home without breaking the fourth commandment; but Kilravock had caused worse than this, for, by making the meeting late in the day, he had ‘occasioned the affair to be protracted till the Sabbath began more than to dawn [two o’clock],’ and there had been ‘gross disorders,’ in consequence of late drinking in taverns. ‘Some,’ says the document, ‘who were in your own |1708.| company, are said to have sung, shott, and danced in their progress to the ferry, without any check or restraint, as if they meant to spit in the face of all sacred and civil laws,’ The synod had found it impossible to keep silence and allow such miscarriages to remain unreproved.