Surplus.
| Year. | Exchequer Accounts. | Diff. between Actual Rev. and Aud. Exp. | Difference. |
| 1888-1889 | £2,799 | £1,968 | £−831 |
| 1889-1890 | 3,221 | 3,383 | +162 |
| 1890-1891 | 1,757 | 1,644 | −113 |
| 1891-1892 | 1,067 | 1,303 | +236 |
| 1892-1893 | 20 | 17 | − 3 |
| 1893-1894 | −170 | −265 | − 95 |
| 1894-1895 | 765 | 1,055 | +290 |
| 1895-1896 | 4,210 | 4,364 | +154 |
| 1896-1897 | 2,473 | 2,546 | + 73 |
| 1897-1898 | 3,678 | 3,681 | + 3 |
| Total for 10 years | £19,820 | £19,696 | £−124 |
The third column in the above shows the price which has to be paid (in the form of discrepancies between facts and figures) for the simplicity secured to statements and records of the national finance by the present system embodied in the term exchequer. Probably few will think the price too high in consideration of the advantages secured.
The principal official who derives a title from the exchequer in its living sense is, of course, the chancellor of the exchequer. He is the person named second in the patent appointing commissions for executing the office of lord high treasurer of Great Britain and Ireland; but he is appointed chancellor of the exchequer for Great Britain and chancellor of the exchequer for Ireland by two additional patents. Although, in fact, the finance minister of the United Kingdom, he has no statutory power over the exchequer apart from his position as second commissioner of the treasury; but in virtue of his office he is by statute master of the mint, senior commissioner for the reduction of the national debt, a trustee of the British Museum, an ecclesiastical commissioner, a member of the board of agriculture, a commissioner of public works and buildings, local government, and education, a commissioner for regulating the offices of the House of Commons, and has certain functions connected with the office of the secretary of state for India. The only other exchequer officer requiring mention is the comptroller and auditor-general, whose functions as comptroller-general of the exchequer have been already described.
The ancient name of the national banking account has been attached to two of the forms of unfunded national debt. Exchequer bills, which date from the reign of William and Mary (they took the place of the tallies, previously used for the same purpose), became extinct in 1897, but exchequer bonds (first issued by Mr Gladstone in 1853) still possess a practical importance. An exchequer bond is a promise by government to pay a specified sum after a specified period, generally three or five years, and meanwhile to pay interest half-yearly at a specified rate on that sum. Government possesses no general power to issue exchequer bonds; such power is only conferred by a special act, and for specified purposes; but when the power has been created, exchequer bonds issued in pursuance of it are governed by general statutory provisions contained in the Exchequer Bills and Bonds Act 1866, and amending acts. These acts create machinery for the issue of exchequer bonds and for the payment of interest thereon, and protect them against forgery.
Some traces may be mentioned of the ancient uses of the name exchequer which still remain. The chancellor of the exchequer still presides at the ceremony of “pricking the list of sheriffs,” which is a quasi-judicial function; and on that occasion he wears a robe of black silk with gold embroidery, which suggests a judicial costume. In England the last judge who was styled baron of the exchequer (Baron Pollock) died in 1897. In Scotland the jurisdiction of the barons of the exchequer was transferred to the court of session in 1856, but the same act requires the appointment of one of the judges as “lord ordinary in exchequer causes,” which office still exists. In Ireland Lord Chief Baron Palles was the last to retain the old title. A street near Dublin Castle is called Exchequer Street, recalling the separate Irish exchequer, which ceased in 1817. The old term also survives in the full title of the treasury representative in Scotland, which is “The King’s and the Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer in Exchequer,” while his office in the historic Parliament Square is styled “Exchequer Chambers.”
(S. E. S.-R.)
Bibliography.—For the early exchequer Thomas Madox’s History and Antiquities of the Exchequer (London, 1711) remains the standard authority, and in it the Dialogus de Scaccario of Richard the Treasurer (1179) was first printed (edited since by A. Hughes, C.G. Crump and C. Johnson, Oxford, 1902). The publications of the Pipe Roll Society (London, 1884 et seq.), the Pipe Rolls and Chancellor’s Roll, printed by the Record Commission (London, 1833 and 1844), and H. Hall’s edition of the Receipt Roll of the Exchequer 31 Henry II. (London, 1899) should also be consulted. A popular account is in H. Hall’s Court Life under the Plantagenets (London, 1901), and a careful study in Dr Parow’s thesis, Compotus Vicecomitis (Berlin, 1906). For the 13th and 14th centuries H. Hall’s edition of the Red Book of the Exchequer (London, Rolls Series, 1896) is essential, as also the Public Record Office List of Foreign Accounts (London, 1900). Later practice may be gathered from the similar List and Index of Declared Accounts (London, 1893), and from such books as Sir T. Fanshawe’s Practice of the Exchequer Court, written about A.D. 1600 (London, 1658); Christopher Vernon’s The Exchequer Opened (London, 1661), or Sir Geoffrey Gilbert’s Treatise on the Court of Exchequer (London, 1758), as well as from the statutes abolishing various offices in the exchequer. H. Hall’s Antiquities of the Exchequer (London, 1891) gives many interesting details of various dates. For the Scottish exchequer The Exchequer Rolls of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1878 et seq.) should be consulted, while Gilbert’s book noted above gives some details on that of Ireland. See also Appendix 13 to the great account of Public Income and Expenditure from 1688 to 1869, in three volumes, prepared for parliament by H.W. Chisholm (1869); and for sidelights on the working of the office from 1825 to 1866 the reminiscences of the same author (the last chief clerk of the exchequer) in Temple Bar (January to April 1891).
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.