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This work was supported by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust under Grant SG130577. The author would like to thank David Churchill, Steven Hutchison, and Clifford Stott for their helpful comments on earlier drafts. Thanks also to Judith Rowbotham, Susanne Karstedt, and Mark Hailwood for various pieces of advice or encouragement. Thanks, finally, to the staff at The National Archives for their assistance and patience.
Introduction
It is often observed that there seems to be an ambivalence or potential inconsistency at the heart of excise taxation in contemporary Western societies. Excise taxes are legal technologies that impose levies upon the domestic production of selected commodities (Cnossen 2011). It is usual for states to identify these specific commodities in statute, authorize official bureaucracies to collect the duties imposed upon them, and strengthen their collection by legislating for a range of actions, including criminal prosecution, to be taken against those who do not comply. On the one hand, excise duties are fiscally and economically useful for states. They can raise significant amounts of revenue and, as their levy and rate can encourage or discourage production of excised commodities, they can also help governments to stimulate or constrain certain industries. But, on the other hand, excise duties are frequently understood in reference to the positive behavioral ends that they may engender. For example, in contemporary societies, excise taxes on petrol are often linked to pollution, taxes on tobacco are rationalized with regard to public health, and taxes on alcoholic drinks are justified with reference to a range of factors such as public health, public order, and addiction. Moreover, tension is often identified between the fiscal and economic ends of excise taxation, which are most obviously met through greater consumption of taxed commodities, and the behavioral objectives that are more consistent with lower consumption (see Cnossen 2011; Gifford 1997; Ogus 1999; Shughart 1997).1 Hence, contemporary practices of excise taxation exist within a mesh of multiple, distinct, and potentially conflicting objectives and rationales.
This article examines how a single form of taxation has become constituted by such a heady brew of objectives and rationalities. Specifically, it sheds new light on the contemporary existence of distinct fiscal and behavioral dimensions of excise taxation by investigating the historical development of excise...