for Excise Evasion

The word "excise" comes from the Middle Dutch excijs or exziis, meaning a duty charged on domestically produced goods, especially alcohol, and the Dutch are credited with first introducing this cunning way of combining the puritan purpose of controlling excessive drinking with raising revenue. The idea was taken up by Charles I's Treasurer, but the king was executed before anything was done and it was his opponents, the Puritan Parliament of 1643, which imposed the first excise tax in the British islands, at the rate of 8d the gallon. The Scottish Covenanting parliament adopted the same tactic the following year.

Interestingly, the "unjust and pernicious attempt to extort great payments from the subject by way of excise" was one of Parliament's complaints to the king in the Grand Remonstrance of 1641. The following year, when it was rumoured that parliament itself intended to introduce the tax, there was a furore and the House declared "that these rumours were false and scandalous; and that their authors should be apprehended and brought to condign punishment". Less than a year later the politicians did what they denied intending to do. Plus ça change...

The original imposition was for a year only: it has remained ever since. After the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 the tax was increased considerably. At this time, Duncan Forbes of Culloden, a leading Whig and supporter of William and Mary, had his distillery at Ferintosh (on the Black Isle) burnt by Jacobites. In compensation he was allowed to distil free of duty from grain grown on his own estate, in perpetuity, upon payment of a trivial annual sum. By the late 1760s, Ferintosh was producing almost two-thirds of all the legally produced whisky in Scotland - some 90,000 gallons - and the Forbes family was making an annual profit equivalent to almost £2 million per annum in today's money!

Following the union of the parliaments of England and Scotland in 1707, duty on excisable liquors was levied at the same rate as in England and a Scottish Excise Board, manned by English officials, was established in Edinburgh. The tax was now seen as an English imposition, and its evasion became something of a patriotic duty.

Until 1781 home distilling was perfectly legal, so long as the spirits were not sold. As excise duty became more onerous, increasing amounts of illicit whisky came onto the Lowland market, mainly from the Highlands. To meet this competition, many legal distilleries had to resort to fraud in their tax declarations, and in the attempt to prevent this the government passed a series of increasingly complex and draconian measures. Their effect was simply to stimulate smuggling and discourage producers from taking out licenses. In 1777, it was estimated that there were 400 illicit stills in Edinburgh. while there were only 8 licensed operations.

By the 1790s the situation was impossible. Illconceived legislation had reduced the quality of legal whisky, increasing the demand for 'moonshine'. To raise money for the prosecution of the Napoleonic War the government imposed excise duties on everything they could think of - bricks, candles, calico, paper, salt, soap, hides, etc - and "when they could no longer be increased in number, they were raised in rate".

Meanwhile the smugglers became bolder and bolder. An official Report of 1790 commented: "Travelling in bands of 50, 80 or 100 or 150 horses remarkably stout and fleet [having] the audacity to go in this formidable manner in the open day upon the public high roads and through the streets of such towns and villages as they have occasion to pass".

The government was bereft of ideas about how to cope with the situation. Duty was tripled in 1793, doubled again in 1795 and again in 1800; further increases took place in 1804, 1811 and 1814.

There was growing concern among landowners in the Highlands about the growth of violent crime, mostly associated with food shortages, evictions and land clearances for sheep parks, but blamed on the "lawless smugglers". The 4th Duke of Gordon, one of the most powerful landowners in the north east, addressed the House of Lords on the subject in 1820, urging a further reduction of duty and a more moderate attitude towards legal distillers. In return, he pledged the landowners co-operation in putting down smuggling. A Commission of Inquiry (sic) into the Revenue was set up, and following its Report, the law was completely overhauled by the Excise Act of 1823, with a view to encouraging distillers to 'go legal'. Thus were the foundations of the modern whisky industry laid.

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