The Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC Prime Minister of Great Britain: 1721-1742
..."The particular crisis and paranoia surrounding the Excise of 1733 was an important parliamentary test for the consensus politics of Sir Robert Walpole. A major concern for the propertied classes by the 1730s was the great disparity between population and taxation.[1] The most superior measure for contribution to the government was the Land Tax, which had not been altered since 1697. Walpole, as First Minister of the Treasury, emerged from the class of landowners and sought to alleviate the burden of state expenses carried by the landed classes since the Revolution. Thus, the two facets of Walpolean economics were a desire to increase efficient taxation on internal consumption and to lower direct taxes on propertied income.[2] The period leading up to the 1730s was further troubled with bountiful crop yields that figured poorly for the profits of landowners.[3] In order for Walpole to relieve the propertied classes, the revenue lost from the lowering of the Land Tax needed to be recovered through excise. Excise was not a revolutionary option. Walpole considered the successful passing of a Salt Tax in 1732 as an accurate indicator of public opinion. In 1733 he decided to extend an excise to wine and tobacco in an attempt to alleviate the Land Tax, a “most unequal tax and the most generally complained of…any tax subsisting.”[4]
Following the introduction of the Excise, Colonel Howard could not help but to observe the throngs of popular opposition to the measure, writing that “the court of request, the lobby, and the stairs were filled with people from the city.”[5] With considerable pressure from local interests upon MPs along with a petition from the people of London, Walpole withdrew the Excise before it could be defeated. How could a measure that appeared to help the propertied interests be so thoroughly despised, particularly by the landed country gentry? The prospect of excise was a source of fear not only for the commercial interest, whose businesses were directly affected, but also for the propertied interests. An excise with its concomitant body of government appointee commissioners threatened the practice of trial by jury. A fear of involvement by government officials, especially bureaucracy, in the possession of private property, coupled with a perhaps irrational fear of fluctuations in the Land Tax in the future, eroded the support on which Walpole counted.[6] The Excise of 1733 excited fears for the loss of privacy and property, so important to the landed interests influencing Parliament. The fragile balance of parliamentary consensus was thrown off balance. Of Walpole's many years in office, this was his first major piece of legislation and a losing gamble. This temporary loss of stability on the part of the Walpole government nearly brought down the “Robinocracy” then and there, were it not for his traditional appeal to stability in the face of the ever resurging threats of Jacobitism.[7] Walpole learned a valuable lesson of the importance of maintaining the good graces of the propertied interests as the directors of public opinion."
[1] Langford, Property and Virtual Representation, 85.
[2] Langford, Excise Crisis, 31.
[3] Ibid 24
[4] Ibid 39
[5] Ibid 65
[6] Ibid 155
[7] Ibid 95
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