passed through the development above outlined, ending in a period of suspended animation, the excise system of provincial Massachusetts attained what may be regarded as its normal. form when, by the act of June 27th, 1716-17, the system of 1700-1 was revived with the single modification of providing for more than one commissioner in each county.

§ 70. Subordinate Excise Officers.

As in the case of the impost, the number of subordinate excise officers has never been fixed by law, these points having been left to the discretion of the chief officers. The only feature here demanding attention is the practice that prevailed throughout the period during which the excise was administered by the judiciary, of utilizing the services of regular county and town officers-" grand jurours, sheriffs, undersheriffs, constables, tythingmen"-as well as "such other persons as shall be appointed by the respective courts of general sessions of the peace" for certain duties in connection with the excise.

From the separate organization of the excise department? to the present time, the commissioners and collectors of excise have been appointed by the general court and commissioned by the governor; although the act of June 16th-29th, 1721,3 in harmony with the tendency already pointed out to fall back in an emergency upon the judiciary, provided that commissioners should be appointed "by the general sessions of the peace, where it shall happen that such commissioners refuse to accept said office, or be removed by death, etc.," to which list of contingencies the court, taught by experience, soon1 added a third, "or mismanagement." Subordinate excise officers, like subordinate customs officers, have been appointed by their superiors, with the exception above noted of the 1 1716-'17, c. I.

2 1697, c. 3.

employment of county and town officers during the judiciary administration.

$71. Qualifications; Oaths.

Concerning the qualifications and oaths required of the commissioners of excise while they were still commissioners of impost we have already spoken. The same conventional requirement of " fitness" and the same form of oath, "to deal truly and faithfully therein," were continued in the law providing for the separate organization of the excise. It was not until after the period of the judiciary administration, beginning in June, 1701-2, after four years with separate commissioners, and continuing fifteen years, through the Indian war, that, by the act of June 27th, 1716-17, in which the final organization of the excise was formulated, a degree of responsible independence was infused into the administration of it by the requirement that, in addition to an oath "to take care of the due execution of this law, and to prosecute the breakers of it," each commissioner should "give bond to the justices at their first general sessions for the peace in their respective counties, with sufficient security, for the faithful discharge of his duty, and that they [he] will duly pay in the money he shall collect to the treasurer of the province for the time being." Finally, by the act of June 26th-28th, 1727, the amount of the bond required was fixed at "double the sum that is usually received for excise annually in said county."

$72. Duties of Excise Officers.

Even after the separation of the excise from the impost, no difference whatever was made in the duties of the commissioners of the respective departments, until, in the act of July 31st, 1703-4, the commissioner of excise entirely disappeared by

1 1697, c. 3.

2 1716–'17, c. 1.

3 1727, c. I. 41703-'4, c. 5.

the complete shifting of the administration of the excise upon the justices of the county courts. When, at the end of their fifteen years' administration, the history of the excise as a fully independent department begins, the duties properly belonging to a commissioner of excise were better understood in the province; and in the course of the first three acts of the period then inaugurated, they were developed in the form in which they have since remained. By the law of June 27th, 1716-17,' each commissioner must "carefully examine the accompts of every licensed person in his respective county, and demand, sue for, and receive the several sums due from them by this act, and the same shall pay into the public treasury of this province;" by that of June 16th-29th, 1721,' he must make his payments to the treasurer "within six months from the date of his commission, and so from time to time within that space of six months, as long as he shall continue in such office;" by that of June 28th-29th, 1726-7,3 they "shall give in an account under their hands of the particular sums they receive, together with the names of the persons of whom received, unto the treasurer, upon oath," and at the time of receiving any money, the said collectors shall give two receipts, of the same tenor and date, mentioning what sum or sums they have received from every taverner, inn-holder, common victualer and retailer; one of which receipts to be by the same taverner, innholder, common victualer or retailer returned to the court of the general sessions of the peace, within the respective counties, at the next session of such court, and the clerks of the said courts shall within twenty days after the receipt thereof, transmit the same to the treasurer or receiver-general.”

$73. Powers of Excise Officers.

The first differentiation of the powers of the commissioners of excise from those of the commissioner of impost appeared

1 1716-'17, c. I.

2 1721, c. I.

3 1726-27, c. 11.

in the act providing for the separation of the two departments, when the commissioners of excise were by implication > given the power to farm the excise. After the specific authorization of such a course by the act of June 27th, 1698, the only mention of farming the excise, for thirty-nine years, is a reference to it as a contingency in the act of July 14th-18th, 16991700, the first separate excise act under the provincial charter, and in the revival of that act for one year, By the act of June 8th-26th, 1702. It is difficult to understand why the power "to sue for and recover any sum or sums of money due or to be due from any retailer or retailers" should have been given by the act of June 29th, 1700-1,5 to the commissioners of the preceeding act and not to those of the acts that followed it. It is equally difficult to see why, in the event of any brewer's or distiller's neglecting to make entry of goods or to take the oath, as by law required, the power to enter into the brewery or still-house of such brewer or distiller, respectively, and the dependencies thereof, or other houses, cellars, vaults or places where they shall be informed any beer, ale, spirits or strong liquors, brewed or distilled as aforesaid, are laid with intent to be concealed in elusion of the law, and to search for, seize and secure, in order to trial and conviction, all such beer, ale, spirits or strong liquors," should have been bestowed upon the commissioner of excise in an act devolving the proper duties of that officer upon other officers, and this just as the commissioner was about to disappear altogether from the excise system for a period of fifteen years. Upon the reorganization of the excise system in 1716, the powers delegated to the commissioner of excise were those of appointing under-officers

upon oath, and inspecting the houses of all such as were licensed or suspected of selling without license.

$74. Excise Classification.

The same cumbersome detail of classification which was noted in the early provincial impost is found in the excise of the same years; but the process of simplification was here applied much earlier and much more thoroughly than there. For example, wines, after having been scheduled in ten or eleven classes for eleven years, were not classified at all after 1716. The radicalness of this change was doubtless largely due to the intervention of the period of the judiciary administration of the excise, during the last six years of which no schedules at all were made by the general court. As in the case of the imposts, wine and spirits formed the basis of the excise throughout the provincial period; malt liquors, metheglin, perry and cider, the only other commodities that figured in the list during the first decade, disappearing altogether when the excise was handed over to the county judges in 1710, except perry and cider for the single year 1716-7.1 Nor was any other commodity added to the slender list of wines and spirits until, in 1737,2 at the same time that the rates on these were largely increased, an excise was placed upon limes and lemons, coaches and chariots, chaises with four wheels and other chaises, calashes and chairs. Of these added commodities only lemons and limes survived the expiration of that act, being retained on the list, with the addition of oranges in 1748, till the end of the provincial period; although calashes, chairs, chaises, chariots and coaches, together with tea, coffee, arrack, snuff and chinaware, were placed upon the excise list by an act passed April 20th, 1750, but disallowed two years later by the English privy council.

1 1716-27, c. I.

2 1737-'8, c. I.

3 1748-'9, c. 4.

4 1749-'50, c. 21.