The Tax Man Cometh: Ideological Opposition to Internal Taxes, 1760-1790

Slaughter, Thomas P.

doi:10.2307/1919154

Cited by 6 publications

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“…The Morgans [1953] were of the view that the distinction was never a popular one. Slaughter [1984], however, maintains that the distinction remained significant throughout the pre-revolutionary period and beyond because it was never really resolved.…”

Section: The Colonial Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of the Bursars' Accounts at Durham Cathedral Priory, 1278–1398

Dobie

2008

Accounting Historians Journal

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This paper is based upon an examination of a selection of the bursars' accounts from Durham Cathedral Priory covering the period from the first extant account (1278–9) to the end of the 14th century. The accounts selected have been transcribed from the original documents and translated from Latin into English. A traditional focus of accounting historians in the medieval period has been on manorial accounting and the system of charge and discharge. This paper examines a series of non-manorial accounts and a variety of supporting accounting materials, analyzing them for evidence of the development and refinement of controls. After an introduction which reviews the background of the accounts and the extent to which they have been utilized for historical research, this paper describes the various sources of receipts and types of expenditure which are revealed. The format of the accounts is traced, and a review of total receipts and expenditure is conducted to gain an understanding of the overall financial position of the bursar's office. Next, the accounts are considered within the context of other accounting records to explore the financial controls in place. Finally, areas for further investigation and analysis are identified. The accounts selected reveal that actual receipts and actual expenditure were kept closely in tandem, and that an extensive network of other accounting material and documents allowing a system of cross-checks enabled auditors to ascertain the veracity and accuracy of the accounts.

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Section: The Colonial Responsementioning

confidence: 99%

An Analysis of the Bursars' Accounts at Durham Cathedral Priory, 1278–1398

Dobie

2008

Accounting Historians Journal

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“…Generally, it relied on a narrow construction of Article I's substantive scope that mollified the American anti-tax contingent. It seized on a distinction between “internal” and “external” taxes that held immense significance for revolutionary-era Americans (Slaughter 1984). Above all, import duties held the virtue of minimal intrusiveness.…”

Section: Introduction: Forgotten Moments In Early Federal Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

From Empire to Law: Customs Collection in the American Founding

Knapp¹

2018

Law soc. inq.

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This essay investigates the eighteenth‐century origins of the federal administrative state through the prism of customs collection. Until recently, historians and legal scholars have not closely studied collection operations in the early federal custom houses. Gautham Rao's National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State (2016) offers the most important and thoroughly documented historical analysis to date. Joining a growing historical literature that explains the early development of the US federal political system with reference to imperial models and precedents, Rao shows that the seductive power of commerce over the state within eighteenth‐century imperial praxis required the early federal customs officials to “negotiate” their authority with the mercantile community. A paradigm of accommodation dominated American customs collection well into the nineteenth century until Jacksonian centralizers finally began to dismantle it in the 1830s. The book brings welcome light to a long‐neglected topic in American history. It offers a nuanced, historiographically attentive interpretation that rests on a broad archival source base. It should command the sustained attention of legal, social, economic, and constitutional historians for it holds the potential to change the way historians think about early federal administration. This essay investigates one of the central questions raised in National Duties: How were the early American custom houses able to successfully administer a comprehensive program of customs duties when their imperial predecessors had proved unable to collect even narrowly tailored ones? Focusing on the Federalist period (1789–1800), I develop an answer that complements Rao's, highlighting administrative change over continuity and finding special significance in the establishment of the first federal judicial system.

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“A Constitutional Conveyance of Intelligence, Public and Private”: The Post Office, the Business of Printing, and the American Revolution

Adelman

2010

Enterp. soc.

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This essay argues that American printers motivated by a deep commercial interest in fast and effective communication worked to overturn the British imperial postal service in 1774 and 1775. Printers enlisted merchants and members of the revolutionary elite, who also relied on long-distance communication through the post office for their own commercial and political purposes, to provide financial and political support. In making their case, printers mobilized a broad array of political ideology and imagery already familiar to colonists during the decade-long imperial crisis, emphasizing the political necessity of replacing the imperial institution. At the same time, they uncontroversially asserted that a new American post office would safeguard their precarious commercial ventures. The essay therefore demonstrates that printers were not "mere mechanics" but actively shaped the political debates leading to the American Revolution as part of a process that scholars have recently highlighted in a work on the economic and commercial influences on the Revolution. Furthermore, it grants the post office its due as part of the Habermasian public sphere; although understudied, the post office-both as a physical space and as a network through which information could travel-was a crucial means by which Americans developed a national infrastructure for political communications. Exploring the overthrow of the British post office, and the creation of an American post office, reveals an understudied but crucial episode to explain the symbiosis between politics and commerce during the American Revolutionary era.

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The Tax Man Cometh: Ideological Opposition to Internal Taxes, 1760-1790

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

An Analysis of the Bursars' Accounts at Durham Cathedral Priory, 1278–1398

An Analysis of the Bursars' Accounts at Durham Cathedral Priory, 1278–1398

From Empire to Law: Customs Collection in the American Founding

“A Constitutional Conveyance of Intelligence, Public and Private”: The Post Office, the Business of Printing, and the American Revolution

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