The genius of the people will ill brook the inquisitive and preemptory spirit of excise laws.
The income tax is a twentieth-century socialist experiment that has failed. Before the income tax was imposed on us just 80 years ago, government had no claim to our income. Only sales, excise, and tariff taxes were allowed.
My long-time view about Christianity is that it represents an amalgam of two seemingly immiscible parts-the religion of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Thomas Jefferson attempted to excise the Pauline parts of the New Testament. There wasn't much left when he was done, but it was an inspiring document.
Minimum sales prices for alcohol are a startlingly bad idea. As with excise duties, the effects are regressive.
Back then, the excise tax was designed to be a luxury tax for people who owned telephones.
Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.