The Excise Bill of 1733 was a proposal by the British government of

Robert Walpole Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford (; 26 August 1676 – 18 March 1745), known between 1725 and 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British Whigs (British political party), Whig statesman who is generally regarded as the ''de facto'' first Prim ...

to impose an

excise tax file:Lincoln Beer Stamp 1871.JPG, upright=1.2, 1871 U.S. Revenue stamp for 1/6 barrel of beer. Brewers would receive the stamp sheets, cut them into individual stamps, cancel them, and paste them over the Bunghole, bung of the beer barrel so when ...

on a variety of products. This would have allowed Excise officers to search private dwellings to look for contraband untaxed goods. The perceived violation of the

Rights of Englishmen The "rights of Englishmen" are the traditional rights of English subjects and later English-speaking subjects of the The Crown, British Crown. In the 18th century, some of the Patriot (American Revolution), colonists who objected to British ...

provoked widespread opposition and the bill was eventually withdrawn. Whig opposition MP William Pitt took the lead in criticising the proposal, invoking the concept that an " Englishman's house is his castle". Walpole proposed the bill while at the height of his powers, during the Whig Ascendency, but its defeat was an early sign of the waning of his dominance over British politics which came to an end in 1742. Opposition

Tory A Tory () is an individual who supports a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalist conservatism which upholds the established social order as it has evolved through the history of Great Britain. The To ...

Mps were joined by the emerging

Patriot Whigs The Patriot Whigs, later the Patriot Party, were a group within the British Whig Party, Whig Party in Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain from 1725 to 1803. The group was formed in opposition to the government of Robert Walpole in the Britis ...

to oppose the measure, signalling an alliance between these two forces.

Aftermath

Much of the ideology and arguments used against the bill in Britain, later influenced American resistance to the Stamp Act. Like the opposition to the Excise Bill, this focused on the argument that governments had a right to tax external trade through customs, but not to interfere in private exchanges by British subjects.

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Cite book, last=Slaughter, first=Thomas P., title=The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution, publisher=Oxford University Press, date=1988 1733 in Great Britain 1733 in law Robert Walpole William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham