Page:The wealth of nations, volume 3.djvu/310

 thought, be more favored than those in another? or why should the merchant exporter be more favored than the merchant importer?

The ancient customs were divided into three branches. The first, and perhaps the most ancient of all those duties, was that upon wool and leather. It seems to have been chiefly or altogether an exportation duty. When the woollen manufacture came to be established in England, lest the king should lose any part of his customs upon wool by the exportation of woollen cloths, a like duty was imposed upon them. The other two branches were, first, a duty upon wine, which, being imposed at so much a ton, was called a tonnage; and, secondly, a duty upon all other goods, which, being imposed at so much a pound of their supposed value, was called a poundage. In the forty-seventh year of Edward III. a duty of sixpence in the pound was imposed upon all goods exported and imported, except wools, wool-fells, leather and wines, which were subject to particular duties. In the 14th of Richard II. this duty was raised to one shilling in the pound; but three years afterward it was again reduced to sixpence. It was raised to eightpence in the second year of Henry IV.; and, in the fourth year of the same prince, to one shilling. From this time to the ninth year of William III. this duty continued at one shilling in the pound. The duties of tonnage and poundage were generally granted to the king by one and the same act of Parliament, and were called the Subsidy of Tonnage and Poundage. The subsidy of poundage having continued for so long a time at one shilling in the pound, or at five per cent; a subsidy came, in the language of the customs, to denote a general duty of this kind of five per cent. This subsidy, which is now called