First, To disguise the name of Excize, as odious to them, that do neither know the payment of Taxes to be as indispensable as eating, and as have not considered the natural justice of this way of Excizing or proportionating.
Secondly, To avoid the trouble and charge of Collecting.
Thirdly, To bring the business ad firmum, and to a certainty of all which we shall speak hereafter, when we examine the several reasons for and against the way of Excize, proceeding now to the several species of Accumulative Excizes, propounded in the world.
8. Some propound Beer to be the only Excizeable Commodity, supposing that in the proportion that men drink, they make all other Expences; which certainly will not hold, expecially if Strong Beer pay quintuple unto, (as now) or any more Excize then the small: For poor Carpenters, Smiths, Felt-makers, etc. drinking twice as much Strong Beer as Gentlemen do of Small, must consequently pay ten times as much Excize. Moreover, upon the Artizans Beer is accumulated, onely a little Bread and Cheese, leathern Clothes, Neck-Beef, and Inwards twice a week, stale Fish, old Pease without Butter, etc. Whereas on the other, beside Drink, is accumulated as many more things as Nature and Art can produce; besides this way of Excizing, though it be never so well administred, is neither so equal nor so easie, nor so examinable as the simple Poll-money before spoken of, which is also but an Accumulative Excize.
9. What hath been propounded for Beer may be of Salt, Fuel, Bread, etc. and the Proposition would all labour under the same Inconveniences; for some spend more, some less of these Commodities; and sometimes Families (each whereof are propounded to be farmed, withou descending to individual heads) are more numerous at some times then at others, according as their Estates or other Interests shall wax or wane.