The excessive dearness of houserent, the great burden of rates and taxes, and the excessive price of all necessaries of life, in cities and large trading towns, nearly counterbalance the expenses of horsekeeping. Every office has its stages of promotions, but the pecuniary advantages arising from a footwalk are so inconsiderable, and the loss of disposing of effects, or the charges of removing them to any considerable distance so great, that many outride officers with a family remain as they are, from an inability to bear the loss, or support the expense.

The officers resident in the cities of London and Westminster, are exempt from the particular disadvantages of removals. This seems to be the only circumstance which they enjoy superior to their country brethren. In every other respect they lay under the same hardships, and suffer the same distresses.

There are no perquisites or advantages in the least annexed to the employment. A few officers who are stationed along the coast, may sometimes have the good fortune to fall in with a seizure of contraband goods, and yet, that frequently at the hazard of their lives: but the inland officers can have no such opportunities. Besides, the surveying duty in the excise is so continual that without remissness from the real business itself there is no time to seek after them. With the officers of the customs it is quite otherwise; their whole time and care is appropriated to that service, and their profits are in proportion to their vigilance.

If the increase of money in the kingdom is one cause of the high price of provisions, the case of the excise officers is peculiarly pitiable. No increase comes to them – they are shut out from the general blessing – they behold it like a map of Peru. The answer of Abraham to Dives is somewhat applicable to them, ‘There is a great gulf fixed.’

To the wealthy and humane it is a matter worthy of concern that their affluence should become the misfortune of others. Were the money in the kingdom to be increased double the salary would in value be reduced one-half. Every step upward is a step downward with them. Not to be partakers of the increase would be a little hard, but to be sufferers by it exceedingly so. The mechanic and the labourer may in a great measure ward off the distress by raising the price of their manufactures or their work, but the situation of the officers admits of no such relief.

Another consideration in their behalf (and which is peculiar to the excise) is that, as the law of their office removes them far from all their natural friends and relations, it consequently prevents those occasional assistance from them, which are serviceably felt in a family, and which even the poorest among the poor enjoys. Most poor mechanics, or even common labourers, have some relations or friends, who, either out of benevolence or pride, keep their children from nakedness, supply them occasionally with perhaps half a hog, a load of wood, a chaldron of coals, or something or other which abates the severity of their distress; and yet those men thus relieved will frequently earn more than the daily pay of an excise officer.

Perhaps an officer will appear more reputable with the same pay than a mechanic or labourer. The difference arises from sentiment, not circumstances. A something like reputable pride makes all the distinction, and the thinking part of mankind well knows that none suffers so much as they who endeavour to conceal their necessities.

The frequent removals which unavoidably happen in the excise are attended with such an expense, especially where there is a family, as few officers are able to support. About two years ago, an officer with a family, under orders for removing, and in rather embarrassed circumstances, made his application to me, and from a conviction of his distress I advanced a small sum to enable him to proceed. He ingenuously declared, that without the assistance of some friend, he should be driven to do injustice to his creditors, and compelled to desert the duty of his office. He has since honestly paid me, and does as well as the narrowness of such circumstances can admit of.

There is one general allowed truth which will always operate in their favour, which is, that no set of men under His Majesty earn their salary with any comparison of labour and fatigue with that of the officers of excise. The station may rather be called a seat of constant work than either a place or an employment. Even in the different departments of the general revenue they are unequalled in the burden of business; a riding officer’s place in the customs, whose salary is sixty pounds a year, is ease to theirs; and the work in the window-light duty, compared with the excise, is lightness itself; yet their salary is subject to no tax, they receive forty-nine pounds twelve shillings and sixpence, without deduction.

The inconveniences which affect an excise officer are almost endless; even the land-tax assessment upon their salaries, which though the Government pays, falls often with hardship upon them. The place of their residence, on account of the land tax, has in many instances, created frequent contentions between parishes, in which the officer, though the innocent and unconcerned cause of the quarrel, has been the greater sufferer.

To point out particularly the impossibility of an excise officer supporting himself and family, with any proper degree of credit and reputation, on so scanty a pittance, is altogether unnecessary. The times, the voice of general want, is proof itself. Where facts are sufficient, arguments are useless; and the hints which I have produced are such as affect the officers of excise differently to any other set of men. A single man may barely live; but as it is not the design of the Legislature or the honourable Board of Excise, to impose a state of celibacy on them, the condition of much the greater part is truly wretched and pitiable.

Perhaps it may be said, why do the excise officers complain; they are not pressed into the service, and may relinquish it when they please; if they can mend themselves, why don’t they? Alas! what a mockery of pity would it be to give such an answer to an honest, faithful old officer in the excise, who had spent the prime of his life in the service, and was become unfit for anything else. The time limited for an admission into an excise employment, is between twenty-one and thirty years of age – the very flower of life. Every other hope and consideration is then given up, and the chance of establishing themselves in any other business becomes in a few years not only lost to them, but they become lost to it. ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men,’ which if embraced, leads on to fortune – that neglected, all beyond is misery or want.

When we consider how few in the excise arrive at any comfortable eminence, and the date of life when such promotions only can happen, the great hazard there is of ill rather than good fortune in the attempt, and that all the years antecedent to that is a state of mere existence, wherein they are shut out from the common chance of success in any other way: a reply like that can be only a derision of their wants. ’Tis almost impossible after any longer continuance in the excise that they can live any other way. Such as are of trades would have their trade to learn over again; and people would have but little opinion of their abilities in any calling who had been ten, fifteen, or twenty years absent from it.