[Verse 1]
John Pym cracked open the ledger in sixteen forty-three,
Borrowed a Dutch invention — a toll on cloth and tea,
He called it the Excise Ordinance, a tax on what you buy,
While the weekly Assessment came knocking, a quota, don't ask why.
Every county got its number, every town its share,
Parliament counting shillings like the Crown was never there.
[Chorus]
C'est la taxe, cuota semanal,
Pym cuenta monedas pour gagner la guerre totale,
Excise and Assessment, marching hand in hand,
La corona se queda pobre, el parlamento manda.
[Verse 2]
Cavaliers lost their acres the moment they picked a side,
Sequestration seized the manor, compounding was the ride —
Pay a fine to keep the chimney, pay again to keep the land,
While a Westminster committee held the auditor's cold hand.
The King had plate and promises, melted down for cannon's call,
But a ledger outlasts a scepter — Parliament outspent them all.
[Chorus]
C'est la taxe, cuota semanal,
Pym cuenta monedas pour gagner la guerre totale,
Excise and Assessment, marching hand in hand,
La corona se queda pobre, el parlamento manda.
[Verse 3]
Sixteen-sixty, Charles comes home, the wardships drift away,
Knight service, feudal dues — gone, the Tenures Act holds sway.
In their place, a hereditary excise on the beer,
The old lords lost their duties while the tax state engineered.
No more ransom for a fief, no escheat, no more ward,
Just a tax on every barrel — the treasury's reward.
[Verse 4]
By the age of Walpole, the excise net grew wide,
Tobacco, salt, and candles — nothing left outside.
The Bank of England lent its gold, the funded debt took hold,
A paper promise standing where the old feudal dues were sold.
Customs men and ledger clerks, an army made of ink,
Counting every subject's purchase before they'd stop to think.
The land tax fell upon the squires, the excise on the poor,
A fiscal engine built by war, demanding always more.
From Dutch finance to English soil, the machinery took root,
Each war a new installment, each peace a bitter fruit.
[Bridge]
Ce n'est pas la fin, non, c'est le début —
De préstamos holandeses a Hanoverian tribute,
Brewer's bureaucrats, excise-men in the rain,
Counting casks and ledgers down the fiscal-military chain.
From Pym's ordinance to the pipe and barrel tax,
El estado crece, siempre pide más.
[Chorus]
C'est la taxe, cuota semanal,
Pym cuenta monedas pour gagner la guerre totale,
Excise and Assessment, marching hand in hand,
La corona se queda pobre, el parlamento manda.
[Outro]
Quota, excise, compounding fine,
The war was counted in numbers, line by line.
C'est l'état fiscal — né de sang et de bière,
Nación que cobra impuestos nunca muere.
[Final Chorus]
C'est la taxe, cuota semanal,
Pym cuenta monedas pour gagner la guerre totale,
Excise and Assessment, marching hand in hand,
La corona se queda pobre, el parlamento manda.