Definition
Publicans is the plural form of publican. In legal usage, the term carries two historically distinct meanings that should not be conflated.
1. Innkeepers, tavern-keepers, and licensees. In English and early American law, a publican is a keeper of a public house — an inn, tavern, alehouse, or other establishment licensed to sell food, drink, or lodging to the general public. The legal significance of the status attaches to the duties and liabilities running with the license: the obligation to receive travelers, the strict liability rules governing goods of guests, and the regulatory framework governing the license itself.
2. Tax collectors (historical/civil law). In Roman law and in Biblical usage, publicans (Latin: publicani) were collectors of public revenues, typically contractors who farmed the collection of taxes or customs duties. This meaning is largely historical in Anglo-American legal sources but appears in ecclesiastical law contexts and in older treatises discussing Roman legal institutions.
Unless context indicates a Roman law or ecclesiastical setting, legal sources using "publicans" almost certainly mean innkeepers or licensed house-keepers.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Plural of publican — in contemporary British and Australian English, a publican is the owner or manager of a pub.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Webster's gives two senses: (1) a keeper of a public house; (2) a collector of tolls or tribute, especially a Roman tax-farmer, with the Biblical sense prominent.
The gap between common and legal meaning is largely one of emphasis and context. In modern colloquial British English, "publican" is a neutral, ordinary term for a pub proprietor. In Anglo-American legal texts, the same word carries formal regulatory weight: publicans are a recognized class of tradespeople subject to licensing requirements, special duties to the public, and distinct liability rules that do not apply to ordinary retailers. The Biblical sense (tax collector) appears in legal texts only when discussing Roman or ecclesiastical law — a researcher encountering "publicans" in a 19th-century American case almost certainly faces the licensed-house sense, not the tax-farming sense.
Common Confusion
The two meanings — licensed house-keeper and tax collector — can mislead researchers working across sources of different periods or legal traditions. A treatise on Roman law or a commentary on Biblical passages incorporated into ecclesiastical law will use "publicans" to mean tax-farmers. An American or English common law case will use it to mean tavern-keepers. Confusing the two produces serious misreadings. Additionally, researchers should not conflate "publicans" with "innkeepers" in all respects: not every publican was an innkeeper subject to the full common law duties of the inn, and not every innkeeper held a liquor license making them a publican in the regulatory sense.
Why It Matters in Research
The Rapalje & Lawrence entry immediately adjacent to "publicans" covers PUBLIC PLACE at length, and the corpus connection is meaningful: questions about what constitutes a public place were directly relevant to the legal duties of publicans, since the obligation to receive guests and the regulatory reach of licensing law both turned on whether an establishment was open to the public. Researchers working on tavern regulation, innkeeper liability, or licensing cases should move between these entries.
Historical sources, including Rapalje & Lawrence, do not appear to provide a standalone entry for PUBLICANS — the term may have been treated as self-explanatory or subsumed under INNKEEPERS or PUBLIC HOUSE. This means that legal dictionary support for the term is thinner than its practical importance in 19th-century litigation warrants. Researchers should not assume silence in a historical dictionary means the term lacked legal significance.
Jurisdictional and temporal variation is substantial. English licensing statutes evolved across several centuries, and early American states diverged considerably in how they regulated licensed houses. A reference to "publicans" in an Alabama case of the 1850s operates within a different statutory framework than the same word in an English case of the same era. The cases cited under PUBLIC PLACE in Rapalje & Lawrence (including Alabama, Indiana, Texas, and Virginia reporters) suggest the public-house regulatory framework was actively litigated in American courts throughout the mid-19th century.
Researchers should also be alert to the ecclesiastical law corpus: in church court materials and older natural law treatises, "publicans" carries the Roman/Biblical tax-collector meaning, and the word may appear in moral-legal arguments about the duties of those who profit from public office or license.
Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence does not appear to provide a direct standalone entry for PUBLICANS. The adjacent entry for PUBLIC PLACE is extensive and case-heavy, suggesting that the regulatory environment surrounding licensed houses generated substantial litigation, but the dictionary treats the terminology as requiring no elaborate definition. This is consistent with the term being regarded as self-evident by 19th-century practitioners.
The absence of a dedicated entry is itself informative: it suggests that by the time Rapalje & Lawrence was compiled, "publicans" as a legal category was well-settled enough to need no elaboration, or that the operative legal concepts had migrated to more specific headings such as INNKEEPERS, LICENSE, or PUBLIC HOUSE.
Jurisdictional Note
England and Wales maintained a distinct statutory licensing regime for publicans that American states largely did not replicate wholesale. American jurisdictions developed their own licensing frameworks, and the duties and liabilities of tavern-keepers varied by state. Researchers should not import English publican law directly into American sources without confirming whether a given state adopted analogous statutory provisions.