How you can resist funding the government →
other forms our opposition can take →
violent rebellion, blowing-one’s-top
Thou shalt not kill.
(Ex. ⅹⅹ. 18).
The disciple is not above his master; but every one that is perfect shall be as his master.
(Luke ⅵ. 40).
For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.
(Matt. ⅹⅹⅵ. 52).
Therefore all the things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.
(Matt. ⅶ. 12).
When kings, like Charles Ⅰ., Louis ⅩⅥ., or Maximilian of Mexico, are sentenced to death, or when they are killed in court revolutions, as were Peter Ⅲ., Paul, and all kinds of sultans, shahs, and khans, there is generally a silence on the subject; but when they are killed without a trial and without court revolutions, as was the case with Henry Ⅳ., Alexander Ⅱ., the Empress of Austria, the Shah of Persia, and now Humbert, such murders rouse the greatest indignation and amazement among kings, emperors, and their retinues, as though these men did not take part in murders, did not make use of them, did not prescribe them.
And yet, the very best of the kings slain, such as Alexander Ⅱ. and Humbert, were the authors, participants, and accomplices — to say nothing of domestic executions — in the murder of tens of thousands of men, who died on fields of battle; while bad kings and emperors have been the authors of hundreds of thousands, or of millions of murders.
“…the payment of taxes, with which soldiers are hired and armed, and much more enlistment in the army, are not indifferent acts, but bad, disgraceful acts, not only an abetment of, but even a participation in murder…”
Christ’s teaching has taken the place of the law, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” but those men who have always kept that law, and even now keep it, and apply it in terrific proportions in their punishments and in wars, and, in addition to “an eye for an eye,” without any provocation command men to kill thousands, as they do when they declare war, have no right to be provoked at the application to them of this law in such a small and insignificant measure, that hardly one king or emperor is killed to one hundred thousand or, perhaps, one million of those killed by command and with the consent of kings and emperors.
Kings and emperors not only need not be provoked at such murders as those of Alexander Ⅱ. and Humbert, but should only marvel how rare such murders are after the constant and universal example of murder which they give to men.
The men of the masses are so hypnotized that they see and do not understand the significance of what is constantly done to them.
They see the constant cares of the kings, emperors, presidents, about the disciplined army, they see those inspections, manœuvres, parades, which they practise and which they boast of before one another, and they run like mad to see their brothers, who are dressed up in stupid, variegated, sparkling uniforms, by the sound of drums and horns transformed into machines and, at the shout of one man, performing in a body the same motions, and they do not understand what it means; but the meaning of this instruction is very simple and clear: it is nothing but a preparation for murder.
It is the stultification of men, in order to make of them instruments of murder.
It is only kings, emperors, and presidents who do this, manage this, and pride themselves on it.
And it is these men, who are specially interested in murder, who have made a profession of murder, who always wear military uniforms and instruments of murder, — the sword at their side, — that are terrified and provoked, when one of them is killed.
The murders of kings, like the late murder of Humbert, are not terrible on account of their cruelty.
The acts committed by order of kings and emperors — not only in the past, as the Night of Bartholomew, the massacres for the sake of faith, the terrible pacifications of peasant risings, the Versailles slaughters, but also the present governmental executions, the starvations in solitary cells and disciplinary battalions, the hangings, the chopping off of heads, the shooting, and the slaughters in war — are incomparably more cruel than the murders committed by the anarchists.
Nor are these murders terrible on account of not having been deserved.
If Alexander Ⅱ. and Humbert did not deserve to be killed, how much less deserved to be killed those thousands of Russians who perished at Plevna, and of Italians who perished in Abyssinia.
Such murders are not terrible on account of their cruelty or the innocence of the murdered, but on account of the senselessness of those who commit them.
If the murderers of the kings do that under the influence of a personal sentiment of indignation, provoked by the sufferings of an enslaved nation, as the authors of which to them appear Alexander, Carnot, Humbert, or under the influence of a personal feeling of revenge, such acts, however immoral, are comprehensible; but how is it that an organization of men — of the anarchists, as they now say — which sent Bressi out, and which is threatening another emperor, has not been able to invent anything better for the amelioration of men’s condition than the murder of those men whose annihilation can be as useful as the cutting off of the head of that fabulous monster, when in place of the one cut off there immediately grew out a new one?
Kings and emperors have long ago arranged things in the same manner as in a magazine rifle: the moment one bullet flies out, another takes its place, — le roi est mort, vive le roi! So what sense is there in killing them?
Only after a most superficial reflection can the murder of these men appear as a means for saving the people from oppression and from wars, which cause the ruin of human lives.
We need only recall that such oppressions and such wars have always existed, independently of who was at the head of the governments, — whether it was Nicholas or Alexander, Frederick or William, Napoleon or Louis, Palmerston or Gladstone, McKinley or anybody else, — to understand that it is not any definite class of men who cause these oppressions and wars from which the nations suffer.
The calamities of men are not due to separate individuals, but to such a structure of society that all men are united among themselves in such a way that all are in the power of a few men (or, more frequently, of one man), who are so corrupted by this, their unnatural position of deciding the fate and lives of millions of men, that they are all the time in a morbid state, all the time obsessed by a mania of greatness, which is imperceptible in them only in consequence of their exclusive position.
In the first place, these men are from their earliest childhood and up to their death surrounded by the most senseless luxury and are all the time surrounded by an atmosphere of lying and servility; their whole education, all their occupations, everything is centred in one thing, in the study of former murders, of the best methods of killing in our time, of the best preparations for murder.
From earliest childhood they are taught every possible way of killing, and they always carry about them instruments of murder, swords and sabres, and are dressed up in all kinds of uniforms, order parades, inspections, manœuvres, visit one another, presenting decorations and regiments to one another, and not only is there not a single man to name what they are doing by its real name, to tell them that the occupation with preparations for murder is detestable and criminal, but from all sides they hear nothing but approval, nothing but transports in consequence of this their activity.
At every appearance of theirs in public, at every parade and inspection, a crowd of people runs after them, greeting them ecstatically, and it seems to them that it is the whole nation that is expressing its approval of their activity.
That part of the press which they see, and which to them appears as the expression of the sentiments of the whole nation or of its best representatives, in the most servile manner proclaims all their words and acts, no matter how stupid and bad they may be.
The men and women about them, both clerical and lay, — all of them men who do not esteem human dignity, — in their attempt to outstrip one another in refined flattery, are subservient to them in everything and in everything deceive them, giving them no chance to see real life.
These men may live a hundred years without seeing a real free man and without ever hearing the truth.
One is often frightened, hearing the words and seeing the acts of these men; but we need only consider their situation, to understand that any man would act similarly in their place.
A sensible man, upon finding himself in their place, can do but one sensible thing, and that is, get out of that situation: if he remains in it, he will do the same.
Indeed, what must be going on in the head of the German William, a narrow-minded, half-educated, vainglorious man, with the ideal of a German Junker, when there is not a stupid and abominable utterance by him which is not met by an ecstatic “Hoch!” and is not commented upon by the whole press of Europe as something extremely significant.
Let him say that the soldiers must by his will kill even their own fathers, and they shout “Hurrah!”
Let him say that the Gospel ought to be introduced with the iron fist, — “Hurrah!”
Let him say that in China the army must not make any captives, but must kill all men, and he is not put into a lunatic asylum, but they shout “Hurrah!” and sail for China to execute his command.
Or the naturally meek Nicholas Ⅱ. begins his reign by announcing to respectable old men, in reply to their expressed desire to deliberate on their affairs, that self-government is a senseless dream, and the organs of the press, the men whom he sees, extol him for it.
He proposes a childish, stupid, and deceptive project of a universal peace, and at the same time makes preparations for increasing his army, and there is no limit to the laudations of his wisdom and virtue.
Without any necessity, senselessly, and pitilessly he torments a whole nation, the Finns, and again he hears nothing but approval.
He finally causes the Chinese slaughter, which is terrible for its injustice, cruelty, and incompatibility with the project of peace, and all people, on all sides, laud him simultaneously for his victories and for the continuation of his father’s peaceful policy.
Indeed, what must be going on in the heads and hearts of these men?
Thus it is not Alexander, Humbert, William, Nicholas, and Chamberlain, who guide the oppressions and wars of the nations, that are the authors of the oppressions of the masses and the murders in wars, but those who have put them in the positions of rulers over the lives of men, and support them in these positions.
And so Alexander, Nicholas, William, Humbert, are not to be killed, but men are to stop supporting the order of society which produces them.
What supports the present order of society is the egotism and stupidity of men who sell their freedom and honour for their insignificant material advantages.
The men who stand on the lower rungs of the ladder, partly in consequence of their stultification by their patriotic and pseudo-religious education, surrender their freedom and feeling of human dignity in favour of the men who stand above them and who offer them material advantages.
In the same condition are the men who stand on a somewhat higher rung of the ladder, and who, also in consequence of their stultification and personal advantage, surrender their freedom and human dignity; the same is true of those who stand still higher, and thus it goes on to the highest rungs, — to those persons, or to that one person, who stands at the apex of the cone and who has nothing to acquire, whose only motive for action is love of power and vainglory, and who is generally so corrupted and stultified by the power over the life and death of men and the flattery which is connected with it and the servility of those who surround him, that, without ceasing to do evil, he is fully convinced that he is benefiting humanity.
The nations, by themselves sacrificing their human dignity for their own advantage, produce these men, who cannot do anything else but what they are doing, and then the nations are angry at them for their stupid and evil deeds.
To kill these men is the same as spoiling children and then whipping them.
To have no oppressions of the nations and no unnecessary wars, and for no one to be provoked at those who seem to be the authors of them and to kill them, very little, it would seem, would suffice, namely, that men should merely understand things as they are, and should call them by their real names, should know that the army is an instrument of murder, and that the levy and maintenance of the army — precisely what the kings, emperors, and presidents are concerned about with so much selfassurance — is a preparation for murder.
If only every king, emperor, and president understood that his duty of managing the army is neither honourable nor important, as he is made to believe by his flatterers, but a bad and disgraceful work of preparing for murder; and if every private person understood that the payment of taxes, with which soldiers are hired and armed, and much more enlistment in the army, are not indifferent acts, but bad, disgraceful acts, not only an abetment of, but even a participation in murder, — then the provoking power of the emperors, presidents, and kings, for which they are now killed, would die of its own accord.
So we must not kill an Alexander, a Carnot, a Humbert, and others, but must explain to them that they themselves are murderers, and, above all, we must not permit them to kill people, we must refuse to kill by their command.
If men are not yet doing so, this is due only to the hypnosis in which the governments carefully maintain them from a feeling of self-preservation.
And so it is not with murders that we can contribute to this, that men may stop killing kings and one another, — the murders, on the contrary, intensify the hypnosis, — but with an awakening from the hypnosis.
That is precisely what I am attempting to bring about with this note.
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I spend most of my time on this blog extolling the value of nonviolent tax resistance.
I suppose, to be fair, I ought to at least mention the violent variety:
Nebojsa Miladinovic, a saw-mill owner in his fifties, tried for days to convince tax officials in the central town of Gornji Milanovac he had paid his 192,200 dinar ($2,794) bill.
They said he had not, sent the bill again and blocked his bank account.
After arguing his case , Miladinovic returned, doused tax chief Gojko Stefanovic and the office files with petrol, shot at computers and yelled “I was ripped off.”
Two people were injured in the melee and parts of the office caught fire, with panicked staff escaping through the windows.
Police arrested Miladinovic, whom neighbors described as a hard worker who never made trouble.
Witnesses said he even paid for parking his car in front of the tax office before the rampage.
Speaking of LewRockwell.com… they recently put on-line Murray Rothbard’s tale of one of the earliest tax resistance campaigns in the United States, which was more successful than many historians give it credit for — The Whiskey Rebellion.
Howard Machtinger was a member of the Weather Underground, which attempted to add a violent domestic insurgency to the mix of techniques used by the movements protesting against U.S. imperialism and injustice in the Vietnam era.
He’s recently written up a reappraisal of the role of the Weather Underground that makes for interesting reading.
In short, he thinks that Weather Underground members were too impatiently focused on proving their own willingness to take risks and to up the ante to violence, and not concerned enough about thinking of long-term and effective strategy that succeeds more through the patient, steady work of organizing than through the dramatic actions of self-appointed revolutionaries.
Good food for thought.
Tax resistance is a staple of nonviolent resistance, but not all tax
resistance is nonviolent. There are also plenty of examples in which people
have taken up arms against the taxing authority, have violently destroyed the
apparatus of tax collecting, or have used threats of violence to intimidate
or inhibit tax collectors.
“Mike The Parking Ticket Geek” … contacted us via Twitter and showed us his website, theexpiredmeter.com, which he used to give people advice on how to beat parking tickets.
The site has become a lightning rod for peoples’ complaints about the new rates and operators.
Mike says the people who are writing to him have a sense of “anger, frustration, rage in some cases.”
To the point where some, it appears, are vandalizing the meters.
Pictures on Mike’s website show meters deliberately smashed, taken apart, spray-painted, or deliberately jammed.
“People suggest taking a quarter, putting some super glue on it, and putting it in the coin slot,” Mike said.
Other tactics mentioned on the site are over-feeding the meters with pennies
so as to make them too full to accept any other coins, spray-painting over
their windows so their status cannot be seen by parking enforcers, filling the
meters with expanding foam, or removing them entirely.
Peter Hendrickson, one of the latest in a long line of constitutionalist tax protester amateur lawyers, got his original tax protester prison term after conspiring to mail a firebomb to the IRS.
And then there are the “suspicious powder” episodes that temporarily shut down IRS facilities from time-to-time.
Though these suspicious powders are always found to be harmless, they’re clearly intended to resemble the anthrax-powder mailings that killed several people — and so are no less violent in practice than a bank robbery using an unloaded gun.
Crowds in Oaxaca State, Mexico, in revolt over new taxes, stoned to death
Diodoro Maldonado, the mayor of Tlacolula.
They attacked him near the gate of his home.
Eight others have been killed and at least 50 injured in riots.
Taxpayers of the city of Oaxaca, the State capital, are holding a general
strike.
They are demanding the resignation of the State Governor, Manuel Heredia,
because of his tax programme.
The Governor armed nearly 3,000 farmers with modern, carbines and marched
them into Oaxaca’s main square to “protect State property” after the first
outbreak of rioting.
The Governor blames Communists for the disorders.
Although the Governor has repealed his tax decree, which would have meant a
sharply increased burden on the State’s poor as well as the rich, an Oaxaca
“citizens’ committee” says that passive resistance will be continued until
he resigns.
Yesterday General Augustin Mustieles said that army tanks and troops of
Mexico’s only motorised brigade, rushed to Oaxaca after police had fired
into a crowd of anti-tax demonstrators should have no trouble in preserving
order.
“But if more trouble develops,” he said, “we will not hesitate to arm more
peasants — 20,000 if necessary.”
Some links that have caught my eye recently:
The Green Zone: How a Greening Culture Cannot Ignore the Military.
The elephant in the room during the debate over the environment and climate change and what-have-you is U.S. militarism.
If “the largest source of pollution in the world is the military, particularly the military at war” then maybe environmentalists have something better to do than encourage people to change their lightbulbs.
Tax resistance by American fiscal conservatives against taxpayer-funded bailouts and deficit spending continues to be an idea that has yet to come, though a lot of folks are meekly hoping somebody else will get the ball rolling.
The latest of these ideas goes by the name “Operation Dep 9” and encourages folks to re-file their W-4 forms, claiming 9 allowances so as to reduce or eliminate federal income tax withholding (this is the same technique that many war tax resisters use).
China’s official Xinhua news agency said the local government’s plan to more strictly enforce payment of taxes from the furniture makers and dealers has been suspended in the face of the opposition.
China’s furniture industry has suffered in the global economic downturn from a decline in demand from export markets.
Thousands of similar protests over taxes, land disputes or corruption are reported in China each year.
James Warren Doyle, Catholic bishop of Kildare and Leighlin in the early nineteenth century, was an insightful pioneer of the tradition of mass nonviolent civil disobedience that would later be developed by Gandhi and King.
On , Doyle wrote to the pastor of Graig at the beginning of a tithe resistance campaign he was promoting:
The new Government will make a show of vigour, but they will shortly learn that no coalition can ever take place between those who plunder and they who are plundered.
Irish Catholics were required by law to pay a significant tax for the upkeep of the Anglican Church of Ireland (as were Irish non-Catholics), which, though the “official” church, was not the chosen church of most of the country (less than 10% of the population of Ireland were Anglicans).
As one historian put it: “The Protestant [Anglican] clergy lived comfortably all through the country, and ministered on Sundays in decent well-kept churches to congregations of perhaps half a dozen, or less; for all which the Catholic people were forced to pay… while their own priests lived in poverty, and celebrated Mass to overflowing congregations in thatched cabins or in the open air.”
Even for members of the Church of Ireland sometimes their only contact with the church was with the tithe collector, as the Church was content to collect its dues without bothering to establish a church house or to deign to send a minister.
Indeed, the Church had in many cases abandoned parishes outright (some parishes — one source says 160 of them — had no Anglican parishioners to minister to at all), and instead leased or auctioned tithing rights to professional “tithe proctors” whose profits were limited only by the extent of their ruthlessness.
Adding to the resentment was that while most subsistence farmers were required to turn over 10% of their produce to the Church of Ireland, wealthier (and usually Protestant) owners of grassland for grazing had long been exempt (an early attempt at reform in abolished this exemption, and changed the 10% tithe requirement to an apportioned and more consistent salary).
Furthermore, exemptions like these were regional.
Presybterian farmers in the North had managed to get potatoes and flax exempt from tithes there, while Catholic farmers in the South still were forced to pay tithes on potatoes, and didn’t grow flax.
The whole thing reeked of being a tax on poor Catholics to support Anglican absentee landlords.
And the poor Catholics occasionally made their feelings known.
One writer said: “The despoiled peasant is recorded to have now and then revenged himself upon the agent of ecclesiastical extortion by placing that functionary, deprived of his nether habiliments, astride upon a restive horse, with no other saddle than a furze bush.”
In , the new Anglican tithe-proctor of Graigue (a parish of 4,779 Catholics and 63 Protestants) decided to break with the tradition of his predecessor and collect tithes not just from the local Catholics, but also from their priest: one Father James Warren Doyle.
Doyle refused to pay, and the proctor seized his horse.
A mass civil disobedience campaign that would become known as the Tithe War followed.
Doyle, though a strong foe of tithes, and an early (for a priest) member of the Catholic Association, was of a reformist bent, and from the pulpit he denounced the lynch-mob violence of radical levellers who had banded together in secret societies like the “Blackfeet” and “Whitefeet” (descendants of the Whiteboys) to combat extortionate tithes and rents by force.
Eager to avoid the revolutionary excesses he feared from Daniel O’Connell’s popular independence movement, and opposing O’Connell’s periodic campaigns to repeal the Act of Union that bound the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland together, Doyle tried to counsel his friends in government to pass reforms that would take the wind out of the agitators’ sails and preserve the Union.
Doyle wrote to Edward Bligh, Lord Darnley, about the state of affairs in Ireland, warning:
The people in parts of this country, of the counties Kilkenny, Wexford, and Tipperary, have, within the last fortnight, assembled in bodies of several thousands to demand the reduction of tithes, and in some places have resolved not to pay any tithe until such reduction is made.
In , O’Connell and other agitators were arrested.
This served mostly to make them prominent martyrs and to increase Irish distrust of the government.
The law under which they were charged expired during the course of the prosecution, turning the case into an embarrassing sham.
Doyle was caught between being sympathetic to the cries for justice coming from his Catholic flock, and trying to dampen an emerging violent rebellion he was certain would be a bloody and disastrous one.
He warned:
There is a very extensive combination against the payment of either tithes or a composition for tithes existing at the present moment.
Government has assembled in the County Kilkenny a large police force to awe the people into the payment of them.
This proceeding will not be successful.
The clergy should be instructed to make abatements and keep things quiet; but there is a military spirit in the Government, which creates the necessity for employing force.
On , in Newtownbarry, some 120 British yeomanry fired on a group of tithe resisters who were trying to recapture some seized cattle, killing eighteen people.
Doyle had counseled against calling out the yeomanry (“who for many years past have been religious or political partisans,” that is, Orange protestants) to repress the tithe resisters, saying this would needlessly inflame matters and deepen the conflict between the people and the government.
Later that year, Irish patriots — hopeless of legal redress (there were no Catholic judges or magistrates in Ireland) — struck back violently, killing eighteen of the yeomanry in a retaliatory ambush.
(The numbers of dead and wounded in both of these cases vary with the source you consult.)
William John Fitzpatrick (Doyle’s biographer) writes:
A number of writs against defaulters were issued by the Court of Exchequer, and intrusted to the care of process-servers, who, guarded by a strong force, proceeded on their mission with secrecy and despatch.
Bonfires along the surrounding hills, however, and shrill whistles through the dell, soon convinced them that the people were not unprepared for hostile visitors.
But the yeomanry pushed boldly on: their bayonets were sharp, their ball-cartridge inexhaustible, their hearts dauntless.
Suddenly an immense mass of peasantry, armed with scythes and pitchforks, poured down upon them — a terrible struggle ensured, and in a few moments eighteen police, including the commanding-officer, lay dead.
The remainder fled, marking the course of their retreat by their blood just as, through the intricacies of English law, the decadence of Ireland had long been traced.
In the mêlée, Captain Leyne, a Waterloo veteran, narrowly escaped.
A coroner’s jury pronounced “Wilful murder.”
Large Government rewards were offered, but failed to produce a single conviction.
Doyle reported another tithe-related killing that took place on : “[A] most brutal murder was committed near Gowran.
The victim was employed, I heard, levying distress for tithes.
There is a radical error in the mode of conducting the affairs of this country.”
He then published two essays, one of which concerned the tithe question, in the form of a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Thomas Spring Rice.
It celebrated historical Irish resistance to mandatory tithes as growing from their “innate love of justice and an indomitable hatred of oppression” and recommended that the current mandatory tithes be replaced by a land tax that would be distributed by secular authorities (for the support of the poor, which subject the first of the essays addressed)
Henry Maxwell, Lord Farnham, attacked Doyle in the House of Lords, saying that Doyle was the head of a tithe resistance conspiracy and was responsible for the Newtownbarry massacre.
Fitzpatrick again:
It was quite true that Dr. Doyle had frankly adverted to the tithe system as unjust in principle and odious in practice — as an impediment to the improvement of Ireland in peace as well as in agriculture — as injurious to the best interests of religion, oppressive to the poor, inconsistent with good government, and intolerable to the Irish people.
In justification of those strong phrases the Bishop detailed many striking proofs of their truth, from the tithe laws enacted in the Irish Parliament to the Battle of Skibbereen*; and he inquired whether the recent slaughter at Newtownbarry was the effect of a cause different from that which produced the former collisions.
The exaction of tithe was incompatible with the peace of Ireland.
It had been hated and resisted before [Doyle] was born, and it would be cursed when he lay in his tomb.
That the system was not less injurious to agriculture than to peace he clearly demonstrated.
He had seen the hay left to rot and the field unfilled rather than pay the tithe of the produce to the parson.
The ministers of the Church of Ireland, Doyle concluded, are “taking the blanket from the bed of sickness, the ragged apparel from the limbs of the pauper, and selling it by auction for the payment of tithe.”
This was no exaggeration.
People had testified in Parliament to just such Scrooge-like abuse.
To the tithe collectors, nothing was too petty to seize, and nobody was too poor to be collected from.
One auction notice from Ballymore in read:
To be soaled by Publick Cant in the town of Ballymore on 15 Inst one Cowe the property of Jas Scully one new bed and one gown the property of John quinn seven hanks of yearn the property of the Widow Scott one petty coate & one apron the property of the Widow Gallaher seized under & by virtue of a leasing warrant for the tythe due the Revd. John Ugher.
The opposition to the tithes became increasingly bold and creative.
One worried parliamentarian noted in a news account of a mock funeral held in Ireland at which 100,000 people attended, “who assembled to carry in a procession to the grave two coffins, on which were inscribed Tithes and Rent.”
The thought that resistance to the taxes levied by foreign, absentee clergy might spill over into resistance to the rents levied by foreign, absentee landlords was frightening to the ruling class.
“But in your opposition to this pest of agriculture and bane of religion,” Doyle wrote to his parishioners, “keep always before your eyes a salutary dread of those statutes which guard the tithe.
Let no violence or combination to inspire dread be ever found in your proceedings [alluding to the Whitefeet and other such guerrilla groups].
Justice has no need of such allies.
In these countries, if you only obey the law and reverence the constitution, they both will furnish you with ample means whereby to overthrow all oppression, and will secure to you the full enjoyment of every social right.”
Doyle was summoned to London to testify before a hostile “Tithe Committee,” which suspected that rhetoric like the above was given with a wink and a nod to the resisters.
Doyle used the occasion to prosecute the tithe system, giving a history that proved that the tithes had been loathed and resisted from the beginning, that furthermore their original justification had been as money set aside for the poor with the clergy as the administrators of this trust but that over time the clergy had simply taken over the tithes as their own salary, and that outbreaks of paramilitary violence in Ireland over the centuries were empowered by the tithe system.
Asked whether his statements encouraging the Irish to see the tithe laws as unjust encouraged lawless behavior, he replied by reminding the committee of the noble disobedience in their own history: the opposition to ship writs, the revolution of , and so forth.
Then, in a passage that reminded me of the rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr., he said:
[N]o man ought to be condemned for exhorting people to pursue justice in a certain line, though he may foresee that in the pursuit of that justice the opposition given to those who are proceeding in a just course may produce collision, and that collision lead to the commission of crime; but our duty, as I conceive, is to seek for the injustice, and there to impute the crime … It is to that injustice, and not to those who pursue a just course for the attainment of a right end, that the guilt is to be ascribed.
He was now frankly advocating “passive obedience and nonresistance” — that is, refusal to pay the tithes, and using any legal methods to avoid them, but unresistingly accepting any legal consequences of refusal to pay.
“I maintain the right which [Irish Catholics] have of withholding, in a manner consistent with the law and their duty as subjects, the payment of tithe in kind or in money until it is extorted from them by the operation of the law.”
Fitzpatrick says that Doyle ended his first day of testimony “by declaring that he would allow his last chair to be seized — nay, sacrifice his life, before he would pay an impost so obnoxious and iniquitous.”
The next day he was asked whether by advising his parishioners to resist the tithes, he wasn’t essentially urging them to steal from those to whom the tithes were due.
In response to this question, he brought up the Quakers:
I find in Ireland the religious denomination of Quakers; and they, on account of a peculiar tenet of their religion, refuse to pay tithes in money or kind to the parsons within whose jurisdiction they live; they suffer their cattle or goods to be distrained, and they have never been charged on that account with robbing the parson.
He concluded by presenting the government committee with what must have been a very tempting proposal: why not have people pay their 10% tithes to the government instead of the Church, and then the government can divvy out the money in a more fair manner.
Shrewd.
But victory was some ways off yet.
Doyle encouraged the resisters to trust in the strength of what Gandhi would later call satyagraha:
The advocacy of truth will always excite hostility, and he who enforces justice will ever have to combat against the powers of this world.
I have, through life, regardless of danger or injury, sought to maintain the cause of truth and justice against those “who seek after a lie” and “oppress the weak.”
We, who are now embarked in this cause, have to renew our determination, and in proportion as power is exerted against us to oppose ourselves to it as a wall of brass.
Let us receive but not return its shocks; for if we abide by the law and pursue truth and justice we may suffer loss for a moment, but as certainly as Providence presides over human affairs every arm lifted against us shall not prosper, and against every tongue that contendeth with us we will obtain our cause.
Peace, unanimity, and perseverance are, therefore, alone requisite, under the Divine protection, to annihilate the iniquitous tithe system, to lift up the poor from their state of extreme indigence, and consequent immorality, and to prepare the way for the future happiness of our beloved country.
In there was another “massacre” when a protestant clergyman led a military force to claim his tithe of growing crops direct from the soil of a farmer.
Doyle continued to counsel nonviolence, though his idea of staying within the law got more and more flexible.
Fitzpatrick says in an unsourced footnote “A man in confession to Dr. Doyle said, ‘I stole from the pound a cow which had been seized from me for tithe.’
Dr. Doyle made no comment: the penitent thought he might be dozing, and repeated that confession.
‘What else?’ was the sole response.”
Elsewhere, Fitzpatrick writes:
Dr. Doyle told the people not to infringe the law, but gave it to be understood that they might exercise their wit in devising expedients of passive resistance to tithes.
The hint fell upon fertile soil.
An organised system of confederacy, whereby signals were, for miles around, recognised and answered, started into latent vitality.
True Irish “winks” were exchanged; and when the rector, at the head of a detachment of police, military, bailiffs, clerks, and auctioneers, would make his descent on the lands of the peasantry, he found the cattle removed, and one or two grinning countenances occupying their place.
A search was, of course, instituted, and often days were consumed in prosecuting it.
When successful, the parson’s first step was to put the cattle up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
This harassing system of anti-tithe tactics, of which an idea is merely given, soon accomplished important results.
Archbishop Whately mentioned some interesting facts.
“I have received information which leads me to feel certain, in some instance, and very strongly to suspect in many others, that the resistance to tithe payment in numerous parishes may be traced to the reading of Dr. Doyle’s letter.
All composition has been refused.
Every possible legal evasion has been resorted to to prevent the incumbent from obtaining his due.
A parish purse has been raised to meet law expenses for this purpose, and the result has been that in most instances nothing whatever, in others a very small proportion of the arrears, has been recovered.
I know that in one parish some extensive farmers had reduced into writing a form of proposal for a composition, and that the proposal was signed by the parishioners at a fair in the neighbourhood.
The fair was held on Saturday; and in consequence, as is supposed, of Dr. Doyle’s letter having been read and commented on next day, instead of his receiving the proposal for composition, notices were served on the clergymen, by those very persons, to take the tithe in kind.
He was forced to procure labourers to the amount of sixty, from distant counties, and at high wages, who yet were incapable of obtaining more than a small portion of tithes, being interrupted by a rabble — chiefly women — though men were lurking in the background to support them.
He instituted a tithe-suit which was decided in his favour; but, instead of receiving the amount, he was met by an appeal to the High Court of Delegates, and is informed that a continued resistance to the utmost extremity of the law is to be supported by a parish purse.”
The Carlow journals of the day furnish graphic details of a tithe seizure in that town, and of the surrender of the cattle to their owners.
The following is culled from “The Sentinel,” a Conservative organ, and cannot, therefore, be suspected of exaggeration:— “Yesterday being the day on which the sheriff announced that, if no bidders could be obtained for the cattle, he would have the property returned to Mr. Germain, immense crowds were collected from the neighbouring counties — upwards of 20,000 men.
The County Kildare men, amounting to about 7000, entered, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq., in the most regular and orderly manner.
This body was preceded by a band of music, and had several banners on which were ‘Kilkea and Moone, Independence for ever,’ ‘No Church Tax,’ ‘No Tithe,’ ‘Liberty,’ &c. The whole body followed six carts, which were prepared in the English style — each drawn by two horses.
The rear was brought up by several respectable landholders of Kildare.
The barrack-gates were thrown open, and different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the passes leading to the place of sale.
The cattle were ordered out, when the sheriff, as on the former day, put them up for sale; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain.
The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity, throughout the entire meeting, when the huzzas of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed.
The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain.
At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double-quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust.
Thus terminated this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained, by their steadiness, a complete victory.
The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.”
This sort of contest continued for some time, until at last Mr. Stanley, in Parliament, avowed that notwithstanding a vigorous effort made by the Crown to collect arrears of tithe, with the aid of the military, police, and yeomanry, they were able to recover from an arrear of £60,000 little more than one-sixth of that sum, and at an outlay of £27,000. £1,000,000 was voted by the Legislature for the relief of the Protestant clergy.
There was also a subscription opened.
The Duke of Cumberland, the Duchess of Kent, the Duke of Wellington, Lords Kenyon, Bexley, and even Dr. Doyle’s correspondent, Lord Clifden, contributed £100 each.
The government responded with a repressive Coercion Act, which instituted martial law and banned public meetings.
The resisters got creative:
It was illegal to summon public meetings, and so no public meeting was summoned.
But it was not illegal for the people of a particular town or parish to announce that on a certain day they were going to have a hurling match, and it was not illegal for the people of other counties and towns and parishes to come and take part in the national sport.
It was perfectly plain, however, that the large assemblages that thus came together, met, not for the purpose of ball-playing, but for the purpose of opposing a strong front to the hated tithe system.
Men came to these hurling matches to talk of other topics than balls and sticks.
These hurling matches became the recognized medium of public opinion, and the public opinion of Ireland was dead against the payment of tithes.
That public opinion hinted pretty plainly to those who were willing, for peace and quietness, to pay tithes to their Protestant masters, that such payment would not necessarily secure to them peace and quietness.
The government insisted that there was nothing legal about this “passive obedience and nonresistance” campaign: “[I]t is not compatible with law to evade the performance of the obligations it imposes, and to frustrate the means it provides for their enforcement.”
Doyle responded, some years before Thoreau made the same point, that “some laws may be so unjust and so injurious to the public good that ‘to evade them’ is a duty, and ‘to frustrate the means provided to enforce them’ is an exercise of a social or moral virtue.”
Still, he insisted on nonviolence:
We bless those who sympathize with us, we shun those who co-operate in the enforcement of an odious law against us; but if any one resort to violence or intimidation whilst our goods are taken from us, him do we disown.
The government eventually (in ) enacted concessions that maintained most of the revenue from the tithe system while making it less confrontational: they lowered the tithe rates by 25% and made them collectible from the landlords as “rent”, not directly from the tenants as “tithe”.
Mandatory tithes were nominally abolished in Ireland.
The million-pound loan that Parliament had made to cover the tithes in arrears was converted into a gift, an additional quarter of a million was added to that, and the outstanding tithe debts were canceled.
This effectively ended the Tithe War.
The Church of Ireland was made formally independent from the government, and the mandatory tithes/rents for its support were given a 52-year sunset period, in .
Most of the information and quotes in this Picket Line entry come from The Life, Times, and Correspondence of the Right Rev. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildale and Leighlin () by William John Fitz-Patrick.
* The “Battle of Skibbereen” was an earlier, , tithe-related massacre.
In the reports I’ve been able to find out about it on-line, a protestant parson by the name of Morrit, who was the beneficiary of the tithes, actually was the one to give the order to fire.
The following poem was an imagining of Morrit’s address to the police:
Brave Peelers, march on, with the musket and sword And fight for my tithes in the name of the Lord! Away with whoever appears in your path — And seize all each peasant in Skibbereen hath!
Hesitate not — the law is on our side you know! “The Church is in danger!” and yonder the foe! If women and children expire at your feet! ’Tis a doom good enough for the Papists to meet!
The rebels refuse their last morsel to part — Let your bullets and bay’nets be fleshed in each heart! No matter what Priests or Dissenters will say — I’llgetallmy tithes, or I’llperishto-day!
The inscription from a monument dedicated to victims of a massacre that took place during the tithe resistance campaign.
Photo by Kman999, some rights reserved.
Some excerpts from a report from a House of Commons select committee that investigated the ongoing Tithe War in Ireland, showing just how successful the tax resistance campaign had become, and how frightened it had made the government:
In the prosecution of the inquiries of your committee into the very important subject which has been intrusted to them, evidence has been adduced to establish beyond a doubt the existence of an organised and systematic opposition to the payment of tithe in several parts of Ireland.
In some instances it appears that this opposition has been accompanied and enforced by acts of violence; but in most it appears to have been effected by a species of passive resistance to the operations of the law, in which the inhabitants of whole parishes, some voluntarily, and some from intimidation, have been induced to join.
The protection of the military and police, so far as it is authorized by the existing laws, appears to have been afforded to the Clergy of the Established Church in their endeavours to enforce their legal rights; but your committee regret to be compelled to add, that while the assistance thus afforded has led to collisions with the peasantry, deeply to be lamented in their immediate as well as in their ulterior results, the object sought has been only very partially attained.
Although, under warrants of distress, payment of the demand has been in some instances enforced, such cases bear a very small proportion to those in which the evasion of the law has been successful.
The nature of the opposition given is such as to elude the mere application of physical force, so long as the law remains unaltered; and it appears that the clergy, unwilling to risk the effusion of blood in attempts, probably unavailing, to recover their dues, have latterly acquiesced in the total cessation of their income, as to abstain from taking active steps, and to await with patience the decision of Parliament.
In making, however, this temporary submission to the dictates of an imperious necessity, it is in evidence that many of them have been reduced to a state of the deepest pecuniary distress; and that more especially in the diocese of Ossory and of Leighlin, in which the opposition to the payment of tithe commenced, and in that of Cashel, several clergymen, with large nominal incomes, are in actual want of the ordinary comforts of life.
Your committee cannot but be of opinion that they should be wanting in the duty that they owe to the House, were they to postpone till the final close of their inquiries, calling the attention of Parliament to the distressing circumstances in which a highly-respectable class of men are placed by the success of the combination to deprive them of their legal income; and suggesting such temporary measures of relief as in their view appear calculated to meet the exigencies of the case.
But however strongly your committee might have been led to this conclusion by the circumstances to which they have already referred, they feel that there are other considerations connected with the same subject, which yet more imperiously press for the early attention of Parliament.
Your committee are deeply impressed with the danger which must threaten the whole frame of society, if a combination against a legal impost be permitted ultimately to triumph over the provisions of the law.
They cannot but feel how small the step from successful resistance to tithe, to resistance to rent and taxes; and how great is the temptation held out by the experience of such success in one case, to a similar opposition to the payment of other pecuniary demands.
If the sanctity of the law be systematically violated, if the proof be once afforded that turbulence leads directly to relief, and that popular combination is sufficiently powerful to overbear legitimate authority, the most effectual security of all property is shaken, the framework of Government and of society is disorganized, and a state of confusion and anarchy must ensue.
Your committee have too much reason to apprehend that the general success which has hitherto attended the resistance to tithe, has already given proof of its tendency to produce this effect.
Not only is the opposition to that species of property rapidly extending, not only has the same cessation taken place in the payment of the lay impropriations, the resistance to which cannot rest upon the same religious scruples which have been urged with respect to ecclesiastical tithes, but intimidation and violence of a similar character have, in some few instances, been manifested against the recovery of the landlord’s rent; and your committee are deeply impressed with the necessity of resorting, without delay, to such measures as may enable the executive government, by a vigorous interposition of its authority, to put a stop to a system ruinous to the tranquility and welfare of the empire.
More on the Tithe War, from the edition of The [New Brunswick] Courier:
The combination in Ireland against the payment of tithes has of late assumed a new shape.
Immense meetings are held, which form themselves into tribunals, before which persons accused of the crime of tithe-paying are summoned to appear, and give an account of their conduct; and defaulters undergo the punishment of being abandoned at once by every person in their employment.
Country gentlemen and farmers are left without a servant or labourer to perform the most necessary work.
The hay is left to rot on the ground, and the cattle to perish for want of the necessary food, drink, and care; and even on the roads it is common for the horses of the mails and stage-coaches to be changed by the coachmen and passengers, because the unhappy recusant innkeeper has been deserted by every one, even to his hostler.
Such is the terror of this new species of judicial authority, that numbers of highly respectable persons have found it necessary, in order to avert ruinous consequences, to appear before these self-constituted courts, acknowledge their jurisdiction, and promise to give obedience to their decrees!
For this new evil the Irish government is providing a remedy.
An official circular has been issued, under the authority of the Lord Lieutenant, to the magistracy, in which they are informed, that, whether the means employed in resisting the payment of tithes be actual violence or intimidation, they are illegal, and that the most prompt and effectual measures should be adopted to counteract them.
In regard to such meetings as the above, it is stated that the recurrence will render it incumbent on Magistrates to exert the powers with which the law invites them, to suppress the mischief and bring the guilty to punishment.
And with respect to cases of doubt whether the law has been violated, they are directed to cause the parties implicated to be identified, and to have informations of the particulars of the case sworn and transmitted to Government for the opinions of the law officers.
Another report from the same paper reads:
The people of Ireland have now virtually abolished tithes.
They will neither pay the tax themselves, nor have any dealings or intercourse with those who do.
They will not even purchase for a twentieth or hundredth part of their value goods and cattle which have been distrained for tithes.
The man who in any way upholds the obnoxious system, whatever his previous character or services may have been, is branded as an object of universal execration.
The people meet in thousands and hundreds of thousands — peaceable, orderly, quiet; but animated with one strong and universal sentiment — the detestation of tithes.
It is admitted on all hands that a most richly-endowed Church in the midst of an impoverished people, nine-tenths of whom do not belong to her communion, and receive no return whatever for their forced contributions on her behalf, is an anomaly which cannot much longer exist.
This comes from the edition of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (showing that certain tactics of the “Tithe War” were already in place well before ):
The Irish papers describe many recent outrages.
The last offences on record are — 1st, a wanton burning of farm produce, and barbarous mutilations of cattle, in the neighbourhood of Doneraile, county of Cork; 2d, the destruction of a Mr. Nash’s house, at Balivaloon, in the same county, the villainy of which act was doubly detestable, because it was in charity to a tenant that the proprietor had taken this farm off his hands, after remitting to him a large arrear of rent;— 3d, a large quantity of stacked corn, the property of a churchwarden of Morne Abbey, consumed by fire;— 4th, a horse butchered near Garrycloyne, as a punishment to the owner who had lent him to draw home some tithe corn;— 5th, a stack of wheat burned near Limerick, because it had been seized and sold for an arrear of rent; some other corn, sold for a similar cause, carried off;— 6th, cows and gunpowder plundered from the owners near Limerick, by a gang of men in arms.
This comes from the edition of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (the reason so many of these reports of Irish tax resistance are from Australian papers, is that the Historic Australian Newspapers project has put large archives on-line for free searching and browsing):
CORK.
— A most extraordinary scene has been exhibited in this city.
Some cows seized for tithes were brought to a public place for sale, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and followed by thousands of infuriated people.
All the garrison, cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir George Bingham, were called out.
The cattle were set up at three pounds for each, no bidder; two pounds, no bidder; one pound, no bidder; in short, the auctioneer descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared.
This scene lasted for above an hour, when there being no chance of making sale of the cattle, it was proposed to adjourn the auction; but, as we are informed, the General in command of the military expressed an unwillingness to have the troops subjected to a repetition of the harassing duty thus imposed on them.
After a short delay, it was, at the interference and remonstrance of several gentlemen, both of town and country, agreed upon that the cattle should be given up to the people, subject to certain private arrangements.
We never witnessed such a scene; thousands of country people jumping with exulted feelings at the result, wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling.
At Carlow a triumphant resistance to the laws, similar to that which occurred at Cork, has been exhibited in the presence of the authorities and the military.
Some cattle had been seized for tithe, and a public sale announced, when a large body of men, stated at 50,000, marched to the place appointed, and, of course, under the influence of such terror, none were found to bid for the cattle.
The sale was adjourned from day to day, for seven days, and upon each day the same organised bands entered the town, and rendered the attempt to sell the cattle, in pursuance of the law, abortive.
At last the cattle are given up to the mob, crowned with laurels, and driven home with an escort of 10,000 men.
From The Hobart Town Courier :
Carding the tithe proctors (who certainly were the genuine tyrants of Ireland) was occasionally resorted to by the White Boys, and was performed in the following manner.
The tithe proctor was generally waked out of his first sleep by his door being smashed in; and the boys in white shirts desired him “never to fear,” as they only intended to card him this bout for taking a quarter instead of a tenth from every poor man in the parish.
They then turned him on his face upon the bed; and taking a lively ram cat out of a bag which they brought with them, they set the cat between the proctor’s shoulders.
The beast, being nearly as much terrified as the proctor, would endeavour to get off; but being held fast by the tail, he intrenched every claw deep in the proctor’s back, in order to keep up a firm resistance to the White Boys.
The more the tail was pulled back, the more the ram cat tried to go forward; at length, when he had, as he conceived, made his possession quite secure, main force convinced him to the contrary, and that if he kept his hold, he must lose his tail.
So, he was dragged backward to the proctor’s loins, grappling at every pull, and bringing away, here and there, strips of the proctor’s skin, to prove the pertinacity of his defence.
When the ram cat had got down to the loins, he was once more placed at the shoulders, and again carded the proctor (toties quoties) according to his sentence.
From The Hobart Town Courier :
Tithe Affray.
Ireland.
— An affray, attended with the loss of two lives, occurred on between the peasantry and some persons who were endeavouring to issue notices upon some tithe defaulters, in the parish of Blarney, near Cork.
A Mr. Hudson, a very respectable man, took upon him unfortunately to accompany and direct a small body of men (not police) who were commissioned by Mr. Beresford, the rector of Inniscarra, to serve notices upon several in the parish spoken of; and as they proceeded in the discharge of their duty they were assailed violently by the country people, who continued to fling stones and other missiles at them for a considerable time before any hostile defence was adopted by the other party.
At length Mr. Hudson cautioned the crowd to desist, at least, from offering any assault, whatever else they might please to do.
However, this forbearance had quite a contrary effect, and the multitude were approaching Hudson with the evident intention of sacrificing him, when he fired and shot one of the ruffians; the rest immediately withdrew.
The men whom Hudson had in his immediate charge very imprudently scattered; and thus, abandoned by them, he was brutally murdered by the mob, who mangled his corpse in a very frightful manner.
Finally, this editorial from The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, :
Tithe Horrors.
The state of Ireland, according to the latest accounts, has by no means tended to allay the anxiety so generally felt in regard to the stern and deadly feeling of resistance to the levy of tithes, prevailing throughout every province of that noble Country.
The Catholic peasantry had evidently become embued with a sullen spirit — they suffered their property to be torn from them, rather than yield a little to pay the Protestant Clergyman from whose religion they derived no benefit.
This state of things cannot long last — patience must become exhausted, and rebellion or violence overspread the Country.
We had, during the Whig Government of Earl Grey, some prospect of a change, favourable to the Catholics, as a people who are fleeced and oppressed by a lavish non-resident Aristocracy, and a ravenous Clergy.
When Tory mis-rule superseded the Liberals and Reformers, anticipation ceased to operate freely and favourably.
The Whigs have again a voice in the National Council — but we fear much that the prediliction of His Majesty, as the third estate, and the rooted determination of the Lords, as the second, to support the Protestant Church in all its abuses, and power, will frustrate for a long time, the zeal of the Commons and the energy of the British people.
When we see a tithe of only one shilling raised by expenses to two pounds more, and property actually sold under the bustle of bayonets, because the Catholic peasant will not pay this trifle, surely such a feeling presents an ominous picture, and should oblige Government to pause before the endurance of an oppressed people seeks a fierce and violent remedy for all the injuries of which they have been the victims. This grievous and sacrilegious exercise of a sovereign power can hardly be excelled by any act of wanton extravagance in a conquered province, on the part of an insolent and powerful enemy.
One instance of this dreadful state of existence, will serve as an index to thousands equally enormous.
We have before us a list of six persons against whom collectively the Reverend H.F. Williams, a Protestant Clergyman, had a tithe claim of twenty shillings and two pence; they refused to pay — expenses on this trifle, by separate processes, were incurred to the amount of twenty-four pounds, and shameful to narrate, the miserable furniture of these conscientious Catholic peasants was brought to the hammer, in presence of the claimant, and a party of armed soldiers!!!
So, do you want to hear what I think of Joe Stack flying his plane into the IRS building?
Every year, the IRS Oversight Board conducts what it calls a “Taxpayer Attitude Survey” in which it hires a polling company to ask a set of questions to a randomly-phoned set of 1,000 households.
The latest survey results were released several days back.
There are a few questions that use loaded phrases to elicit answers that are in favor of compliance with tax laws, a few questions that ask people to rank their favorite enforcement priorities, some questions about what sort of IRS services they think are most important and what they think of current IRS services, some questions to gauge public opinion about possible IRS funding increases (which seem mostly designed to help the agency craft its pleas to Congress at budget-time), and a couple of miscellaneous ones.
The loaded questions are things like (emphasis mine):
How much, if any, do you think is an acceptable amount to cheat on your income taxes?
[Do you agree that] it is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes?
[Do you agree that] everyone who cheats on their taxes should be held accountable?
Predictably, people overwhelmingly report that cheating is bad and fair shares are good.
Which tells us little, but makes for good press releases touting the culture of compliance that the government relies on.
(The one non-loaded question in this category is “taxpayers should just have to pay what they feel is a fair amount.”
Last year, 11% of those polled “completely” agreed with that statement, another 15% merely agreed with it, 31% “mostly” disagreed, and 41% “completely” disagreed.)
Conversations with the Tax Collector about Poetry (detail), Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko,
In the past four years, there appears to have been a “steady, upward trend” in the number of threats against IRS employees, said an official with the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration.
I don’t recommend violent defense against or reprisals against IRS employees.
That said, if you are going to burn your house down and fly your plane into a building, the IRS building is an excellent choice of targets.
As much as I don’t think Joe Stack’s recent suicide attack was anything like a good idea, an IRS building in flames strikes me as much less of a public nuisance than the same building prekindled.
But really: don’t.
Play the video game instead.
My feelings about righteous violence are complicated.
I haven’t been able to reduce them to a philosophical system the way that confident pacifists of various flavors, Christian non-resistants, or libertarian non-aggressors have.
It has been many years since I last felt justified in being physically violent toward someone, and I don’t think it did much but provide a cathartic outlet for my rage, which doesn’t much improve the incident in my memory of it with the passing of time.
I don’t own a firearm, and don’t much go in for revolutionary fantasies of people rising up and storming the castle or of a small vanguard setting things to rights one bomb at a time.
On the other hand, I think there’s probably a time and a place for well-applied violence, both when it is the best, most effective, and most just path toward a good end, and because some smug, criminal sons of bitches need to get their faces stomped in the dirt for the satisfaction of their betters.
There’s where we are now, in this dark age in which mendacity, thievery, murder, torture, and the like are enshrined into respected institutions and their practitioners are laureled and praised.
And then there’s where we want to be: in some barely-imaginable future in which people have too much self-respect to put up with such barbaric nonsense.
Some folks think the key to getting from point A to point B is fear.
If the thieves and murderers and what-not know that an armed populace of good and honest people is watching them and won’t let them get away with their shenanigans, pretty soon nobody will stick their necks out and try to get away with something they shouldn’t. To this end, it makes good sense to make sure IRS agents, for instance, know that pursuing their line of work isn’t safe.
I don’t buy it.
Fear only serves the good when the good are more frightening than the evil, and how likely is that, really, in the world we currently live in?
The day that good people are numerous enough and powerful enough to out-frighten the government will probably be several days after they no longer have any need to.
The next thing that comes on the scene that’s more frightening and imposing than the government will probably be worse than it, too.
But while I don’t consider Stack’s actions to have been wise, neither were those of Vernon Hunter.
I find it hard to shed any tears over the death of the 30-year IRS employee, a “proud” Vietnam veteran with 20 years of Army service under his belt, whom Stack killed when he flew his plane into the IRS building.
Saying “he didn’t write the tax laws” is no more excuse than saying of Stack “he didn’t build the plane.”
And yet, I feel for his family and I wish he hadn’t been killed.
It would be easier for me to explain my position were I a pacifist, a non-resistant, or someone who had signed on to the non-aggression principle as my North Star.
I could then argue forward from one of these principles, and you could take it or leave it based on whether my logic was sound and whether my principles were also yours.
Even if I were short-term pragmatic, it would be easier.
I could say, “the time is not yet right for a violent uprising; such individual acts of retribution against government agents are counter-productive,” and many folks would nod their heads and agree or at least understand where I was coming from.
But actually I’m tempted to agree that someone who is victimized by the IRS is in fact fully justified in defending himself or herself with violence against the actual IRS agents who are the agents of this victimization (justified, mind you, not necessarily wise).
And I think that short-term pragmatism of the sort I described is sometimes wise but often just a mask for a sort of endless inertia where fantasies of an eventual “right time” are substitutes for the sort of forthright action that takes the lead.
But my instincts lead me to an even weirder position that I have a hard time justifying: that from a long term pragmatic perspective, even if violence were effective in helping us right the scales of justice and reach our short-term goals, that the same violence would end up salting the earth underneath us, and we’d find that even in the wake of a bloody revolution that succeeded beyond our wildest hopes, all the pain of it put us more or less back where we started from, or worse.
Not only is violence not the only answer, it’s not even an answer. There’s no answer, I suspect, but the difficult, frustratingly slow, nigh impossible task of trying to foment a revolution of values that will make a revolution of blood and fire unnecessary or, anyway, merely ancillary.
It does require a patience and faith and a weird love for the human project, since, unlike bloody vengeance, which you can imagine completing in your lifetime with the decapitation of the King or what-have-you, this sort of project will inevitably be unfinished at your death.
It requires hard work.
It requires the same fierce determination, kamikaze fury, righteous anger, and eagerness to sacrifice that might lead someone to fly a plane into a building, but without the boom at the end, without the satisfaction of being able to think “well, this time I’ll have the last word,” without the catharsis of blood.
I think it may be the best hope we’ve got.
Jerusalem Jewish Council says Jews will not Pay Taxes Unless Money will
be Used For Jewish Projects
Jerusalem, (JTA). —
The Jewish community council here declared this week that Jews would not pay
taxes to the municipal government until they were satisfied that the money
would be used for Jewish projects while Daniel Auster, former Jewish mayor of
the city, said that the Jews would take care of their section of separate
municipal councils were formed and each body was permitted to spend its funds
on improvements for its own people.…
That was shortly before Israeli independence, but tax resistance in
British-occupied Palestine went on for decades before then. Here’s an example
from the Montreal Gazette:
Jerusalem, .—
Lieut.
Gen. Robert H. Haining,
commander of the British forces in Palestine, invited the heads of the Jewish
Agency for Palestine, the National Council of Palestine Jewry and the Jewish
Communal Council to his headquarters here this morning and warned them that
he intended to enforce order and would make no exceptions. General Haining
added that, while he appreciated the three years of restraint on the part of
Jews, he would suppress violence unflinchingly.
The first move in the Jewish non-co-operation movement against the Government
in protest at the new British policy was a decision of the Landlords
Association, composed of rural and urban property owners, to refuse to pay
taxes, beginning , until the White
Paper had been repealed.
Despite all stringent measures taken to prevent illegal immigration into
Palestine, 300 Jews succeeded in landing clandestinely near Ashkalon, Southern
Palestine, but were apprehended by British troops and taken to Tel Aviv for
detention.
In contrast with ’s turbulence in
this Holy City, there was quiet ,
although considerable tension still exists. As a result of the violence
, when a mob of Jews attempted to
raid the district commissioner’s office, smashed windows of an English shop
and a German restaurant and engaged in fighting in which a British constable
was killed and more than 100 Jews were wounded, the military
took far greater precautions to
prevent further bloodshed.
All Government offices were heavily guarded, various parts of the city were
barricaded, and soldiers manned machine guns for action. Only incident
was when several Jewish youths
penetrated a branch post office in the Jewish quarter of Mahne Yehuda here
and broke window panes and furniture.
Three British police sergeants and two constables, who
annoyed the Tel Aviv public, it
is charged, by wearing helmets marked with swastikas and by shouting “Heil
Hitler,” were relieved of duty today pending disciplinary proceedings.
The “White Paper” policy, which, among other things, prevented Jewish
evacuation into Palestine during the Holocaust, was not repealed until Israel
won its independence in .
Tax resistance was practiced both by Jews and by others in Palestine against
the British occupation. In at least one case, in
, there was a sympathy tax strike in England
itself:
In the all-Jewish coastal city of Tel Aviv a high Jewish source who declined
to be quoted by name said meetings were called throughout Palestine Sunday
to consider a “passive resistance movement” similar to those undertaken by
nationalists in India.
A decision would be taken “as to the best method by which Palestine’s Jewish
community can demonstrate to the British they will have to arrest tens of
thousands of us if the government thinks we are accepting quietly everything
it wants to put on us,” he said.
Passive resistance would include nonpayment of taxes, a strike by Jews in
government service and “in all ways complete non-cooperation with the
British,” this source said.
From the
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Holy Land Bomb Damage — A patrol moves around ruins of the
income tax office, Jerusalem, Palestine, after a bomb detonated by police
wrecked the building.
Palestine Tax Office Bombed
Building Leveled By Terrific Blast
Jerusalem, — (AP) —
The Palestine Income Tax Building was leveled this afternoon by a terrific
explosion from a bomb-laden cart which Palestine police said was placed by
Jews.
One person, a Jewish constable, was killed. Five persons — a British Army
captain and lance corporal, a British police sergeant and an Arab policeman — were injured. Windows were shattered within a radius of three blocks.
All employes had been evacuated from the building following a telephone
warning 10 minutes before the blast.
Police said three Jews, one dressed as an Arab, pushed a bomb-laden,
Arab-type delivery cart into the building and fled, after clubbing a Jewish
policeman and snatching a rifle from an Arab guard.
Police tried to drag the cart from the building, but the rope parted. They
said they then detonated the bomb with rifle fire, but “miscalculated the
charge.”
Tel Aviv police reported… that a young Jew and Jewish girl claiming to
represent the Stern Gang, a small Jewish underground unit, had delivered an
ultimatum personally to 18 Jewish officials of the Palestine Income Tax
Department to resign within 96 hours or face drastic consequences. Special
guards were assigned immediately to the 18 officials.
The attempt to bring about the large-scale resignations was viewed by
authorities as another step in the Stern Gang’s announced policy of
sponsoring non-payment of taxes by Palestine’s Jews.
Another report on the same incident
clarifies that the two Jews, “described as Yemenites, visited the homes of the
tax officials Thursday night to deliver the warnings.”
Jerusalem, — (AP) —
Irgun Zvai Leumi, militant Jewish underground group, exhorted Jews throughout
the world today to “hit Britain economically without mercy” in protest
against the trans-shipment of 4,400 Jewish refugees to Germany.
In a broadcast denouncing British treatment of the refugees, who were
intercepted in mid-July while trying to enter Palestine illegally aboard the
Exodus of , a former Chesapeake Bay steamer,
Irgun declared:
“You can stop the cruel British machine forever. Do not pay your tax money,
do not obey their orders. Do not obey their laws. Boycott, boycott, boycott
until the end.
“Jews of the whole world can bring great harm to our enemy. Britain is in
economic trouble. They can be hit economically without mercy.”
The Irgun broadcaster also urged Jews to ignore appeals for a hunger strike
today to protest treatment accorded the refugees.
“This is no time for fasting,” the broadcast said. “It is now time for war.”
Little Rock, Ark., . —
In Craighead County the irate taxpayers of Arkansas got at least temporary relief from the burden of the special taxes for road projects, over which there is a State-wide protest described in dispatches to The New York Times in the last two days.
They took the law into their own hands, and at the point of the gun forced the Commissioners of a road improvement district to resign before work was commenced on a stretch of road which was estimated to cost $50,000 a mile through territory where the land is valued at only from $5 to $10 an acre.
The Commissioners were first asked to suspend their plans.
They refused.
They were then asked to resign.
They likewise refused, and went on with their plans.
The taxpayers of the districts were aroused to such a pitch that mob violence was openly threatened, but their lawyers urged against violence, so a suit to enjoin the Commissioners was filed in the Lake City Chancery Court, with Judge Wheatly presiding.
From the tenor of the hearing, during a morning session of court, the taxpayers became convinced that they would lose.
Their lawyers frankly confessed that they had no case, legally.
So just as the court was adjourning for a noon recess, a body of taxpayers marched into the courtroom and presented typewritten resignations to the Commissioners and to the attorneys for the Commissioners as well, and with the business ends of revolvers motioned for the Commissioners to sign.
The Judge tried to quell the disturbance, but the taxpayers kept their guns drawn until the resignations were duly signed.
They then marched out.
The leader of the taxpayers was a young man named Alexander MacDonald, a kinsman of United States Senator Caraway [a follow-up article corrected this, saying they weren’t related].
MacDonald was subsequently fined $500 and sentenced to six months in jail for contempt of court.
He was the only member of the party cited for contempt.
MacDonald did not go to jail, he did not pay the fine, and subsequently the Governor by proclamation relieved him of both the fine and the imprisonment.
He continues to be one of the most popular citizens of Craighead County.
In several other counties resignations have been secured through other unpleasant means of procedure.
The article goes on to say that “special” taxes like the road tax constituted the overwhelmingly largest taxes on land in the Mississippi delta region, and of these the road tax represented about 40%, rising to about 50% with the new taxes.
These taxes were levied per acre, regardless of the quality of the land, so unproductive swamp was taxed as much as productive farms. The tax came to about $5 per acre, in an area where cotton farms were renting for about $7.50–$10 per acre.
The Legislature used some chicanery to slip the road district creation bill that included the tax into something called a “curative bill” so that no otherwise Constitutionally-required public announcements needed to be made about the tax before its enactment.
Lawmakers of course managed to make themselves the beneficiaries of much of the public expenses, with one legislator, who was also the attorney for the road district, using his position to block any legislation to rescind the tax.
(A later federal investigation uncovered lots of legal double-billing and other accounting funny-business.)
Another instance in Poinsett County called to the attention of the writer was a road tax levied on a farmer whose property is on the St. Francis River, one of the principal Arkansas tributaries to the Mississippi.
The Road Commissioners of one of the districts decided that this man’s farm would be benefited by the construction of a road that is on the other side of the St. Francis River from his property.
The amount of this special tax for this year is in the neighborhood of $400 and the only way the farmer can get to the road in order to avail himself of the “betterment” is by using a boat.
The farmer has announced that he will not pay this tax and that if necessary he will oppose its forcible collection with a gun, and he is perhaps the most famous shot in his particular section of the lumber and cotton country.
Past government road-building boondoggles had seen money collected and spent, without much in the way of roads to show for it.
In addition to kickbacks and other graft of that sort, politicians and well-connected people would invest in empty, low-priced lots and then have roads built on or to them to increase their value.
Part of their motivation for stealing money via roads projects was that state road improvement projects were also eligible for subsidies from the federal government, so for every dollar they stole directly from their own citizens, they could get a grant of stolen money from the feds.
Populace Sided with Cattleman Arrested for Refusing to Pay.
Malaga, Spain, . — An outbreak occurred in the town of Canillas De
Aceituno , in which two persons were
killed and five wounded. Among the latter is a Sergeant of the Civil Guard.
The trouble arose over the seizure of cattle by the authorities because the
owner failed to pay the Octroi dues.
The cattle owner protested to the Mayor, whose only reply was to order the
man’s arrest. The populace, which is violently hostile to the Octroi dues,
sided with the cattleman, and massed in front of the City Hall. An attack by
a force of civil guards to disperse the infuriated mob precipitated a sharp
fight, in which firearms were freely used.
Wat Tyler is another name that frequently comes up when mention is made of English tax resisters of yore.
From what I’ve been able to find out about the Tyler case, it seems to be more complicated than a case of tax resistance, though tax resistance seemed to play a part.
In the reign of Richard, Ⅱ. a poll tax was passed at twelve pence per head, on all above the age of sixteen.
This being levied with severity, caused an insurrection in Kent and Essex.
A Blacksmith, well known by the name of Wat Tyler, was the first who excited the people to arms. The tax-gatherers coming to this man’s house, while he was at work, demanded payment for his daughter, which he refused, alledging that she was in the age mentioned in the act.
One of the brutal collectors insisted on her being a full grown woman; and immediately attempted giving a very indecent proof of his assertion.
This provoked the father to such a degree, that he instantly struck him dead with a blow of his hammer.
The standers by applauded his spirit; and, one and all, resolved to defend his conduct.
He was considered as a champion in the cause, and appointed the leader and spokesman of the people.
It is easy to imagine the disorders committed by this tumultuous rabble.
The whole neighborhood rose in arms. They burnt and plundered wherever they came, and revenged upon their former masters, all those insults which they had long sustained with impunity.
As the discontent was general, the insurgents increased in proportion as they approached the capital.
The flame soon propagated itself into Kent, Hertfordshire, Surry, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge and Lincoln.
They were found to amount to above an hundred thousand men, by the time they were arrived at Blackheath; from whence they sent a message to the king, who had taken shelter in the Tower, desiring a conference with him.
With this message Richard was desirous of complying, but was intimidated by their fierce demeanor.
In the mean time, they had entered the city, burning and plundering the houses of such as were obnoxious from their power, or remarkable for their riches.
They broke into the Savoy palace, belonging to the duke of Lancaster, and put several of his attendants to death.
Their animosity was particularly levelled against the lawyers, to whom they shewed no mercy.
Such was the vehemence of their fury, that the king began to tremble for his own safety; and knowing that the Tower was not capable to stand against an assault, he went out among them, and desired to know their demands.
To this they made a very humble remonstrance, requiring a general pardon, the abolition of slavery, freedom of commerce in market-towns, and a fixed rent, instead of those services required by the tenure of the villanage.
As these requests were reasonable, the king soon complied; and charters were accordingly made out, ratifying the grant.
In the mean time, another body of these insurgents had broken into the Tower, and murdered the chancellor, the primate, and the treasurer, with some other officers of distinction.
They then divided themselves into two parties, and took up their quarters in different parts of the city.
At the head of one of these, was Wat Tyler, who led his men into Smithfield, where he was met by the king, who invited him to a conference, under a pretense of hearing and redressing his grievances.
Tyler ordering his companions to retire, till he should give them a signal, boldly ventured to meet the king in the midst of his retinue; and accordingly began the conference.
The demands of this demagogue, are censured by all the historians of the time, as insolent and extravagant; and yet nothing can be more just than those they have delivered for him.
He required that all slaves should be set free; that all commonages should be open to the poor, as well as the rich; and that a general pardon be passed for the late outrages.
Whilst he made these demands, he now and then lifted up his sword in a menacing manner; which insolence so raised the indignation of William Walworth, then mayor of London, attending on the king, that, without considering the danger to which he exposed his majesty, he stunned Tyler with a blow of his mace; while one of the king’s knights riding up, dispatched him with his sword.
The mutineers seeing their leader fall, prepared themselves to take revenge; and their bows were now bent for execution, when Richard, though not yet quite sixteen years of age, rode up to the rebels, and, with admirable presence of mind, cried out, “What, my people, will you then kill your king?
Be not concerned for your leader, I myself will now be your general.
Follow me into the field, and ye shall have whatever you desire.”
The awed multitude immediately desisted.
They followed the king, as if mechanically, into the fields, and there he granted them the same charter, which he had before granted to their companions.
These grants, for a short time, gained the king great popularity; and it is probable, it was his own desire to have them continued.
But the nobles had long tasted the sweets of power, and were unwilling to admit any others to a participation.
The parliament soon revoked these charters of enfranchisement and pardon.
The low people were reduced to the same slavish condition as before, and several of the ringleaders were punished with capital severity.
The insurrection of the barons against the king, are branded in history with no great air of invective; but the tumults of the people against the barons, are marked with all the virulence of reproach!
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
Prisoners in at least six Georgia state prisons have gone on strike, refusing to leave their cells to work in government-run prison slave labor industries.
The unusual strike is being organized by the prisoners via contraband cell phones.
I’ve been working on a series of pages for NWTRCC under the tentative title of “Where Else Does the Government Get money to Make War, and What Can We Do About It?”
These pages are meant to supplement the current NWTRCC site focus on the federal personal income tax and telephone excise tax, and to talk about other government funding sources and the resistance strategies appropriate to them.
It is slow going, and surprisingly controversial (there is debate about to what extent taxes like the payroll tax are really dedicated to non-military trust fund spending and to what extent this is an illusion).
Prison labor is one way governments extract value from people at gunpoint (and, seeing as how the Department of Defense is a big user of prison labor-produced products, I suppose it counts as a “war tax” also).
Another tactic governments have often turned to is seigniorage — simply printing up money and spending it and implicitly taxing people by making their money-denominated savings less valuable.
But according to a recent article in Forbes, seigniorage doesn’t work as well as it used to, as investors now have more tools to evade or counteract its effects.
The Initial Public Offering of stock from the formerly-public, then government-owned General Motors is another odd source of government revenue.
According to a Treasury Department press release, the government brought in $13.5 billion in by selling GM stock.
(Actually, according to the press release, “Taxpayers” received the money, but that’s only true in government fantasy-land.)
Did you buy any?
Did the mutual funds in your 401k or IRA?
If so, you helped the federal government get a return on its investment.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration publishes a list of management priorities for the IRS every year.
This year they’ve got a new top priority: keeping their employees safe from “a surge of hostility towards the federal government” from irate taxpayers.
Government Will Not Permit Natives to Make Salt — Riot
New Delhi, India, (AP) — The working committee of the Indian Congress party voted to reject the viceroy’s proposals for a compromise settlement of the party’s demands.
Firm on Salt Tax.
The government refused point blank, it was said in authoritative circles here, to grant the Mahatma’s demand that Indians be given the right to make their own salt, holding that the present salt revenue law could only be altered by a legislative act.
The viceroy was said to be equally determined not to yield on the question of obstructing the sale of foreign cloth and the boycotting of British goods.
Would Not Pay Tax: 1 Killed and 5 Injured
Lucknow, India, (AP) — An Indian revenue officer was killed and five persons were injured in a riot which followed the revenue officers’ attempt to collect taxes.
Forty-six persons were arrested.
The mob met the collectors with a shower of stones and beat them with staves.
The All-India National Congress organization was blamed by police for the refusal of the villagers to pay taxes.
There’s a myth about how Leon Czolgosz became an anarchist that goes like this:
Czolgosz came from a Roman Catholic family, but despite their religious beliefs, on their way back from celebrating in Cleveland they stopped in at the modest home of a notorious soothsayer.
When they arrived, there was already a small crowd of people who had come to hear if the old man had any predictions for the coming century.
He did.
There was a woman leaning down with her ear to the old man’s mouth, listening to what he said and trying to translate the gist of it to the assembly.
“He says that mankind will be decimated by its rulers in the coming century — there will be great wars that kill millions of people.”
She leaned down again.
“Millions of people will be killed in these wars, but even worse slaughter will come when the governments of the world turn on their own people — they will literally decimate their people.”
She leaned down again.
“Literally ‘decimate’ — if the angel of death traveled over the world today and visited each person, man woman and child, and killed with its breath every tenth person it visited, it would extinguish fewer lives than the governments of the world will murder off of the field of war in .”
Someone muttered “anarchist” and turned on his heel and left with his family, and that’s when Leon became an anarchist.
He shot and killed William McKinley, then president of the United States government, in , and was executed .
As it turns out, the prophecy came true, fifteen years ahead of schedule.
It is easy to conceive how ill the people spoke of the taxgatherers, who, by their severity and roughness in their daily treatment, kept up perpetual quarrels and ill-will with the equally rough populace, who therefore tried to deceive them.
On one beautiful summer night the custom-house in the great market-place flew up into the air.
A quantity of powder had been conveyed into it by unknown hands, and in the morning nothing remained but the blackened ruins.
It had been intended by this action to oblige the viceroy to take off the taxes; but, without loss of time, in an opposite building a new custom-house was established.
The collectors were only the more angry and unmerciful, and every day seemed to bring the outbreak nearer.
On one beautiful summer night the custom-house in the great market-place flew up into the air.
Thus the morning of , approached.
It was Sunday, and a number of fruit-sellers, with carts and donkeys and full baskets, came into the town very early from Pozzuoli, and went as usual to the great market.
Scarcely had they reached it when the dispute began.
The question was not so much whether the tax was to be paid, as who was to pay it.
The men of Pozzuoli maintained that the Neapolitan dealers in fruit were to pay five carlins on an hundred weight; the others said that it was not their business: thus the disturbance began.
Some respectable people who foresaw the evil hastened to the viceroy, who commissioned Andrea Naclerio, the deputy of the people, to go immediately to the market-place, and restore peace.
Naclerio was getting into a boat to sail to Posilipo, where he intended to spend the day with his colleagues belonging to the association of nobles, when he received the order.
He turned back, coasted along the shore of the Marinella, and got out by the tanner’s gate, near the fort which takes its name from the church of the Carmelites.
Here a different Sunday scene awaited him from that which he had promised himself in the fragrant and shady gardens.
The market was filled with riotous people, and the uproar was so much the worse because Masaniello, with his troop of Alarbes, had met there in the morning for a grand review.
The people of Pozzuoli, of bad fame since the days of Don Pedro de Toledo, quarrelled and protested; the Neapolitans were not a whit behind them in fluency of speech.
The tax-gatherers would listen to no remonstrances, and insisted upon the payment.
Andrea Naclerio tried in all ways to obtain a hearing and to appease the tumult.
He said to the Pozzuolans that they ought to pay, that the money would be returned to them: they would not.
He demanded to have the fruit weighed; he would pay the tax out of his own purse: this also they refused.
The tax-gatherers and sbirri now lost all patience.
They fetched the great scales, and wanted to weigh the fruit by force.
Then the venders pushed down the baskets, so that the fruit rolled along the ground, and called out to the people, “Take what you can get, and taste it; it is the last time that we shall come here to the market!”
From all sides boys and men flung themselves upon the baskets and the fruit.
The signal was given for an insurrection.
The tax-gatherers drove the people back; the people made use of the fruit as their weapons.
Andrea Naclerio rushed into the thickest of the crowd; the captain of the sbirri and some of the respectable inhabitants of the adjacent tan quarter hastened hither, and bore him in their arms out of the knot of men who in one moment had increased to a large mass; for idle people had flocked thither from the neighbouring street, from the dirty and populous Lavinaro, as well as from the coast.
The deputy was rejoiced to reach his boat, and made the rowers ply vigorously that he might bring the news of the tumult to the palace.
But the populace proceeded from fruit to stones, put to flight the tax-gatherers and sbirri, crowded into the custom-house, destroyed the table and chairs, set fire to the ruins as well as the account-books, so that soon a bright flame rose up amidst the loud rejoicings of the bystanders.
Meanwhile Andrea Naclerio had reached the palace.
He related the whole proceeding to the viceroy, and pointed out to him at the same time that only the abolition of the fruit tax could appease the people.
The Duke of Arcos resolved to try mildness.
Two men of illustrious birth, who were more beloved by the crowd than the others, Tiberio Carafa, Prince of Bisignano, and Ettore Ravaschieri, Prince of Satriano, repaired to the market-place as peacemakers.
Naclerio was not satisfied with this; he feared that Don Tiberio would, in his kindness, promise more than could be performed, and so only make matters worse.
What he had foreseen happened.
When Bisignano reached the market and found the crowd still wild with rage, he announced that the viceroy would not only abolish the fruit-tax, but all the other gabelles: they might make merry and be satisfied.
A promise from the viceroy of the abolition of all the gabelles — that was worth hearing.
The rioters listened.
A promise from the viceroy of the abolition of all the gabelles — that was worth hearing.
Masaniello had kept quiet during the assault upon the deputy and the tax-gatherers, and to a certain degree had acted as mediator.
“Now,” he exclaimed, “we will march to the palace.”
The great mass of the people followed him; another troop surrounded Bisignano, who would gladly have freed himself from his wild escort, and trotted his horse when he came to the king’s gate; but they soon reached him again, and so much forgot the respect due to his rank, that they laid their hands on him and compelled him to accompany them to San Lorenzo, the residence of the superior town magistrate.
Arrived here, they cried out for the privileges of Charles Ⅴ., an idea instilled into them by Giulio Genuino, who, disguised and with a long beard, made one of the procession, and was the soul of all the intrigues that were hidden under the wild impulses of the masses.
Don Tiberio Carafa esteemed himself fortunate to escape from his oppressors; he crept into a cell, and went to Castelnuovo, from whence he repaired to Rome, so exhausted from the scene he had witnessed that he died mad not long afterwards.
Meanwhile the far more numerous band was on its way to the royal palace.
Drummers marched in advance.
Masaniello had mounted a horse, and held up a banner, some of his followers were provided with sticks, and others armed with poles.
They had in their haste seized upon any implements that they could find; numerous lads, old guards of the leader, accompanied the strange procession.
Whistling and making a blustering noise, most of them in rags and barefooted — a genuine mob, who soon became aware how much was left to their will and discretion.
The duke was in the palace, and with him many of the nobles belonging to the town, who advised him to strengthen his Spanish guard immediately; but he would not, whether from fear of irritating the people, or because he did not consider the danger so imminent.
The grand master of the horse, Don Carlo Caracciolo, with Don Luis Ponce de Leone, a cousin of the viceroy’s and governor of the vicarial court, were standing on one of the balconies at the moment when the crowd reached the square before the palace, and Masaniello waving his banner three times before the royal guard, called out “Long life to the king of Spain! Down with the gabelles!” — a cry which was repeated by thousands of the people.
Caracciolo went down, and began to talk to the people.
They remained standing; they complained of the oppressive taxes; they complained of the bad bread; they held him out pieces of it; he might judge for himself whether it was food for men or for dogs.
They urged above all the deposition of the Eletto, on whom, as usual, the blame was laid that things were not more prosperous.
Now the audacity of the crowd increased. Why not ask for more when everything was granted to them? The flour-tax also!
At first affairs went on tolerably well.
With great dexterity Don Carlo kept the crowd away from the entrances, whilst he corresponded by means of his vassals with the viceroy, who consented to Naclerio’s deposition — to the abolition of the duties on fruit and on wine.
Now the audacity of the crowd increased.
Why not ask for more when everything was granted to them?
The flour-tax also!
Caracciolo objected; things could not go on so.
But in the same moment new masses of many thousand men crowded into the square, uttering wild noises.
The negotiator was obliged to give way, and had only time to inform the viceroy that he might withdraw into Castelnuovo.
The protesters rushed the palace and pushed past the outnumbered German bodyguard.
The Duke of Arcos tried to address the crowd to make concessions but was unheeded.
He fled as the crowd began to vandalize the palace “in the midst of wild rejoicings and laughter.”
A runaway Augustinian monk seized him by the hair and screamed “Abolish the taxes!”
The Duke of Arcos had descended the spiral staircase, when he perceived that the bridges of the castle were already drawn up, the portcullis let down.
He believed that he could save himself by crossing the square to the opposite convent of the Minimi, as he imagined that the rebels were too much occupied with plundering the palace to attend to him.
But he miscalculated.
Scarcely had he reached the square, when he was recognised and surrounded.
A knight of St. Jago, Don Antonio Taboada, was accidentally passing by, he succeeded in penetrating through the crowd to the viceroy, and lifted him into his carriage.
The fescue of the Duke of Arcos turned upon a hair.
One of the people, it is said Masaniello himself, wanted to thrust his sword into him, but the blow was parried by Don Emanuel Vaez.
A runaway Augustinian monk seized him by the hair and screamed “Abolish the taxes!”
The carriage could not go on.
The horses pranced; some of the people seized the reins; the coachman was on the ground.
Then many of the nobles pressed through the crowd, making themselves a passage partly by violence, partly by fair words — the Count of Conversano, the Marquises of Torrecuso and Brienza, the Duke of Castile Airola, the prior of Rocella Carafa, Don Antonio Enriquez, and Carlo Caracciolo — the viceroy was indebted to them for his rescue.
They surrounded the carriage with drawn swords.
The rebels had already taken the harness off the horses; two noblemen took possession of it, put it on as well as they could, and Caracciolo jumped upon the coachbox, fastened in the loose horses, whilst the other nobles remained at the door.
But there was no getting further — the cries, the uproar, the mass of men increased every instant.
So few against so many — if there was any delay no exit would remain.
Don Carlo Caracciolo’s mind was quickly made up; he opened the doors of the carriage, dragged out the half-dead viceroy, seized him by the arm, whilst the rest of the nobles surrounded them, raising high their swords, and warding off the pressure of the mob.
With the cry “Make room for the king!” they got through the crowd.
The duke was carried off to a convent by these noblemen, under continuing abuse from the mob, which then tried to storm the hastily-barricaded convent.
“Long life to the King of Spain! Down with the bad government!”
This was the cry, echoed from a thousand voices.
The Duke of Arcos showed himself at the window — he repeated that he would grant what was desired — he threw down a declaration signed by himself: nothing was of any avail.
The rebels tried to get into the convent through the church; they threatened to drag the viceroy to the market.
The alarm spread through the town.
At this momentous crisis, the Cardinal Archbishop Ascanio Filomarino appeared.
The more important the part which the Archbishop of Naples acted during the revolutions of the kingdom, so much the more interesting is the account of it written by himself, in a letter addressed to Pope Innocent Ⅹ.
“When I left my house ,” he writes on the , “to go to the Capuchin convent, I perceived that the viceroy was besieged in his palace by from fifty to sixty thousand of the people, who wished to extort by any means the abolition of the fruit-tax.
This tax has agitated the minds of the people for some days: the crowd was alike exasperated against the ministers and the nobles, and threatened to plunder their houses, and even not to spare the convents, for it is said that from fear of an insurrection a great number of treasures, jewels, as well as plate, have been concealed in these last places.
Upon this news I changed my purpose, and turned back towards the town by the gate of the Holy Ghost.
On the way I met numbers of my acquaintance who were making their escape, and advised me not to go further, but to return home, which only stimulated me to hasten my speed.
About a hundred steps from the palace of the nuncio (on the Toledo) I met a troop of armed men, who were marching on in the greatest excitement, whilst people streamed from all the adjacent streets.
I expected kindness from this people, that I have always found full of respect and affection for their pastors, and amongst whom I saw many that were personally known to me.
When I gave the crowd the blessing for which they longed so much, that they were unwilling to let me pass without it, and spoke kindly to the people, they replied that at all events the fruit-tax must be abolished.
I assured them that I would stand by them, and willingly sacrifice my life for them, and labour for the abolition of this and of the other gabelles.
They must be quiet, and let me act, they would certainly be satisfied.
The further I proceeded the greater was the crowd, so that to get more space some of the leaders of the people, who were well inclined towards me, accompanied me and made room for me by making signs that I was on their side.
Thus with great difficulty I reached the square before the palace, that I found full of frantic people.
When I understood that the viceroy had taken refuge in the convent of the Minimi, I sent him word by one of my noblemen that I was arrived, but that he must submit to the people.
I received for answer that the viceroy as well as the officers with him were extremely rejoiced at my arrival; and as I was getting out of my carriage to go into the convent, the Marquis of Torrecuso brought me a note written by the viceroy himself, in which he promised the abolition of the gabelles.
After I had read the note, and communicated its contents to the people, I ordered them aloud, and in the presence of all, to pull down the custom-houses; and that on the next morning better and more substantial bread would be sold.
I cannot describe to your Holiness how this order pacified and contented the people.
When I returned to my carriage the crowd surrounded me; they knelt before me, they kissed my hands and my clothes; those who could not reach me, made signs at a distance with their hands and mouths.
As I returned by the same road, I made it known everywhere that the gabelles were abolished, and that the bread would be better.
This announcement had such an effect, that in the above-mentioned part of the town the tumult considerably subsided, and people’s minds were tranquil, and I desired the leaders of the mob to go into the other quarters of the town, there to proclaim the same good tidings, and restore peace.”*
I ordered them aloud, and in the presence of all, to pull down the custom-houses.
But the cardinal deceived himself, and assisted perhaps even more than did Tiberius Carafa by his imprudence to increase the rebellion.
The passions of the multitude once excited, evil-minded persons were not wanting who availed themselves of this excitement.
Scarcely had the archbishop departed, when the uproar began again.
Neither the Prince of Montesarchio, nor Don Prospero Tuttavilla, nor any others were able to restore peace, however lavish of their words.
The populace attacked the Spanish guard belonging to the palace, broke in pieces their drums, smashed their pikes, and were so violent that the soldiers were obliged to fire.
This produced an effect.
Five or six of them fell, and the crowd dispersed in a wild flight.
The viceroy had profited by the interval, going out by the back door of the convent, to reach a house situated on the slope of Pizzofalcone.
Here he got into a closed sedan-chair, and, accompanied by many noblemen, went to the castle of St. Elmo over the bridge built by the Duke of Medina, which unites the hill of Pizzofalcone with that of San Martino.
Part of the way the mountain was so steep that the bearers of the sedan-chair in which was the viceroy could not proceed.
He was obliged to get out, and by a great exertion this corpulent man climbed the height.
Other cavaliers attached themselves to this procession which met with no impediment from the masses of the people who had all moved down to the lower parts of the town.
The Duchess of Arcos, into whose apartments the populace had penetrated, had fled with her children and servants, with her maids of honour and many other ladies of illustrious birth belonging to the town, into Castelnuovo.
But the Spanish troops had left the neighbouring posts, too weak to be able to defend them against the mob, and all the army had assembled under the Prince of Ascoli in the park, which joins the palace as well as the castle, to maintain this advantageous post by their united efforts.
The toll-booths throughout the town were demolished; the mob went from one gate to another.
The night came — what a night!
A hundred thousand men marched with loud cries through the town.
The churches were open, and resounded with prayers for the restoration of peace.
The Theatines and Jesuits left their convents and arranged themselves in processions, singing litanies to the Madonna and the saints, but the Ora pro nobis was overpowered by the fury of the crowd.
Although the first forced their way down the Toledo to the palace, and the others penetrated to the great market-place, they were obliged nevertheless to withdraw without having accomplished their object.
All the highwaymen and murderers, of which Naples was full, left their hiding-places.
The first thing done was to break open the prisons and set the prisoners at liberty — all, excepting those confined in the prisons of the vicarial court, for the castle of Capuano inspired the rebels with respect, whether because of a very large imperial eagle of Charles Ⅴ., fixed over the portal, or because the garrison of the old fortress, together with the sbirri, stood with lighted matches behind the cross-bars, and threatened the assailants with a bloody welcome.
The prisoners in the vicarial court now sought to set themselves free, and began by destroying the cross-bars with heavy beams; but some shots, which laid two of them dead on the ground, warned them to desist from their attempt.
All the other prisons were cleared, and the archives and everything that could be found in them was burnt; the toll-booths throughout the town were demolished; the mob went from one gate to another.
Everywhere the toll-gatherers had escaped — nobody thought of making any resistance, and as there were no more prisons to be broken open, no more customhouses to be destroyed, the populace began to attack the houses of those whom they knew had, by farming tolls or in any other way, become rich at the expense of the people.
There was no mention of defence — the proprietors were glad to save their bare lives.
Many rewarded with gold the services of the rowers, who conveyed them to a villa at Posilipo, or to any other place beyond the town.
But the houses were emptied: first that of the cashier of taxes, Alphonso Vagliano.
Beautiful household furniture, plate, pictures, everything that could be found was dragged into the streets, thrown together in a heap and burnt; and when one of the people wanted to conceal a jewel, he was violently upbraided by the rest.
* Lettere del Cardinal Filomarino, published by G. Aiazzi.
Florence, (printed again at Palermo and other places).
Pp. 379–393.
The Prince of Montesarchio was the first whom the viceroy sent as a messenger of peace…
Montesarchio rode to the market-place provided with a written promise of the viceroy’s touching the abolition of the taxes.
He took an oath in the church of the Carmelites that the promise should be kept: the people refused to believe him.
The rioting and thorough destruction of property continued on :
All the rich and noble persons who were concerned in the farming of tolls, as well as all members of the government, saw their houses demolished. …
Above forty palaces and houses were consumed by the flames on this day, or were razed to the ground…
…To oblige the viceroy the Duke of Maddaloni rode once more into the market-place, carrying with him a manifesto, according to which all the gabelles which had been introduced since the time of Charles Ⅴ. were abolished, and a general amnesty granted for the crimes already committed.
The mob were not satisfied, now claiming that they also wanted more radical political reform in the form of these “privileges of Charles Ⅴ.”
They instead took the Duke captive (he escaped and fled that night).
The Viceroy and company finally dug up the document enacting these principles and entrusted archbishop Filomarino to take it to the rioters as a sign of their victory (and that they could please stop rioting now).
By this time, though, the riot had developed a destructive momentum, and leaders had come forward to press for, and gain, even more political concessions.
The rioters certainly showed the power of the people over their rulers, who were forced to make significant concessions in order to regain authority.
Soon after these events, the Neapolitan Republic briefly became independent.
I was struck by the detail that the rioters were careful to destroy rather than loot property (“when one of the people wanted to conceal a jewel, he was violently upbraided by the rest”).
This reminded me of the Boston Tea Party, which was similarly harsh against anyone who tried to filch, rather than destroy, the imported tea.
The Annual Register gave what it represented as a transcript of part of the rally held by the Birmingham Political Union while the House of Lords was going through the motions of contemplating the Reform Bill:
They were all acquainted with a peaceful, orderly, and most respectable body of men called Quakers, to whose example he wished specially to call the attention of the meeting.
This respectable sect of Christians refused to support a parson, but, in their opposition, they did not knock out the brains of the tithe-collector — they simply suffered a distress to be levied upon their goods.
Now, if the Quakers refused to pay the tithes, the people generally might refuse to pay the taxes; and, if the bailiff came, he should like to know where they would find the auctioneer who would dare to sell, or the people who would dare to buy.
The voice of the auctioneer, he conceived, would be passive, not active; and rather than knocking down, he would be himself knocked down.
While upon this point, he could not but think of another glorious patriot, whose name and character, during a long night of despotism, shone bright as the day-star of British liberty, whose example ought to be as an encouraging beacon for their future guidance.
When Hampden refused the payment of ship-money, his gallant conduct electrified all England, and pointed out the way by which the people, when unanimous and combined, might rid themselves of an odious and oppressive oligarchy.
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
Mark my words — failing all other more constitutional means.
That volume also talks about the rioting that took place after the failure of Parliament to pass the Bill — rioting that seems, from the description, to have been strikingly methodical in its targeting of excise, toll, & customs houses, jails, and government buildings, starting with the Mansion House, moving on to the Council House, then to Bridewell prison where they “battered down the gates, rushed into the interior, liberated all the prisoners, and then set fire to the building.”
From there, they “attacked the new jail, while thousands looked on.
They carried and gutted the governor’s house, made their way into the yard, armed with hammers to break open the doors: all the prisoners — criminals as well as debtors — were forthwith set at liberty, amid the exulting shouts of the populace; and the jail, being thus emptied, was immediately set on fire, with all its adjuncts of tread-mill, chapel, and governor’s house.”
The rioters leaving the jail burning, and setting fire, on their way, to various toll-houses, next carried, without resistance, the Gloucester county prison, liberated its inmates, and then set it on fire — sending off a detachment to aid the conflagration of the Bridewell, one wing of which seemed otherwise likely to escape.
They torched the already ransacked Mansion House next, and the home of an anti-Reform bishop.
In Queen square:
They reached the Custom-house, an immense building, left utterly unprotected.
Its whole extent was forthwith added to the burning mass.… [T]he Excise-office… shared, unprotected and unresisted, the fate of the Custom-house.
The Political Unions became bolder and more organized, and a national Political Union formed.
On it (and “all such associations”) was banned.
It (and they) ignored the ban.
From the Camperdown Chronicle for :
Affairs in the Transvaal
The native tribes in the west of the Transvaal refuse to submit to the taxation imposed upon them by the Boers, and are offering an armed resistance to the tax collectors.
The Boers are mobilising their forces, with a view to coercing the tribes, and hostilities are imminent.
Not long before this, the Boers had launched their own war of independence against the British Empire — the First Boer War — with some tax resistance of their own.
, the Launceston Examiner published a somewhat longer piece that alluded to this:
We are not sufficiently acquainted with the tribal distribution of South Africa to distinguish the people over whom the Chief Mordsiva, referred to in our telegrams from Durban, exercises his sway.
Whoever they may be they must evidently be both brave and numerous to have inflicted two crushing defeats on the forces sent by the Boers to raid its territory.
That the Boers can fight has been too satisfactorily proved when they met and defeated British troops, and when they in their turn have to submit to the superiority of their foe these recent opponents must be a powerful body.
Recent intelligence from the Transvaal was to the effect that the native tribes in the west of that country refused to yield to the taxation imposed on them by the Boers, and were offering an armed resistance to the tax collectors.
Thereupon the Boers began to mobilise their forces with a view of coercing the tribes and enforcing the tax.
Under these circumstances it was no wonder to find it added that hostilities were imminent.
It can hardly be doubted that the later information has reference to the proceedings which arose out of the state of things then disclosed.
At the same time there are few who would have been prepared to hear of the defeat of the Boers who evidently were not inclined to accept their first reverse as irremediable and therefore again marched against the recalcitrant tax paying nations.
The second defeat cannot fail to have taught the Boers that they have no insignificant antagonists to deal with, and may lead them to reconsider the wisdom of trying to collect taxes from such are unwilling and powerful people.
It is scarcely possible that the Boers will let matters rest at their present stage, and that a further effort will be made to enforce the collection of the tax, so that we may not have long to wait to hear that further hostilities have taken place.
I had a devil of a time tracking down information about “Chief Mordsiva.”
Other sources from the period refer to a “Montsima,” or “Montisba Lonza,” or “Montisba Longa,” or “Montsioa,” or “Montshiwa.”
One paper identifies him as specifically a Zulu chief, and says he was killed in one of the skirmishes in .
Another book says he was a chief of the Baralongs, and was still alive after the war.
Another chief, Mampuru, was refusing the hut tax around the same time, and this led to battles sometimes called the “Mapoch War,” but I think that is distinct from what was being reported above.
After early victories by the resisters, the Boers and their allies beat back Montshiwa and his allies, and distributed the conquered territories as spoils among the soldiers.
These became Stellaland and Goshen, and were, , independent republics.
There is more about this in The Transvaal and Bechuanaland by Gavin Brown Clark, but note that the Boer and English versions of what took place are often very different, and the Borolong version is rarely seen at all.
Police battle protesters outside of an Equitalia office.
Equitalia is “a publicly owned company responsible for collecting taxes and fines in Italy” — one of those weird government “privatization” boondoggles, I suppose.
Staff have also expressed fears over their personal safety with increasing numbers calling in sick and with one unidentified employee telling Italian TV:
“I have told my son not to say where I work or tell anyone what I do for a living.”
Annamaria Cancellieri, the interior minister, said she was considering calling in the army in a bid to quell the rising social tensions.
“There have been several attacks on the offices of Equitalia in recent weeks.
I want to remind people that attacking Equitalia is the equivalent of attacking the State,” she said in an interview with La Repubblica newspaper.
Saturday night’s attack took place on the Equitalia office in Livorno and the front of the building was left severely damaged by fire after the bombs exploded.
The phrases “Thieves” and “Death to Equitalia” were sprayed onto outside walls.
It came just 24 hours after more than 200 people had been involved in running battles with police outside a branch in Naples which left a dozen protesters and officers hurt.
Meanwhile, a couple of days ago, Italian Justice Department Secretary Andrea Zoppini resigned after having been indicted for tax fraud.
The government is trying to press an austerity program of sorts, along with higher taxes and a crackdown on tax evasion.
Among the Italian tax resisters, though something of a lone wolf outlier, is libertarian George Fidenato, who is following the path set down by Vivien Kellems in the U.S. back in .
He is refusing to withhold taxes from his employees’ paychecks, saying he doesn’t work for the government and wouldn’t even if you paid him, and his employees’ interactions with the tax office are their own concern.
Today’s hunt through the archives was inspired by this Associated Press dispatch from :
Chief Beheaded
Lagos, (AP) — Rioting villagers beheaded Oba (King) Olajide Olayode and killed five of his chiefs, one of his wives, and a son in the Western state town of Ogbomosho, reports reaching this Nigerian capital said.
It was feared a number of civilians also were killed or wounded as police and army units moved in to take over, a Daily Sketch reporter said.
He added that residents of the town had set up roadblocks to resist tax-collecting efforts.
After digging around a bit, I learned that this was one phase in the “Agbękoya”, a peasant uprising / tax revolt that had begun .
Wikipedia’s summary includes the following:
Peasants shouted Oke mefa l’ao san! Oke mefa l’ao san! [“we are only paying 30 shillings”] as they marched through the village after village to persuade the local farmers not to pay any taxes to the military governor of the Western state.…
Soon, some farmers and their leaders gradually left the villages and marched towards Mapo hall, the seat of the regional government.
There, they ransacked the offices of officials, declaring that they would only pay $1.10.
Mayhem then descended on the capital city and many villages.
To curtail further violence, the government employed the use of force and violence to quell the uprising and arrested some of the Agbękoya leaders.
However, farmers took to violent reprisals on government structures, and as a result, many officials were killed.…
As a method of protest against the military government, the Agbękoya attacked major symbols of state power like court houses and government buildings, setting free thousands of prisoners alongside their jailed members.…
The aftermath of the riots resulted in the removal of local government officials administering the villages, removal of Baales [civil authorities], reduction in flat tax rate, end of the use of force for tax removal, increase in price of cocoa and the improving of roads leading to the villages.
The government at the time agreed to these concessions.…
During the period of the civil war, taxation was the most pressing issue.
Enforced austerity, combined with inflation, low cocoa prices, and frequent (and often brutal) tax raids exacerbated the situation.
Disturbances started in Ibadan in with an attack on the local government offices, and they spread to Ęgba, Ǫyǫ, Ędę and elsewhere.
Tax-collection was suspended and a commission of enquiry was appointed to look into the reasons for the trouble.
Its report concluded that the riots had been spontaneous and were due primarily to the high levels of taxation.
There were complaints from all over the state about the sole administrator system, corruption in local government, and the failure to provide local amenities, despite the high taxes.
The government accepted these complaints in principle, but refused to lower the flat rate of income tax to the level demanded.
In the government gave an ultimatum to tax defaulters, and the raids started again.
The Şǫhun of Ogbomǫʂǫ was killed by rioters in July, and in Ibadan the rioters freed all the prisoners, including tax defaulters, from Agodi Prison in .
The leaders of the rebellion in Ibadan were mainly illiterates, small-scale farmers, and men who had not been involved in politics before.
The most prominent leader to emerge was Tafa Adeoye, a farmer from Akanran…
In , Chief Awolowo [who had only recently been released from prison] made a well-publicized trek through the bush to negotiate with Adeoye, and many of the demands of the Agbękoya were met.
The flat rate of taxation was reduced to £2 a year, an amnesty for tax defaulters was declared, and Agbękoya members were soon out helping local tax officials in the task of collection.
