Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
United States →
Colonial resistance to Governor Andros, 1687
On , John Wise met with some of the other “principal inhabitants” of Ipswich in New England, and decided that a new tax that had been imposed by governor Edmund Andros, without consulting the colony’s General Assembly, was bogus and “that it was not the town’s duty any way to assist that ill method of raising money.”
, a town meeting was assembled, ostensibly “for choosing a commissioner to join with the Selectmen to assess the inhabitants according to an act of His Excellency the Governor and Council, for laying of rates.”
Instead:
The town then considering, that this act doth infringe their liberty, as freeborn English subjects of His Majesty, by interfering with the Statute Laws of the land, by which it was enacted, that no taxes should be levied upon the subjects without the consent of an Assembly, chosen by the Freeholders for assessing of the same, they do therefore vote, that they are not willing to choose a commissioner for such an end without said privilege, and, moreover, consent not, that the Selectmen do proceed to lay any such rate until it be appointed by a General Assembly, concurring with Governor and Council.
A number of those at the town meeting were then arrested, hauled to a jail in another town, and then put on trial before a jury hand-picked by the prosecution and a judge who referred to the defendants as “criminals” over the course of the trial.
John Wise made a statement under oath about the case, from which these excerpts come:
The evidence in the case, as to the substance of it, was, that we too boldly endeavoured to persuade ourselves we were Englishmen and under privileges, and that we were, all six of us aforesaid, at the town-meeting of Ipswich aforesaid, and, as the witness supposed, we assented to the aforesaid vote, and, also, that John Wise made a speech at the same time, and said we had a good God and a good King, and should do well to stand to our privileges.
The jury return us all six guilty, being all involved in the same information.
We were remanded from verdict to prison, and there kept one and twenty days for judgment.
Fines and court costs followed, and, at first, the Andros tyranny was triumphant.
But Wise and company had the last laugh.
On , in the wake of the Glorious Revolution in the home country, a “Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston” was issued, which proclaimed the assault on the rights of dissenting English colonists to be part of the same plot of “the great Scarlet Whore” to crush Englishmen under the thumb of the papists (that is, James Ⅱ) again.
The Declaration is a good predecessor of the better-known one of , but much more interesting reading.
Here’s a nice excerpt:
…extraordinary and intolerable Fees extorted from every one upon all occaſions, without any Rules but thoſe of their own inſatiable Avarice and Beggary; and even the probate of a Will muſt now coſt as many Pounds perhaps as it did Shillings heretofore; nor could a ſmall Volume contain the other Illegalities done by theſe Horſe-leeches in the two or three Years that they have been ſucking of us…
The Declaration then quoted one of the judges in the Wise case:
…it was a maxim delivered in open Court unto us by one of the Council, “that we muſt not think the Priviledges of Engliſh men would follow us to the end of the World:” Accordingly we have been treated with multiplied contradictions to Magna Charta, the rights of which we laid claim unto.
Perſons who did but peaceably object againſt the raiſing of Taxes without an Aſſembly, have been for it fined, ſome twenty, ſome thirty, and others fifty Pounds.…
Then followed a revolution.
Andros and his horse-leeches (including Judge Dudley who had tried the case against Wise and the rest) were overthrown and imprisoned (legend has it Andros was caught trying to escape disguised as a woman).
The “Charter Oak” (you can see it on the back of the Connecticut state Quarter design) comes from this period.
Andros tried to get the Connecticut colonial authorities to renounce the charter they had been granted by the King and to instead give Andros total authority.
At the meeting where this was to take place, the colonists blew out the candles and under cover of darkness took the charter away and hid it in a hollow in the oak tree.
Refusal by juries to convict tax resisters or those associated with tax resistance movements can be a powerful check on government power.
Today I will mention a small handful of such cases from tax resistance campaigns of the past.
Many successful applications of jury nullification never make the papers or the histories — this is because the government, seeing how the cards of public opinion are dealt, decides against bringing cases to trial because they fear the effect an innocent verdict would have.
The government might try transporting the defendants to a more sympathetic jurisdiction, or might hand-pick a “hanging jury” to insure conviction, but either of these tactics risks further alienating the people and bolstering the resisters’ arguments about the faithlessness and illegitimacy of the government and its taxes.
Governor Andros of Connecticut
For example, Governor Andros of colonial Connecticut put members of the Ipswich town meeting on trial after they refused to assess taxes the governor had tried to impose without the consent of the colonial Assembly.
The trial was a sham — the jury was hand-picked by the prosecution and the judge referred to the defendants as “criminals” throughout the course of the trial, telling them they “must not think the privileges of English men would follow [them] to the end of the world.”
But they did think that, and threw that quote back in the faces of Andros and the judge in the case, when they revolted, overthrew the colonial government, and imprisoned the two of them.
The Whiskey Rebellion
During the Whiskey Rebellion, juries had no interest in indicting or convicting people for their refusal to pay the federal excise tax.
Mary K. Bonsteel Tachau, in her paper “The Whiskey Rebellion in Kentucky: A Forgotten Episode of Civil Disobedience,” showed how effective this strategy was:
When they did meet, grand jurors seemed uninterested in charging anyone with anything.
In fact, the only action taken by grand juries during the first four years was to approve the first census.
Their inactivity implied that Kentucky was a notably law-abiding place.
Of course the judge, the marshal, the grand jurors, and everybody else in Kentucky knew that the internal revenue laws were being ignored.
The Kentucky Gazette regularly published notices about the statutes, often accompanied by complaints and threats from Colonel [Thomas] Marshall.
It is possible that the grand jurors felt justified in overlooking their obligation by attending strictly to the instructions that Judge [Harry] Innes gave them.
He regularly delivered eloquent addresses describing the matters that came within their cognizance.
Among those were such traditional offenses as treason, misprison of treason, forgery, interference with the processes of the courts, bribery, perjury, and so on.
These were sometimes lengthy lists, but they had one obvious omission because violation of federal statutes was also within the grand jurors’ purview.
As long as the judge overlooked such widespread evasion, the jurors evidently felt no obligation to take the initiative and bring charges against their neighbors.
Federal prosecutors could themselves bring charges for violation of the excise law to these grand juries, but none did.
Indeed the federal government had difficulty even finding anyone to take the job of prosecutor.
When, five and a half years after the excise tax went into effect, they finally found someone to take the job, it was a recent arrival from out of state, and they had “to furnish [him] with copies of the revenue statutes, because none were available in the commonwealth.”
Then the government finally was able to begin bringing charges against Whiskey Rebels.
It thought it had won.
Not so much:
During the remaining terms of court in , the federal marshal failed to convene grand juries, and [federal prosecutor] Clarke failed to file any informations [charges].
Clarke had run head-on against the power structure, and it was not about to submit tamely to an outsider.
The agents that he had instructed to seize [Thomas] Jones’s stills were charged with trespass; the witnesses whom he had summoned to testify to the grand juries were denied compensation for their travel.
Clarke complained to the treasury department, which initially sympathized with him, but it acknowledged that the judge was master in his own court.
Then, seven plus years after the widely-resisted excise tax came into effect, the government changed the rules: deciding that anyone who was a whiskey distiller would be banned from serving on the grand jury!
One of the bottlenecks to prosecution had been broken through.
Yet as these cases came to trial, it became clear that the distillers did not have much to worry about.
In an early grand jury address, Judge Innes had stated that “trials by jury… are the great bulwark which intervenes between the magistrate and the citizen,” and these petit jurors obviously saw themselves as that great bulwark.
Whether the charges were initiated by Clarke or by revenue collectors or by grand juries made no difference: trial jurors regularly acquitted their neighbors of criminal charges.
In Kentucky, violation of the revenue acts was simply not perceived as a crime.
Not one of the fifty criminal charges brought during the four years of Clarke’s tenure resulted in conviction [emphasis mine –♇].
Default judgments were set aside, while other charges were abated by death, or quashed, dismissed, or discontinued.
Seven cases went to trial, but the jurors found for the defendants every time, and the judge then ordered their accusers to pay the costs of the suits.
It was proving impossible to win convictions — and it is easy to see why.
The law was held in utter contempt by the people the juries were being drawn from.
Bonsteel Tachau notes, for instance, that “[i]n one term of court alone, five members of the jury panels were themselves defendants in cases brought by Clarke.”
The successful resistance by people in Kentucky against attempts to prosecute their neighbors for resistance to the federal excise tax continued until the the anti-tax movement could claim victory with the election of Thomas Jefferson as president, who promised to rescind the tax.
Karl Marx’s jury
When the royal and military aristocracy of Germany tried to shut down the country’s first popularly-elected legislature before they could enact a Constitution, the parliament responded by declaring the government out of business: “So long as the National Assembly is not at liberty to continue its sessions in Berlin, the Brandenburg cabinet has no right to dispose of government revenues and to collect taxes.”
Karl Marx, who was at the time editing a newspaper called the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, trumpeted the news, saying: “From today, therefore, taxes are abolished!
It is high treason to pay taxes.
Refusal to pay taxes is the primary duty of the citizen!”
The government took Marx to court for such incitements to rebellion, but this didn’t discourage him.
Instead, Marx managed to persuade the jury that he’d been right all along.
(Edmund Wilson, in whose book To The Finland Station I first learned about this case, writes that “the effect [of Marx’s defense] on the jury was so great that Marx was thanked on their behalf by the foreman for his ‘extremely informative speech.’”)
Marx wrote of the acquittal:
[T]he case turned only on the political question: whether the accused were authorised by the decision of the National Assembly on the refusal to pay taxes to call in this way for resistance to the state power, to organise an armed force against that of the state, and to have government authorities removed and appointed at their discretion.
After a very brief consultation, the jury answered this question in the affirmative.
The Rebecca Riots
During one of the tollgate demolishings that marked the Rebecca Riots in Wales, Sarah Williams, who was in charge of the toll house being destroyed, rushed back to try to save it from the flames.
She was shot and killed, presumably by one of the Rebeccaites.
Colonel George Rice Trevor explains what happened next:
[A]n inquest was held… Two surgeons… gave evidence that on the body were marks of shot, some penetrating the nipple of left breast, on in the armpit of the same side, and several shot marks on both arms. Two shots were found in the left lung.
In spite of all this evidence the jury found “that the deceased died from effution of blood into the chest [which] occasioned suffocation, but from what cause is to this jury unknown.”
[emphasis mine –♇]
The inquest refusing to find the cause of death to be murder made it difficult to launch an investigation, make arrests, or begin a prosecution.
One way that governments have tried to make taxes more palatable is to allow the citizens to elect their own local tax assessors and collectors.
And one way citizens have responded to this gambit is by refusing to elect anyone at all.
Here are some examples:
During the Fries Rebellion, people refused to serve as assessors.
On one occasion, Commissioner Eyerley addressed a crowd of tax resisters:
Mr. Eyerley proposed that inasmuch as they were opposed to the present assessor, he would give them the privilege of electing one of their own number, to whom he would give the appointment.
This they declined, saying: “We will do no such thing; if we do, we at once acknowledge that we submit to the law, and that is what we will not do.”
on another occasion, the principal assessor, James Chapman, held a public meeting to try to mollify critics of the tax:
and also to inform them they would be permitted to select their own assessor, and that any capable man whom they might name would be qualified.
The offer, however, did not meet with much favor in that section of the township, and the people declined to have anything to do with it.
When Governor Andros tried to impose taxes on colonial New England without the consent of the colonial Assembly, he held a town meeting in Ipswich at which the town was to choose its Assessor.
The town refused, saying “that they are not willing to choose a commissioner for such an end.”
In the wake of the Panic of , in some parts of the United States, tax resistance was resorted to out of fury at having to pay off foreign speculators and in the hopes of sovereign debt repudiation (all much like what is going on in Greece today).
One newspaper noted that “they have resisted the collection of taxes and defeated, at least temporarily, the operations of the law; in some cases, by the resignation of officers whose duty it was to collect the taxes and in others by the refusal of the people to elect the proper officers for that purpose.”
In Kastamonu, Turkey in , the citizenry boycotted the elections for city councillors on the grounds that it did not matter whom they elected, since they had no control over taxation or spending.
Some bits and pieces from here and there:
The emerging Spanish tax resistance movement, which combines the war tax resistance movement with a broader anti-austerity / community-autonomy focus, has put out a video (and has helpfully translated it into English for its overseas fans):
An article about Catholic women activists included a note about war tax resistance in Italy that was news to me (translation mine):
In , in Italy, Beati Costruttori Della Pace [“blessed are the peacemakers”] was born.
While it is not an exclusively female organization, it emphasizes the participation of women.
At its creation, religious people were involved who were motivated by war tax resistance.
Instrumental at its launch was a document defending this practice signed in by Lorenzo Belloni, bishop of Trieste and president of the Peace & Justice Commission, and by ten thousand laypeople and five thousand nuns, monks, and priests.
All of them pledged to practice and spread war tax resistance.
The founding document says: “peace is central to the Church if it wants to remain faithful to the risen Christ.
Peace cannot be delegated but is entrusted to each person in everyday life.”
This association, in addition to war tax resistance, has organized nonviolent intervention marches in war zones like Sarajevo, Kivu, or Ramallah.
It also promotes campaigns against the manufacture of landmines, nuclear energy, and military bases on Italian soil.
The Historic Ipswich Massachusetts blog
pointed out that the Ipswich post office has a mural representing an assembly of colonial Americans debating how they would resist taxes that had been illegally imposed by Governor Andros:
This act of resistance has been called “the foundation of American Democracy,” and was the beginning of a series of events which culminated in the Revolutionary War.
The act of opposition is commemorated in the seal of the town of Ipswich, which bears the motto, “The Birthplace of American Independence .”
In John Andrews was chairman of the selectmen, the town clerk was John Appleton and the minister at Chebacco Parish was the popular John Wise.
They met with other town leaders to discuss the command of crown-appointed governor Sir Edmond Andros and his council that a new tax be assessed on the king’s subjects.
A town meeting was hastily organized the next day which voted that “no taxes should be Levied upon the Subjects without consent of the Assembly chosen by the Freeholders.”
For this act Rev. Wise, John Andrews, John Appleton, Samuel Appleton, William Goodhue, Robert Kinsman, and Thomas French were arrested and tried before the court in Boston.
They were severely handled, imprisoned for several weeks and fined.
Sam Appleton refused to give the bond and was kept a prisoner under very harsh conditions.
A group of provincial militia and citizens gathered in Boston on and arrested several dominion officials as well as members of the Church of England who were suspected of sympathizing with the administration.
Major Samuel Appleton was among the men who helped escort Andros to Castle Island in Boston Harbor as a prisoner.
Leaders of the former Massachusetts Bay Colony then reclaimed control of the government, rescinded the tax order, and Andros was shipped back to England.
Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed governance under their earlier charters as well.
