This comes from The British Friend, dated , and is prefixed with the note “Dear Friends, — The following is the copy of a paper I am about to post for the Friend. As the subject is interesting to Friends generally, will you insert it in your periodical, and thus oblige your Friend, B.”:
An inquiry from A. appearing in The Friend, for this month, as to whether those called Church Rates may be considered as taxes on property or not, I confess that, however interesting the question may be, as one of curious legal research, I do not see how its decision could reconcile Friends to such payments. What we object to is surely this, the interference of man in the things of God. If so, it matters little whether one is called on to pay “church rates” to repair a building connected with state religion, or to pay “property tax” for the very same purpose.
Willingness to be led by Christ’s Spirit we believe to be the essence of Christian worship, but in all state churches “law is substituted for love,” and force for voluntary homage.
“B.” goes on to denounce establishmentarianism, and concludes:
We utterly deny the man-made ministry of national “churches,” and as steadfastly affirm that none ought to be compelled to repair the places in which such teachers officiate.
In the Herald of Peace, some years ago, mention was made of a Friend in Wales who suffered distraint for the property tax, then existing, because that tax had been granted expressly as a war tax. This is a case in point. When a tax or rate is levied and set apart for a definite object, there can be no mistake, because it is not mixed up with the general mass of rates or taxes.
The letter immediately following this one told of a shoemaker, John Gardner of Garstang, whose goods were seized to pay 1 shilling, 1½ pence of church rates, plus £1, 8 shillings of various fees associated with the auction (in other words, the total amount seized was more than 25 times the amount of the resisted taxes).
