Resistance to the Tax on Foreigners in Tuolumne County.
It is reported in this city, on authority not to be doubted, that the foreigners in Tuolumne county have presented a strong resistance to the enforcement of the late tax law.
The sheriff of the county, in attempting to compel the foreigners to yield, was killed by them, and one or two of his posse wounded.
This caused the American miners to turn out en masse, and at the last accounts about a hundred of the foreigners had been arrested.
Sacramento Transcript, .
The “Foreign Miners Tax” of required all miners who were not American citizens to pay $20 per month.
The tax was not so much a revenue raising instrument as a way of allowing citizens to monopolize mining and take over sites being worked by Chinese and Mexican miners.
The resistance of the foreign miners was successful.
The tax was repealed by the end of , though a smaller ($4/month) tax was reapplied to Chinese miners in , and some particularly unscrupulous tax collectors continued to extort the tax from foreign miners even when it was no longer legal to do so.
…The legislature has imposed a monthly tax of $20 on every foreigner digging gold.
The law was to operate from the Within 10 miles of Sonora there is a large majority of foreigners.
They thought the tax oppressive and were deliberating resistance.
The ringleaders and fomeneters of trouble were chiefly French Socialists — Red Republicans… “They collected the simple and ignorant Mexican and Chilian peasantry — harangued them with inflammatory speeches — denounced the tax as “unjust” and “tyrannical” — and said if it must be paid, pay it in powder and ball.
Frenchmen from all quarters collected about Sonora [] all armed to the teeth, and affairs grew serious.
The excitement was heightened by an American who rashly undertook to cheat a Chileno out of his hole — by representing himself the Collector and demanding the tax.
The Chileno said he had not then enough money to pay it.
“Then you must quit work.”
The Chileno quietly left the hole — but no sooner was he out than the perfidious scoundrel jumped into it in his place.
This exasperated the Chileno who with one blow cut the jugular vein of the American and he died in a few minutes.
The Americans in and about Sonora felt apprehensive for their safety and sent runners to Mormon Gulch and Jamestown for reinforcements.
That night about 400 Americans there under arms — they remained next day which was the last “day of grace” given by the Collector — and owing no doubt to the determined front they presented, no difficulty took place, except that a Mexican drew a knife on the Sheriff (newly elected) but was killed on the spot by the Sheriff’s deputy.
One Frenchman was arrested for inciting the mob by inflammatory harrangues.
Thus ended, or rather was prevented, the war which if begun would have raged furiously in this quarter.
It would have become a war of extermination, for the want of any power on either side to arrest it, and it would have swept to its end so quickly.
For several days a painful suspense prevailed, and we were all in readiness to march at a moment’s warning to the assistance of the authorities and our fellow citizens in danger.
Now all is quiet and many of the foreigners have left.
I am sorry to say that several Americans who reap a rich harvest of profit off the foreigners, encouraged the disaffection, denounced the law, and preached actual treason…
One of the people who was forced off of his mining claim by the Foreign Miners Tax was Joaquin Murieta, whose story became a Robin Hood-like myth in California.
(A myth that also bears some resemblance to the “Rebecca” mythos from Wales a decade before, in that it appears there were many vengeful banditos at the time who all called themselves “Joaquin.”)
Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of attacks on police and soldiers when they attempt to enforce tax laws or to take reprisals against resisters.
, a crowd of people on the Greek island of Hydra attacked local police after they detained a restauranteur for tax evasion:
[T]he inspectors wanted to transport the restaurant owner to Athens, an hour’s ride away by fast boat.
They were set upon by a local crowd, which also attacked the boat’s crew.
The police, along with the restaurant owner, had to retreat to the island’s police station, which was besieged until riot police arrived .
Locals cut off the station’s electricity and water supplies.
a police bus on fire in Zhili, China
In , protesters in China “overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes.”
In another mob of tax protesters in China destroyed ten police vehicles including an armored car.
There were battles between police and protesters during the Poll Tax rebellion in the Thatcher years.
In Bristol, the crowd charged the police and rescued arrested demonstrators.
“One police officer was kicked unconscious when he tried to make an arrest.
Six more were dragged out of their van.”
In London, “As the police baton-charged the crowd… they were resisted by a hail of bricks, bottles, and stones.”
Police brutality turned a peaceful demonstration into a riot in Trafalgar Square.
“Mounted riot police baton-charged the crowd.
The crowd, angered by this violent provocation, retaliated by throwing sticks, banner poles, bottles — anything they could find.
Young people, armed only with placards, fought hand to hand with police.
… As the missiles began to rain down the police retreated:
…Pedestrian isles were being torn up and real serious lumps of concrete being thrown at the romper-suited police.
I found myself with rock in hand.
The first I threw was aimed at a group of police.
I watched it bounce off a shield.
My second rock was more specifically aimed at their front line.
Again, it was well-deflected.
I saw a rock strike a policeman’s visor and he didn’t even blink.
The police were shielding themselves from the missiles raining down, but they were vulnerable to rocks aimed at their legs and midriffs.
The police were taking a battering.
Every now and then a policeman would crumple to his knees and the crowd would roar.”
More than 100 police officers would be treated for injuries sustained during the riot.
A spokesman for the police said, “I have never seen such sustained and savage violence used directly against the police.”
During the Poujadist tax rebellion in France in , “unabashed Poujade vigilantes went right on chasing tax collectors down the roads, mobbing police and defying troops assigned to escort them.”
At the tail end of the Dharsana Salt Raid, some Indian nationalist sympathizers, disregarding Gandhi’s guidelines and “abandoning, it was said, all pretenses at non-violence, stoned guards and police.
Five police and three excisemen were injured by the pebbles.
Six police who went to the rescue of some hardly pressed excisemen were themselves surrounded by the mob and obliged to retire.”
In Spain in , when guardsmen tried to disperse protesters angry at the arrest of a tax resisting cattleman, the crowd fought back — “two persons were killed and five wounded.
Among the latter is a Sergeant of the Civil Guard.”
After the Russian duma-in-exile issued a tax resistance manifesto, the government said that if people refused to pay taxes, it would send in troops who would show no mercy.
“Without waiting for soldiers to put the threat of the government into execustion the peasants have inaugurated a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the troops already in the province.
… Within the last few days a number of military sentinels have been shot down in ambush or attacked by the peasants.”
In , the military were called in to Guerrero, Mexico, to put down a tax rebellion.
Instead, the rebels defeated the troops and took General Ranjel prisoner.
“Half-breeds” (people of mixed European immigrant and Native American parentage) in the Dakota Territory refused to pay taxes in .
When the Sheriff tried to collect, “the half-breeds assembled from all directions, and pressing about the Sheriff and his one man they forced him to surrender his well-earned pittance of taxes … and say they will resist to the last man.
Sheriff Flynn has been notified that he will be shot on sight if he again makes a similar attempt.”
“When a deputy sheriff went to make seizures” against Irish settlers in Canada who were resisting taxes in , “the residents threatened to string him to the nearest tree.
Finally, they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
A sheriff trying to enforce the “foreign miners tax” in California “in attempting to compel the foreigners to yield, was killed by them, and one or two of his posse wounded.”
The Rebecca Rioters in Wales targeted the constables who tried to stop or investigate the riots, or to conduct tax seizures:
Two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at a Pontyberem village, and while there “made some special constables promise not to serve, and took away their staves.”
“They then attacked the house of the blacksmith, who had previously said he would face fifteen of the best Rebecca boys, and who also had been sworn in as a special constable; according to his own statements he was a man devoid of fear.
The smith — fearless man of Vulcan — had, however, departed; but smash! went in his door and windows, and his deserted smithy was practically destroyed.”
“At the outset of these proceedings the toll-man ‘Dick’ contrived, by running over ditch and dell, to warn a parish constable, one Evan Thomas, otherwise ‘The Porthyrhyd Lion,’ of his own mishap, as well as the peril to which he thought him exposed, Evan being somewhat unpopular in the neighbourhood.
On receiving this hint, away bolted ‘Ianto,’ scampering over the ditches and fields until he found a cow-house where he lay concealed in anxious suspense the remainder of the night.
Notwithstanding the retreat of ‘Ianto,’ about seventy of the tribe visited his domicile, smashed in his windows and doors, destroyed his shelf and dresser, and all his crockery, as well as the spokes of a new cart, put a cheese on the fire, cut down some of the trees in the garden, and then simultaneously raised the cry, ‘Alas! poor Ianto!’
… Evan the constable… if found, was to have his ears cut off.”
“These riotous proceedings caused considerable excitement and alarm… The different persons in the neighbourhood who were sworn in as special constables… gave up their staves, with the determination of refusing on any future occasions to interfere with the movements of Rebecca or the protection of the toll-house.”
“John Evans and John Lewis, two Sheriff’s officers from Carmarthen, were sent… to make a distress on the goods and chattels of William Philipp… They were attacked by about twenty-five of the ’Beccas, and beaten in a dreadful manner.… John Evans was compelled to go on his knees before them, and put the distresses and authority to distrain in the fire.
He was then made to take his oath on the Bible, which one of them put in his hands, that he would never again enter the premises to make another distress.
He was compelled to make use of the following words: ‘As the Lord liveth, and my soul liveth, I will never come here to make any distress again.’
After taking the oath, he was set free, and the two bailiffs returned to town.”
William Chambers, who led a police unit that wounded and arrested some Rebeccaites, was targeted multiple times.
On one occasion, a stack of his corn was burned, on another, a stack of straw met the torch.
Later his farm and outbuildings were all engulfed in flames.
A horse of his that had been rescued from another of his farms as it burned down was later shot.
This panel from the Carrickshock memorial depicts an attack on British troops during the Irish Tithe War.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, British troops killed 18 resisters who were trying to reclaim distrained livestock.
In return, the resisters killed 18 troops in an ambush:
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… 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.
In Issoudun, France in , a general who was sent to try to quell a tax rebellion there “entered the town only through a capitulation; the moment he reached the Hôtel-de-Ville a man of the Faubourg de Rome put his pruning-hook around his neck, exclaiming, ‘No more clerks where there is nothing to do!’ ”
During the Fries Rebellion in the early United States, “it came to the knowledge of the authorities that several of the magistrates themselves were disaffected, and others were prevented doing their duty through fear of injury.”
During the French Revolution, when the people of Peronne and Ham got wind that an order had been issued to rebuild destroyed toll-houses, they destroyed the soldiers’ barracks.
In another case: “M. de Sauzay, commandant of the ‘Royal Roussillon,’ who was bold enough to save the [tax] clerks, is menaced, and for this misdeed he barely escapes being hung himself.
When the municipal body is called upon to interpose and employ force, it replies that ‘for so small a matter, it is not worth while to compromise the lives of the citizens,’ and the regular troops sent to the Hôtel-de-Ville are ordered by the people not to go except with the butt-ends of their muskets in the air.”
Tax resistance campaigns have found it useful to identify resonances with popular myths, esteemed tax rebellions of yore, and semi-fictional heroes.
Here are some examples:
Just about every tax revolt in the United States (and many elsewhere as well) appropriates the example of the Boston Tea Party as an evocative reminder of a grassroots uprising, the recent “Taxed Enough Already” TEA Party movement being just the latest of many, many examples.
John Hampden pictured on a banner of the Women’s Tax Resistance League
In Spain, the tancament de caixes plays a similar role to the Tea Party in America, with modern Spanish tax resisters comparing their campaigns with that legendary struggle.
In England (and the British empire), John Hampden has long been the exemplar of choice, with his example being used from South Africa to Ireland to India to prove that celebrated patriots can refuse to pay their taxes.
The phrase “no taxation without representation” has such resonance, especially in the descendant nations of the British Empire, that it gets trotted out even to support tax resistance campaigns in which representation isn’t really an issue at all.
It was especially potent in the American revolution and in the women’s suffrage movements.
The Rebecca Rioters in Wales, painting their faces and dressing in drag to destroy tollgates and mete out justice in the middle of the nineteenth century, were tapping into a folkloric form of grassroots justice that was centuries old.
“Jack a Lents” painted their faces and dressed in women’s clothing to tear down turnpikes in England a century before, and I’ve found references to protesters led by men in women’s clothing and using the shared pseudonym of “Lady Skimmington” in the Western Rising in England a century before that.
Resistance to the “Foreign Miners Tax” in California in gave birth to the myth of Joaquin Murieta, a sort of Robin Hood-like outlaw who became a desperado when he was forced off his claim by the tax.
The Robin Hood myth itself has taken on a tax resistance theme in recent years.
The popular Disney animated version of the Robin Hood story makes the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham a tax collector, and Robin Hood’s robbery of him a case of redistributing the taxes back to the people they’d been seized from:
While he taxes us to pieces And he robs us of our bread King Richard’s crown keeps slippin’ down Around that pointed head Ah!
But while there is a merry man in Robin’s wily pack We’ll find a way to make him pay And steal our money back
Urban legends helped to fuel tax resistance during the French Revolution.
Rumors that the King had abolished taxes led people to refuse payment or to destroy the obsolete offices and apparatus of taxation.
Here is a similar example from Russia (as found in James C. Scott’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance):
After the emancipation [of the serfs] in , the peasants in Biezdne (Kazan Province) were demoralized to discover that with redemption payments, labor dues, and taxes their burdens were, if anything, heavier than before.
When one of their number claimed that the emancipation decree granted them complete freedom from such dues — the term volia (freedom) appeared in many contexts in the decree — but that the squires and officials had kept it from being implemented, they leapt at the opportunity, now sanctioned from on high, to refuse payment.
The myth of the czar’s benevolence, which was of course promoted by the czarist government, could backfire in this way when peasants refused to pay onerous taxes or obey other commands of the czar’s subordinates, under the theory that because the czar was so good he could not possibly have ordered such terrible things:
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the myth was its plasticity in the hands of its peasant adherents.
First and foremost, it was an invitation to resist any or all of the czar’s supposed agents, who could not have been carrying out the good czar’s wishes if they imposed heavy taxes, conscription, rents, military corvée, and so forth.
If the czar only knew of the crimes his faithless agents were committing in his name, he would punish them and rectify matters.
When petitions failed and oppression continued, it may simply have indicated that an impostor — a false czar — was on the throne.
In such cases, the peasants who joined the banners of a rebel claiming to be the true czar would be demonstrating their loyalty to the monarchy.
… In a form of symbolic jujitsu, an apparently conservative myth counseling passivity becomes a basis for defiance and rebellion…
Scott also talks (e.g. in his paper Everyday Forms of Resistance) about how “much of the folk culture of the peasant ‘little tradition’ amounts to a legitimation, or even a celebration, of [resistance]…”
In this and other ways (e.g. tales of bandits, tricksters, peasant heroes, religious myths, carnivalesque parodies of authorities) the peasant subculture helps to underwrite dissimulation, poaching, theft, tax evasion, evasion of conscription, and so on.
While folk culture is not coordinational in any formal sense, it often achieves a “climate of opinion” which, in other more institutionalized societies, might require a public relations campaign.
The very name “Poll Tax,” which came to be the most widely-accepted name for what Thatcher’s government hoped would go down as the “community charge,” was a potent propaganda coup for the resistance movement.
Danny Burns, a chronicler of that successful tax rebellion, says that “the story of [Wat Tyler’s] peasants revolt against the Poll Tax in 1381 was told in virtually every meeting.
Calling on these traditions was an important part of explaining why non-cooperation was needed…” Signs that people would hang in their windows reading “No Poll Tax Here” also hearkened back to the tax resistance accompanying the Reform Act agitation in the .
Today, tax resistance actions like the ongoing Household Tax resistance in Ireland compare themselves in turn to the successful Poll Tax revolt.
The Lady Godiva myth concerns a “noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants.”
A motley variety of myths about “common law,” about the True Constitution, about the significance of fringed edges to flags, and other what-not, fuel the often bizarre Constitutionalist tax protester movement in the United States.
