Some historical and global examples of tax resistance → religious groups and the religious perspective → British Nonconformists → 19th Century Irish Tithe War and other Catholic tax resistance

The following brief note comes from The Household Narrative of Current Events of October, 1855 (billed as a “monthly supplement to Household Words, conducted by Charles Dickens”).

The Roman Catholic priest of Blarney, the Rev. Mr. Peyton, having Refused to Pay his Income-tax, the Commissioners ordered his horse to be seized and sold by auction. Placards informing the public of the alleged injustice were distributed in Cork; and when the horse was led out for sale at the Bazaar on Saturday, the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings. After much ado, however, the sale was effected, and the horse was sold for 6l. 1s. 6d. Mr. Peyton then addressed the crowd to place them in possession of the “reasons” for his conduct. He alleged that priests are not treated like other citizens by the government; that they cannot, like artisans or Protestant ministers, recover their dues; and he declared that, for his own part, until he enjoys those privileges which his fellow citizens enjoy, he will never voluntarily pay income-tax. He concluded a violent tirade by exclaiming, “The Income-Tax Commissioners have gratified their vindictive feeling against the Irish priests — much good may it do them!”

The Carlisle Journal of 19 October 1855 fills in some more details:

Father Peyton, His Horse, and The Income Tax. Those ruthless despoilers, the income-tax collectors in Ireland, made a descent on Blarney the other day, and laid sacrilegious hands on Father Peyton’s horse, which they forthwith set up to public auction, and sold for the shabby trifle of £6 odd. Their reasons for this violent and unjustifiable proceeding are as weak as their conduct was wicked. Father Peyton was served with one of the usual returns, calling on him, after the manner of the profane heretics in this country, and of the mere Roman Catholic laity, to fill up the amount of income at which he considered he should be assessed. With a proper sense of the reverence that out to be paid to an anointed priest, the revered father treated the impertinent return with silent contempt. A second application was made to him; and then, disclaiming to claim exemption from a pack of unbelievers on the score of his sacred character, he condescended to enter into argument with them to prove that they had no right to levy their rascally income-tax on him. Says Father Peyton: “We the Catholic Priests, are not treated like our fellow-citizens by the Government of the country. They allow every other man, professional, commercial, and artisan, to recover their dues, and accordingly they tax them; but the priest is the only man that the law will not recognise in recovering his dues. I must attend the beds of the sick and the dying, and perform many other duties, but the people need not give me anything. It is optional with themselves. They are all voluntary gifts on their part; and that very government that would not allow me, like the minister or any other man, to recover my rights or dues from the people, have therefore no right to ask me for an account of what people voluntarily give me.” Acting on the principles set forth in the foregoing extract from a speech delivered by his reverence to the crowd assembled to witness the sale of his poor hack, he refused to pay the iniquitous tax. The upshot of the business was that the flinty-hearted, irreligious collectors brought the steed under the auctioneer’s hammer, and, we suppose, by this time the cash he realised has been lodged to the credit of the Income-tax Commissioners.

The following excerpt from John Thomas Ball’s The Reformed Church of Ireland (1537–1886) concerns resistance to mandatory tithes by Irish Catholics in the 1830s.

The value of the tithes levied at this time in Ireland may be reckoned at about six hundred and forty-three thousand pounds a year. Of this sum nearly five-sixths belonged to the Established Church, and the remainder to laymen, in whom monastic property had vested under grants from the Crown. In Ireland, lands in permanent pasture were exempt from this impost; as also were certain other privileged lands; but everywhere else the tenth of the produce of the soil had to be set apart by the farmers, and rendered by them in kind or value to the tithe-owners, lay and clerical, according to their respective rights. Extreme subdivision of the leaseholds threw the burden largely upon a poor and ignorant class, unable to protect themselves against the exactions of the agents employed to levy the tax, who, undertaking an unpopular office, endeavoured to obtain compensation through whatever arts were fitted to increase its profits. To uneducated tenants it was useless to point out that although paid by them tithe really fell upon the landlords, since the liability was necessarily taken into account when ascertaining their rents; or to suggest that the abolition of one obligation was certain to lead to increase of the other. Such persons only considered the immediate claims upon them, and the vexations accompanying their enforcement.

To a demand, therefore, of this character nothing could be expected to reconcile the agricultural population, except an application of its proceeds for purposes either beneficial to their interests or acceptable to their sentiments and sympathies. But in Ireland in three provinces the vast majority of the farmers from whom the tithes were levied were Roman Catholics, while the revenue collected went in much the greater number of instances to maintain a Church whose ministrations these farmers rejected, and, where this was not the case, to lay proprietors. It increased the dissatisfaction thus caused that the persons subject to the liability were left to maintain their own clergy without the least assistance from the State.

The result was that associations to obtain the abolition of tithes were extensively formed. These continually increased in number and strength, until finally they expanded in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught into an almost universal combination of the Roman Catholic tenants to resist the collection of the tax. Resistance developed into systematized violence; the agents concerned in asserting the rights of the tithe-owners were obstructed and terrified; and in many places outrages of great enormity were perpetrated. Government tried, but failed, to enforce the law; and in the end, over the larger part of the island, the charge ceased to be levied.

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 10 December 1830, 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 1823 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 1830, 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 January, 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 3 March 1831, 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.

A memorial to the fighters in this attack shows villagers armed with rocks attacking armed troops on horseback.

Doyle reported another tithe-related killing that took place on 23 March: “[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 1824 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 Rev^d. John Ugher.

The opposition to the tithes became increasingly bold and creative. One worried parliamentarian noted in 1832 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 1688, 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 1832 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 1838) 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 1869.

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 1832 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 25 August 1832 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 10 June 1824 edition of The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (showing that certain tactics of the “Tithe War” were already in place well before 1830):

The Irish papers describe many recent outrages. The last offences on record are — 1^st, a wanton burning of farm produce, and barbarous mutilations of cattle, in the neighbourhood of Doneraile, county of Cork; 2^d, 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;— 3^d, a large quantity of stacked corn, the property of a churchwarden of Morne Abbey, consumed by fire;— 4^th, a horse butchered near Garrycloyne, as a punishment to the owner who had lent him to draw home some tithe corn;— 5^th, 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;— 6^th, cows and gunpowder plundered from the owners near Limerick, by a gang of men in arms.

This comes from the 13 October 1832 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 7 December 1832:

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 3 June 1836:

Tithe Affray.

Ireland. — An affray, attended with the loss of two lives, occurred on Thursday 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, 1 December 1835:

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!!!

Yesterday I noted one author’s comparison of the Rebecca Rioters to another set of tollbooth-destroyers a century earlier called “Jack a Lents.” Hunting up information on the Jack a Lents has been tougher, but there are some notes in Thomas Wright’s England Under the House of Hanover:

The following particulars relating to these insurgents are taken from the Daily Gazetteer of Oct. 8 and Dec. 9, 1735:—

Hereford, October 4— There are now committed to the county gaol two, and more are daily expected, of the Ledbury rioters, who rather deserve the name of rebels, for they appeared a hundred in a gang, armed with guns and swords, as well as axes to hew down the turnpikes, and were dressed in women’s apparel, with high-crown’d hats, and their faces blacken’d. I suppose you have heard of the attack they made at Ledbury on the 21^st of September, about nine o’clock at night, when in two hours’ time they cut down five or six turnpikes to the ground; but, before they had gone through all their work, they were disturbed by a worthy magistrate in the neighbourhood, John Skipp, Esq.; who, being in the commission of the peace, caused the proclamation to be read against riots, and then the act of Parliament; but to no purpose; for this gentleman, with his servants and neighbours, going to defend the last turnpike, a skirmish ensued, in which he took two of those miscreants prisoners, whom he secured for that night in his own house; but the whole gang appeared soon after, who demanded the said prisoners, threatening, in case of refusal, to pull his house down, and burn his barns and stables, and immediately discharged several loaded pieces into the house, which happily did no damage. The justice finding himself and family beset in such a manner, discharged several blunderbusses and fowling-pieces at them, whereby one was shot dead on the spot, and several so wounded, that ’tis not believed they will recover. At this the rioters fled with precipitation, leaving their two companions behind them. But ’tis fear’d that more blood will yet be spilt, the country being in the greatest confusion, and I am informed that an attempt is designed upon the county gaol; but the quarter sessions being to be held next week, a petition will no doubt be presented to the justices for relief.

Hereford, Dec. 6.— You have already heard that two men were committed to the keeper of the gaol of this county, for the riot at Ledbury. I am now to acquaint you, that on Sunday last above twenty of those turnpike cutters or levellers, as they call themselves, though that is a character by much too good for them, met with the said keeper at the King’s Head Inn at Ross fair, and demanding his reasons for detaining those two men in custody, without giving him time to return an answer, dragged him out of the inn into the street, knocked him down several times, and almost murdered him, notwithstanding all that the innkeeper and his servants could do to prevent it, who were used in a very cruel manner for assisting him. The villains immediately carried the keeper to Wilton’s Bridge, where at first they concluded to throw him into the river Wye; but at length they agreed to carry him to a place where they would secure him till they themselves had fetched the prisoners out of custody. The better to complete that design, they dragged him four miles in his boots and spurs, to a place called Horewithey, a public-house, where he was kept prisoner, beat in a shameful manner by those merciless wretches, and obliged to write a discharge to the turnkey, being threatened, in case of refusal, to be hanged upon the spot. Four gentlemen from Hereford, who followed them, and endeavoured to dissuade them from such wickedness and cruelty, were inhumanly beat, and obliged to ride off for their lives. After they had detained the keeper near six hours at the house aforesaid, they ferried him over the Wye, walked him about the country till near four o’clock in the morning, and then robbed him of his money. Those that robbed him made off, but left others to guard him, who, quarrelling and fighting about dividing the booty, it gave the keeper an opportunity to make his escape out of the villains’ hands with his life, but not without bruises in abundance.

This illustration, commonly found on-line as a contemporary representation of the Rebeccaites, is actually a political cartoon from Punch that compares the agitators for Irish independence with the Rebecca Rioters. In the cartoon, Irish independence fighter Daniel O’Connell, dressed as a woman, joins in hacking away at the gate of Union, Tithes, Church Rates, and Poor Laws, while Prime Minister Robert Peel hides in the gatehouse.

The Church of England Quarterly Review indignantly reported that “At a meeting of the farmers of Kilmacon, county of Kilkenny, on the 16^th of December, 1838, the following resolutions were adopted:”

1^st. That we, the undersigned, solemnly declare that we feel a conscientious objection to the payment of tithes, as being a remnant of our slavery; an unjust tax on our property and industry, as being injurious to our religion and insulting to God. 2^d. That we consider the man that will enforce tithes an oppressor, determined to perpetuate our slavery, to injure our property, and to insult our holy religion. 3^d. That we consider the man that pays tithes (unless he be a Protestant) an enemy to his neighbour, an enemy to his country, an enemy to his religion, and an enemy to his God. [Then follows an immense list of signatures.]

People will be less reluctant to take risks in a tax resistance campaign if they know other people are willing to share those risks. One way of providing this sort of reassurance is for resisters to join together in a mutual insurance plan, so that if the government takes legal action against a resister, or retaliates against them in some other way, they won’t have to bear these consequences alone.

Today I’ll review some examples of how a variety of tax resistance campaigns have created mutual insurance plans to protect resisters.

War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund

The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund reimburses American war tax resisters who have penalties & interest seized by the IRS. The fund is operated by a team of resisters and sympathizers, and has hundreds of subscribers:

In 1982 a core group of 83 people across the country decided we could easily share $463.14 in penalties and interest incurred by a few military tax resisters who appealed to the war tax resistance community for help. The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone. With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.

The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes. The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight. In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more. In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.

Resisters who have had money seized by the IRS send the fund documentation showing how much of the seizure was the result of interest and penalties, and then the fund sends out an appeal to its members to help reimburse the cost:

We divide the total amount for all resisters by the number of active names on the membership list to arrive at a “share.” We then send out an appeal to both actives and inactive members. Each contributor pays all of a share or whatever amount she can afford. Some pay more than a share. If we collect 75 percent of the total we ask for, each resister gets 75 percent of the amount they requested. We cannot promise that we will collect the total amount requested; usually, however, we can reimburse between 50% and 80% of each appeal.

I have personal experience with this mutual insurance plan. In 2007 and 2008 the IRS seized some bank accounts of mine to recover taxes I had refused to pay. This included $813 in interest and penalties. I applied to the War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund, which sent me a check for $649 from the amount the subscribers to the fund pledged.

Irish Land League

When the National Land League launched a rent strike targeting English absentee landlords in Ireland in 1881, it made sure resisters knew it would have their backs if the landlords tried to evict them. The leaders of the League issued a rent strike manifesto from Kilmainham Jail that declared:

If you only act together in the spirit to which within the last two years you have countless times pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole nation than they can imprison them.

The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintingly for the support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute if necessary as many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees.

One of the ways this played out was for evicted tenants to be temporarily put up, along with their livestock if any, on the property of unevicted tenants and sympathetic landowners, in what came to be called “Land League Villages.” Each family was given a small monthly allowance from the Land League.

Dublin Water Charge Strike

In 1994, the resistance campaign against the water charge in Dublin initiated a mutual insurance fund. One of the campaign leaders recalls:

Obviously the council/government tactic was to try to individualise their intimidation. By summonsing individuals to court maybe they could bypass the mass participation that the protests against disconnections had seen. The campaign immediately took a decision that when any individual was summonsed to court, we would turn up and contest every case — and that we would turn up in force. It was at this time that we made a decision which would prove crucial to the success of the campaign. We decided to initiate a membership of the campaign at £2 per household. This money would go into a warchest to pay legal fees so that no individual would be left facing a legal bill. The idea that the individuals being taken to court were representing all of us was paramount. Within weeks 2,500 households had paid the £2 membership fee, and within 12 months there were over 10,000 paid-up households making the campaign without doubt the biggest to have existed in decades.

Breton Association

When Charles Ⅹ of France attempted to bypass the legislature and enact his own taxes in 1829, French liberals in the Breton Association organized tax resistance and created a fund to defray the costs of any tax resisters who were prosecuted. By the terms of the Association’s manifesto:

We declare… [t]o subscribe individually for ten francs… This subscription will form a common stock or fund for all Brittany, destined to indemnify the subscribers for any expense they may be put to by their refusal to pay any illegal contributions imposed upon the public…

And this is how the fund was to be administered:

[Elected procurators are to] receive the subscriptions, to afford indemnities conformably to the [section quoted above], at the request of any subscriber prosecuted for the payment of illegal contributions; to sue in his name… for justice against the exactors by all possible means allowed by law…

War of the Regulation

The Regulator movement, a tax resistance rebellion in pre-American Revolution North Carolina, had an oath that members took that committed each of them to come to the aid of any others who might be arrested or whose property was being seized for nonpayment:

I will, with the aid of other sufficient help, go and take, if in my power, from said officer, and return to the party from whom taken; and in case any one concerned should be imprisoned, or under arrest, or otherwise confined, or if his estate, or any part thereof, by reason or means of joining this company of Regulators, for refusing to comply with the extortionate demands of unlawful tax gatherers, that I will immediately exert my best endeavors to raise as many of said subscribers as will be force sufficient, and, if in my power, I will set the said person at liberty…

The oath also created a mutual insurance pledge:

I do further promise and swear that if, in case this, our scheme, should be broken or otherwise fail, and should any of our company be put to expense or under any confinement, that I will bear an equal share in paying and making up said loss to the sufferer.

Reformed Israel of Yahweh

Members of the small Christian group called the Reformed Israel of Yahweh were, like its founder, conscientious objectors to military taxation. When some of the members of the group were convicted on tax evasion charges, the Reformed Israel of Yahweh organization paid their fines.

Pacific Yearly Meeting

A committee of the collection of American Quaker congregations known as the Pacific Yearly Meeting administers something it calls “the Fund for Concerns:”

Its purpose is to assist members and attenders of Monthly Meetings to follow individual leadings arising from peace, social order, or spiritual concerns. … Up to $100 per fiscal year per person will be available to help with the interest and penalty expenses of war tax resisters who are members or regular attenders of a Monthly Meeting. The Monthly Meeting must indicate approval and provide matching funds.

New York Yearly Meeting

During the Vietnam War, the New York Yearly Meeting advocated war tax resistance and “promised financial help through special committees if [Quaker resisters] changed jobs or refused to pay taxes in protest against the war.”

Papuan Courier

In 1919, Papua, which had been a territory occupied and run by the German Empire until World War Ⅰ when Australia took over, began to agitate against taxation without representation, and many people refused to pay.

The Papuan Courier, which was sympathetic to the tax resisters,

…as evidence of its bona fides on the question, has decided, to form a fund for the defence of any resident who may by victimised, persecuted, or prosecuted for failure to pay the tax, and to that end we open the list with a contribution of Five Guineas.

Tithe War

In the 1830s, Irish Catholics rebelled against paying government-mandated tithes to the Anglican church. In this case, the Catholic church itself provided some insurance to the resisters. The Anglican archbishop Richard Whately complained:

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. … [One Anglican clergyman] 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.

Addio-Pizzo Movement

In 2007, a number of individuals and businesses opposed to paying mafia protection money began to use a number of techniques to interrupt the payments and to support those resisters whom the mafia was threatening with reprisals. The mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, pledged €50,000 to assist merchants who had been victims of extortion.

Peacemakers

The group “Peacemakers,” which launched the modern American war tax resistance movement sixty-some years ago, had a mutual insurance component from the beginning:

Peacemakers at the Ohio cell… established the Peacemaker Sharing Fund, a mutual aid plan designed to insure aid to dependents of imprisoned Peacemakers and to help finance group projects. During the Vietnam war, the sharing fund became the main vehicle for donations to meet the needs of war resisters’ families.

Penalty Sharing Community

The Iowa Peace Network maintains a mailing list of persons who have made a commitment to the Penalty Sharing Community to share in the penalties assessed to individuals and families who have chosen to resist war taxes or have participated in civil disobedience or non-violent direct action. When a request for assistance is received, a mailing is sent out which explains the resister’s situation and the amount of money needed. For example, if the resister was assessed a $300.00 penalty, each of the persons in the Community would pay an equal portion of the $300.00. Thus if there were 200 people in the Community, each would pay $1.50. The Iowa Peace Network will also add into the amount requested its costs for printing and mailing. Such costs have proven to be minimal.

Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters

Members of the Pioneer Valley War Tax Resisters redirected their federal taxes into an “alternative fund” that served partially as an escrow account, and partially as a way of redirecting some of the money to charitable organizations. Part of the fund was reserved to help defray any legal costs incurred by members in the course of their resistance.

“New Rush” Resisters

White miners at the “New Rush” in Kimberly, South Africa, voted in 1874 to form “a Defence League and Protection Association… not to assail the Government, but to protect individuals if assailed unrighteously by the Government.” The pledge of the association said in part:

I shall to the utmost of my power, with purse and person, protect any and every officer and member of the League against coercion or consequences of what nature soever arising out of the action necessitated by this pledge.

The pledge had a clause that made it binding when it would be signed by 400 men, whereupon:

The Government will be defied if they dare to touch a single claim for non-payment of license. The diamond buyers will refuse to pay further license and will be defended from harm.

Ruhrkampf

When the Ruhr region of Germany began resisting reparation payments to the victorious nations of World War Ⅰ, France and Belgium occupied the region to take the payments by force. Germans responded with a campaign of mass nonviolent resistance, including tax resistance, and were backed up by their own government.

One of the ways the German government supported the campaign was by paying the strikers itself, to the tune of 715 million marks. It did this in part by printing off more currency, which helped fuel the hyperinflation of 1923 (itself a sort of resistance strategy that made it difficult or impractical to account for reparations payments).

Louisiana Anti-Reconstructionists

During the “Reconstruction” period after the American Civil War, white supremacists in Louisiana refused their allegiance to a federally-backed, mixed-race state government, and demonstrated this through tax resistance.

Several attorneys issued a statement offering to “engage themselves, without compensation, and as a matter of public service, to defend professionally all [tax resisters].” A mass-meeting issued a tax resistance pledge, and resolved:

That a committee of five be appointed to draw up a plan by which the citizens may co-operate, to employ counsel and mutually assist each other in their refusal to pay taxes.

Satyagraha in South Africa

Gopal Krishna Gokhale, an officer in the Indian National Congress fighting for the independence of India, pledged £2,000 a month to support Indian satyagrahis in South Africa who were engaged in tax resistance and other tactics under Gandhi’s direction.

Thursday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices, and yesterday I gave some further examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation. Today I’m going to give some examples of how some tax resistance campaigns have used particularly humiliating violent attacks against individual tax collectors in the course of their campaigns.

• The textbook case of humiliation-attacks on tax collectors is the “tarring and feathering” practiced, in particular, by American revolutionaries. After the revolution, the Whiskey Rebels took up the practice. In one case:

  A party of men, armed and disguised, waylaid [Robert Johnson, collector of the revenues] at a place on Pidgeon Creek, in Washington County, seized, tarred and feathered him, cut off his hair, and deprived him of his horse, obliging him to travel on foot a considerable distance in that mortifying and painful situation.

  On other occasions, the rebels “docked [collectors’] horses’ tails, and in at least one instance tarred a collector and rolled him in leaves.” One process server “was seized, whipped, tarred and feathered, and after having his money and horse taken from him, was blindfolded and tied in the woods, in which condition he remained five hours.”
  
  A delusional man named Wilson, “manifestly disordered in his intellects, imagining himself to be a collector of the revenue, or invested with some trust in relation to it, was so unlucky as to make inquiries concerning distillers who had entered their stills, giving out that he was to travel through the United States, to ascertain and report to Congress the number of stills, etc. This man was pursued by a party in disguise, taken out of his bed, carried about five miles back to a smith’s shop, stripped of his clothes, which were afterwards burnt, and, after having been himself inhumanly burnt in several places with a heated iron, was tarred and feathered, and about daylight dismissed — naked, wounded, and otherwise in a very suffering condition.”
• Violent humiliation attacks known as “carding” were also part of the Tithe War in Ireland. According to one account:

  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.

• In 1972, “An irate dry cleaner” named LaSaunders Hudson “who wouldn’t pay his taxes forced three state revenue agents to march naked out of his store”

  Mabile said as the agents were removing their underwear, Hudson advised them that “this is part of the punishment we are going to give the white man for injustices done the black man.”

• During the salt tax (gabelle) riots in Bordeaux in 1548, “A few tax collectors were killed. Their bodies were dragged through the streets and covered in heaps of salt to underline the point.”
• In 1881, Irish settlers in Canada who were refusing to pay a county tax there were confronted by a deputy sheriff who had intended to seize property for back taxes. Instead, “they compelled him to eat the writs he had, and then gave him a limited time to get out of the township.”
• In one town, in the aftermath of the French Revolution, “the moment the clerk begins to read the document, the women spring upon him, seize the tax-roll, and ‘tear it up with countless imprecations;’ the municipal council is assailed, and two hundred persons stone its members, one of whom is thrown down, has his head shaved, and is promenaded through the village in derision.”

Sometimes the humiliation attack would be performed on the tax collector in absentia or in effigy:

• During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters

  audaciously dug a grave within sight of Dinefwr Castle, the family seat, and announced that [Colonel George Rice] Trevor would occupy it by 10 October. Trevor, however, surrounded by soldiers, survived unscathed.

• During the Whiskey Rebellion,

  [T]he inspector of the revenue was burnt in effigy in Allegany county, at a place, and on a day, of some public election, with much display, and without interruption, in the presence of magistrates and other public officers.

Thursday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices, Friday some examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation, Saturday some examples of tax resistance campaigns using particularly humiliating violent attacks against individual tax collectors, and yesterday some examples of attacks directed at the property of tax collectors.

Today I’ll continue this chronicle of the more brutal side of tax resistance campaigns with some examples of direct violent attacks on individual tax collectors.

• During the Tithe War in Ireland, a Mr. Hudson was leading a party to serve notices on people who had not paid their parish tithes when the group was met by resisters who threw stones at them. Hudson shot one, at which point the rest of his party abandoned him, whereupon “he was brutally murdered by the mob, who mangled his corpse in a very frightful manner.”
• There were several examples of such attacks during the Whiskey Rebellion. These examples come from Alexander Hamilton’s report to President Washington:
  • “The officers now began to experience marks of contempt and insult. Threats against them became more frequent and loud; and after some time these threats were ripened into acts of ill treatment and outrage.”
  • A deputy reported that “from a variety of threats to himself personally, although he took the utmost precaution to conceal his errand, that he was not only convinced of the impossibility of serving the process, but that any attempt to effect it would have occasioned the most violent opposition from the greater part of the inhabitants; and he declares that if he had attempted it, he believes he should not have returned alive.”
  • “Designs of personal violence against the Inspector of the Revenue himself, to force him to a resignation, were repeatedly attempted to be put in execution by armed parties, but by different circumstances were frustrated.”
  • “The idea was immediately embraced, that it was a very important point in the scheme of opposition to the law, to prevent the establishment of offices [of inspection] in the respective counties. For this purpose the intimidation of well-disposed inhabitants was added to the plan of molesting and obstructing the officers by force or otherwise, as might be necessary. So effectually was the first point carried (the certain destruction of property and the peril of life being involved), that it became almost impracticable to obtain suitable places for offices in some of the counties, and when obtained, it was found a matter of necessity, in almost every instance, to abandon them.”
  • “[A]nother party of men, some of them armed, and all in disguise, went to the house of the same collector of Fayette which had been visited in April, broke and entered it, and demanded a surrender of the officer’s commission and official books. Upon his refusing to deliver them up, they presented pistols at him, and swore that if he did not comply they would instantly put him to death.”
• The Fries Rebellion also was notorious for its violence against tax assessors. Here are some examples from William Davis’s book on the subject:
  • “In a few instances, and before any matured plan had been agreed upon, the officers were prevented by threats from making the assessments…”
  • “[A]s threats of serious injury had been made against the assessors, who were forbidden to enter the township, they declined to attempt it.”
  • “The assessor of this township had been so much intimidated and threatened he was afraid to go about in the discharge of his duties. Mr. Foulke also expressed some fears of going into the township, as threats had likewise been made against him, and he anticipated trouble.”
  • “Captain Kuyder, who was in command of a company of militia, called them into service to assist in driving the assessors out of the township.”
  • “[Fries] proclaimed his opposition to the law; and said ‘I now warn you not to go to another house to take the rates; if you do you will be hurt.’ ”
  • “[The assessors] came to the unanimous conclusion they would not be justified in further attempt to take the rates in Milford township, on account of the violent opposition of the inhabitants, led on by John Fries.”
  • The rebels confronted a small band of assessors, who split up on seeing them. “Rodrock now rode in advance, and, when he had passed about half through the crowd, without giving heed to their commands to stop, they started to run after him from both sides of the road, some carrying clubs and others muskets, and made motions as if they intended to strike him.” He was halted, threatened at gunpoint, and then he fled; his companions were captured. One was dragged back to a pub and beaten. When he refused to hand over an assessment he had made earlier in the day, “They again took hold of him and shook him severely; and one man came forward and said he should be shot.” Fries told him he would be if he ever came back to assess. “The circumstances which took place at Quakertown decided the assessors to make no further attempt to take assessments in Milford, as they were convinced it would lead to difficulty, and, possibly, bloodshed.”
  • “When the people of the township heard that another person had been appointed in place of the one first named, and had undertaken to discharge the duties of the office, they became very violent and threatened him with personal injury. The leaders of the opposition collected a number of the disaffected into a mob, who waited upon the assessor, and gave him to understand harm would be done him if he attempted to take the rates. This demonstration intimidated him to such degree he resigned, and declined to have anything more to do with it.”
  • “[T]he people were so much enraged at Nicholas Michael, the assessor, for accepting the appointment, they went in large numbers to his house at night to do him bodily injury, but, being informed of their intention, he sought safety in flight. The next day he went to the commissioner and made complaint of the treatment he had received, tendered his resignation, and begged its acceptance… …they went to Judge Traill, an associate judge of the county; but, when they arrived there, Michael became alarmed and begged to be allowed until the next morning to consider the matter; saying, that if he informed against the people, he and his family would be ruined. In the morning he wished to be put in jail to be kept from danger, so great were his fears, but his request was not complied with.”
  • “[Mr. Bailliott, a collector] was waylaid upon his return from Bethlehem, whether he had been on business, and so severely beaten a physician was brought from that place to attend him.”
• The French Revolution also featured attacks on collectors:
  • “At Toulon a demand is made for the head of the mayor, who signs the tax-list, and of the keeper of the records; they are trodden under foot, and their houses are ransacked.…”
  • “Especially against collectors of the salt-tax, custom-house officers, and excisemen the fury is universal. These, everywhere, are in danger of their lives and are obliged to fly. At Falaise, in Normandy, the people threaten to ‘cut to pieces the director of the excise.’ … For four hours the clerks are on the point of being torn to pieces; through the entreaties of the lord of the manor, who sees scythes and sabres aimed at his own head, they are released only on the condition that they ‘abjure their employment.’ ”
  • “ ‘No collector dare send an official to distrain; none that are sent dare fulfill their mission.’ ”
  • “At Saint-Etienne-en-Forez, Berthéas, a clerk in the excise office, falsely accused of monopolizing grain, is fruitlessly defended by the National Guard; he is put in prison, according to the usual custom, to save his life, and, for greater security, the crowd insist on his being fastened by an iron collar. But, suddenly changing its mind, it breaks upon the door and drags him to death. Stretched on the ground, his head still moves and he raises his hand to it, when a woman, picking up a large stone, smashes his skull. — These are not isolated occurrences.”
  • “[A]t Béziers, thirty-two employés, who had seized a quantity of contraband salt on the persons of armed smugglers, are pursued by the crowd to the Hôtel-de-Ville; the consuls decline to defend them and run away; the troops defend them, but in vain. Five are tortured, horribly mutilated, and then hung.”
  • “ ‘The arrears of taxes to be collected is here very considerable, white all proceedings of constraint are dangerous and impossible to execute, owing to the fears of the bailiffs, who dare not perform their duties, and the violence of the tax-payers, on whom there is no check.’ ”
• In 1830, a tax official in Issoudun, France, was “dragged… through the streets, [the crowd] shouting out at each street-lamp, ‘Let him be hung!’ ”
• During the Poujadeist tax strikes 125 years later in France, “unabashed Poujade vigilantes went right on chasing tax collectors down the roads, mobbing police and defying troops assigned to escort them” … “Angry ‘Poujadistes’ began resorting to physical violence against stubborn tax inspectors who insisted on seeing the accounts.”

Thursday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices, Friday some examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation, Saturday some examples of tax resistance campaigns using particularly humiliating violent attacks against individual tax collectors, Sunday some examples of attacks directed at the property of tax collectors, yesterday some examples of direct violent attacks on individual tax collectors.

Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of assaults and intimidation directed at collaborators with the tax system:

• In Paris during the French Revolution, legal proceedings against people who destroyed the tax offices were abandoned when neither the officers in charge of the investigation or the National Assembly itself had the courage to stand up to popular indignation and threats.
• Witnesses who were called to testify against the Fries Rebels “were generally very reluctant to give information, being afraid the insurgents would do them some injury.”
• In the Whiskey Rebellion, “William Richmond, who had given information against some of the rioters… had his barn burnt, with all the grain and hay which it contained…”
• During the Rebecca Riots, two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at an inn in Pontyberem and, during the course of the meeting, forced the innkeeper to swear not to admit the toll collector at the inn. In another example: “the dead body of Thomas Thomas… was found in a river near Brechfa! This man had been very much opposed to the Rebecca movement, and… had been to Carmarthen to make a complaint to the authorities against some Rebeccaites; on his return home that night he found his house, etc., on fire. Bearing this in mind, together with other circumstantial evidence, it is plain that he had some bitter enemies in the neighbourhood, and it was generally believed that he had been waylaid and murdered.” Thomas had on another occasion testified against his servant and had him jailed, and for this the Rebeccaites ransacked his house, destroying what they could.
• During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters did what they could to prevent people from cooperating with attempt to seize and auction off resisters’ goods:

  [I]t 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.

  One clergyman had to import some sixty workers to help him take his tithes “in kind” from the farmers in his parish, “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.”
• In colonial North Carolina during the Stamp Act agitation, “The stamp masters were seized and forced to swear they would have nothing to do with the stamps, and it being known when the vessel bringing the stamps would come up to Wilmington, Colonels Ashe and Waddell, having called out the militia from Brunswick and the adjoining counties to the number of some 700 men, seized the vessel and held her until her commander promised not to permit the stamps to be taken from her.”
• During the Reform Bill uprising in the 1830s, “Threats had been employed to prevent auctioneers from selling distrained goods; and an auctioneer in Bath had been obliged, in consequence of intimidation, to issue a handbill, in which he gave public notice, that he would not receive for sale any goods distrained for the non-payment of King’s Taxes.”
• Irish Household Tax resisters recently mobbed Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, surrounding his car and chanting “fucking scumbag” Another politician who witnessed the event said: “In my view, there was an element of thuggery to it. Some of the protestors prevented him from getting out of the car park.”
• When Ondárroa tried to hire an outside debt collection company to go after resisters; “Upon learning of the assignment of this work to the Bilbaoan firm Gesmunpal, the nationalist left spread slogans via Internet in favor of ‘civil disobedience,’ as well as calls and letters against the company. Gesmunpal resigned.”
• During the Annuity Tax resistance movement in Edinburgh, a newspaper was sued for publicizing the names of the people who rented carts to the government for hauling away distrained goods — the grounds of the suit being that such publicity would be damaging to the business of the carters.
• The Poll Tax resistance movement in Thatcher’s Britain included attacks and threats directed at collaborators with the tax, for example:
  • “Attacks and threats have been made against Bristol newsagents and shops where people can pay the Poll Tax. Windows have been smashed and graffiti daubed over businesses which have become agents for the Bristol-based company ‘Penalty Points.’ The firm installs special tills with its agents to collect the community charge on behalf of local authorities for a fee. Mr. Ross Hendry, a spokesman for the company… said ‘because of the attacks, one newsagent in Patchway has now declined taking an agency after a brick was thrown through his window. He said another newsagent in Bishoport Avenue, Hartclife had the words ‘Poll Tax scab’ and ‘you’re the first’ scrawled in white paint across his window. A Circle K store in Cardiff where the revolutionary scheme was launched on April 9^th with 48 agents, had its door locks jammed with superglue.”

  

  • Intimidation of bailiffs (people authorized to seize and sell property for tax arrears) was widespread: “Housing schemes and estates were plastered with posters. One showing a vicious dog, read ‘Bailiffs? Make my day!’ Another showing a picture of Malcolm X holding a machine gun looking out from behind the curtains, read: ‘Bailiffs we’re ready.’ A third showed a picture of a bailiff swinging in a noose. It read ‘Dead bailiffs don’t knock on doors.’ In some areas bailiffs and registration officers were photographed and their portraits were reproduced on posters which read ‘wanted’ and listed their ‘crimes.’ These images were extremely popular… People were used to seeing images of themselves in the role of victim. Now wherever they looked there were images of their adversaries in this role.”
  • “Wherever the council registration officers went they were harassed. In Glasgow violent threats drove canvasser Robert Stevenson to quit his job. He was physically threatened twice in four weeks and continually harassed:

    I’d just put the form through the door when this guy across in the garden opposite started shouting. He was sitting in the garden with about four others and they were all giving me dirty looks. He said that if I came back to collect the form I would need a tank for protection. I was in no doubt that they were serious. I didn’t finish my last street. I just chucked it.

    “…another canvasser… was ‘harassed by a gang.’ In this case, it was reported that:

    Four or five youths cornered him in a close in Gairbraid Avenue and subjected him to abuse. A Strathclyde police spokesman revealed: “They said it was a ‘No Poll Tax Area’ and told the worker to get out, which he did.”

    “Following these reports, the Poll Tax registration officer admitted that ‘there had been at least four other incidents involving canvassers’ and… canvassers had been threatened (leaflets were grabbed from their hands). Already over two members of his staff had resigned because of fears about their personal safety.”
  • Mayors and municipal councils resigned en masse to support the French wine-growers’ tax strike of 1907, and, according to one account, “there have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to resign.”
  • “Mr. Trueman, a Poll Tax snooper whose job was to call on people and badger them into filling the registration forms, [was] unable to cope with the abuse…

    Mrs. Trueman found the corpse of her husband as she came back from shopping. Fred Trueman, 52, an employee of Bristol City, had hanged himself. “No-one can imagine what terrible pressure he had to work under,” she claimed. “He was sworn at and threatened; he couldn’t stand it any more.”

Thursday I gave some examples of attacks directed at tax offices, Friday some examples of attacks on the apparatus of taxation, Saturday some examples of tax resistance campaigns using particularly humiliating violent attacks against individual tax collectors, Sunday some examples of attacks directed at the property of tax collectors, Monday some examples of direct violent attacks on individual tax collectors, and yesterday some examples of attacks and intimidation aimed at tax system collaborators.

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.

• Earlier this year, 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 Saturday morning. Locals cut off the station’s electricity and water supplies.



• In 2009, protesters in China “overturned police cars and blocked roads over plans to more strictly enforce payment of taxes.” In 2011 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 1955, “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 1911, 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 1892, 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 1889. 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 1881, “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.



• 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 1830, 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.”

A typical government gambit in its battle against tax resisters is to say, “okay, if you won’t pay us taxes, we’ll seize your property instead.”

Some tax resisters have responded to this by taunting back: “you’ll have to find it first.” And one way they have made good on this is by arranging to have other people hold their property in their names. Here are some examples:

• Some war tax resistance “alternative funds,” into which resisters pay their taxes into rather than submitting them to the government, have a dual purpose: they serve as ways to redirect tax money to causes the resisters find more palatable than government expenses, and they serve as a holding tank for funds that the resisters can later reclaim if back taxes are ever seized from them.



• The tax collector was so frustrated trying to seize anything at all from tax resister Ammon Hennacy that, when Hennacy was picketing the IRS office one day, the agent assigned to his case walked up to him and seized his picket sign — telling him he planned to auction it off! The next day, Hennacy was picketing again with some new signs that he and a friend had hastily made the night before… each one carefully marked “this sign is the personal property of Joseph Craigmyle.”
• In the Irish Tithe War, farmers would give temporary pasturage to the livestock of people when seizures were impending:

  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.

• Observers noted that during the resistance by British nonconformists against the taxes for sectarian education included in the Education Act, “they are taking the precaution of putting their property out of their own names, so that the collectors will not have anything to levy on.” Resister John Clifford said, “In the hope of preventing the authorities from getting their money in this way I made over all my household effects to my wife, but the collectors seized them just the same.” Another resister, Thomas Watson, foiled the collectors for at least eight years with the same technique.
• Tax resister Karl Hess sold the rights to royalties from his book to a community organization he worked for, so as to get a more easily-concealable lump sum of cash instead of a more-seizable royalty stream.
• War tax resister Aleck Dodd transferred his property into his wife’s name when he began to resist, in order to “protect my family from the possible results of my action, and not to evade the collection of my tax by due process of law.”

A tax resistance campaign can increase participation by means of a social boycott practiced against non-resisting by-standers. Here are some examples of social boycotts of this sort:

• Social boycott was an important tool of the Bardoli tax refusal campaign during the independence struggle in India. Mahadev Desai, in The Story of Bardoli, writes:

  It is this weapon that exasperated the Government, but they were helpless because social boycott was no offence under the Penal Code. And the Sardar [Vallabhbhai Patel, who commanded the campaign] poured ridicule on Government for grudging the people the use of this their only weapon. “What do you do yourselves? Yours is a close corporation maintained by force of arms and its motive is no nobler than keeping a nation in bondage. We resort to this weapon simply for the sake of self-defence and self-preservation.” But he never omitted to emphasize its limitations, the very first being that in no circumstances should a Satyagrahi refuse to minister to the physical needs of the party boycotted. “Eschew by all means molestation or oppression. We may not refuse anyone milk, water, foodstuffs, help in case of illness or worse. We cannot afford to prosecute boycott at the expense of our humanity.”

  Among the ways they could boycott landowners who capitulated to the government and paid their property taxes was to refuse to rent their fields or to work as agricultural laborers for them.
• During the American revolution, boycotts of British imports were enforced by social boycott. One resolution of boycotters read in part:

  [W]e further promise and engage, that we will not purchase any goods of any persons who, preferring their own interest to that of the public, shall import merchandise from Great Britain, until a general importation takes place; or of any trader who purchases his goods of such importer: and that we will hold no intercourse, or connection, or correspondence, with any person who shall purchase goods of such importer, or retailer; and we will hold him dishonored, an enemy to the liberties of his country, and infamous, who shall break this agreement.

  another said:

  That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt, or in any wise aid or abet in unloading receiving or vending the Tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an Enemy to America — … That a Committee be immediately chosen to wait on those Gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said Tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this Town and Province immediately to resign their appointment.

  An Ipswich town meeting resolved:

  [W]e will not by ourselves or any for or under us directly or indirectly purchase any goods of the persons who have imported or continue to import, or any person or trader who shall purchase any goods of said importer contrary to the agreement of the merchants in Boston and the other trading towns in this government & the neighboring colonies until they make a public retraction or a general importation takes place.

• Sicily’s branch of the “Confindustria” industrialists’ union unanimously voted in 2007 to expel any member who was caught paying protection money to the mafia, and a few dozen members in fact were expelled from the group under this policy.
• Many Quaker “meetings” (congregations) had a policy of “disowning” members who failed to practice war tax resistance. Sometimes, even failing to report that the government had subjected you to “sufferings” for your resistance could make you suspect, and Quakers would be appointed to visit you and ask how you had managed to avoid government reprisals while maintaining your refusal to pay. Disowning was something akin to excommunication, and had the effect of removing the benefits of meeting membership from the disobedient Quakers until such time as they repented and made satisfactory amends — which might include reading an acknowledgment of the wrong of their behavior at a future meeting. Occasionally, as during the American Revolution, disownings like this would lead to schisms and the emergence of rival meetings.
• During the Tithe War in Ireland, it was reported that

  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!

  Another report complained: “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.”
• When resisters at the “New Rush” in South Africa in 1874 pledged to refuse to pay further taxes, they also pledged, “that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation.”
• Women in Pennsylvania who found themselves suddenly taxable in the wake of women’s suffrage were subject to strong social pressure to join in a largely unorganized but widespread tax boycott. According to one report:

  [A] woman, who is reported to have failed to pay her tax, asserted she was laughed at by her friends when she paid her tax in former years, and she would not be laughed at any longer.

A couple of days ago I gave some examples of social boycotts and shunning being used as a way of discouraging non-participation in a tax resistance campaign.

Campaigns have also used threats of violence and other, more ambiguous threats as a way of trying to coerce reluctant people into resisting their taxes. Here are some examples:

• During the Whiskey Rebellion, rebels threatened to destroy the stills of distillers who complied in paying the excise tax. Here are some other examples:
  • A letter from “Tom the Tinker” (a collective alias used by the rebels) to one distiller told him that he must stop paying the tax, must join them in their paramilitary activities, and must publish the letter containing these threats in the newspaper at his own expense.
  • Alexander Hamilton complained that “nor were the outrages perpetrated confined to the officers; they extended to private citizens who only dared to show their respect for the laws of their country.” Also: “a person of the name of Roseberry underwent the humiliating punishment of tarring and feathering, with some aggravations, for having in conversation hazarded the very natural and just but unpalatable remark, that the inhabitants of that county could not reasonably expect protection from a government whose laws they so strenuously opposed.”
  • “Robert Shawhan, a distiller, who had been among the first to comply with the law, and who had always spoken favorably of it… had his barn burnt, with all the grain and hay which it contained.”
  • There were “threats of tarring and feathering one William Cochran, a complying distiller, and of burning his distillery; and that it had also been given out that, in three weeks, there would not be a house standing in Alleghany County, of any person who had complied with the laws.”
  • “[M]en called at the house of James Kiddoe, who had recently complied with the laws, broke into his still-house, fired several balls under his still, and scattered fire over and about the house.”
  • “James Kiddoe, the person above mentioned, and William Cochran, another complying distiller, met with repeated injury to their property. Kiddoe had parts of his grist-mill at different times carried away, and Cochran suffered more material injuries; his still was destroyed, his saw-mill was rendered useless by the taking away of the saw, and his grist-mill so injured as to require to be repaired at considerable expense.”
• During the Fries Rebellion, also, one family “said there were some bad people living in the neighborhood who would do them injury if they submitted to the rates.”
• The Rebecca Rioters sometimes took or threatened reprisals against those who willingly paid tolls or who refused to join their tollbooth destruction gallivants:
  • One notice from the rioters read: “This is to give notice, that the goods of all persons who will henceforth pay at Water Street Gate will be burned and their lives will be taken from them at a time they will not think — ’Becca.”
  • “Mr. Thomas of Clynarthen, having refused to join them, had his wheat-field entirely destroyed before morning, by their turning cattle from the mountain into it that night.”
  • “[T]he farmyard of Mr. Howell Davies, a respectable farmer living in the village of Conwil, and an Anti-Rebeccaite, was set on fire. With the assistance of the neighbours the fire was ultimately got under, but not until two ricks of hay and three stacks of corn or straw had become a prey to the devouring element.”
• During the 1907 tax strike in a French wine region, “there have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to resign and of those taxpayers who satisfy the taxgatherers’ demand.” And “committees have been nominated to see individuals who have not undertaken not to pay taxes.”
• In Ghana in the mid-19^th century, a meeting of rebellious groups “swore not to let the grandees go to the fort nor pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.” At one point, making good on this threat, “[a] stir was made by some ruffians when they perceived the chiefs of Christiansborg were on the point of giving in, upon which the whole assembly, amounting to over 4000 men, at once took up arms to [threaten to] attack the merchants.”
• A report on the Beit Sahour tax resistance movement said of businesses in the town that “if they paid, they undermined the resistance movement, [and] were harassed and threatened by intifada leaders.”

Other descriptions are more vague, and may or may not imply violent threats:

• In the French revolution, “[i]f a docile taxpayer happens to be found, he is not allowed to pay the dues; this seems a defection and almost treachery.”
• During the Irish Tithe War, “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.” A meeting of Kilkenny farmers passed a resolution saying that, “we consider the man that pays tithes (unless he be a Protestant) an enemy to his neighbour, an enemy to his country, an enemy to his religion, and an enemy to his God.”

A tactic that I’ve encountered on many occasions in my research into tax resistance campaigns is that of disrupting government auctions of goods, particularly those of seized from tax resisters. Here are several examples that show the variety of ways campaigns have accomplished this:

Religious nonconformists in the United Kingdom

Education Act-related resistance

Some disruption of auctions took place during the tax resistance in protest of the provisions of the Education Act that provided taxpayer money for sectarian education a century ago. The Westminster Gazette reported:

There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as “the fighting parson,” entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays. At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer. A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.

The New York Times reported that “Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.” And the San Francisco Chronicle noted:

Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated. In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament. The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters. Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.

Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance

Auction disruptions were commonplace in the Annuity Tax resistance campaign in Edinburgh. By law the distraint auctions (“roupings”) had to be held at the Mercat Cross — the town square, essentially — which made it easy to gather a crowd; or sometimes in the homes of the resisters. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reported of one of the Mercat Cross roupings:

If any of our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale. Latterly the passive hubbub rose as if by magic. Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate; and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of Passive Resistance. The tax had grinded the faces of the poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation. Irish, Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering. Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges; Irish traders flew from St. Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy. And here were the black placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude — ROUPING FOR STIPEND! This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods. Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend. What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just? The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.

Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland appeared before a committee that was investigating the resistance campaign. He mentioned that “Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those sales.”

Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?

A: He was very much inconvenienced on that occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any customer who was of that party.

Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?

A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.

Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who declined?

A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration with his friends, he declined to act.

Q: Any other?

A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last moment.

It was difficult for the authorities to get any help at all, either from auctioneers, furniture dealers, or carters. The government had to purchase (and fortify) their own cart because they were unable to rent one for such use.

Here is an example of an auction of a resister’s goods held at the resister’s home, as described in the testimony of Thomas Menzies:

A: I saw a large number of the most respectable citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.

Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?

A: No. The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a back street, rather than go by the direct way.

Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?

A: He refused to act again, he gave up his position.

He then described a second such auction:

A: The house was densely packed; it was impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not force their way up, except with great difficulty. The consequence was, that nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys down. Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were considerably subdued.

Sheriff Clerk Maitland also described this auction:

I found a considerable crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all the rooms crowded with people. I said that it was necessary to carry out the sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare.

On another occasion, as he tells it, the auction seemed to go smoothly at first, but the buyers didn’t get what they hoped for:

At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an orderly way as far as the sale was concerned. We got in, and only a limited number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance. Certain goods were knocked down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those were the only things which had to be taken away. There was no vehicle ready to carry them away. Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them. After the police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.

A summary of the effect of all of this disruption reads:

So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police funds. In March 1865, it was found necessary to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from the recusants. But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing payment of the arrears. All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds, induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.

The Tithe War

William John Fitzpatrick wrote of the auctions during the Tithe War:

[T]he 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.

The Sentinel wrote of one auction:

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.

Similar examples were reported in the foreign press:

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.

In a somewhat later case, a Catholic priest in Blarney by the name of Peyton refused to pay his income tax on the grounds that the law treated him in an inferior way to his Protestant counterparts. His horse was seized and sold at auction, where “the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings.”

Irish factions

In 1919, a Sinn Fein leader told a reporter that the group was pondering a tax strike, and predicted that “No Irish auctioneer would consent to act at [distraint] sales. Auctioneers would have to be imported from England. So would purchaser. Then Irish laborers would refuse to move the sold goods to the wharves and Irish sailors would refuse to carry it on their ships. England soon would find herself without the millions of pounds sterling that she now squeezes out of Ireland.”

There was precedent for this. During the Tithe War period and thereafter, the authorities had to go to extraordinary lengths to auction off seized goods. As one account put it:

In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale; and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.

The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom

The tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain were particularly adept in disrupting tax auctions and in making them opportunities for propaganda and protest. Here are several examples, largely as reported in the movement newsletter called The Vote:

• “On Christmas Eve a sale was held… of jewellery seized in distraint for income-tax… Members of the W.F.L. and Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn (Hon. Sec.) assembled to protest against the proceedings, and the usual policeman kept a dreary vigil at the open door. The day had been specially chosen by the authorities, who wished to prevent a demonstration…”
• “The sale of Mrs. Cleeves’ dog-cart took place at the Bush Hotel, Sketty, on Thursday afternoon. The W.F.L. held their protest meeting outside — much to the discomfort of the auctioneer, who declared the impossibility of ‘drowning the voice outside.’ ”
• “Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’ League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after 10 o’clock last Saturday morning to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes. Before the sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for. Miss Leonora Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence]. A. Underwood, and supported by Miss Brackenbury. The resolution was carried with only two dissentients, and these dissentients were women!”
• “The goods seized were sold at the public auction room. Before selling them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How Martyn to make a short explanatory speech, and he himself added that it was an unpleasant duty he had to perform.”
• “A scene which was probably never equalled in the whole of its history took place at the Oxenham Auction Rooms, Oxford-street, on Friday last. About a fortnight before the bailiffs had entered Mrs. Despard’s residence in Nine Elms and seized goods which they valued at £15. Our President, for some years past, as is well known, has refused to pay her income-tax and inhabited house duty on the grounds that taxation and representation should go together; and this is the third time her goods have been seized for distraint. It was not until the day before — Thursday, noon — that Mrs. Despard was informed of the time and place where her furniture was to be sold. In spite of this short notice — which we learn on good authority to be illegal — a large crowd composed not only of our own members but also of women and men from various Suffrage societies gathered together at the place specified in the notice. ¶ When ‘Lot 325’ was called Mrs. Despard mounted a chair, and said, ‘I rise to protest, in the strongest, in the most emphatic way of which I am capable, against these iniquities, which are perpetually being perpetrated in the name of the law. I should like to say I have served my country in various capacities, but I am shut out altogether from citizenship. I think special obloquy has been put upon me in this matter. It was well known that I should not run away and that I should not take my goods away, but the authorities sent a man in possession. He remained in the house — a household of women — at night. I only heard yesterday of this sale, and from a man who knows that of which he is speaking, I know that this sale is illegal. I now claim the law — the law that is supposed to be for women as well as men.’ ”
• “[A] most successful protest against taxation without representation was made by Mrs. Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction Rooms, 120, High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr; and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the W.F.L., went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and not only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted taxation, but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the sale was over.”
• “One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever held in St. Leonards was that arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and the Hastings and St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage Propaganda League, on Tuesday, July 4, on the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at the residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of Inhabited House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest was the fact that members of all societies in Hastings, St. Leonards, Bexhill and Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of all shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of many societies were seen in the procession.… The hearty response from the men to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for ‘three cheers for Mrs. Darent Harrison’ at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came as a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.”
• “On Thursday, July 20, the last item on the catalogue of Messrs. Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude Eaton, of Kensington. Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical world and interested in social reforms, and hon. secretary of the Prison Reform Committee. Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot, by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it. A procession then formed up and a protest meeting was held…”
• “At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on Tuesday, a silver cream jug and sugar basin were sold. These were the property of Dr. Marion McKenzie, who had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s suffrage. A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which proved far too small to accommodate them all. Mr. Parnell said he regretted personally having the duty to perform. He believed that ultimately the women would get the vote. They had the municipal vote and he maintained that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote. (Applause.) But that was his own personal view. He would have been delighted not to have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down. Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them. A protest meeting was afterwards held on St. Nicholas Cliff.”
• “Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson, representing the Women’s Tax Resistance League, was, by courtesy of the auctioneer, allowed to explain the reason of the protest. Judging by the applause with which her remarks were received, most of those present were in sympathy.”
• “The auctioneer was entirely in sympathy with the protest, and explained the circumstances under which the sale took place. He courteously allowed Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr to put clearly the women’s point of view; Miss Raleigh made a warm appeal for true freedom. A procession was formed and an open-air meeting subsequently held.”
• “The auctioneer, who is in sympathy with the suffragists, refused to take commission.”
• “[A] crowd of Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s Sale Rooms, Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support Dr. Frances Ede and Dr. Amy Sheppard, whose goods were to be sold by public auction for tax resistance. By the courtesy of the auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were allowed, and Dr. Ede emphasized her conscientious objection to supporting taxation without representation; she said that women like herself and her partner felt that they must make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very considerable inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she trusted that the grave injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers were given for the doctors, and a procession with banners marched to Marble Arch, where a brief meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the usual resolution was passed unanimously.”
• “An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston Villa, Bath, was the sale held on Wednesday, March 6, at the White Hart Hotel. To cover a tax of only £15 and costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and exposed. The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired to possess. The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about 50s. and £3 for an ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust of the assembled dealers. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to go.”
• “Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on April 17, on the occasion of the sale of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes. Their property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to the protesters to explain their action.”
• “At the sale of a silver salver belonging to Dr. Winifred Patch, of Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on May 2 by members of the Women’s Freedom League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies. The auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation before the sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League, was well supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the reasons why Dr. Patch for several years has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A procession was then formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large open-air meeting was presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of the Women’s Freedom League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.”
• “Practically every day sees a sale and protest somewhere, and the banners of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, frequently supported by Suffrage Societies, are becoming familiar in town and country. At the protest meetings which follow all sales the reason why is explained to large numbers of people who would not attend a suffrage meeting. Auctioneers are becoming sympathetic even so far as to speak in support of the women’s protest against a law which demands their money, but gives them no voice in the way in which it is spent.”
• “The sale was conducted, laughably enough, under the auspices of the Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League; for, on obtaining entrance to the hall, Miss Anderson and Mrs. Fisher bedecked it with all the insignia of suffrage protest. The rostrum was spread with our flag proclaiming the inauguration of Tax Resistance by the W.F.L.; above the auctioneer’s head hung Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard’s embroidered silk banner, with its challenge “Dare to be Free”; on every side the green, white and gold of the W.F.L. was accompanied by the brown and black of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, with its cheery ‘No Vote, no Tax’ injunctions and its John Hampden maxims; while in the front rows, besides Miss Anderson, the heroine of the day, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Fisher, were seen the inspiring figures of our President and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, vice-president of the W.T.R.L.”
• “…all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration…”
• “From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets. In the afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags. These marched through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags and colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Mr. Croome, the King’s officer, conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles. The prices fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the goods in for her.”
• “Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able to give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the weapons employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of women. Then came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not been aware he was to sell ‘distressed’ goods, and he very much objected to doing so.… The meeting and the auctioneer together made the assembly chary of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great triumph for the tax-resisters.… Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting by carrying placards round the crowded market.”
• “There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his capacity as tax collector. After the sale a public meeting was held… At the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the League…”
• The authorities tried to auction off Kate Harvey’s goods on-site, at her home, rather than in a public hall, so that they might avoid demonstrations of that sort. “On Saturday morning a band of Suffragist men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the device, ‘I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay taxes over which she has no control,’ and long before 3.30, the time fixed for the sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the little town of Bromley, and made their way towards ‘Brackenhill.’ Punctually at 3.30 the tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd assembled that this was a genuine sale! Mrs. Harvey at once protested against the sale taking place. Simply and solely because she was a woman, although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent. The tax collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs. Harvey in her protest. He tried to proceed, but one after another the men present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods. The tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine sale! ‘One penny for your goods then!’ was the derisive answer. ‘One penny — one penny!’ was the continued cry from both inside and outside ‘Brackenhill.’ Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in the room. There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be sold and what wasn’t. The men also objected to the presence of the tax-collector’s deputy. ‘Tell him to get down!’ they shouted. ‘The sale shan’t proceed till he does,’ they yelled. ‘Get down! Get down:’ they sang. But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy. ‘He’s afraid of his own clerk,’ they jeered. Again the tax-collector asked for bids. ‘One penny! One penny!’ was the deafening response. The din increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme. During a temporary lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas. Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement. ‘Illegal sale!’ ‘He shan’t take it home!’ ‘The whole thing’s illegal!’ ‘You shan’t sell anything else!’ and The Daily Herald Leaguers, members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies, proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands. Darkness was quickly settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled wearily. ‘Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan could manage,’ roared an enthusiast. ‘My word, you look sick, guv’nor! Give it up, man!’ Then everyone shouted against the other until the tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had lost £7 over the job! Ironical cheers greeted this news, with ‘Serve you right for stealing a woman’s goods!’ He turned his back on his tormentors, and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over. The protesters sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to take away the sideboard he should take them with it! With the exit of the tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter, and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell Hotel. But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard to the tax-collector. Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey is still in possession of the sideboard!”
• “The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell to conduct the sale, was most unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking during the sale; but Miss Boyle was able to shout through a window at his back, just over his shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized because Miss Cummins refused to submit to taxation without representation, after which quite a number of people who were attending the sale came out to listen to the speeches.”
• “The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to make a short speech before the waggon was sold. He then spoke a few friendly words for the Woman’s Movement. After the sale a meeting was held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident interest by a large number of men. The Vote and other Suffrage literature was sold.”
• “A joint demonstration of the Tax Resisters’ League and militant suffragettes, held here [Hastings] today as a protest against the sale of the belongings of those who refused to pay taxes, was broken up by a mob. The women were roughly handled and half smothered with soot. Their banners were smashed. The police finally succeeded in getting the women into a blacksmith’s shop, where they held the mob at bay until the arrival of reinforcements. The women were then escorted to a railway station.”
• “The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps, the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had. It was made the occasion for widespread propaganda. The newspapers gave columns of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the auction room…”
• “When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to the auction-room. The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and explained to the crowd what it all means. Here are the banners, and the room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation is tyranny. … The women remain at these auctions until the property of the offender is disposed of. The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be called.”

American war tax resisters

There have been a few celebrated auction sales in the American war tax resistance movement. Some of them have been met with protests or used as occasions for outreach and propaganda, but others have been more actively interfered with.

When Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home was seized, for example, there were “months of continuous picketing and leafletting” before the sale. Then:

The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group. While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk. At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps). Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal. Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person. As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people. Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold.

The protests, odd as they were, eventually paid off, as the IRS had in the interim been caught improperly pursuing political dissidents, and as a result it decided to reverse the sale of the Bromley home and give up on that particular fight.

When Paul and Addie Snyder’s home was auctioned off for back taxes, it was reported that “many bids of $1 or less were made.”

Making a bid of pennies for farm property being foreclosed for failure to meet mortgages was a common tactic among angry farmers during the Depression. If their bids succeeded, the property was returned to its owner and the mortgage torn up. In some such cases, entire farms plus their livestock, equipment and home furnishings sold for as little as $2.

When George Willoughby’s car was seized and sold by the IRS,

Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.

The Rebecca rioters

On a couple of occasions the Rebeccaites prevented auctions, though not of goods seized for tax debts but for ordinary debts. Here are two examples from Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca phenomenon:

A distress for rent was levied on the goods of a man named Lloyd… and a bailiff of the name of Rees kept possession of the goods. Previous to the day of sale, Rebecca and a great number of her daughters paid him a visit, horsewhipped him well, and kept him in safe custody until the furniture was entirely cleared from the house. When Rees was freed, he found nothing but an empty house, Rebecca and her followers having departed.

Two bailiffs were there in possession of the goods and chattels under execution… Having entered the house by bursting open the door, Rebecca ran upstairs, followed by some of her daughters. She ordered the bailiffs, who were in bed at the time, to be up and going in five minutes, or to prepare for a good drubbing. The bailiffs promptly obeyed, but were driven forth by a bodyguard of the rioters, who escorted them some distance, pushing and driving the poor men in front of them. At last they were allowed to depart to their homes on a sincere promise of not returning.

Reform Act agitation

During the tax resistance that accompanied the drive to pass the Reform Act in the early 1830s in the United Kingdom, hundreds of people signed pledges in which they declared that “they will not purchase the goods of their townsmen not represented in Parliament which may be seized for the non-payment of taxes, imposed by any House of Commons as at present constituted.”

The True Sun asserted that

The tax-gatherer… might seize for them, but the brokers assured the inhabitants that they would neither seize any goods for such taxes, nor would they purchase goods so seized. Yesterday afternoon, Mr Philips, a broker, in the Broadway, Westminster, exhibited the following placard at the door of his shop:— “Take notice, that the proprietor of this shop will not distrain for the house and window duties, nor will he purchase any goods that are seized for the said taxes; neither will any of those oppressive taxes be paid for this house in future.” A similar notice was also exhibited at a broker’s shop in York Street, Westminster.

Another newspaper account said:

A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced to take place at Ashton Tavern on the 16^th May, at Birmingham. From forty to fifty persons attended, including some brokers, but no one could be found except the poor woman from whose husband the goods had been seized, and the auctioneer himself. A man came when the sale was nearly over, who was perfectly ignorant of the circumstances under which it took place, and bid for one of the last lots; he soon received an intimation, however, from the company that he had better desist, which be accordingly did. After the sale was over nearly the whole of the persons present surrounded this man, and lectured him severely upon his conduct, and it was only by his solemnly declaring to them that he had bid in perfect ignorance of the nature of the sale that he was suffered to escape without some more substantial proof of their displeasure.

Railroad bond shenanigans

There was an epidemic of fraud in the United States in the late nineteenth century in which citizens of local jurisdictions were convinced to vote to sell bonds to pay for the Railroad to come to town. The railroad never arrived, but the citizens then were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bonds. Many said “hell no,” but by then the bonds had been sold to people who were not necessarily involved in the original swindle but had just bought them as investments.

In the course of the tax resistance campaigns associated with these railroad bond boondoggles, auction disruption was resorted to on some occasions. Here are some examples:

St. Clair [Missouri]’s taxpayers joined the movement in the 1870s to repudiate the debts, but the county’s new leaders wanted to repay the investors. Afraid to try taxing the residents, they decided to raise the interest by staging a huge livestock auction in 1876, the proceeds to pay off the railroad bond interest. On auction day, however, “no one seemed to want to buy” any animals. To bondholders the “great shock” of the auction’s failure proved the depth of local resistance to railroad taxes.

Another attempt was made the other day to sell farm property in the town of Greenwood, Steuben county [New York], on account of a tax levied for the town bonding in aid of railroads, and another failure has followed. The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks. We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.” The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.

The White League in Louisiana

In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, white supremacist tax resisters disrupted a tax auction.

There was a mob of fifty or sixty armed men came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all. Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector. The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices. I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed. I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.

Mr. [Valsin A.?] Fournet came with eight or ten. When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him. The deputy then shoved him down. As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.

…very few people attended tax-sales [typically], because the white people were organized to prevent tax-collection, and pledged themselves not to buy any property at tax-sales, and the property was generally bought by the State.

Miscellaneous

• The First Boer War broke out in the aftermath of the successfully resisted auction of a tax resister’s waggon. Paul Kruger wrote of the incident:

  The first sign of the approaching storm was the incident that happened at the forced sale of Field Cornet Bezuidenhout’s waggon, on which a distress had been levied. The British Government had begun to collect taxes and to take proceedings against those who refused to pay them. Among these was Piet Bezuidenhout, who lived in the Potchefstroom District. This refusal to pay taxes was one of the methods of passive resistance which were now employed towards the British Government. Hitherto, many of the burghers had paid their taxes, declaring that they were only yielding to force. But, when this was explained by the English politicians as though the population were contented and peacefully paying their taxes, some asked for a receipt showing that they were only paying under protest and others refused to pay at all. The Government then levied a distress on Bezuidenhout’s waggon and sent it to public action at Potchefstroom. Piet Cronjé, who became so well known in the last war, appeared at the auction with a number of armed Boers, who flung the bailiff from the waggon and drew the waggon itself back in triumph to Bezuidenhout’s farm.

• When the U.S. government seized Valentine Byler’s horse because of the Amish man’s conscientious objection to paying into the social security system, no other Amish would bid at the auction.
• Between the Wars in Germany, the government had a hard time conducting auctions of the goods of tax resisters. Ernst von Salomon writes:

  Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.… Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid. The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants. One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.

• Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a Bureau of Land Management auction by making winning bids on everything that he had no intention of honoring.
• During the Poujadist disruptions in France, “They also took to spiking forced tax sales by refusing to bid until the auctioneer had lowered the price of whatever was up for sale to a laughably small figure. Thus a tax delinquent might buy back his own shop for, say 10 cents. At an auction the other day, a brand-new car went for one franc, or less than one-third of a cent.”
• Many years before in roughly the same region of France:

  It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government. A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction. The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.

• In York, Pennsylvania in 1786, a group “surrounded the crier and forbid any person purchasing when the property which had been seized was offered for sale. A cow which had been in the hands of the collector was driven away by the rioters.”
• In the Dutch West Indies in 1921 “The household effects of a physician who refused to pay the tax were offered for sale at auction today by the Government. Although the building in which the sale was held was crowded, there were no bids and the articles were not sold.”
• In Tasmania, in 1874, “Large quantities of goods were seized, and lodged in the Commissariat Store [but] Lawless mobs paraded the streets, tore down fences, and, arming themselves with rails and batons, smashed windows and doors.… The fence round the Commissariat Store was torn down…”
• During the Bardoli tax strike, “There were meetings in talukas contiguous to Bardoli, not only in British territory, but also in the Baroda territory, for expression of sympathy with the Satyagrahis and calling upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by bidding for any forfeited property that may be put to auction by the authorities.”

Pickets and other such public demonstrations commonly accompany tax resistance campaigns. Here are some examples that caught my eye:

• During the Tithe War in Ireland, one parliamentarian noted with some panic a news account of a mock funeral held in Ireland, attended by 100,000 people “who assembled to carry in a procession to the grave two coffins, on which were inscribed ‘Tithes’ and ‘Rent’.”
• The Women’s Tax Resistance League used signs, banners, handbills, chalked-slogans, and sandwich boards to help get their “No Vote — No Tax” message across at their public demonstrations.
• The Benares hartal of 1810–11 was in part a strike, but in part a huge demonstration, the duration and peaceful discipline of which pointed out the determination of the demonstrators.
• When the Rebecca Rioters came to Carmarthen, they came en masse and during the daytime, almost as a parade. They were “preceded by a band of musicians playing popular airs, and men bearing placards with the following enscriptions in large printed letters:” “Justice and lovers of Justice are we all.” “Freedom and better food.” “Free tolls and Freedom.”
• The tax strike in the French wine-growing region in 1907 was preceded by huge demonstrations and parades. Wrote one observer:

  All observers were struck by the extraordinary perfection of the organization. It was not necessary once for the troops or police to interfere with the multitude which was variously estimated was made up of from 400,000 to 600,000 persons. A feature of the parade was the large proportion of women participating. Groups from various cities bore banners with various inscriptions and carried coffins, guillotines, &c.

  Another wrote:

  …all night long trains entered the station every quarter of an hour with crowds, many of whom had been travelling fifteen and twenty hours. Looking worn and dishevelled, they formed in serried battalions, and, headed by bands and trumpets and drums, young and old, men, women, and children, marched to their quarters…

  This morning five huge columns, approaching from various quarters, welded at the Arch Peyrou into one procession nine miles long, and the march through the streets began at 11. Placards threatened, “The day of reckoning is at hand,” “We will take up arms,” “Down with the deputies.” Here were 200 handsome Norbannese women in mourning, there 500 young girls robed in white muslin, with tricolor robes.

• In 1906 in Turkey, mass tax refusal was backed up by mass demonstrations of as many as 20,000 people, demanding the repeal of the taxes.
• In 2003, anti-Chavez protesters launched a tax strike by tearing up their income tax forms in a demonstration in which thousands of demonstrators marched on the tax offices in Caracas.
• Farmers in New Zealand threatened to drive their farm equipment onto the highways to jam the roads in protest against a new greenhouse-gas-targeting “flatulence tax” on livestock in 2003.
• When the authorities tried to impose a tax on dogs in Breslau, Germany, in 1925 5,000 dogs (and their owners) descended on city hall to protest.
• One of Gandhi’s first experiments with satyagraha was a strike in South Africa to protest against a tax on Indian immigrants there. The culmination of that campaign was a massive protest march of striking workers that deliberately violated laws restricting the right of travel of Indians.
• Ammon Hennacy was fond of accompanying his solitary tax resistance with periodic fasts and picketings at IRS headquarters, typically around the time of the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. He would hand out to passers-by copies of the Catholic Worker as well as leaflets that described his own particular protest — while also carrying a sign and wearing a sandwich-board that put things more concisely.
• The previously-untaxed caste of Bhats in India responded to being subjected to the income tax in dramatic fashion: “Two thousand men turned out to remonstrate with the Superintendent of Police who appeared on the scene. He remained firm, whereupon they cut themselves with knives, cursed the Assessors, bespattering them with their blood, and declared they would rather die than surrender their birthright. When several were apprehended, their wives began to hack their persons, and so severely that several have since died. Up to the last intelligence the Bhats still gloried in their refusal.”
• American war tax resisters frequently hold rallies, pickets, street theater, and other such actions around “Tax Day” (the date when federal income tax returns are due). This among other things helps make sure that their message is one of those represented in the obligatory tax day news stories. Here is an example:

  The group then left for the federal building, in which the IRS and a number of other offices are located, at which 75 people burned tax forms and blockaded the street for a bit. There were no arrests. In conjunction with the tax form burning, they used a banner with the quote: “Pardon us, friends, for the fracture of good order, for burning paper instead of babies,” sent from prison during the Vietnam War by Daniel Berrigan… They offered their apologies for burning tax forms instead of Colombian villages, Palestinian schools, Iraqi hospitals, Filipinos’ mosques and Afghan homes.

  In another case:

  After a mock President Clinton bragged to onlookers about the many areas in which the U.S. was #1 - military spending, arms sales, violent gun deaths, etc. — he drove home the point with an 8-foot Patriot missile tossed into a group of students, parents, nurses and other ordinary people.

  Mass dying ensued, followed by an appearance by the grim reaper himself. Ostensibly there to collect bodies, he assented to an interview with M.C. Daniel Woodham. Death was the only one at the rally willing to even attempt an explanation of the maniacal logic of a still-bloated U.S. military budget.

  Here are some street theater tips from war tax resister Steve Gulick.
• Some war tax resisters in Wales brought their tax payment to the tax office in a bucket of blood. When the payment was refused, they poured the blood over the steps of the building.
• In 1997 members of the Magdalene House Catholic Worker held a demonstration at the IRS office in which they “laid out a cloth altar with candles, flowers, and health care items to represent life, and tax forms with their blood poured on them to represent death. They held a worship service and talked about why they were there.” This was enough for several of them to get arrested.
• During the rebellion against Thatcher’s poll tax, there were several demonstrations.
  • The Scottish Trade Union Conference organized a number of rallies, including a 30,000-person march in Edinburgh, but then it put its weight behind a strange 11-minute-long general strike at which people all over Scotland were supposed to briefly stop working to engage in some short anti-poll-tax activism. That protest didn’t go anywhere and the Union Conference lost some credibility as a movement organizer.
  • Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to demonstrations in England, with some of these rallies and marches turning into riots (or being attacked by police, depending on whose stories you believe). On such occasions, the riots became the message of the demonstrations, whatever the intentions of the organizers were. This had mixed consequences for the movement.

Here are some excerpts from the archives of The Spectator that concern the Irish Tithe War of the 1830s.

First, from “Opinions of the Press: The Tithe War” (29 January 1831):

Morning Chronicle — … If in Ireland events are fast hastening to destruction the Protestant Established Church “guaranteed at the Union,” we have lay preachers in England haranguing every parish against the system of English tithes. The country papers teem with reports of resolutions of grand juries against the pressure of local taxation, revolts against church-rates, superadded to poor and country levies; determination of rate-payers not to sanction the expense of gas-light for evening services; parsons lowering their tithe 10, 15, and 25 per cent. under the illuminating influence of “Swing;” whole parishes meeting to proscribe the clergy and petition against this odious, oppressive, overwhelming impost! …The landowners and farmers are practically learning the rudiments of political economy; and low prices, high rents, and a restricted currency, have revealed to them that the clergy belong to the classes distinguished as unproductive labourers. They have picked up, in the course of their inquiries into the causes of agricultural distress (and some of them, may be, from Mr. Cobbett’s Sermons and Ecclesiastical Histories), that the support of the poor was anciently a lien on the tithe; and that the clergy have silently and cunningly contrived by process of time to get rid of that burden and shuffle it on the laymen. Hence the same men who, a few years since, were as willingly pewed in the parish-church as their sheep were penned up in night-folds, halloo out against a hired a paid priesthood as a public nuisance, the sooner gotten rid of the better! If this marvelous state of society is not a revolution, we do not know what merits that appellation. The farmers now everywhere inquire what services the clergy render for eight millions sterling per annum, forced out of the pockets of the people — whether the services rendered are in proportion to the wages — how their duties are individually executed, and what their moral conduct and personal character. …what farmer now believes that above one clergyman in a hundred dedicates his life to the ministry from any other motive than to get a good living, alias tithes? The agriculturalist, naturally, therefore, regards the parsons as a money-seeking, grasping set of men. He views the parish-spire as a deserter eyes the sentry-box of his obnoxious guard on duty — and there is one such sentry-box, if not two, in every parish! The scenes which are now acting beggar belief.

From “Ireland” (2 June 1832):

The Tithe war continues in Ireland; or rather we would say it has ceased, by the yielding at discretion of the weaker of the parties in the struggle — the Clergy. The most remarkable display of the energy of the people that has hitherto been made, was exhibited at Cork last week. On Thursday, fifteen cows distrained for tithes due to Mr. Freeman, Rector of Ardngeehy, arrived in Cork, escorted by a troop of Lancers — a most honourable escort for cows. The sale was advertised for Saturday. At twelve o’clock on Saturday, 10,000 people arrived in Cork to witness the sale. We quote the following striking description of the scene from the Cork Southern Reporter–

Surrounded by the troops, the process of auctioning was commenced — the auctioneer, a stranger, it is said a resident of Middleton. They were set up at 3l. for each — no bidder; 2l. — no bidder; 1l. — no bidder; in short, he descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared. This scene lasted for over 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 subject 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. At this hour, the cattle, followed by the people, frantic with joy, have just passed our office. We never witnessed such a seene — thousands of the country people jumping with exulting feelings at the result — wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling. When the result was known, clamorous and irrepressible cheering for the military burst forth. Their conduct, indeed, was praiseworthy beyond any thing which language can describe. Three cheers were then given for General Sir George Bingham, and were followed by shouts the most deafening. Nothing could be more suitable to the occasion than his mode of conducting the proceeding. The people, to be sure, were under the guidance and amenable to the direction of persons in whom they could confide; but even were it otherwise, his manner and courteous demeanour would secure order. As the military passed through Patrick Street, they were loudly complimented by the gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce.

The Reporter adds–

Would that the Irish Secretary could have witnessed this scene; it would guide him to more correct notions entire subject of tithes in Ireland.

We doubt this. The Secretary belongs to a set of men whom no evidence will turn from the way they have once chosen, — for the simple reason, that evidence had no concern with their choice. This is not the only case in which sales have been in vain resorted to. The same play has been played at Carlow, and with precisely the same success. We need not say, where will these things end. He must be very short-sighted who does not see that.

From “The Tory Tithe War in Ireland: Down with the Tithes!” (13 December 1834):

Irish nature is human nature still, notwithstanding centuries have been employed in brutalizing it. Quick sensibility to wrong, and the determination to resist it even unto the death, are characteristics of the Irish nation. Ireland has become as unfortunate a field for Tory experiments in the art of governing, as could well have been selected. As long as money was to he had by any means, however extortionate and cruel — as long as tithe-proctors could get the “rem, quocunque modo rem,” all went on smoothly to the eye of Protestant dignitaries. But now, the very poverty which formerly rendered the latter so easy a prey, makes him desperate. The little he has to give, he will not give to the Protestant parson without fighting. He is not a person to be reasoned or treated with. Like Rob Roy in the novel, “he has gone down to the hill-side, shouldered his claymore, and become a broken man.”

Every week adds to the national exasperation against the Protestant Church. A few days ago, there was a battle in the county of Armagh between a tithe-collecting party of military and police and the racked and ruined peasantry. Shots were fired, many were wounded, and one poor fellow was killed. The tithe-owner, the Reverend Mr. Blacker, a Magistrate, witnessed the battle, as he was out tithe-gathering with the party. A fitting employment this for a lowly minister of Christ’s gospel of peace! The account of this affair will be read to the Catholic peasantry, with probably half-a-dozen others of a similar description, at every polling-place throughout the country, and by every priest from the altar.

From “Irish Tithe Massacres: Down with the Tithes!” (27 December 1834):

A few days ago, thirteen men were shot, and eight others wounded, in resisting a party of the military, who were employed to force the payment of tithe from a widow woman, to a dignitary of the Church, Archdeacon Ryder, in the county of Cork. It matters little how the massacre began: it may be (though the accounts are, as usual, contradictory,) that the country-people commenced the attack by throwing stones. This may make a material difference as to the strict legality of the slaughter that ensued, but does not lessen our abhorrence of the system of supporting that unbearable nuisance the Irish Church, which the Tories are pledged to maintain. The Rathcormack massacre adds one other to the thousand proofs already before the British nation, that the Church in Ireland can only be maintained on its present footing by bayonet and bullet.

From “The Church in the Three Kingdoms” (8 October 1836):

The [following] extract is taken from the Carlow Sentinel, a Tory advocate of a vigorous prosecution of the rights of the Church; and will form a fitting conclusion to our present survey of Church affairs.

On Friday, the Sub-Sheriff of the county, Henry Butler, Esq., accompanied by Captain Blake, Sub-Inspector of the county, Chief Constables Fitzgibbon and Trent, and forty of the Constabulary, with a Captain and twenty of the Fusileers, proceeded to post tithe-notices in the parishes of Hacketstown and Rathvilly. At an early hour, the whole party arrived at Hacketstown, and posted the notices according to law on the chapel and church doors: they were hooted and abused, but no further obstruction was given the civil authorities, in the execution of their duty. From Hacketstown they proceeded to Rathvilly, where they met a different reception from the lawless and disorganized population of that parish. On their arrival at the latter place, large masses of men were concentrated at the avenue leading to the chapel. The walls enclosing the chapel-yard were lined with men armed with pitch-forks, scithes, bludgeons, and stones, while the women had a plentiful supply of boiling water, supplied by the inhabitants of the village. After the notices were posted on the church-door, the Sheriff marched his party to the chapel; the gates of which were locked, and the chapel-yard filled with men to oppose his entrance. He proceeded to the house of Priest Gahan for the key; but he was not to be found! The Sheriff next ordered the Police to scale the walls to post the notices on the chapel; upon which the party were assailed by a general volley of stones and missiles. The Police were repeatedly beaten off the walls; but they again retook them, with a cool intrepidity and a forbearance unparalleled. Having gained the yard amid showers of stones, the Police formed, and, after priming and loading, succeeded in posting the notices. Captain Blake acted, we are informed, with firmness and determination; and, we regret to say, is desperately wounded. The Police, in self defence, after seeing the Sub-Inspector fall from blows of stones, fired some shots; but whether they took effect or not, we have as yet received no intelligence. Nine Policemen are severely wounded, three of whom were assailed by boiling water. Here is an awful picture of the county. We would offer some observations on this awful outrage on the civil authorities, but far the lateness of the hour the intelligence reached us.

Further Intelligence.

We have received information on going to press, that the boiling water which was poured on the Police was actually brought out of the chapel! Such is the dreadful state of one poor man, that the hair has dropped off his head!