Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
Britain / U.K. (see also: Ireland, Scotland, Wales) →
Reform Act of 1832
I shared some of what I found about the Breton Association — a group that used tax resistance to combat the French king and his reactionary ministers in their power play.
, a similar battle was playing out in the United Kingdom.
A “people power” movement there was responsible for the eventual success of the Reform Act of over the opposition of the House of Lords.
Tax resistance was high on the agenda of the “Political Unions” that led this movement.
The following comes from John Arthur Roebuck’s History of the Whig Ministry of 1830, to the Passing of the Reform Bill ():
at length the House of Lords, disregarding… threatening indications of popular feeling, brought matters to a crisis, and forced the ministers to resign, the long-cherished and only half-suppressed popular anger and suspicion were allowed to burst forth in the most vehement demonstrations and threats.
From one end of the country to the other petitions were sent to the House of Commons, praying that House to stop all supplies until the Reform Bill should be passed.
The political unions everywhere began to organize their members for actual insurrection.
Meetings in London were held by day and by night, at which the most violent language was employed, not by unknown or inferior persons, but by men of rank and substance.1 Not only was parliament entreated to withhold supplies, but individuals were advised to refuse the payment of taxes; associations were proposed of persons who would undertake to use no excisable articles, and a run upon the Bank of England was recommended, by immense placards posted upon every bare wall throughout London, and which couched its dangerous recommendation in these ominous words — “GO FOR GOLD, AND STOP THE DUKE.”
The anger and indignation felt and thus fiercely evinced were not confined to one class of persons, or any peculiar sect or condition.
Rich and poor, noble and commoner, churchman and dissenter, grave citizens, members of both Houses of parliament, the Common Council of London, parish vestries, and immense public meetings, all employed language indicative of a serious and resolute determination to resist with arms, if necessary, the attempt of the House of Lords to reject the bill, spite of the ardent expectations of the people.
The Common Council met, in accordance with a requisition to the Lord Mayor to convene a meeting, for the purpose of taking into consideration the measures necessary to be adopted in consequence of the proceedings in the House of Lords.
Resolutions condemning the conduct of the House of Peers, and asserting that they who had advised the king not to create peers were enemies of their sovereign, had put to imminent hazard the stability of the throne and security of the country, were passed by acclamation; and the following yet more significant resolution received an immediate and clamorous assent.
“That, under these circumstances, this court feels it to be its duty, as a necessary means of procuring for the people of this great country an efficient reform, to petition the House of Commons to withhold the supplies until such a reform shall have been secured.”
A standing committee was also appointed of all the aldermen, and certain of the citizens, for the purpose in the present crisis, “so pregnant with danger,” of meeting from day to day to watch events, and take steps to insure the passing of the Reform Bill.
These most unusual proceedings, and the extraordinary language employed by the different speakers in the Common Council and elsewhere, and vehemently cheered by the vast meetings which met upon those occasions, proved beyond the possibility of doubt that the whole mercantile and trading classes in the metropolis were prepared to adopt revolutionary measures, if such were necessary, for the attainment of the Reform Bill.2 Immense numbers of persons, who hitherto had considered the proceedings of the National Political Union in London too violent, were now, says the Times of , “at their own solicitation admitted members.”
The various parishes called upon their local officers to convene public meetings; and in every meeting the proposal to refuse the payment of taxes was alluded to, and received with enthusiastic approbation.
Petitions to the House of Commons, entreating that House to withhold the supplies until reform was attained, were almost universally proposed, and when proposed were invariably adopted.
The excitement in the provinces was, if possible, even more threatening than in London.
Birmingham was at that time looked upon as the head-quarters of reform; and the movements of its Political Union, presided over by Mr. Thomas Attwood, were deemed of great importance both by the friends and the opponents of reform.
The news that the Reform Bill was in fact defeated, and that Lord Grey had resigned, instantly excited not only the more ardent reformers of the town, who had hitherto constituted the Union, but stirred up the whole population, timid and fearless, eager and apathetic alike; and they in various ways made manifest their anger and their determination.
Placards were exhibited in the windows, some of which were in these words:—
NOTICE. No Taxes paid here until The Reform Bill is passed.
Others stated, “No taxes paid here in money, and no goods bought, distrained for taxes.”
And, as was the case in London, immense numbers of persons to whom political agitation was disagreeable, and who therefore had hitherto abstained from taking part in it, now joined the Political Union.3 Catholic priests and grave Quakers ostentatiously enrolled their names in the books of the Union, stating that they did so, in order to preserve the peace, for anarchy and confusion, they asserted, were certain, unless the Reform Bill were instantly carried.
Deputies from the surrounding towns came hurriedly to Birmingham, as a centre, in order to concert measures “in this dangerous crisis.”
A meeting was held, a petition was proposed and adopted, and a deputation immediately selected to carry the petition express to London.
The petition, among other angry and violent expressions, contained this very plain and threatening announcement, which when it was read to the excited crowd, whose petition it purported to be, was received, says the newspaper of the day, with a tremendous burst of cheering which lasted several minutes.
“That your petitioners find it declared in the bill of rights, that the people of England may have arms for their defence, suitable to their condition, and as allowed by law; and your petitioners apprehend that this great right will be put in force generally, and that the whole of the people of England will think it necessary to have arms for their defence, in order that they may be prepared for any circumstances that may arise.4
A petition which more plainly stated the intentions of its framers actually to have recourse to arms, was probably never presented to the House of Commons.
The delegates from Birmingham, who brought this petition express to London, were next day present at various public meetings held in the metropolis.
Their presence excited still more the enthusiasm of the people, who now seemed to vie with each other in the employment of fierce and threatening language, and in proposing means by which the House of Lords might be coerced into a sense of the danger which clearly impended over the very order to which they belonged.
Among the more remarkable of the public meetings held in the metropolis was that of Southwark, which attracted especial attention, because of the attendance of the member for Southwark, Mr. W. Brougham, who evidently intended that the world should believe that he spoke on behalf, and in the name of his brother, the Lord Chancellor.
The language he employed, indeed, proved the jealous nature of the times, being as it was, anxiously directed to answering imputations upon the fidelity of the Chancellor to his party and the cause of reform.
This vindication would not have been attempted, had not the imputation obtained some credence.
“A report has been very prevalent,” said the learned gentleman, “that the Lord Chancellor is to continue in office, and form part of government, but not Earl Grey’s government.
This report I have authority to contradict.
My brother will ever continue to support the cause of the people by every means within his power; and with no other cause will he identify himself.
Something has been said,” he added, “about the people not paying taxes, and a resolution to that effect would be highly illegal.
People might individually refuse, without rendering themselves amenable to the law.
Now this is an affair easily arranged.
If a tax-gatherer calls upon me, and asks me to settle his little bill for taxes, I may say to him in reply — I have got a little bill of my own, Sir, which I should like to have settled by the gentlemen down in Westminster, who owe it me, and unless that little bill of mine be satisfactorily settled, you must never expect me to settle yours.”
Again, reverting to his brother, he said, “Before I conclude, I beg to state to this meeting, that my brother, the Lord Chancellor, is at this moment in better health than ever — he is in good fighting order, as the sham reformers will discover to their cost.”
(This announcement was received, says the report, with thunders of applause.)
“He will prove a sharp thorn in their sides — he will never desert the cause of the people.”
Lord Milton, now Lord Fitzwilliam, openly advised the people to refuse the payment of taxes.
Mr. Duncombe, member for Hertford, joined the Political Union of London, and took part in their discussions.
“When the tax-gatherer called on Lord Milton last week, he requested that the tax-gatherer would call again, because he was not certain that circumstances might not arise which would oblige him to resist their payment.
Does the noble lord admit the truth of this statement?
Lord Milton: Yes, certainly.”
— Mirror of Parliament, , p. 2456.
The king was always anxious about and eager to know the feelings of the merchants and traders in the City; and doubtless the ministers, who well knew this feeling, made the most of these demonstrations, perhaps in no slight degree contributed to make the demonstrations themselves.
A declaration to the following effect was signed in a few hours by five hundred persons—among the most respectable of the inhabitants:—
We, the undersigned inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood of Birmingham, who have hitherto refrained from joining the Birmingham Political Union, deem it our duty to our country, at this awful crisis, to come forward and join that body, for the purpose of promoting the further union, order and determination of all classes in support of the common cause of parliamentary reform.
Similar proceedings occurred in Manchester, and a deputation was sent to London with their petition.
“The Manchester petition was the very first which was presented praying the House of Commons to stop the supplies until reform and a redress of grievances were obtained. — See Personal Recollections of Manchester, by A. Prentice, in which an amusing account is given of the journey to London by the deputation charged with the petition, p. 409, et seq.
This comes from The Annual Register of :
[The Political Unions] took into their consideration, whether it would be proper to commit a crime by combining to refuse payment of taxes; and being satisfied that the adoption of a formal resolution to that effect would expose them to the danger of an indictment, they confined themselves to an understood arrangement to do it as individuals, supporting each other by mutual encouragement.
A meeting which styled itself a meeting of the inhabitants of Westminster, assured the king, that unless their advice were complied with, “tumult, anarchy, and confusion will overspread the land, and will cease only with the utter extinction of the privileged orders.”
At this meeting, one of the speakers, by way of showing the impossibility of forming a government, said, “To the waverers, who pretend to be friends of reform, we will present buttoned pockets; but for the absolutes, or military rulers, we will prepare our powder, and melt our lead.”
The National Political Union resolved to present a petition, praying that, till the bill passed, no supplies should be allowed to go into the hands of the lords of the Treasury, but should be paid over to commissioners named by the House of Commons; and this was specifically recommended to them on the ground, that it was taken from “that admirable resolution adopted by the House of Commons in : “while another patriot assured them the question was, whether the King’s government was to be brought into disgrace and peril, not paralleled except by the execution of Charles and the deposition of James.”
— “The time for resistance is come,” exclaimed another orator; “the taxes are in the course of collecting.
Will the people say to the tax-gatherer, what I said to him, ‘until the reform bill is a law one penny of my money you shall not touch?’
They may carry us into the Exchequer; let them sell our goods, and we will pay them a commission for it; but we will replevin, and appeal to a jury of our countrymen.
Then we will try the question, and see what twelve Englishmen will say to a brother contending for his rights.
The House of Commons has declared itself not to be the representative of the people, and the people ought not to pay taxes imposed by an illegal authority.”
The common council of the city of London resolved, “that whoever may have advised his Majesty to withhold from his ministers the means of ensuring the success of the reform bill have proved themselves the enemies of their sovereign, and have put to imminent hazard the stability of the throne, and the tranquillity and security of the country; and that under these circumstances, this court feels it to be its duty, as a necessary means of procuring for the people of this great country an efficient reform, to petition the Commons’ House of parliament to withhold the supplies, until such a reform shall have been secured.”
And this last brief bit comes from Henry Jephson’s The Platform: Its Rise and Progress ():
[At a meeting of the Birmingham Political Union, o]ne of the speakers, referring to the eventuality of the Lords refusing to pass the Bill, said: “Failing all other constitutional means of obtaining the success of the reform measure, he solemnly declared that he would be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy on his goods” (tremendous cheering).
“I now call upon all who hear me, and are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up their hands.”
(An immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering.)
“Extraordinary was the excitement which this great meeting created throughout the country.
Nothing of the sort had been witnessed in England before.
Friends and foes were alike astonished at the peaceful, orderly, and unanimous conduct of its proceedings.”
A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced
to take place at Ashton Tavern on
,
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.
It’s hard for me to tell from this brief report, but this was possibly part
of the tax resistance campaigns conducted by
Political Unions
in England in the 1820s and 1830s.
We have been informed that in several districts of the metropolis the tax-gatherers have been informed by the inhabitants on whom they have called, that the taxes which they have recently collected would be the last they would have to receive, unless the Reform Bill was carried.
The districts to which we allude are not those in which a determination has been evinced, with reference to the taxes called rates imposed by self-elected bodies, to act upon the constitutional principles that taxation without representaton is illegal; namely Mary-le-bone, St. Pancras, and Islington parishes.
We may mention as an instance of the quiet mode in which these determinations will be carried into effect, that the inhabitants of St. Martin’s parish, without calling any public meeting, or making any outward demonstration, have refused to pay their last poor-rates.
The amount which it was expected to produce is, perhaps, £2,000; and of this amount probably not more than £100 has been collected, and that it is believed has been paid by those who had not been consulted, and who knew nothing of the determination of other inhabitants to refuse payment.
But what possibly terrified the Government most was the formation of huge “Political Unions,” whose motto was, “To protect the King and his Ministers against the Boroughmongers.”
At Birmingham the Union included 150,000 persons, who resolved that should the Bill fail to pass again, they would all refuse to pay any more taxes.
[Mary Russell] The Duchess of Bedford has consented to become a member of our Society, and requested us to conduct her protest when distraint has been levied for the amount of her unpaid taxes.
The following Sales took place last week:—
On , Miss Baker, of Torquay, who had refused to pay inhabited house duty, had goods sold by public auction.
At the subsequent meeting Mrs. Kineton Parkes spoke on the reasons for sale to a large crowd.
On , Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence and Miss Hayes, of Marlow, Bucks., had their goods sold by public auction.
The sale aroused great interest, and a successful meeting was afterwards held, the speakers being Miss Nina Boyle, Miss [Agnes Edith] Metcalfe, and Miss Amy Hicks.
On , Miss Ina Moncrieff, of Tregunter-road, South Kensington, had her goods sold at Harding’s Auction Rooms.
The speakers at the subsequent meeting were Miss Watson and Mrs. Kineton Parkes.…
However, a piece of verse that she uses as the introduction to one of her chapters fits right in here at The Picket Line:
“Where lies the power, there let the blame lie too.” Nay, power is relative; you cannot fright The coming pest with border fortresses, Or catch your carp with subtle argument.
All force is twain in one: cause is not cause Unless effect be there; and action’s self Must needs contain a passive.
So command Exists but with obedience.
Benjamin Haydon’s Meeting of the Birmingham Political Union (1832)
In , the parliament of the United Kingdom debated the Reform Bill and occasionally alluded to the threats of tax resistance being made by the various Political Unions that were pushing for the Bill’s passage.
Here are some excerpts:
Henry Brougham, The Lord Chancellor, in the House of Lords,
The system, we are told, works well… Whence, then, the phenomenon of Political Unions — of the people everywhere forming themselves into associations to put down a system which you say well serves their interests?
Whence the congregating of 150,000 men in one place, the whole adult male population of two or three counties, to speak the language of discontent, and refuse the payment of taxes?
I am one who never have either used the language of intimidation, or will ever suffer it to be used towards me; but I also am one of those who regard those indications with unspeakable anxiety.
With all respect for those assemblages, and for the honesty of the opinions they entertain, I feel myself bound to declare as an honest man, as a Minister of the Crown, as a Magistrate, nay, as standing by virtue of my office, at the head of the magistracy, that a resolution not to pay the King’s taxes is unlawful.
When I contemplate the fact, I am assured that not above a few thousands of those nearest the Chairman could know for what it was they held up their hands.
At the same time there is too much reason to think that, the rest would have acted as they did, had they heard all that past.
My hope and trust is, that these men and their leaders will maturely re-consider the subject.
There are no bounds to the application of such a power; the difficulty of counteracting it is extreme: and as it may be exerted on whatever question has the leading interest, and every question in succession is felt as of exclusive importance, the use of the power I am alluding to, really threatens to resolve all government, and even society itself, into its elements.
I know the risk I run of giving offence by what I am saying.
To me, accused of worshiping the democracy, here is indeed a tempting occasion, if in that charge there were the shadow of truth.
Before the great idol, the Juggernaut, with his 150,000 priests, I might prostrate myself advantageously.
But I am bound to do my duty, and speak the truth; of such an assembly I cannot approve; even its numbers obstruct discussion, and tend to put the peace in danger, — coupled with such a combination against payment of taxes, it is illegal; it is intolerable under any form of government; and as a sincere well-wisher to the people themselves, and devoted to the cause which brought them together, I feel solicitous, on every account, to bring such proceedings to an end.
Blah blah blah.
Standard politician stuff: trying to take advantage of a populist uprising while keeping it at arm’s length.
I’m struck in particular by Brougham’s blind belief that he has “never… used the language of intimidation” while at the same time he declares the gatherings of Political Unions “illegal [and] intolerable under any form of government” and reminds us that “by virtue of my office, at the head of the magistracy… I feel solicitous, on every account, to bring such proceedings to an end.”
But there’s a nod and a wink there, since he sees these unruly mobs of commoners as the bad cop to his Reform Bill’s good cop: pass the Reform Bill, he tells his colleagues, and the mob will then have a legitimate outlet for their grievances within the political system and they won’t be tempted to resort to these threatening independent organizations.
This tack was also made in the House of Commons:
Thomas Babington Macaulay, in the House of Commons,
I do not predict — I do not expect — open, armed insurrection.
What I apprehend is this — that the people may engage in a silent, but extensive and persevering war against the law.
What I apprehend is, that England may exhibit the same spectacle which Ireland exhibited three years ago — agitators stronger than the Magistrate, associations stronger than the law, a Government powerful enough to be hated, and not powerful enough to be feared, a people bent on indemnifying themselves by illegal excesses for the want of legal privileges.
I fear, that we may before long see the tribunals defied, the tax-gatherer resisted, public credit shaken, property insecure, the whole frame of society hastening to dissolution.…
…Sir, I firmly believe, that if the people of England shall lose all hope of carrying the Reform Bill by constitutional means, they will forthwith begin to offer to the Government the same kind of resistance which was offered to the late Government, three years ago, by the people of Ireland — a resistance by no means amounting to rebellion — a resistance rarely amounting to any crime defined by the law — but a resistance nevertheless which is quite sufficient to obstruct the course of justice, to disturb the pursuits of industry, and to prevent the accumulation of wealth.
And is not this a danger which we ought to fear?
And is not this a danger which we are bound, by all means in our power, to avert?…
…There is in truth a great anomaly in the relation between the English people and their Government.
Our institutions are either too popular or not popular enough.
The people have not sufficient power in making the laws; but they have quite sufficient power to impede the execution of the laws once made.
The Legislature is almost entirely aristocratical; the machinery by which the decrees of the Legislature are carried into effect, is almost entirely popular; and, therefore, we constantly see all the power which ought to execute the law, employed to counteract the law.
Thus, for example, with a criminal code which carries its rigour to the length of atrocity, we have a criminal judicature which often carries its lenity to the length of perjury.
Our law of libel is the most absurdly severe that ever existed — so absurdly severe that, if it were carried into full effect, it would be much more oppressive than a censorship.
And yet, with this severe law of libel, we have a Press which practically is as free as the air.
In 1819 the Ministers complained of the alarming increase of seditious and blasphemous publications.
They proposed a law of great rigour to stop the growth of the evil; and they obtained their law.
It was enacted, that the publisher of a seditious libel might, on a second conviction, be banished, and that if he should return from banishment, he might be transported.
How often was this law put in force?
Not once.
Last year we repealed it; but it was already dead, or rather it was dead born.
It was obsolete before le Roi le veut had been pronounced over it.
For any effect which it produced it might as well have been in the Code Napoleon as in the English Statute-book.
And why did the Government, having solicited and procured so sharp and weighty a weapon, straightway hang it up to rust?
Was there less sedition, were there fewer libels, after the passing of the Act than before it?
Sir, the very next year was the year 1820 — the year of the Bill of Pains and Penalties — the very year when the public mind was most excited — the very year when the public Press was most scurrilous.
Why then did not the Ministers use their new law?
Because they durst not; because they could not.
They had obtained it with ease; for in obtaining it they had to deal with a subservient Parliament.
They could not execute it; for in executing it they would have had to deal with a refractory people.
These are instances of the difficulty of carrying the law into effect when the people are inclined to thwart their rulers.
The great anomaly, or, to speak more properly, the great evil which I have described, would, I believe, be removed by the Reform Bill.
That Bill would establish perfect harmony between the people and the Legislature.
It would give a fair share in the making of laws to those without whose co-operation laws are mere waste paper.
Under a reformed system we should not see, as we now often see, the nation repealing Acts of Parliament as fast as we and the Lords can pass them.
As I believe that the Reform Bill would produce this blessed and salutary concord, so I fear that the rejection of the Reform Bill, if that rejection should be considered as final, will aggravate the evil which I have been describing to an unprecedented, to a terrible extent.
To all the laws which might be passed for the collection of the revenue, or for the prevention of sedition, the people would oppose the same kind of resistance by means of which they have succeeded in mitigating — I might say in abrogating — the law of libel.
There would be so many offenders, that the Government would scarcely know at whom to aim its blow.
Every offender would have so many accomplices and protectors, that the blow would almost always miss the aim.
The veto of the people — a veto not pronounced in set form, like that of the Roman Tribunes, but quite as effectual as that of the Roman Tribunes — for the purpose of impeding public measures, would meet the Government at every turn.
The Administration would be unable to preserve order at home, or to uphold the national honour abroad: and at length men who are now moderate, who now think of revolution with horror, would begin to wish that the lingering agony of the State might be terminated by one fierce, sharp, decisive crisis.
I often read contemporary radicals complaining that the government uses liberals and half-baked liberal reform as a way of defeating radical change.
Here is a good example of a politician making that explicit.
Ugliest is this part of the speech:
We read that in old times, when the villeins were driven to revolt by oppression, when the castles of the nobility were burned to the ground — when the warehouses of London were pillaged — when a hundred thousand insurgents appeared in arms on Blackheath — when a foul murder perpetrated in their presence had raised their passions to madness — when they were looking round for some captain to succeed and avenge him whom they had lost — just then, before Hob Miller, or Tom Carter, or Jack Straw, could place himself at their head, the King rode up to them and exclaimed, “I will be your leader” — and at once the infuriated multitude laid down their arms, submitted to his guidance — dispersed at his command.
Herein let us imitate him.
This is an allusion to the tax revolt led by Wat Tyler in .
Tyler was assassinated while he was negotiating with the King, and his followers became furious.
The King is then said to have boldly gone out to the crowd and told them that he was on their side and would be their leader and fight for their concerns, and on the spot he granted them a number of concessions and pardoned their leaders.
An opponent of the Bill, Charles Weatherell, called him on his good-cop/bad-cop routine: “the honorable and learned Gentleman… deprecates, he revokes, he abjures anything tending to excitement; but in abjuring the thing, he uses expressions that forcibly recall it to the mind, and he eloquently deprecates that which in his arguments he seems most to inculcate… [He] says that he does not wish the people to resist the payment of taxes; but, at the same time, he who would not, of course, wish to lead them to erroneous conclusions, has told us what will happen if the Reform Bill is not passed, for he says that the tax-gatherer would be resisted.”
While these topics of the non-payment of taxes were under discussion, the honorable and learned Attorney General was present: if the law was not what the honorable and learned Gentleman had compared it to — a rusty nail, he would set himself in motion.
Was it true that this non-payment of taxes had been the subject of discussion?… He himself meant to assert that where there was a conspiracy to refuse the payment of taxes, there was a crime of a higher kind than some of the peace-making gentlemen opposite imagined.… [T]hese assemblies to rob the King of money voted by the Parliament were not a bit-by-bit question, almost amounting to a breach of the peace, as it had seemed to be considered in another place.
Those men were no lawyers who, if non-payment of taxes was combined with circumstances of conspiracy, would not say, that it was an offence far advanced in the scale towards high treason.
He could hardly have imagined there would have been so much said out of doors upon this subject, or he would have come armed with his authorities for this assertion.
Did the House know the sort of publications that had been issued on this subject?
He had had put into his hands a pamphlet, with a portrait of his noble and learned friend, the Lord Chancellor; it was a bad portrait — but it was a portrait prefixed to his speech on this question.
It was right to publish his speech, and the cheaper the rate at which such speeches were circulated, and the more they were ventilated through the country, the better.
He complained not that it had been so ventilated, but that a note had been appended to it in such a way, that unless looked at most carefully, it might be taken for part of the speech itself.
The note was this — “God grant that all this may be right; but, depend on it, that the watchword will now be ‘pay no taxes.’ ” He repeated, that unless the sword of the Attorney General was, in fact, the rusty iron it had been compared to (though it had ever and anon been proved a sword sharp enough), these were publications that did require the attention of his honorable and learned friend.
He would not say, that the Attorney General would neglect his duty in permitting these publications to go unreprehended and unnoticed; but he would go the length of stating to the Attorney General, that if the language used in that House, bold and unlimited as it might be, by the latitudinarian nature of their forms of debate, was thus permitted to be exceeded out of doors, the law was, indeed, a dead letter.
It was quite true, that the British public were not to be governed by the sword — but they were by the laws; and one of those laws was, that the recommendation of peace-breaking, of tumult, of risings against the Government, of non-payment of taxes, was an offence which, by a slight limit alone, was out of the pale of treason.
A number of other opponents of the Bill tweaked supporters for being too cozy with the Political Unions and for refusing to condemn their tax resistance resolutions strongly enough.
On a House of Commons member named Trevor spoke about an advertisement in the Times that read:
At a numerous meeting of the Committees and inhabitant householders of the parish of St. James, Westminster, the following resolution, proposed by Mr. Ewen, and seconded by Mr. Pitt, was unanimously agreed to:— “That this Committee acknowledge with the utmost gratitude, the exertions of his Majesty’s Ministers in favour of the Bill for the better regulation of Vestries, &c. now before Parliament; and as the success of that excellent measure is no longer doubtful, it is the opinion of this Committee, that the meeting of the inhabitant householders of this parish, for the purpose of taking into consideration the propriety of withholding the payment of all parochial rates under the select vestry system, as advertised in The Times, Morning Herald, Morning Chronicle, and Morning Advertiser, on the , should be postponed, and in the mean time the Committee recommend to the householders not to [withhold] the payment of such rates as may have become due.”
That reopened the debate on the propriety of tax resistance in general.
Trevor, alarmed, said that “if such threats as were conveyed in that advertisement were allowed to be made, and the people were told to withhold the payment of taxes, it would be impossible for… Parliament any longer to exist as a deliberative assembly.”
A Mr. Hume responded, saying that there was no cause for alarm, as there had been a case when a parish had actually followed-through on such a threat, and that had failed to bring down the anarchist apocalypse:
At a meeting of his fellow-parishioners of Mary-le-bone (of which he was the Chairman) a resolution was come to, not to pay the taxes imposed by the Select Vestry, but to allow their goods to be distrained.
He considered that his fellow-parishioners had acted legally, and their conduct had produced a most beneficial effect, for a disposition was already shown on the part of the Select Vestry to accommodate matters.
[T]he parishioners of Marylebone had no intention of violating the law.
The law directed, that in case of nonpayment of rates the goods of the party refusing were to be distrained.
The inhabitants of Marylebone would refuse to pay the rates imposed by the Select Vestry, but they would submit to the alternative provided by the law, and allow their goods to be taken away.
He thought that their resolution could not be considered in the light of a violation of the law.
Cutlar Fergusson wasn’t buying it.
While it wasn’t criminal to refuse to pay taxes because you couldn’t afford to (it then became a matter of civil distraint), a refusal like the one described, particularly a conspiracy of refusal, was criminal: “a high misdemeanour… a most dangerous proceeding, totally subversive of the law, and if persevered in, might be the means of the entire dissolution of society.… It was absolutely necessary, for the preservation of the institutions of the country, that the payment of taxes should be enforced.”
Henry Hunt backed Fergusson up:
A man might refuse to pay the taxes, and allow his goods to be distrained; but that was not the question.
The question was, whether it was lawful for 150,000 persons to conspire together to refuse the payment of taxes.
But the matter did not stop there.
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.
Hunt then complained that some trickster (he accused “the Whigs” generically) had forged his signature to an order to his printer telling them to print up 1,000 copies of a broadside signed with his name and reading: “Englishmen, rouse yourselves!
Pay no rates nor taxes, until you get the Reform Bill.”
The Annual Register gave what it represented as a transcript of part of the rally held by the Birmingham Political Union while the House of Lords was going through the motions of contemplating the Reform Bill:
They were all acquainted with a peaceful, orderly, and most respectable body of men called Quakers, to whose example he wished specially to call the attention of the meeting.
This respectable sect of Christians refused to support a parson, but, in their opposition, they did not knock out the brains of the tithe-collector — they simply suffered a distress to be levied upon their goods.
Now, if the Quakers refused to pay the tithes, the people generally might refuse to pay the taxes; and, if the bailiff came, he should like to know where they would find the auctioneer who would dare to sell, or the people who would dare to buy.
The voice of the auctioneer, he conceived, would be passive, not active; and rather than knocking down, he would be himself knocked down.
While upon this point, he could not but think of another glorious patriot, whose name and character, during a long night of despotism, shone bright as the day-star of British liberty, whose example ought to be as an encouraging beacon for their future guidance.
When Hampden refused the payment of ship-money, his gallant conduct electrified all England, and pointed out the way by which the people, when unanimous and combined, might rid themselves of an odious and oppressive oligarchy.
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
Mark my words — failing all other more constitutional means.
That volume also talks about the rioting that took place after the failure of Parliament to pass the Bill — rioting that seems, from the description, to have been strikingly methodical in its targeting of excise, toll, & customs houses, jails, and government buildings, starting with the Mansion House, moving on to the Council House, then to Bridewell prison where they “battered down the gates, rushed into the interior, liberated all the prisoners, and then set fire to the building.”
From there, they “attacked the new jail, while thousands looked on.
They carried and gutted the governor’s house, made their way into the yard, armed with hammers to break open the doors: all the prisoners — criminals as well as debtors — were forthwith set at liberty, amid the exulting shouts of the populace; and the jail, being thus emptied, was immediately set on fire, with all its adjuncts of tread-mill, chapel, and governor’s house.”
The rioters leaving the jail burning, and setting fire, on their way, to various toll-houses, next carried, without resistance, the Gloucester county prison, liberated its inmates, and then set it on fire — sending off a detachment to aid the conflagration of the Bridewell, one wing of which seemed otherwise likely to escape.
They torched the already ransacked Mansion House next, and the home of an anti-Reform bishop.
In Queen square:
They reached the Custom-house, an immense building, left utterly unprotected.
Its whole extent was forthwith added to the burning mass.… [T]he Excise-office… shared, unprotected and unresisted, the fate of the Custom-house.
The Political Unions became bolder and more organized, and a national Political Union formed.
On it (and “all such associations”) was banned.
It (and they) ignored the ban.
The idea which originated in Birmingham, of refusing to pay taxes until compelled by a distraint upon the chattels, has been seized upon and adopted by a number of people of Manchester and Salford, who have resolved to resist the payment of taxes in money.
The following placard has been posted, and the declaration has already received a thousand signatures:—
Distraint for Taxes.
The undersigned inhabitants of Manchester and Salford, having been always taught that no taxes are legal which are not imposed by the consent of their representatives, and having seen it solemnly pronounced in repeated votes of the House of Commons, that the majority of that House, being nominees of borough proprietors, are not the representatives of the people, hereby declare 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.
“Stopping the supplies,” which had never been dreamt of since the revolution of , was now, by the highest authority, promulgated, not merely as a theoretical possibility, but as an actual occurrence; and men, who had never before heard that combination of words, or who had never affixed any practical meaning to the expression if they had ever heard it, were surprised and delighted to be thus invested with a new and most formidable instrument of popular power: and accordingly, when, in , the monarch showed some intention of having an opinion of his own, the fraudulent device of the year before was brought into actual operation, and “stop the supplies” was the watchword by which the revolutionary party endeavoured to collect and consolidate their opposition to the King and the Peerage.
From this was deduced a corollary, also recommended by lordly authority, that not only ought parliament to stop the supplies, but that individuals were justified in refusing to pay the taxes imposed by law.
These monstrous propositions have had no immediate effect, but we are much mistaken if they will not hereafter rank amongst the foremost mischiefs created by these madmen.
The idea has, by being familiarised to the public mind, lost much of the alarm and terror which it ought to create; and the idea of stopping the supplies, first broached by the Lord High Chancellor, and the individual right of refusing to pay taxes, asserted first by the brother and mere creature of the Lord High Chancellor, and then by a more important person, the noble colleague and nearest friend of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will, instead of being the ultima ratio populi, become the ordinary and common mode of expressing public dissent from the policy of the king and the government!
We need not waste words in proving that such principles can lead to nothing but anarchy; not merely to the overthrow of the existing constitution and the monarchy — that we believe the Reform Bill has done — but to absolute and uncontrollable anarchy.
By 1834, the battle for the Reform Bill had been won, and the Whigs, who rode the Reform sentiment to victory, cemented power and turned on the radicals who had put their necks on the line to give them the opportunity.
Or so was the opinion of Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine:
The Solicitor-General addressed the Jury.
“This was an information filed against the defendants, proprietor and printer of The True Sun, for the publication in that paper of two malicious and seditious libels, in which the people of this country were called upon to resist the payment of the assessed taxes; and also, for a libel tending to bring the House of Commons into contempt with the people of this realm! … We complain that this publication undisguisedly exhorts the people to open violation of the law — that there is not an attempt made in it to discuss the justice or injustice of the taxes which the people are called on to resist, but that it seditiously incites them to an illegal resistance by physical force.”
But here was the text of that exhortation:
The majority of last night has decided that the rich shall not be taxed according to their means, and that the poor shall continue to be taxed beyond theirs.
It has decided that the amount which every man is called upon to pay to Government shall not be regulated according to his property.
What then remains to be done?
The House has rescinded its own resolution of Friday, the people must rescind the resolution of the House on Thursday — they must refuse to pay what they can only pay at the expense of their common ruin.
The refusal to pay taxes a few months ago re-seated the wretched Whigs in power — a second refusal will unseat them.
The Whig Government has taken the advantage of such a step; let it take the adverse consequences of it.
Let the people for once avail themselves of the example of a Lord.
Let them look for precedents in an emergency even among the Peerage.
Let them do as Lord Milton did, and resist the tax-gatherer; and above all things let the men of the metropolis be the first to follow the aristocratic example, by refusing to submit longer to the infamous inequality and injustice of the House and Window Taxes.
The Ministers themselves have denounced these taxes — let the people quietly proceed to extinguish them, and they will.
Ecce signum. Several private meetings have been held in different parts of the metropolis, by the tradesmen and householders, on the subject of the house and window duties, which were attended by several brokers; each of the parishioners spoke with a firm determination to resist those oppressive taxes for the future.
The tax-gatherer, they said, 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.
… Let the metropolis “stop the supplies.”
The defense noted that no less a newspaper than the Times had published words supporting tax resistance, like the following:
It may not be generally known, that during the late crisis, one person, and that one of station and rank, was ready to set a patriotic example in resisting a Government opposed to the just rights of the people.
When a tax-gatherer called on Lord Milton last week, he requested the tax-gatherer to call again, because he was not sure that circumstances might not arise which might make it necessary for him to resist payment.
or
The Anti-Reformers will soon be taught by severe chastisement, that the only real force which can be brought to bear upon this vast question of national interest is in the people, and in them alone.
If, under the direct injunctions of their constituents, the House of Commons stop the supplies, where stands the Tory Government?
If the shrewd and resolute people of this country, combining for the execution of that scheme of passive resistance which in Ireland has baffled all the dexterity of the law, should refuse to pay taxes, where, we repeat, would be the conservative Government?
or
The accounts from every quarter of England are awful.
Birmingham refuses to pay taxes; Manchester refuses to pay taxes; Westminster and London, there is reason to believe, will not pay taxes until the Reform Bill is passed.
But will this dry rot in the foundation of all Government — this famine of the State — be confined to the above three spots, however great and popular?
No, unquestionably; for the sentiment is everywhere, the obligation to non-payment is felt throughout the kingdom, by a large majority of men of all ranks, as the most sacred of political duties.
I have seen a letter from the man whom I consider the most influential man in England, Thomas Attwood of Birmingham, proposing an association to collect the names of persons in London who will pledge themselves to pay no more taxes if ministerial interference should produce the probability of a war with Belgium, and I believe something of the kind will be done.
There has long been growing a disposition to refuse paying taxes, but it is only now that rich men who have any influence have countenanced it.
Now there are many such willing to take part in it.
Now mark the consequences.
If any considerable portion of the housekeepers were to refuse paying taxes, and especially if this were to happen in London, a revolution would be effected in a week, in spite of the Government and the army.
If taxes were refused it would instantly produce a panic, Bank of England notes would no longer circulate, and Government would be powerless.
No one would bring a sack of flour, a bullock or a sheep, to the London markets.
The moment taxes were really refused the shops would be all closed, decent people would remain at home until the populace and the soldiers had fought and were reconciled.
A provisional government would thus be formed — no man can tell what fortuitous circumstances may produce a revolution…
In , Mr. Thomas Attwood and his friends had founded the formidable “Birmingham Political Union of the Middle and Lower Classes,” with a Populist programme, to use the American term, of manhood suffrage and paper money.
In regard to the proposal to refuse to pay taxes, Place wrote, “I was induced to put Attwood’s proposition into a form which, if not strictly legal, was yet not punishable, as his certainly was, by all who should sign it.
I therefore wrote out a declaration in a very few words, thus:— ‘That in the event of the present ministers so misconducting the affairs of the country as to make it probable we shall be involved in a Continental war, we will consider the propriety of checking so mischievous an event by withholding the means as far as may lay in our power, and will then consider whether or not refusing to pay direct taxes may not be advisable.’
This was readily agreed to by a great many of the most prosperous shopkeepers, and by many other persons of property and influence.”
I hadn’t realized (or maybe I’d forgotten) that the tax resistance campaigns of the Political Unions for the Reform Bill had been born as war tax resistance campaigns against an anticipated war in Belgium.
Tax resistance is a time-honored tactic of nonviolent resistance, but it has
also been used by movements or individuals that had little interest in holding
to nonviolence. History gives us plenty of examples of people violently
resisting taxation.
Today I’ll give some examples of attacks on tax offices, many of which were
violent or included intimidation by threats of violence.
Bomb threats and “mysterious white powder”-type incidents
Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve kept half an eye on the news for examples
of IRS
offices being evacuated by explicit bomb threats or suspicious packages. Here
are some examples:
: “The
FBI
is investigating after a mysterious white powder was sent to the
IRS
mail room in Fresno. The discovery forced the mail room to shut down for
about three-and-a-half-hours
afternoon.”
: “A hazardous materials
scare forced a huge evacuation Tuesday of the
IRS
center in southeast Fresno. A mailroom employee thought he was opening a
regular letter from a taxpayer. But when he opened it, a white powder
spilled all over him.”
: “A letter containing a white
powder and a note mentioning anthrax forced federal authorities to shut
down the mailroom of the Kansas City IRS headquarters.… ‘We do not think
this is going to be anthrax or any other biological agent, but we have to
treat this to the Nth degree,’ Herndon said, adding that a field test
found the substance likely to be talcum powder.”
: “Officials have given the
‘all clear’ after a letter containing a suspicious powder was received in
the mailroom at the
IRS
office in the John Duncan Federal Office Building in Knoxville.”
: “Someone apparently trying
to make a political statement caused a brief stir Tuesday at the Boulder
office of U.S.
Rep. Jared Polis. …
The Boulder Fire Department Hazardous Materials Team responded and opened
the envelope. They found a tea bag inside, with a note reading, ‘We the
People, .’ ”
: “A package of foot powder
mailed from a prison ZIP code caused
250 workers to be evacuated Thursday from [the building containing the
IRS
offices] in the Flair Park area of El Monte.”
: “Michelle Lowry… who processes
forms for the
IRS
in Austin, confronts that venom regularly. People slip razor blades and
pushpins into the same envelopes as their W-2 forms. They send nasty notes
with their crumpled documents. Last year during the height of the Tea
Party movement, hundreds of taxpayers included — what else? — tea bags
with their returns. And then there’s the weird stuff. ‘Sometimes you’ll
see stuff that looks like blood on them,’ said Lowry, who has worked as a
seasonal employee for five years. ‘We wear gloves.’ … She’s been through
evacuations caused by suspicious items in the mail, such as white powder.
(It turned out to be packing material.)”
: “A suspicious substance
discovered Monday at an Internal Revenue Service building is not
hazardous, a
U.S. Postal
Inspection Service official said. A portion of an office building that
houses an Internal Revenue Service mail processing center was evacuated
after an unknown substance was found about
11:15 a.m.” “ ‘There was an envelope
that appeared to have seeds inside,’ Buttars said. ‘What it was is not
known yet.’ ”
: “Hundreds of people had to
evacuate, and dozens of downtown businesses were disrupted, all because of
a suspicious package found near the
IRS
building — the contents of which were soon found to be harmless.”
: “Fox 4 reported that this was
the second day in a row that workers had found a suspicious package. On
Sunday, a powdery substance was found in an envelope (it wasn’t anything
threatening).”
: “The FBI
is now investigating a discovery at Ogden’s James V. Hansen Federal
Building that caused a scare, and the evacuation of more than 200
employees.”
: “An inspector at the Fresno
IRS
noticed a package in the mail room with a suspicious odor. … The Fresno
PD Bomb
squad was called in and the contents inside the package were an unknown
type of feces.”
: “Workers at a downtown
Oklahoma City
IRS
building and people inside the Colcord Hotel were allowed to return after
police investigated a suspicious package that was found Monday
morning.”
Note that in many of these cases, there was no deliberate threat involved, but
merely an over-cautious reaction based on previous threats. For example: The
tactic of including a tea bag with your tax paperwork as a form of protest
alluding to the Boston Tea Party has been a periodic American craze for over
sixty years, but nowadays any tea-bag-sized lumps in envelopes are an occasion
for a very disruptive evacuation and visit from the
hazmat team.
And then there’s this:
: “Angry New Zealand farmers are
reportedly sending parcels of cattle manure to cabinet ministers in a
campaign against a so-called “flatulence tax” on their animals. New
Zealand Post said it was treating the campaign “as seriously as
cyanide”…”
Actual bombings and other attacks
In addition to these mailed threats and suspicious packages, most of which
turn out to be bluffs, there have been cases of indisputably real attacks on
tax offices. For example:
In , a letter bomb exploded
in the hands of the director general of Equitalia, a quasi-private
company that handles taxes in Italy. The following month, three bombs
went off outside Equitalia’s offices in Naples. In
another branch was
struck with molotov cocktails. “The phrases ‘Thieves’ and ‘Death to
Equitalia’ were sprayed onto outside walls.”
A couple of years back, a fellow named Joe Stack loaded up his small plane
with fuel and flew it into the offices of the
IRS,
torching the building and killing an
IRS
employee (in addition to himself). National Treasury Employees Union
president Colleen Kelley said that after Joe Stack’s kamikaze attack,
“there were calls where taxpayers said they were thinking of ‘taking
flying lessons’ in the context of an audit or a collection. There are 70
that have been reported.”
During the Poll Tax rebellion, “In Cambridgeshire two petrol bombs were
thrown at the Poll Tax Headquarters and Anti-Poll Tax slogans were sprayed
on the side of the building…”
A patrol moves around ruins of the income tax office in Jerusalem after a
bomb wrecked the building.
, Jewish independence fighters
bombed an income tax office in Palestine, killing a constable, and
injuring five others. “All employes had been evacuated from the building
following a telephone warning 10 minutes before the blast. Police said
three Jews, one dressed as an Arab, pushed a bomb-laden, Arab-type
delivery cart into the building and fled, after clubbing a Jewish
policeman and snatching a rifle from an Arab guard. Police tried to drag
the cart from the building, but the rope parted. They said they then
detonated the bomb with rifle fire, but ‘miscalculated the charge.’ ”
In , the Railway Protection Movement in
Sichuan destroyed tax offices there.
In St. Claire county,
Missouri, in , “a gang of armed men rode into the county seat of Osceola and held tax officials at gunpoint while its members stole all the official tax records. … The gang destroyed the tax records, and that meant that the county had no way of taxing anyone.” A year and a half later: “Around midnight on , an armed gang forced Deputy Treasurer K.B. Wooncott to take its members to the county offices. The gang seized the railroad tax book and escaped into the night.”
During the rioting that followed the British parliament’s failure to pass
the Reform Bill in , the mob burned the
Custom-house and Excise-office, along with many other government
buildings.
In Hippolyte Taine’s history of the French Revolution, he includes many
examples of attacks on tax offices:
“the crowd, rushing off to the barriers, to the gates of Sainte-Claire
and Perrache, and to the Guillotière bridge, burn or demolish the
bureaux, destroy the registers, sack the lodgings of the clerks, carry
off the money and pillage the wine on hand in the depôt.”
“At Limoux, under the pretext of searching for grain, they enter the
houses of the comptroller and tax contractors, carry off their
registers, and throw them into the water along with the furniture of
their clerks.”
“at Aupt and at Luc nothing remains of the weighing-house but the four
walls; at Marseilles the house of the slaughter-house contractor, at
Brignolles that of the director of the leather excise, are sacked: the
determination is ‘to purge the land of excise-men.’ ”
“…the windows of the excise office are smashed, and the public notices
are torn down…”
“During the months of , the tax offices are burnt in almost every town in the
kingdom.”
“Without waiting, however, for any legal measures, they take the
authority on themselves, rush to the toll-houses and drive out the
clerks…”
“…the pillagers who, on the
, set fire to the tax offices…”
Taine also notes that “in Issoudun after , against the combined imposts[, s]even or
eight thousand vine-dressers burnt the archives and tax-offices and dragged
an employé through the streets, shouting out at each street-lamp, ‘Let him be
hung!’ ”
In Naples in , a tax revolt expressed
itself with attacks on tax offices: “On one beautiful summer night the custom-house in the great market-place flew up into the air. A quantity of powder had been conveyed into it by unknown hands, and in the morning nothing remained but the blackened ruins.” “the populace proceeded from fruit to stones, put to flight the tax-gatherers and sbirri, crowded into the custom-house, destroyed the table and chairs, set fire to the ruins as well as the account-books, so that soon a bright flame rose up amidst the loud rejoicings of the bystanders.” The archbishop, under pressure from the crowd, “ordered them aloud, and in the presence of all, to pull down the custom-houses”
Nonviolent blockades and occupations
Nonviolent tactics have also been directed at disrupting tax offices.
I mentioned
the “Free Keene”
activists in New Hampshire who were arrested for entering an
IRS
office and trying to convince the employees there to resign their positions.
Here are some other examples:
Anti-war demonstrators used handcuffs to lock the doors of an
IRS
building in Rochester, New York, for about a half hour in
.
Poll Tax resisters in Glasgow occupied a tax office, and, as the staff
retreated, took their places at the walk-up windows. One of the occupiers,
John Cooper, remembers: “I just sat down at the desk and said through the
glass, ‘Can I help you?’ I says, ‘It’s okay; you don’t need to pay any
more, it’s abolished!’ and the guy says, ‘Are you sure?’ I says, ‘I’m
positive. You know what I’d do with this money: go and spend it, have a
good time.’ He says, ‘You’re having me on.’ I could see the guy was still
uncertain, so there was a bunch of pads for phone messages — I ripped one
of them off and said, ‘If there’s any bother just send that in to
us.’ ”
Another group of anti-war activists, including representatives from the
War Resisters League and NWTRCC,
performed a sit-down blockade at
IRS
headquarters for about an hour in .
From The Sydney Monitor of comes this brief note about tax resistance accompanying Reform Bill agitation in Britain:
, and on , a number of the inhabitants of St. Margaret’s and St. John’s Westminster, when applied to by the King’s tax-gatherer for the payment of taxes, refused in most unqualified terms. In some instances, the tax collector begged and entreated as a friend, that the parties would pay him.
Not until the Reform Bill is passed! was the general reply.
A number of the inhabitants had notices placed to that efiect in their windows.
The determination is becoming more general every hour.
Tax resistance campaigns have found it useful to identify resonances with popular myths, esteemed tax rebellions of yore, and semi-fictional heroes.
Here are some examples:
Just about every tax revolt in the United States (and many elsewhere as well) appropriates the example of the Boston Tea Party as an evocative reminder of a grassroots uprising, the recent “Taxed Enough Already” TEA Party movement being just the latest of many, many examples.
John Hampden pictured on a banner of the Women’s Tax Resistance League
In Spain, the tancament de caixes plays a similar role to the Tea Party in America, with modern Spanish tax resisters comparing their campaigns with that legendary struggle.
In England (and the British empire), John Hampden has long been the exemplar of choice, with his example being used from South Africa to Ireland to India to prove that celebrated patriots can refuse to pay their taxes.
The phrase “no taxation without representation” has such resonance, especially in the descendant nations of the British Empire, that it gets trotted out even to support tax resistance campaigns in which representation isn’t really an issue at all.
It was especially potent in the American revolution and in the women’s suffrage movements.
The Rebecca Rioters in Wales, painting their faces and dressing in drag to destroy tollgates and mete out justice in the middle of the nineteenth century, were tapping into a folkloric form of grassroots justice that was centuries old.
“Jack a Lents” painted their faces and dressed in women’s clothing to tear down turnpikes in England a century before, and I’ve found references to protesters led by men in women’s clothing and using the shared pseudonym of “Lady Skimmington” in the Western Rising in England a century before that.
Resistance to the “Foreign Miners Tax” in California in gave birth to the myth of Joaquin Murieta, a sort of Robin Hood-like outlaw who became a desperado when he was forced off his claim by the tax.
The Robin Hood myth itself has taken on a tax resistance theme in recent years.
The popular Disney animated version of the Robin Hood story makes the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham a tax collector, and Robin Hood’s robbery of him a case of redistributing the taxes back to the people they’d been seized from:
While he taxes us to pieces And he robs us of our bread King Richard’s crown keeps slippin’ down Around that pointed head Ah!
But while there is a merry man in Robin’s wily pack We’ll find a way to make him pay And steal our money back
Urban legends helped to fuel tax resistance during the French Revolution.
Rumors that the King had abolished taxes led people to refuse payment or to destroy the obsolete offices and apparatus of taxation.
Here is a similar example from Russia (as found in James C. Scott’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance):
After the emancipation [of the serfs] in , the peasants in Biezdne (Kazan Province) were demoralized to discover that with redemption payments, labor dues, and taxes their burdens were, if anything, heavier than before.
When one of their number claimed that the emancipation decree granted them complete freedom from such dues — the term volia (freedom) appeared in many contexts in the decree — but that the squires and officials had kept it from being implemented, they leapt at the opportunity, now sanctioned from on high, to refuse payment.
The myth of the czar’s benevolence, which was of course promoted by the czarist government, could backfire in this way when peasants refused to pay onerous taxes or obey other commands of the czar’s subordinates, under the theory that because the czar was so good he could not possibly have ordered such terrible things:
Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the myth was its plasticity in the hands of its peasant adherents.
First and foremost, it was an invitation to resist any or all of the czar’s supposed agents, who could not have been carrying out the good czar’s wishes if they imposed heavy taxes, conscription, rents, military corvée, and so forth.
If the czar only knew of the crimes his faithless agents were committing in his name, he would punish them and rectify matters.
When petitions failed and oppression continued, it may simply have indicated that an impostor — a false czar — was on the throne.
In such cases, the peasants who joined the banners of a rebel claiming to be the true czar would be demonstrating their loyalty to the monarchy.
… In a form of symbolic jujitsu, an apparently conservative myth counseling passivity becomes a basis for defiance and rebellion…
Scott also talks (e.g. in his paper Everyday Forms of Resistance) about how “much of the folk culture of the peasant ‘little tradition’ amounts to a legitimation, or even a celebration, of [resistance]…”
In this and other ways (e.g. tales of bandits, tricksters, peasant heroes, religious myths, carnivalesque parodies of authorities) the peasant subculture helps to underwrite dissimulation, poaching, theft, tax evasion, evasion of conscription, and so on.
While folk culture is not coordinational in any formal sense, it often achieves a “climate of opinion” which, in other more institutionalized societies, might require a public relations campaign.
The very name “Poll Tax,” which came to be the most widely-accepted name for what Thatcher’s government hoped would go down as the “community charge,” was a potent propaganda coup for the resistance movement.
Danny Burns, a chronicler of that successful tax rebellion, says that “the story of [Wat Tyler’s] peasants revolt against the Poll Tax in 1381 was told in virtually every meeting.
Calling on these traditions was an important part of explaining why non-cooperation was needed…” Signs that people would hang in their windows reading “No Poll Tax Here” also hearkened back to the tax resistance accompanying the Reform Act agitation in the .
Today, tax resistance actions like the ongoing Household Tax resistance in Ireland compare themselves in turn to the successful Poll Tax revolt.
The Lady Godiva myth concerns a “noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants.”
A motley variety of myths about “common law,” about the True Constitution, about the significance of fringed edges to flags, and other what-not, fuel the often bizarre Constitutionalist tax protester movement in the United States.
Sometimes the decisive turn in a tax resistance campaign has come when the resisters have coalesced into a formal group with the authority to organize and coordinate resistance actions.
Today I’ll give some examples of this.
The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia formed in the to fight taxes associated with a recently-enacted Road Act, and, once organized, the League was successful in its fight.
Organizer Jonathan Norman remarked to a meeting of the League in : “They had before them an example of what might be achieved by union.
In everything they had been victorious; the dray-tax. which from time to time was threatened to be enforced, was ultimately abandoned altogether.
The various memorials from the different hundreds, backed by the memorial of the united delegates, had caused the Government to introduce an amended Act, which promised almost everything they desired.”
When Charles Ⅹ and his ministers threatened to bypass the elected legislature and start taxing and spending on their own initiative in , French liberals declared that since such actions violated the constitution, the people were under no obligation to pay for them with their taxes.
Taxed landholders in Brittany formed the “Breton Association” to coordinate their resistance.
This Association had a two-fold object.
They proposed, in the first place, to refuse to pay any illegal tax, and in the second place to raise by contribution a common fund for indemnifying any subscriber, whose property or person might suffer by reason of his refusal.
The members subscribed each ten francs.
In the event of any tax being imposed without the consent of the Chambers, or with the consent of a Chamber of Deputies created by any illegal alteration of the existing law, payment of the tax was to be refused, and the money subscribed was to be employed in defending and indemnifying the persons who should so refuse, and to prosecute all who might be concerned in the imposing, or the levying of such illegal taxes.
The association enacted a trigger mechanism for an organized tax strike and a process for collecting and distributing a mutual insurance fund.
In this way they were able to present a credible threat to the planned royal usurpation — so much so that the newspapers that dared to print the Association’s charter were prosecuted and their editors imprisoned.
This only served to fuel the movement: “The associations spread over the greater part of the kingdom; they embraced more than half the Chamber of Deputies, and a very considerable number of peers.”
The Rebeccaites formed Farmers Unions which met in secret to discuss the same sort of grievances that, in disguise, Rebecca and her sisters would address vigilante-style, and which corresponded with each other in a regional network.
One farmer said: “This Union among us is a very excellent thing if all join.
When they elect members of Parliament they do just as they please, and we have no voice, but here we have.
There is no way of putting things to rights till we get up this Union, and then we can do as we please and think best.
If we had had this Union many years ago we should be better off than we are now!”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League formed in when about twenty women from existing suffrage groups came together in London “with the single-minded aim of starting ‘an entirely independent society quite separate from any existing suffrage society with the object of spreading the principles of tax resistance.’ ” League organizer Margaret Kineton Parkes explained that it “included Suffragists from every camp, Conservative, Liberal, Socialist, as well as non-party, and was making every effort to get a large number of influential women to refuse to pay taxes” because “[t]he isolated refusal to pay was ineffective and only caused trouble to the refuser; but a large and unexpected number would cause considerable trouble to the Government and would bring the question at issue home to them.”
Elias Rishmawi was among those who organized tax resistance in Beit Sahour during the first intifada.
He remembers how important it was to have formed a network of committees so as to distribute communication and decision-making in anticipation of Israeli military disruption by means of curfews and arrests of the resistance leadership.
Direct action-oriented pacifists in the United States came together in to form Peacemakers.
“[T]his is not an attempt to organize another pacifist membership organization, which one joins by signing a statement or paying a membership fee,” they announced.
By the group had about 2,000 members, about 150 of which were resisting taxes.
A second group, War Tax Resistance, promoted the tactic within the anti-Vietnam War activist community.
In , the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee formed to help a variety of groups that included war tax resistance as part of their work to coordinate and share resources and expertise.
During the Great Depression in the United States, taxpayers’ leagues, some of which organized property tax strikes, proliferated in the thousands.
Such groups “spring up like mushrooms,” one critic complained, “every time you go out in the morning, you find more of them.”
These leagues attacked the taxes on multiple fronts — not only organizing tax strikes but also coordinating legal suits and pressuring political figures.
A proposed sales tax boycott in Ottawa in
was boosted by the group Human Action to Limit Taxes.
“As individuals we are lost,” one resister said.
“But as a group we would have some impact.”
In the Birmingham Political Union of the Middle and Lower Classes formed.
It would play a strong role — and would advocate tax resistance — in the battle to pass the Reform Act of .
But it also began as a war tax resistance group, asking its members to sign the following oath:
That in the event of the present ministers so misconducting the affairs of the country as to make it probable we shall be involved in a Continental war [with Belgium], we will consider the propriety of checking so mischievous an event by withholding the means as far as may lay in our power, and will then consider whether or not refusing to pay direct taxes may not be advisable.
Similarly, the Catalonian “National Union” began life as a committee to direct a tax resistance action in and grew into the organizing party for an ambitious reform movement: “its demands included the entire reorganization of the vital forces of the nation: fiscal and administrative reform, the amelioration of the judicial system, the introduction of an effective system of compulsory education, the improvement of the provincial governments.”
A variety of local groups, with independent organizations, were key to the victory of the Anti-Poll Tax movement.
In Danny Burns’s book on the Poll Tax Rebellion, he stresses how important it was for the success of the campaign that people formed and ran their own small-scale, neighborhood resistance groups, rather than ceding control of the movement to the various established left-wing partisan and labor-union groups who wanted to use the movement to their own ends but were also afraid to identify themselves too closely with the law-breaking resisters.
Prior to the Anti-Poll Tax campaign, many people’s only experience of politics was a traditional Labour Party or trade union meeting — the sort of meeting where the top table takes up 90% of the discussion; where the only items discussed are those decided by the executive committee; where half the meeting time is spent discussing procedural motions or the order of words in a resolution; where political factions throw rhetoric across the room in angry and unproductive exchanges.
Essentially, boring meetings which stretch long into the night.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been to these meetings just once and never returned.
To engage people in a mass campaign, the Anti-Poll Tax Unions had to challenge this culture of organisation.
They had to make people feel wanted and included and give everyone a sense that they had a role.… This immediate form of organisation also meant that people weren’t patronised by those who had political experience.
In the local groups, people didn’t need permission to act, they just had to get on the phone to their neighbours and get something going.
People stay involved in political campaigns if they can contribute in the way that they feel is most effective.
Very often this is not by sitting in boring meetings.
…most of the successful Anti-Poll Tax Unions operated on a principle of parallel development.
Rather than trying to assert majority control or spend hours reaching consensus, people were allowed to get on with what they thought was most important.
Everything could be done in the name of the Anti-Poll Tax Union, which existed to coordinate activity against the Poll Tax, not to specify its exact nature.
However, he also notes:
…it was sometimes in the places where the Anti-Poll Tax Unions were weakest that resistance was strongest.
For example, St. Pauls was almost the only area in Bristol which couldn’t sustain an Anti-Poll Tax group.
Local people didn’t feel the need to set up new groups because, as in many inner city areas, they already had strong networks of solidarity, and there was already a high level of general hostility to officials of any sort.
… By the end of , three times as many people had turned up to court to contest their cases from St. Pauls than any other area.
White supremacists in Louisiana met in
to form “The People’s Association to Resist Unconstitutional Taxation” to coordinate their resistance to state and city taxes enacted by the reconstruction government there, and to provide legal support for resisters.
Property owners of Silver Lake Assembly met in to decide how to respond to a property tax they felt was being illegally put over on them by a government with no authority to do so.
They decided to respond as a group, “and perfected an organization for the purpose,” issuing a resolution saying that they “individually and collectively will resist the payment of the so-called taxes.”
As internet telephony started to become a real option several years ago, some American war tax resisters realized they could avoid the federal excise tax on telephone service by getting rid of their phone lines and switching over to such internet-based plans.
In , as the U.S. was launching its attack on Iraq, anti-war activists from other countries began to promote a boycott of the products of U.S. government contractors, and even of U.S. companies in general.
“The U.S. economy is strung out across the globe,” wrote Arundhati Roy.
“Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable.
Our strategy must be to isolate Empire’s working parts and disable them one by one.
No target is too small.
No victory too insignificant.”
When the Continental Congress imposed a tax on postage stamps to help pay for the revolutionary war effort, Quaker James Mott decided to stop using the mail.
He wrote to a friend:
Must our correspondence by mail be at end, in consequence of the extra postage?
or shall we pay it, and thereby contribute a mite to the support of measures calculated to destroy men’s lives and property?
Perhaps I may be alone in refusing to pay postage on letters.
Only a few cents — what can this do, it may be said, towards enabling government to prosecute the war?
Very little, I own: but the great sum required is made up of littles; and if all those littles are withheld, the effusion of human blood may be at an end. …
I cannot… believe it best for me to pay the present demand of additional postage, little as it is, and alone as I may stand.
Many years later, Congress issued revenue stamps that had to be purchased and applied to certain types of documents.
One Quaker wrote in :
I am one of those (I suppose there are others), who have felt an extreme unwillingness to help maintain our wars by the use of the revenue stamps, which were legalized expressly for war uses.
Our forefathers would have made an emphatic protest against it, if indeed they would not have refused entirely to use the stamps, and borne the consequences, whatever they might have been.
… at least we could restrict the use of checks (for example) wherever possible, and diminish in this way our contributions to the war fund.
Other Quakers began refusing to use or to deal in imported goods, so as to avoid paying import duties that were being directed to military expenses.
Joshua Evans wrote:
About , I understood a law was made for raising money to defray the expenses of war, by means of a duty laid on imported articles of almost every kind. …
I had felt myself restrained, for thirty or forty years, from paying such taxes; the proceeds whereof were applied, in great measure, to defray expenses relating to war: and, as herein before-mentioned, my refusal was from a tender conscientious care to keep clear in my testimony against all warlike proceedings.
Quaker shopkeeper Isaac Martin decided to stop dealing in imported goods rather than pay an import duty:
[A] weighty concern attended my mind on account of a tax on shop keepers, who dealt in foreign articles, to be appropriated towards carrying on the war against England.
I felt much scrupulous in my mind, respecting the consistency thereof with our peaceable principles. …
I believed my peace of mind would be affected, if I paid the said tax.
So I resigned myself to the Lord’s will, let the event be as it may.
But scarcely a day passed, that I had not to turn customers away, who applied for articles which I had on hand, but could not sell, on account of the heavy penalty.
Quaker meetings also had a policy of warning their members against “sharing or partaking in the spoils of war by purchasing or selling prize-goods” — that is, goods seized from the ships of enemy nations by government-sanctioned pirates.
Government bonds are an obvious boycott target for people trying to restrict the resources available to the government.
John Payne wrote a tract in entreating Quakers to divest from government bonds that went to pay for wars:
[T]he King [once] had the power of summoning the barons to the field, and the barons their retainers: by these means armies were raised, fields fought, and blood-stained laurels acquired.
But now immense sums are wanted; and without them War would be an impossibility.
The magnitude of the money necessary, infinitely exceeds any resource which the kingdom can immediately supply: therefore the ingenuity of ministers has recourse to the aid of Funding; that is, of establishing a fictitious capital, which shall bear a certain rate of interest; and any person, purchasing of Government a portion of this fictitious capital, is put into the receipt of interest according to the sum he purchases, and the country is burthened with taxes to support the payment of such interest.
No man hazards his veracity by saying that War cannot be now supported without the Funding System.
As no man then can deny this solemn truth, is it not astonishing to find Quakers holders of stock, not only in their individual, but in their collective capacity?
What then is the conclusion?
The Quakers, at the time they declare their fundamental principles prohibit War, are actively and voluntarily supplying the only prop by which the modern system of War is supported.
Payne himself went even further.
Eager to avoid as much as possible paying money to the British government that was fighting the American revolutionary war, he bricked up a third of the windows of his home to reduce his property tax (which was assessed based on the number of windows), he disabled his coach to avoid its license fee, and he rode miles out of his way to avoid road tolls.
Upset at the government siphoning off a portion of pew rents in establishment churches “to relieve the embarrassments in the city finances, occasioned by an extravagant self-elected magistracy,” some people in Edinburgh around the time of the Annuity Tax resistance there proposed also refusing to rent pews until government spending were to become more responsible.
The “Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions” movement aims to boycott businesses that profit from Israeli settlement expansion in occupied Palestine.
The “Potato Movement” in Greece is trying to circumvent the over-taxed middle-men of the above-ground commercial market by directly connecting producers and buyers in a way that is mutually-beneficial to them and less profitable to the state.
The British government’s enforced monopoly on tea imports into the American colonies was “equal to a tax” in the eyes of Samuel Adams and his fellow patriots.
Boycotts of monopoly tea were widespread, and were famously backed up by acts like the Boston Tea Party, in which monopoly tea was destroyed in bulk.
Other monopoly British imports that suffered from American boycott included house paint, cloth, glass, paper, and dye.
One patriotic song included the lyric:
The use of the taxables, let us forbear:—
(Then merchants import till your stores are all full,
May the buyers be few, and your traffic be dull!)
Boycotts of British-monopoly goods like salt were also, of course, big parts of the Indian independence campaign led by Gandhi.
During the tax resistance and protests that accompanied the campaign for the Reform Act of , “associations were proposed of persons who would undertake to use no excisable articles.”
In Russia around the time of the Vyborg Manifesto, a report noted that “the peasants are deciding to boycott all state-owned businesses.”
For example: “they have undertaken a concerted abstention from vodka, the manufacture and sale of which intoxicant was made a Government monopoly… [which] has since constituted one of the principal sources of the public revenue.”
Another report said that “[t]he leaders of the workingmen’s organization have taken the lead in placing fresh obstacles in the way of the government raising money at home by advising their followers to refuse to use spirits upon which the government collects an enormous tax.”
In the Vietnam era, “[o]ne pacifist, imprisoned for draft refusal and therefore lacking income to refuse taxes on, gave up smoking because the cigarette tax brings the [U.S.] government more revenue than any other single consumer-commodity tax.”
Another possibility is to obstruct the sale of such goods:
In Wales, truckers blockaded a Chevron refinery and called upon the tanker operators to join them in shutting it down, to protest the government’s tax on fuel.
Farmers in Argentina decided in to “halt sales of grains and livestock for a week, setting up roadblocks and hampering exports to press for lower taxes.”
In Greece, recently, resisters to taxes that were added to utility bills have barricaded the offices of utility companies.
A very frequently-used tactic of tax resistance campaigns is to take public oaths or sign public pledges of resistance.
This signals to potential resisters that they will not be alone, and is a show of defiance to the authorities.
I’ve collected dozens of examples, which I’ll summarize here:
When Gandhi launched his first satyagraha-based campaign in South Africa in , a member of the meeting asked everyone present to take a solemn oath of opposition.
Gandhi remarked:
There is no one in this meeting who can be classed as an infant or as wanting in understanding.
You are all well advanced in age and have seen the world; many of you are delegates and have discharged responsibilities in a greater or lesser measure.
No one present, therefore, can ever hope to excuse himself by saying that he did not know what he was about when he took the oath.
I know that pledges and vows are, and should be, taken on rare occasions.
A man who takes a vow every now and then is sure to stumble.
But if I can imagine a crisis in the history of the Indian community of South Africa when it would be in the fitness of things to take pledges, that crisis is surely now.
… Resolutions of this nature cannot be passed by a majority vote.
Only those who take a pledge can be bound by it.
This pledge must not be taken with a view to produce an effect on outsiders.
No one should trouble to consider what impression it might have upon the local Government, the Imperial Government, or the Government of India.
Every one must only search his own heart, and if the inner voice assures him that he has the requisite strength to carry him through, then only should he pledge himself and then only would his pledge bear fruit.
His entire speech, which reflects on vows and the responsibility of vow makers, is worth reading in this context.
In , “98 per cent of the merchants at Stuttgart and… 60 out of 60 merchants at DeWitt,” Arkansas, signed pledges to refuse to collect a new sales tax from their customers or to pay it to the government.
Also in , in Verdun (then a suburb of Montreal), 164 shopkeepers, including the mayor, signed a pledge to refuse to collect or pay a Montreal city sales tax.
, merchants in Gadsen, Alabama followed suit: gathering and voting unanimously to refuse to collect or pay a sales tax.
In Ghana, in , the Akuashongs met and “swore not to… pay any tax, even if the government should fight with them, and to make war with any party breaking the agreement.”
In several French newspapers printed the text of a pledge in which French liberals vowed to resist any taxes that the monarchy instituted without going through constitutional channels.
The newspapers were themselves prosecuted for this.
However, in court, they pointed out that the King himself, before he took the throne, had signed a tax resistance pledge of his own, along with three other members of the nobility, as a protest against republican infringements on their privileges.
In Castine, Maine, in , the pledge took the form of a vote: the town voted 125 to 65 at a specially-convened town meeting, to refuse to collect a school funding tax in defiance of a superior court order to do so.
In , some 5,000 businessmen in Belfast vowed to “keep back payment of all taxes which they can control, so long as any attempt to put into operation the provisions of the Home Rule Bill is persevered in.”
In the Women’s Tax Resistance League, members signed “pledge cards” that indicated which taxes they would be resisting if the government persisted in denying women the vote.
The Reform Act agitation really hit its stride in when a huge rally, 150,000 people strong, vowed as a group to stop paying taxes until the Act’s passage.
One account of the meeting read:
He declared before God, that, if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the reform measure failed, he should and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes, except by a levy upon his goods [tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes].
I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands [an immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering].
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent [not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated].
In South Africa’s “New Rush” in , a number of miners signed a pledge reading, in part, “I promise on my honour and in presence of the people that I shall not from this day forward — until released from this obligation by the officers of the League — pay any taxes or impositions whatsoever to the Government, id est, for the support and maintenance of the Government of this territory; and that I shall buy from, sell to, or deal with only such men as have also taken this pledge or obligation; and that 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.
At least 1,000 taxpayers in Elmira, New York, signed a declaration in saying that “The undersigned taxpayers… believing the county, city, and school tax rates as levied are too high, hereby refuse to pay until the budget has been thoroughly examined by the committee of the Taxpayers’ league.
We also refuse to pay penalties until such revision has been made and a lower tax adopted.”
500 taxpayers in Cadillac, Michigan, signed a petition in in which they vowed to refuse to pay taxes for two years unless the local government cut its budget by 20%.
In , 36 New Jersey residents signed their name to a petition to the home country in which they declared that they would refuse to pay any further taxes so long as a Roman Catholic was in charge of tax assessment.
At a “monster meeting” at Castlemaine in Australia in , a group of miners unanimously adopted a resolution to refuse to take out licenses.
Taxpayers in Zeehan, Tasmania, met in an open-air meeting in and passed a resolution stating that they “hereby express our solemn determination to passively resist the payment of the unjust income tax imposed by the late Government.”
A Queensland, Australia stealth tax on rural irrigation improvements, was resisted by the farmers there in , who, organized in groups called “Local Producers’ Associations,” passed motions vowing to resist.
For example, the Association in Rockhampton “unanimously decided that all members pledge themselves to offer passive resistance to the operation of the Act by refusing to make the required applications or to furnish any returns, or to make any payments as demanded by the Act.
Further, it was decided to invite all other LPAs and kindred bodies to adopt a similar attitude.”
, about twenty households near Paddock Wood, England, “signed a declaration to withhold [tax] payments” to protest the lack of government action against vagabonds camping in their neighborhood.
When the Russian Duma-in-exile issued the Vyborg manifesto in , calling on Russians to refuse to pay taxes to the Czarist autocracy, a number of villages responded by voting whether or not to heed the call and then taking the results of the vote as a pledge they were bound to abide by.
In , 149 members of a Catholic War Veterans post vowed to refuse to pay their real estate taxes unless the government dismissed a Communist Party member from his post as an advisor to the Borough President of Manhattan.
At a meeting of the Charleston Board of Trade in South Carolina in , the white supremacist group unanimously passed a series of resolutions declaring that they considered debts incurred by the reconstruction government to be illegitimate and that they would resist the payment of taxes meant to pay them off.
At a mass meeting of white supremacists in Louisiana in , they passed a resolution vowing that “we will pay no more taxes to State or city.”
Some resisters of Thatcher’s poll tax made their resistance dramatically public by burning their “final reminder notices” at demonstrations.
This tactic has been prominent in the American war tax resistance movement.
For example:
In the American pacifist group Peacemakers released a statement, signed by 59 members, in which “the undersigned state hereby that we are not going to pay our federal taxes.”
In , some 370 people signed a public oath saying “We will refuse to pay our federal income taxes voluntarily.”
In , more than five hundred writers and editors added their names to a war tax resistance pledge that appeared as a newspaper advertisement.
The names included James Baldwin, Noam Chomsky, Philip K. Dick, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Grace Paley, Susan Sontag, Benjamin Spock, Gloria Steinem, William Styron, Hunter S. Thompson, Thomas Pynchon, Betty Friedan, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Also in , a letter was circulated largely among academics, and signed by more than a dozen professors, among others, organized as the “No Tax for War Committee” in which the signatories pledged to “withhold all or part of the taxes due” and urged the recipients to join their public pledge.
Tax resistance campaigns have sometimes tried to amplify their impact by encouraging bank runs — that is, asking people to withdraw all of their savings from banks, preferably in hard currency.
Sometimes this is meant to directly reduce the assets available to the government, other times it is more of an attempt to harm the economic system and thereby hurt the government more indirectly.
If the government forbids people from withdrawing their own money, or is unable to meet the sudden demands for currency, the credibility of the banking system is called into question, which can make it difficult for the regime to continue in business.
If the government allows people to withdraw their money, and if enough of them do so, this reduces the capital available to the banks, reduces their ability to confidently loan money (for instance, to the government), and can have similar effects.
The government may respond to such a crisis by further degrading the currency, but the long-term effects of this can also serve to undermine the government.
In the final days of the agitation in the United Kingdom that led up to the Reform Act of , the movement in favor of the act augmented its tax resistance campaign with a run on the Bank of England.
London awoke one morning to find its walls plastered with posters reading “To stop the Duke: Go for Gold!” (“the Duke” being the Duke of Wellington, who opposed the Reform Act and who was beginning to form a new government).
About £1.8 million in gold was withdrawn from the Bank of England in the first days of the campaign (out of roughly £7 million in the Bank’s possession).
Some commentators believe this to have been the turning point in the campaign.
The King turned his back on the Duke, and invited Earl Grey to form a government with the authority to pass the Reform Act into law.
In , Russian socialists issued a manifesto in which they called on the proletariat to withdraw all of their savings from the banks in gold.
They billed this as an act of self-defense, saying that the government had squandered its reserves on speculation, leaving it no money to pay its bills.
The manifesto said that the wealthy had already sent their wealth abroad to avoid the coming collapse.
Some modern war tax resisters avoid depositing money in banks as more of a boycott than a bank run — because banks operate as war financiers, because bank deposits are particularly vulnerable to government seizure, and because the profits of banks are taxable.
There was an interesting thread about banking on a war tax resistance email list a couple of years back.
The “Move Our Money” project claims that it has convinced Americans to shift more than half a billion dollars from banks to credit unions.
“We stand against the bankers, CEOs and lobbyists who have hijacked our democracy to serve themselves at the expense of everyone else.”
One way a tax resistance campaign can claim victory is by convincing the government to either formally rescind the tax, or to recognize the legal validity of tax resistance.
Charles Ⅰ went around Parliament to create a new property tax, and John Hampden famously said “no” in .
He lost his court case, but the next Parliament legalized his resistance by voiding the “ship-writs” tax and declaring the court judgment against him invalid.
American Amish, after a long campaign of lobbying, lawsuits, civil disobedience, and public relations, successfully won an exemption to the U.S. social security system, including its tax, and also canceled the outstanding social security tax bills of 15,000 Amish resisters.
A number of pacifist groups, frequently including war tax resisters, have been trying to get their governments to recognize or legally formalize a right to conscientious objection to military spending that would permit conscientious objectors to pay their taxes in a way that would not pay for the military portion of the government’s budget: a “Peace Tax” as it were.
So far, none of these long-standing efforts — which have included legal challenges using a variety of arguments, lobbying, and appeals to international legal bodies — have borne much fruit.
Governments seem universally hostile to the idea, and those international legal bodies with any clout have been unwilling to push the point.
Besides this, it is difficult to separate a government’s military budget from the rest of its budget in a way that would make a separate “Peace Tax” plausible.
The American version of the “Peace Tax” legislation, for instance, would ironically result in more taxpayer money going to military projects.
Italy has an otto per mille tax, which people can designate either for their church or for “humanitarian and cultural projects” of the government’s choosing — this resembles the sort of plan the “Peace Tax” promoters have in mind, but Italy’s government cunningly declared its participation in the Iraq War a “humanitarian and cultural” project and siphoned the funds off that way.
A tax resister who was opposed to the death penalty came to an agreement with the state of Delaware in which the state permitted him to pay his state taxes into a fund designated for paying state tax refunds of other taxpayers, rather than into the general fund that funded the prison system and executions.
American Quaker war tax resister Joshua Evans was so persistent that eventually the tax collector gave up.
“I was told it was concluded that as I gave myself up very much to the service of Truth, it was not proper I should be troubled on account of military demands; and I understood my name was erased, or taken from their list.”
Occasionally something similar happens today, when because a war tax resister has so few assets, or those assets would take too much trouble to discover, the IRS formally lists the resister’s file as “uncollectible” and gives up the attempt to force payment.
After ten years, a delinquent income tax payment hits a statute of limitations and the U.S. government is generally forbidden to pursue the matter further.
American suffragist activist Sarah E. Wall resisted her taxes for 25 years, when finally, according to Susan B. Anthony, “I do not know exactly how it is now, but the assessor has left her name off the tax-list, and passed her by rather than have a lawsuit with her.”
Something similar happened to English suffragist tax resister Charlotte Despard and some others: “[T]he Government rather than go to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant ‘debtor,’ and attracting attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in several instances.
Mrs. Despard had had no application for taxes since she had been sold up last year.”
Ellen C. Sargent patiently pursued legal challenges in California to try to promote women’s suffrage with a “no taxation without representation” argument.
She began by petitioning the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for a refund of her property taxes, and then filed a lawsuit when this petition was denied (the lawsuit also failed).
When farmers in drought-ravaged regions of Argentina threatened a tax strike in , the government responded with a clever bit of ju-jitsu — it declared an agricultural emergency in the area which exempted those farmers from paying taxes.
Utah governor J. Bracken Lee stopped paying his federal income taxes in the hopes of prompting a Supreme Court test case that would invalidate what he considered to be extraconstitutional federal spending.
(The court declined to take his case.)
A group referred to as “the Texas housewives” resisted paying the social security tax on the salaries of their household help, and pursued a two-year parallel legal challenge to have the tax invalidated, before finally being turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Property tax resisters in Depression-era Chicago won a court case that found property assessments in the city to have been performed incorrectly — with $15 billion in property held by wealthy, well-connected Chicagoans somehow left off the rolls — thus effectively legalizing the resistance.
“As the matter stands,” a newspaper account put it, “citizens howled about their taxes, refused to pay them and a court upheld them.
They are in revolt with legal sanction.”
During the Land League’s rent strike in Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell reported that “a large majority of landlords” reduced the rents on their properties, “[which] shows that they did finally recognize the situation, and that they determined to make the best of it.”
When the Prussian quasi-autocracy tried to ignore the legislature and govern on its own, the legislature formally declared tax resistance to be legal, and said that the autocrats had no authority to raise or spend money.
Something similar happened in Russia half a century later, when the Czar dissolved the legislature, which then reconvened in Vyborg and called on the citizens to refuse to pay any more taxes to the Czar.
According to a book on war tax resistance: “In Russia became the first country to establish legislation exempting pacifists from paying war taxes.
Thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander Ⅰ to establish a cotton mill.
Because some of the employees were Quakers, a petition was submitted to the Czar from the employees asking for freedom of conscience and an exemption from military service, church taxes for war, etc. The Czar issued a certificate which read ‘His Imperial Majesty has given his gracious assent to this petition … all … shall be exempted from all civil and military taxes … the sect of Quakers may now and in future be freed from war taxes for the support of the Military…’ Two English Quakers visiting Russia in found these provisions still in effect.”
The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia began as a tax resistance and mutual insurance group, but was soon successful in convincing the government to rescind the offensive tax.
But history is also full of lessons about the foolishness of trusting the government when it responds to your tax resistance campaign by insisting that it’s on your side and wants to help.
For example:
When tax resistance leader Wat Tyler was assassinated while negotiating with the King in , the king boldly went out to the enraged crowd and told it that he would be their leader and would press for their demands.
Instead, he waited for the fuss to die down, then executed some of the other leaders of the rebellion.
When the Whigs were whisked into power in the wake of the Reform Act agitation around , the tax resistance movement celebrated its victory… only to find that the Whigs could be just as tyrannical about prosecuting those who promoted tax resistance as their Tory cousins.
The recent American TEA Party was quickly coöpted by the Republican Party, which learned how to lead it by the nose with witless rhetoric, but conceded nothing on the tax-and-spend big government front.
During the Annuity Tax strike in Edinburgh, the government passed something called the “Edinburgh Annuity Tax Abolition Act.”
Despite its name, that act did not abolish the annuity tax, but merely concealed it with an aim to making it more difficult to resist.
Tax resistance was an important tool of the movement to force the British government to finally enact the Reform Act of .
Here are some examples, from the archives of The Spectator, showing how that magazine covered the tax resistance angle of the campaign.
At the Cinque Ports Reform Meeting, held last week in Rye, on the motion of Colonel Evans, a resolution was unanimously adopted, that the inhabitants of the ports and adjacent country, including the whole line of the Sussex and Kent coasts, were ready to come forward to support Ministers in their plan of reform, if necessary, with their lives and properties.
Colonel Evans stated that he was aware of the existence of a society of mercantile gentlemen in London, who had determined, in the event of the Ministers’ measures being defeated, not to pay any new taxes levied by the Parliament; and that a similar determination had been come to in Birmingham and Manchester.
…the fear of losing those old walls, and old mounds, and old trees, with which for so many years they have plundered this once patient people, renders them blind to the danger of outraging the nation, now bent on governing and taxing itself.
Suppose that they should succeed in buying a majority of votes for the new Parliament — what then?
Have they heard of the discussions in Sussex and Warwickshire as to the legality of associations for the non-payment of taxes in money?
Quakers are not supposed to do that which is illegal when they tell the tax-gatherer to seize their goods; and the Quakers are permanently associated for regulating the conduct of the whole body: so that we do not see how the very comprehensive law of “conspiracy” even could be brought to bear upon associations for paying taxes like the Quakers.
The association, without the deed, would be enough; for who would buy the goods of one person in arrear of taxes, if a thousand persons in the same neighbourhood had declared that they would pay taxes only in goods? and what tax-gatherer would incur the expense of seizing goods without the least prospect of selling them?
But even supposing such associations perfectly legal — on which point we offer no opinion as yet — the small amount of direct taxes may appear to render them insignificant.
On this last point we have no doubt.
At present, a rotten borough is worth but little in the market; but the old tree at Beeralston would not fetch one sixpence if twenty [thousand?] of the middle classes had associated to pay taxes like the Quakers.… In a word, association alone would suffice in this case; — the only question is, would such associations be contrary to law?
That question was commonly, though not publicly, discussed before the introduction of the Reform Bill; and it will be tried, if the Association of Boroughmongers should buy a majority in the new Parliament and turn out the Ministers.
Come what may, the immense sum subscribed by the boroughmongering lords and baronets will never be paid, as they intend it should, by the people.
However, the question is yet in abeyance.
That the borough lords may never render it a present one, none can desire more earnestly than ourselves.
Months ago, we stated our apprehension, that, in case the Reform Bill should be thrown out, or materially damaged by either House of Parliament, the middle classes would associate for the purpose of withholding the direct taxes.
Such a measure, it appears, is contemplated in various parts of the kingdom, and boldly announced too, as the certain consequence of a rejection of the Bill by the Lords.
We do not pretend that such a measure would be justified by the occasion; nor do we, for our part, believe that the occasion will occur.
But, as the occasion will surely occur unless the Lords be convinced of the evils to which it would give rise, — and as, moreover, no saying or omission of ours will alter the determination of the people, — we think it most desirable that their Lordships should have clearly pointed out to them the consequences of a refusal on the part of the people to pay direct taxes.
The explanation may not be lost upon Ministers.
But to the point.
The direct taxes form but a small portion of the whole amount of taxes.
“Therefore,” it is said by the wildest Tories, “the Government may go on very well though the King’s taxgatherer should obtain nothing.
People will continue to eat and drink as usual, and consequently to pay the indirect taxes, whatever the lords may do with the Bill.
A fig for your threats!”
Let us see whether people would continue to eat and drink as usual after refusing to pay the direct taxes.
Let us suppose that a majority of the householders of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, and some portion of London, have agreed to refuse the payment of King’s taxes in money; and that either the brokers refuse to act for the taxgatherer, or that, if the brokers should act, no one bids for the goods distrained and put up for sale.
Let us imagine that only a tenth of the householders of Great Britain do that in reality which the stiffest of the Quakers pretend to do, — viz. desire the taxgatherer to seize their goods; and that (what would surely occur in that case) the goods were not sold.
Two or three seizures in any district, without sales, would deter the taxgatherer from proceeding further; because seizures cost something, and, if they produced nothing, the loss would fall on the taxgatherer.
Consequently, if one tenth of the householders refuse to pay direct taxes in money, a most important law is de facto repealed by the People in spite of the Legislature: all the direct taxes are in fact repealed, notwithstanding acts of Parliament to maintain them.
“Never mind,” say our Cumberlands and Londonderries: “the indirect taxes will suffice for a time; and these the people must pay, because they will continue to eat and drink as usual.”
Will they?
— Let us see.
The foundation of public credit is public confidence in the future payment of taxes. if the people take upon themselves the repeal of a single tax, even though its amount were not 1,000l. a year, public confidence in the future payment of taxes must cease.
In such a case, the Government might be strong in votes of the Legislature and in the devotion of the armed force; but no one would reckon with confidence on the future payment of the dividends, and Government Stock would become unsaleable.
If the Government Stock of this country were to become unsaleable, or were suddenly to fall in price 30 or 40 per cent., the whole framework of society would be broken up.
If any one doubt this, let him reflect for a moment on the immense amount of transfers in Stock which take place every week for all the purposes of trade, and indeed, it may be said, for nearly all the objects of existence.
Further, would Messrs. Grote and Co., or Messrs. Payne Smith and Co. — would the Bank of England — discount a single bill for 20l., if a sudden and great fall in the price of Stock had occurred through a repeal of direct taxes by the People in spite of the Legislature?
In such a case, would any one take a Bank of England note? Every one who reflects for an instant on the nature of public credit, will answer these questions in the negative.
But if public credit fail, what becomes of private credit?
Both are equally dependent on confidence in certain future payments.
When Charles the Tenth issued his ordinances, the French Funds fell suddenly, and the assembled bankers of Paris put forth a declaration that they would no longer discount private bills.
What happened?
All the manufactures and trades of Paris were stopped forthwith: myriads of workmen were turned into the streets without the means of obtaining food: and then came the fighting of the Three Days.
In Paris, three days’ fighting produced tranquillity, and revived public and private confidence.
In London, probably, this would not be the case.
Here there is no Charles the Tenth — no Polignac — no Swiss Guard; here all the people ready to fight would be on one side.
There would be no fighting then: what would there be?
The destruction of public and private confidence in future payments involves the cessation of all markets.
If Bank of England notes would not pass, no cattle would be brought to Smithfield, nor any corn to Mark Lane.
There would be no fighting; but all classes would be without food, after the small quantity of food at any time in London had been seized by the strongest.
But this seizure of food by the strongest — this emptying of barns, shops, granaries, and grocers’ warehouses, by the starving workpeople — to what would it lead?
To the emptying also of brew-houses, cellars, distilleries, and gin-shops!
Next — there would be no fighting, but — let every reader’s imagination fill up the picture, recollecting that there are twenty thousand common thieves in London, and that the Peel, and Hunt party has succeeded in its endeavours to exasperate the working classes against all above themselves.
What may be predicated of London, is true of all the great manufacturing towns.
To all parts of the kingdom, where great masses of people live from hand to mouth by pursuits not agricultural, the mail would carry the infection of public and private distrust: in all such places, bank-notes would no longer pass, nor bills be discounted; the workpeople would be discharged; the markets would not be supplied; the physical force would be starving, drunk, frantic.
In a country where the great body of the people live by agricultural pursuits, so that in case of necessity they could seize the food — the cattle and the corn — in the midst of which they would live, an insurrection of the working class might produce less terrible effects than a refusal of the middle class to pay taxes.
Peasants, though in insurrection, need not be driven to utter desperation by hunger; because, for a time, they could obtain food in spite of the destruction of public and private credit.
But, in this country, where so great a portion of the physical force could not possibly obtain food without the concurrence of the middle class, it appears that an insurrection of the workpeople, if approved and guided by the middle class, would be less injurious than a refusal of the middle class to pay taxes.
This distinction merits notice: we offer it to the consideration of the Bench of Bishops.
It is understood that Ministers do not feel confident of a majority for the Bill in the Lords; and that, whether the Bill be thrown out or withdrawn, they will not resign, but will prorogue and reassemble the Parliament, carry the Bill once more through the Commons, and secure its passage through the Lords by a creation of Peers.
Of course Ministers expect that the People, being aware of the Ministerial intention, will patiently await the result: of course they expect that there will be no refusal to pay taxes unless they resign.
Is this expectation well founded?
For our part, we believe that the House of Lords now assembled will pass the Bill unhurt; but if they should not do so, we have great doubts whether the people will any longer place confidence in the Ministers.
For what is the state of the case?
Ministers profess to have at their disposal the means of carrying the Bill.
But say they — “We are not sure that the means is required: we are going to try an experiment on the Lords: if the Lords pass the Bill, well and good; if not, we shall add to their number, and then they will pass it; but let us try the experiment.”
If Ministers really have the King’s permission to create Peers for carrying the Bill, the above is a fair report of the language held for them by their partisans.
The desired result is in their power; but they prefer trying an experiment.
If they pursue this course, they may try two experiments — one upon the wisdom of the Lords, and another upon the patience of the People.
Were it not better at once to create a few Peers, and so put to rest all questions of hereditary wisdom or popular patience?
The Tories say that Ministers expect to be dismissed by a House of Commons elected under the Bill; and that they are therefore glad of a pretext for delay.
This explanation of their conduct is more credible than that which supposes them bent on a most dangerous experiment, even while the desired result is in their hands.
The next excerpt, from the issue, covered the 150,000-person strong meeting of the Birmingham Political Union, at which the crowd roared a tax resistance vow.
It quotes from the conclusion of a speech at the meeting by “Mr. Edmonds” (George Edmonds perhaps):
Should the Lords reject the Bill, and should the King refuse the creation of Peers, then it remained for the People to put in action a power which all constitutional writers admitted they had a right to exercise when Government was tyrannously opposed to the great majority of the nation.
The power to which he alluded had driven an anointed King from the throne of England, and was equally competent to drive an unanointed Peerage from the House of Lords.
They were all acquainted with a peaceful, orderly, and most respectable body of men called Quakers, to whose example he wished specially to call the attention of the meeting.
This respectable sect of Christians refused to support a parson; but in their opposition they did not knock out the brains of the tithe-collector — they simply suffered a distraint to be levied upon their goods.
Now, if the Quakers refused to pay the tithes, the people generally might refuse to pay the taxes; and if the bailiff came, he should like to know where they would find the auctioneer who would dare to sell, or the people who would dare to buy.
The voice of the auctioneer, he conceived, would be passive, not active; and rather than knocking down, he would be himself knocked down.
(Cheers and laughter.)
While upon this point, he could not but think of another glorious patriot, whose name and character, during a long night of despotism, shone bright as the day-star of British liberty, whose example ought to be as an encouraging beacon for their future guidance.
When Hampden refused the payment of ship-money, his gallant conduct electrified all England, and pointed out the way by which the people, when unanimous and combined, might rid themselves of an odious and oppressive oligarchy.
Mr. Edmonds declared before God, that if all constitutional modes of obtaining the success of the Reform measure failed, he should, and would, be the first man to refuse the payment of taxes except by a levy upon his goods.
(Tremendous cheering, which lasted some minutes.)
“I now call upon all who hear me, and who are prepared to join me in this step, to hold up your hands.
(An immense forest of hands was immediately elevated, accompanied by vehement cheering.)
I now call upon you who are not prepared to adopt this course, to hold up your hands and signify your dissent.
(Not a single hand appearing, loud shouts and cheers were repeated.)
Mark my words, failing all other more constitutional means.”
The House of Lords did in fact reject the bill.
Next, from the issue, an article that quotes Thomas Attwood of the Birmingham Political Union as saying that he expects new Lords to be appointed in order to get the House of Lords to pass the bill; barring this, he expects the House of Commons to “refuse the supplies” — that is, to refuse to authorize government spending.
[“]Even if the House of Commons should refuse to do its duty upon such an emergency, still the people would possess within their own hands the peaceful and legal means of insuring their own redress.
They had only to adopt the advice of Mr. Edmonds, which was strictly legal and constitutional, although it had been misrepresented, viz. — to act upon the system of the Quakers, and to submit to a distraint upon their goods for the payment of taxes, and the House of Commons would be instantly brought to see the position in which it stands.
In this way the people would legally act upon the House of Commons — the House of Commons would compel the Government — and the Government would compel the House of Lords, and every thing would be right.”
Under another subhead in the same article came this news:
Political Friends.
A number of people of Manchester and Salford have resolved to resist the payment of taxes in money.
Their reason for this step is the passing of the Bill in the House of Commons, which solemnly pronounces a large portion of the members not to be elected by the people.
They pledge themselves not to purchase the goods seized in execution for taxes, so long as the House remains unreformed.
Next, several months later, as yet another version of the bill has passed the House of Commons and is under consideration in the House of Lords, from the issue:
At the meeting of the Northern Political Union, held at Newcastle-upon-Tyne some days ago, a Mr. Fife declared, that if the Reform Bill were not passed in all its integrity, no inducement would prevail on him to pay one farthing more of taxes.
The same sentiments have been expressed at the meeting of the National Political Union in the Metropolis, by Mr. Galloway and others.
Our contemporary, the Standard, is witty at the expense of those who imagine so vain a thing as opposing a passive resistance to the “Peel and Dawson Crew,” when they again come into office.
“A poor honest cheesemonger,” he says, “who trembles at the crack of his own carter’s whip, will talk you ‘cannon, fire, and smoke, and bounce,’ in a manner to disturb the nerves of a buccaneer.
Sir Walter, who has scarcely left one human feeling or one human folly unmarked, has illustrated this cumulation of fictitious heroism, from rivalry, in the case of the little cutting mercer of Abingdon.
At the Black Bear meeting, Master Goldthread talked as highly of his desperate courses as Messrs.
John Fife and Larkin of what they mean to do — scrupled as little to confess his willingness to commit a highway robbery, as the Northern Unionists talk of their alacrity to embark in high treason.
But Laurence Goldthread cut a very different figure on the high-road.
When unhorsed by the very pedlar whom he had threatened to rob, he bore the case as peaceably as a Quaker; and so peaceably, no doubt, would Messrs.
Fife and Larkin bear the defeat of the Revolution Bill, notwithstanding all their swagger.
Mr. John Fife questionless would pay his taxes (that is, if he is of taxable rank) as punctually as ever; while Mr. Larkin would scud before a stirrup-leather in the hands of any of the driver’s corps that had ever served under the Duke of Wellington.”
The Standard afterwards gets into a sort of passion with Messrs.
Fife and Larkin; and calls them ignorant fools, resolved traitors, villains, and compares them to Thistlewood and Jack-the-Painter, and such like.
We regret his indulgence in this strain, for two reasons, — first, because, by giving way to anger, it would seem that he fears the men that he affects to despise; second, because, when we instructors begin to rhodomontade, we bring the clerk-craft into danger, and act no higher rôle than the Unionist whom we censure.
It is as easy for the journalist to bluster at his desk, as the Reformer on the hustings, and he is as likely as the Unionist is to prove the Master Goldthread of his own tale.
While we do not receive with implicit credit every profession that a Reformer may happen to make, any more than we would every profession that it might please an Anti-Reformer to make, we can see little wisdom in despising the professions either of the one side or the other.
What is to hinder the People, if they will, from refusing to pay direct taxes; or from abstaining, if they will, from the consumption of articles, not necessary, that are burdened with indirect taxes?
We should like to see the strap either of the Duke’s driver corps or driven corps attempt it.
We suspect, like that worthy magistrate mentioned by the author whom the Standard quotes, in the Duke’s anxiety to break the honest man’s head, he would contrive to break his own.
It was said by Lord Eldon — whom, indeed, the very mention of refusing to pay taxes seemed to strike with consternation — that it was illegal, we believe he said treasonable, to combine for the purpose.
Grant that the retired Chancellor make it out to be treasonable, and that Bishop Phillpotts anathematize it, still it may be practised, for it has been practised.
We presume, if there be in mundane affairs any truth less disputed than another, it is, that what has been done once may be done again.
What does the Standard say to Ireland?
Have not the people there combined, and have they not combined with perfect success?
How long before they combined did their cry go up unheeded; and how speedily afterwards was it listened to and considered?
We know our contemporary’s answer.
Theirs was a religious combination.
But if Englishmen feel as strongly on the question of Reform as the Irish feel on the question of Religion, they will combine as readily.
The case of Ireland is not a solitary one.
Look to Edinburgh.
There is no religious feud in that case; it is a mere question of pounds, shillings, and pence.
Yet the people of Edinburgh have suffered their goods to be seized by the clergy, and not a soul has been found false enough to the popular cause to purchase.
But there is no need for that extended combination among the People, which seems to our contemporary only a fit subject for ridicule.
Suppose the auctioneers only — a very small class of the community — should say, “We will not distrain” — will the Duke’s stirrup-leather frighten them too?
Suppose their zeal quickened by a hint, that if they perform that very disagreeable and ill-paid duty, they must not look to be employed in such services as are not disagreeable and that are better paid?
It is true that, in London, it may be easy to find men regardless enough to do any thing; and there are so many holes and corners, that let a man’s villainy be ever so great, he may easily contrive to stow it out of sight.
But such is not the case in smaller towns.
In a town of twenty or thirty thousand inhabitants, such concealment is impossible.
A rogue may escape the eye of the Magistrates or of the Police, but we would defy Satan himself — unless, like Mr. Salusbury, of St. Mary’s, Aldgate, he were a non-resident — to play his pranks in such a town without being observed by his neighbours.
The strike against tax-paying; if ever we come to such a pass, will begin in the lesser towns.
We hope and trust, that the Lords will not by their conduct throw temptation in the People’s way.
Above all, we trust they will not be flattered into an opinion, that the People are to be driven from their purpose with the smallest show of coercion.
If the Duke of Wellington were insane enough to put foot in stirrup against the People of England, he would find it the toughest piece of work he has hitherto cut out for himself.
He and his partisans might boast while putting on their harness; but, truly, we believe their boast would be small when they came to take it off.
Another article in the same issue also covered the Fife speech, and began as follows:
At a meeting of the Union at Newcastle, on , it was agreed to send a petition to the House of Lords, praying them to pass the Bill unmutilated; and another to Earl Grey, calling upon him to effect this object by the creation of Peers.
Mr. J. Fife, in the course of an eloquent speech, said, “he trusted that the People would reject the Bill with scorn if it was impaired or emasculated.
For his own part, he was prepared to endure any consequences.
He would pay no taxes — they might confiscate his lands — they might persecute him to banishment or death — he would endure to the last, rather than be the willing slave of a tyrannical Ministry.”
The House of Lords again balked on passing the bill, and the King was dragging his feet on elevating enough pro-reform peers to that House to ensure passage.
This article appeared in the issue:
A Court of Common Council was held on , for the purpose of petitioning the House of Commons on the subject of the present crisis.
Mr. Galloway moved the resolutions; which were seconded by Mr. Pritchard.
The principal resolutions were as follows —
“That this Court views with the greatest grief, mortification, and disappointment, the extraordinary and distressing communication made by his Majesty’s Ministers, that his Majesty had refused to them the means of carrying through the House of Lords the Reform Bill passed by a large majority of the House of Commons, and required by an overwhelming majority of the people.
“That whoever may have advised his Majesty to withhold from his Ministers the means of insuring the success of the Reform Bill, have proved themselves the enemies of their Sovereign, and have put to imminent hazard the stability of the throne, and the tranquillity and security of the country.
“That, under these circumstances, this Court feels it to be its duty, as a necessary means of procuring for the people of this great country an efficient Reform, to petition the Commons House of Parliament to withhold the Supplies until such a Reform should have been secured.”
Alderman Waithman and Mr. Thornhill followed Mr. Pritchard on the same side.
Alderman Winchester objected to the language of the resolutions as too strong.
He thought the Court should not offend the Crown.
The Alderman’s anxiety about the Crown produced roars of laughter, which rendered a great deal of his eloquence unintelligible.
A member called Howell, opposed the resolutions, because they would give a tone to the country; three fourths of which, he said, was opposed to Reform.
This gentleman also excited great merriment.
Alderman Marshall and Mr. Hughes Hughes spoke against the third resolution.
Mr. Hughes thought it very possible the next Administration might be as zealous for the People as the last.
Mr. Hughes was too dull for laughter — he was only hissed.
The two first resolutions were carried unanimously; about twenty hands, including those of the three dissenting Aldermen and Mr. Hughes Hughes, were held up against the third.
The Livery of London met ; when strong resolutions were voted, and addresses to the House of Commons, calling on that body to stop the Supplies, agreed to.
Several speakers declared that, as far as in them lay, as individuals, they would do what they could to stop the Supplies, as they would pay no further taxes till the Reform Bill was passed.
On , the instant the intelligence of Ministers having resigned reached Manchester, a petition was agreed on to the House of Commons, praying them to grant no Supply until the Bill was passed unmutilated.
In four hours, it was signed by 25,000 people; and three gentlemen — Messrs.
R. Potter, J. Filden, and Shuttleworth — left Manchester for London with it.
The following notice has been placarded all over the town of Manchester—
“Court Intrigue
Has, for the present, prevailed over the voice of twenty-four millions demanding reform. The King has refused to support his Patriotic Ministers, and they have resigned.
What is to be done now?
Let the People petition the Commons to refuse the Supplies and let them form Associations pledged to discontinue the use of all Taxed Commodities. These are the peaceable means of destroying the Boroughmongering domination.
It will depend upon the Usurpers whether other measures need be resorted to.”
It had been intended to have a public meeting in Bristol on , but the resignation of Ministers produced a sensation in that town which could not be controlled so long.
On , accordingly, the Mayor having refused the Guildhall, the Reformers, headed by Mr. Herapath, the President of the Political Union, met in the Assembly Room, Prince’s Street.
It was instantly filled; and after some considerable delay, principally from a fear that some alleged breach of the peace should give the military, who were under orders to act, pretense to interfere, an adjournment took place to Brandon Hill.
The number of persons that assembled was about 7,000. We need not give the resolutions, for they are the same as in all the meetings that have been held on the same occasion.
A spirited letter from Mr. O’Connell was read at the meeting.
The people of Brighton met on , to the number of 2,000 or 3,000, on the subject of the Bill.
Resolutions in favour of a creation of Peers were unanimously passed.
The meeting declined petitioning the House of Peers, “because, as at present constituted, they had no confidence in it.”
At the Reform meeting at Bury, on , Mr. Eagles, one of the speakers, noticed Lord Eldon’s doctrine respecting the non-payment of taxes—
“It had been said by the Earl, that indictments could be framed to compel those who refused to pay taxes; now, if the Earl of Eldon, or Sir Charley Wetherell, or any other lawyer, were ingenious enough to frame an indictment, he should like to know where they would find a jury who would convict their countrymen of a conspiracy against themselves?”
The King’s dinner for the town of Salford is countermanded, in consequence of the disclosures of this week.
On the news of the late division reaching Leicester, the people could only be kept quiet by a promise from the Political Union to call out the whole town en masse, to meet and deliberate on the present alarming state of the country.
A third article in the same issue covered the meetings of the Birmingham Political Union, before and after news of the resignation of the Ministers came out.
Excerpts:
The ground chosen was the foot of Newhall Hill, where the gradual slope, not less than the extent of the area, is peculiarly favourable for a meeting of such vast magnitude.
The space immediately occupied by the meeting measured about 17,000 yards; and it is calculated, from the manner in which they stood, was amply sufficient for at least 100,000; but the entire number that attended was not less than 150,000, including in this number those that crowded the heights in the immediate neighbourhood, as well as the roofs of the surrounding houses, and every point from which even a bird’s eye view of the exhilarating spectacle could be obtained.
The bustings were pitched at the lower part of the field, so that they were not only in view of the entire meeting, but the voices of the speakers were audible to much the greater portion of it.
Every arrangement that the utmost sagacity of the Council could devise, had been employed to give regularity and order to the numerous bands that continued for several hours to pour in from the surrounding country.
The following has been given as an authentic statement of the names and numbers, of the various parties that entered Birmingham on this eventful occasion—
“Grand Northern Division, headed by Mr. Fryer, the banker, including Wolverhampton, Bilston, Wednesbury, Sedgley, Walsall, Willenhall, Darlaston, West Bromwich, and Handsworth.
The procession extended over four miles; there were upwards of 150 banners and 11 bands of music.
— Grand Western Division — including Stonebridge, Dudley, Harbourn, Cradley, Lyewater, Oldbury, Rowley, and Halesowen.
The procession extended two miles, and was accompanied by 9 bands of music and 70 banners.
Grand Eastern Division — including Coventry, Warwick, Bedworth, Kenilworth, Leemington, Solihuil, &c., with 8 bands and 30 banners.
Grand Southern Division — including Worcester, Bromsgiove, Redditch, Studley, Droitwich, and Alcester, with 6 bands of music and 12 banners.
The preceding estimate is exclusive of the inhabitants of Birmingham and its immediate vicinity.
Upwards of 200 bands of music were in attendance, and from 700 to 1,000 banners waved over the assembled throng.”
At half-past twelve, silence was proclaimed throughout the mighty host by the sounding of a bugle; and Mr. Attwood, on the motion of Mr. Edmonds, assumed the Chair.
He was surrounded by Napoleon Czapski, a Polish nobleman; Count Rechberg, Secretary to the Austrian Embassy; H. Acland, Esq., James West, Esq., Arthur Gregory, Esq., H. Boulthee, Esq., W. Allsop, Esq., of Derbyshire, Stubbs Whitick, Esq., R. Fryer, Esq., the Hon. Godolphin Osborne, Esq., and a great many other gentlemen from the town and neighbourhood.
One of the speakers, Joseph Parkes, is quoted as alluding to tax resistance:
[“]I do not touch on the chances of a refusal to pay taxes; I would not now hold out to the Lords unnecessary threats or terror; but I warn them that John Hampden dwells in the breasts of three-fourths of the inhabitants of these islands, and will inspire them with patriotism and self-sacrifice.
The image of John Hampden, with his deeds inscribed, will be the worship of the People of England, Scotland, and Ireland, if occasion require.[”]
(Loud and repeated cheers.)
An article in issue included an account of Captain Williams’s speech at a reform rally in Kensington:
“Couriers are already flying to announce the tidings to the tyrant of Russia, who is yet reeking with the unavenged blood of Poland — to the wily Austrian — the perfidious Prussian — the bigoted Ferdinand — the guilt-covered Miguel.
Nothing can arrest his daring career, but intimidation, or, to use an imported word, ‘agitation.’
It was by this instrument the Irish beat him down, and wrung from him Catholic Emancipation.
Let us wield the same weapon, and he shall again capitulate.
The House of Commons will stop the Supplies.
We are told of a dissolution of Parliament; let it come to that, and it will be seen what a grand blow there will be struck throughout the empire.
It is recommended to pay not taxes; let every man adopt that expedient — I for one will pay none.…”
And a Mr. Brougham was quoted addressing a meeting in Southwark as follows:
[“]Something had been said about the people not paying taxes.
A resolution to that effect would be highly illegal; but people might individually refuse without rendering themselves amenable to the law.
Now this was an affair easily arranged.
If a tax-gatherer were to call upon him, and ask him to settle his little bill for taxes, he might say to him in reply, ‘I have got a Bill of my own, Sir, which I should like to have settled; and, unless you settle mine satisfactorily, you must never expect me to settle yours.’[”]
The King asked the anti-reform Duke of Wellington to try to form a government, which he was unable to do, so then the King asked pro-reform Earl Grey to return and also promised to create as many new Lords as it would take to get the Reform Act passed.
It passed in June.
The last of the Spectator’s articles that came to my attention comes from its issue:
Lord Milton’s avowal of his intention to refuse the payment of taxes, in case of a successful opposition to the passing of the Reform Bill, has given rise to a controversy between the Morning Herald and the True Sun.
The Herald severely censures Lord Milton’s conduct, upon moral grounds, which (leaving the argument of constitutional right to the disputants who have been discussing it) we conceive to be wholly fallacious.
It must be considered what were the circumstances in which Lord Milton made his remarkable declaration.
The country was in a state of extreme and imminent peril.
A great measure, the object of the dearest wishes of all classes of the community, devised by the King and his Ministers, and carried by the Representatives of the People, was thwarted in the House of Lords, by an opposition so pertinacious, that the Ministers, finding themselves unable to fulfill their pledge to the Nation, resigned their places.
This astounding event, and the still more astounding intelligence that the functions of Government were on the point of being committed to the very men who had then successfully defeated the People’s hopes, produced a storm of indignation in every quarter of the country.
Nor was this a storm of words merely.
The whole mass of the People was preparing for deeds of tremendous import.
The Bank of England in a couple of days was drained of a million of specie; runs on the country banks threatened ruin to them and to the thousands whose property was in their hands; the House of Commons was about to stop the machine of Government by stopping the Supplies; and the People, by tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands, were prepared to demand their rights, and to resort to the ultima ratio, that of conscious power, for compelling them.
In such an unheard-of situation of things, what would have been the inevitable consequence of the insane Anti-Reformers being allowed to persist, for three days longer than they did, in their factious opposition?
The storm would have burst in thunder more terrible than ever was heard within our shores.
Its course would, indeed, have been brief — the whirlwind would have swept away the Opposition and its authors; but still its career might have been desolating.
We know that the portentous aspect of things — the indications that, such a storm was impending in the air — were the very circumstances that averted it.
Among the Anti-Reformers themselves, the heart of the boldest quailed within him.
He yielded to the force of necessity; he allowed the tide of Reform to flow unresisted; and calmness was instantly restored.
What prevented the extreme consequences that were impending?
It was the terror produced by the indications of their approach.
Every indication, then, which contributed to heighten this most salutary terror, was a benefit to the country; and every one who bore his part in those indications, was a public benefactor.
Among these indications, was the threatened refusal of the People to pay taxes; and Lord Milton, by his emphatic declaration, gave it, from his station and character, a decisive power and effect.
Instead, therefore, of Lord Milton, in the Herald’s words, setting “an example to the People, the effect of which would have been to reduce society to its first elements, and put in hazard the institutions of the country,” he set them an example of a line of conduct which actually did the very reverse.
The True Sun got caught up in another tax resistance kerfluffle the following year.
But I’ll save that for another time.
After Earl Grey’s administration was unable to move the Reform Act forward, the Duke of Wellington took the reins, and that was the last straw for the Reform advocates.
They ramped up their resistance campaign with tactics that included tax resistance and a run on the banks.
Here are some excerpts from an issue of the Staffordshire Advertiser with some of the news from the time:
…A serious run is taking place on the Manchester Savings Bank.
Six hundred and twenty depositors, possessing 16,000l. have given notice to withdraw, chiefly on .
Military precautions have been taken within these few days to preserve the peace of the Metropolis.
The Non-payment of Taxes.
, a number of the inhabitants of St. Margaret’s and St. John’s, Westminster, when applied to by the King’s tax-gatherer for the payment of taxes, refused in most unqualified terms. In some instances, the tax-collector begged and entreated as a friend the parties would pay him.
Not until the Reform Bill is passed, was the general reply.
A number of the inhabitants had notices placed to that effect in their windows.
The determination is becoming more general every hour.
The “Assessed Taxes,” otherwise known as the “Window Tax” or “House and Window Tax,” were the subject of a tax resistance campaign in Britain in , and continuing protests that led to the replacement of the taxes in .
Today I’ll summarize and excerpt a sample of newspaper articles from that period that concern the tax resistance campaign.
The earliest article I stumbled on concerning this struggle comes from the Morning Post.
It concerns a “meeting, composed of the constituencies of the metropolitan boroughs,” held “for the purpose of Petitioning for a total repeal of the house and window tax.”
More than a dozen members of Parliament attended the meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, and apologetic letters of regret for not attending from were read from more than a dozen more.
The chairman complained of hard economic times, and a program of tax relief that largely benefited the rich and big business rather than struggling small businessmen and workers.
“The house and window tax was most oppressive in its operation upon the middle and poorer classes of tradesmen, and the time had arrived when they should press with energy for their repeal.”
D.W. Harvey
then moved the first resolution, after first complaining at length of the enormous military expenditures, questionable government pensions, and other wasteful items in the national budget — including government salaries: “He would contend that the salary of every Officer of State, from the King on the throne… to the doorkeeper of the House of Commons, must not only undergo revision, but a substantial and searching reduction.
— (Loud cheers.) — If that was not done, whatever might be the consequences, he for one would not contribute one farthing to the support of the State.
— (Loud cheers, lasting for several minutes.)”
The resolution he read, though preceded with lots of talk about how bold and daring it was, merely expressed the meeting’s feelings of “utmost disappointment and regret” and predicted that the “tyrannical and undefined system” of tax assessment “may lead to the afflicting circumstance of resistance to the assessors and collectors for the Crown, altogether repugnant to the natural disposition and feelings of the English people.”
Perhaps this was a nod-and-wink way of threatening resistance without risking legal repercussions.
W. Williams seconded the resolution, and it was passed by a show of hands.
A second resolution doubled down on the implied threat theme:
[N]othing short of the entire and immediate repeal of the house and window taxes can ensure peace to the disappointed hope and excited feeling of that numerous and important class of society upon whom these and other oppressive burdens, comparatively unfelt by other portions of the people, have long been placed…
Daniel O’Connell addressed the assembly next, and, as might be expected from the great Irish independence agitator, turned things up a notch:
The people wanted to get off the assessed taxes, but the Ministers had a double reason for keeping them on; they wanted them to fill the Treasury, and they wanted to prevent the people from having the amount of those taxes in their own pockets, lest it might be applied to the purchase of their own liberty.
— (Cheers.) — He wanted the army to be reduced.
Why should seven or eight millions be applied to pay a military force?
Were not Englishmen brave enough to defend themselves and loyal enough to defend their Constitution?
— Cheers — What had the present wretched Ministry done for the people.
Had they reduced any of the establishments?
— (Cries of “No; but we’ll make them by refusing the taxes.”)… They had to support a police too in addition to the standing army.
— (Hear, hear.) — But what was the use of a police to protect their property by night when it was open to the attacks of every Excise officer and Custom-House officer by day?
— (Hear, hear.) — Englishmen had protection from private pillage; they wanted protection from public pillage.
(Loud cheers.)
Then O’Connell reminded them of the popular victory of the Reform Act 1832, which was pushed through an intransigent House of Lords thanks in large part to a mass people power movement that featured tax resistance:
The history of England during was not so old as to be forgotten already.
How did they get Reform?
Was it by asking Parliament?
No.
It was by standing shoulder to shoulder, pressing on their ranks upon their enemies, uniting from one end of the country to the other, calling upon every man who valued liberty, and wished to put an end to the plunder of the people, to stand by them firmly, and not merely in appearance.
— (Loud and continued cheering.) — Let every man tell his Representative, “You must vote for the abolition of the Assessed Taxes.”
— (Cries of “We will,” and “Do you hear that, Sir Francis?”) If the Administration said they could not afford it your answer must be, “Then we cannot afford to pay it.”
— (Cheers.) — If they be told then at once they must do it, they would soon find out in the future tense, as the Irish had it, “will do it.”
A Mr. Gough later gave a more full-throated endorsement of tax resistance:
[H]e had that morning formed one of a Deputation from the parish of Shoreditch, the inhabitants of which were literally starving, to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
That Deputation had stated boldly that they would pay taxes no longer until the assessed taxes were repealed.
— (Cheers.) — And they would not pay taxes, and he hoped all London would follow their example.
— (Cries of “We will not.”) … The Deputation then told the Chancellor that the inhabitants would meet from day to day till these taxes were abolished, and that they would not pay any taxes until the standing army was reduced.
A Mr. Murphy moved a final set of resolutions, and in so doing “argued strongly on the imperative necessity of taking some decisive measures in relieving [our]selves from the burdens of the assessed taxes.
Ireland had given a good example of what could be gained by passive resistance, and he recommended the people of England to follow their example.
— (Loud cheers.)”
The London Evening Standard reported on a meeting held at St. Mary, Newington, .
A Mr. Chessman, or Cheesman perhaps, began by saying:
He hoped… to see the people join together, and, by passive resistance, convince the ministers they had taken a wrong course when they sought to deceive the people who had confided in them.
He hoped the people would do the best for themselves; this would be done by the means he proposed, passive resistance.
Passive resistance alone could preserve their rights, and place them in that relative degree which free-born Englishment deserved.
Several other gentlemen addressed the meeting, supporting the principle of passive resistance; and Mr. Sewell, who represented seven fellow-parishioners of his own calling, said that appraisers and auctioneers would abide by their resolution not to assist in recovering the obnoxious taxes.
That paper also quoted from the Liverpool Standard, which characterized this movement as the radicals of the Reform Act campaign coming home to roost on the parliament that campaign had swept into power:
Lord Milton, now Lord Fitzwilliam, declared he would pay no taxes unless the Reform Bill were permitted to pass.
Mr. W. Brougham made a similar declaration in Southwark.
Mr. Thomas Duncombe sang the same song at a meeting of revolutionary shoebacks at St. John’s Wood; and various other persons, equally respectable, entered upon the journals of tap-rooms and smoking-clubs equally illegal and seditious protestations.
But where is Lord Fitzwilliam now?
If a refusal to pay taxes in were justifiable, it must be as defensible in .
An editorial in the Leeds times suggested tax resistance was inevitable if the assessed taxes were not removed:
The present Earl Fitzwilliam
a short time ago set an example of resistance to the payment of taxes, and that example will be followed with a vengeance in every part of the British empire.
An immense number of the householders of the metropolis have placed themselves [in] the van of determined and inflexible opposition; they have positively declared their calm and settled resolution peacefully to resist the demand of the tax-gatherer, and to submit to the consequences of seizure; and the brokers and auctioneers have announced that they will not assist in selling the goods of their fellow-parishioners taken at the suit of the king for the non-payment of the assessed extortions.
“This,” says the leviathan leading journal, “is a black page torn from the Irish farmer; this is passive resistance.”
In things heated up.
The following comes from The Freeman’s Journal out of Dublin, dated :
English Taxation — Passive Resistance.
The people of England are borrowing a second leaf from the history of Irish agitation, and seem determined to take the business of redressing popular grievances into their own hands.
…the abolition of the “assessed taxes” is sought to be effected on the principle of passive resistance, which has been already found, in the case of tithes, in this country, to have been so triumphantly successful.
In both instances, England, by adopting the tactique of Irish warfare, both offensive and defensive, has paid a just compliment to the national shrewedness and energy of our people, and cemented a moral union which, if vigorously acted on, will crush the power of any set of ministers, and enforce the necessity of good government.
Already have the most populous and influential parishes in the English metropolis expressed their determination to coerce the government through the medium of passive resistance.
The great towns of the North have recorded a similar resolution; and men of all classes and districts are now impressed with the important truth, that governments are made for the people, not the people for them.
The Chelmsford Chronicle of reprints a story from the Spectator.
Excerpts:
Assessed Taxes.
Considerable bodies of men in the Metropolis — principally composed of shopkeepers, brokers, and mechanics — are forming themselves into associations for procuring by legal means the repeal of the Assessed Taxes.
This is the avowed object of the parties; but, from the style of the speeches delivered, and of the resolutions passed at their meetings, it is seen that their real intent is to organize of passive resistance to the payment of these taxes at the present time.
Unquestionably, the proceedings we speak of may give the Government some trouble; but passive resistance, in order to be effectual, must be very general; and we perceive no ground for believing that tax-payers generally will united in this virtual opposition to the law.
But then, the Government must take effectual means for compelling payment from the recusants, or the resistance will become general.
The London Evening Standard of quotes from the Morning Chronicle which in turn quotes from the London Times, saving me the trouble of having to hunt up that less-accessible archive:
[T]he Times… has, after long deliberation, and anxious inquiry no doubt, at last proclaimed the cause of the tax resisters victorious.
“The opinion of [the taxes’] partiality,” says our contemporary, “is so deeply rooted, and the hardship of their exaction is so severely felt by the middle classes and the retail interest in towns, and particularly in the metropolis, that their collection cannot be any longer enforced (so as to render them as productive as formerly), without bringing the government into a dangerous collision with the people — without incurring the charge of fiscal persecution — and perhaps encountering the risk of civil disturbance.”
After some observations on the injustice and impolicy of the taxes in question, in the justice of which we fully concur, our contemporary proceeds to show, that the spread of the associations and the example of Ireland ought to satisfy us that there are no means of enforcing the collection of the tax; and, moreover, that there is not a little danger that the people may, emboldened by success, attempt to rid themselves by similar means of other taxes.
But we will allow our contemporary to speak for himself:–
Certainly it is a fatal vice in the assessed taxes, to which we are adverting — that when they become so unpopular as the latter are at present, they cannot be levied with success.
The public must have observed the spread of the associations for a passive resistance to the house duty in the metropolis; and they know the result of such a resistance to tithes in Ireland.
They have seen numbers of brokers coming forward to declare that they would not sell goods distrained for these duties; and, upon proper explanation, it would probably be difficult to find purchasers, where the purchaser would be sure to be denounced by the by-standers as a robber in league with the tax-gatherer.
We therefore regard the assessed taxes imposed upon houses and windows as already repealed.…
The Worcester Journal brought this news:
Assessed Taxes.
In the metropolis, the resistance to the payment of the House and Window Taxes is daily becoming more formidable:– On a general meeting of the various associations for the repeal of the house and window duties took place at the Yorkshire Stingo, New-road.
The large room of the tavern, capable of holding 2,000 persons, was filled.
The gardens were crowded, and hundreds went away from not being able to come within hearing of the speakers.
A Mr. Bush moved the following resolution, which was carried unanimously:–
That this association having had recourse to every measure consistent with their duty as good citizens to obtain relief without effect, are now compelled to declare that they can no longer pay in money those iniquitous imposts, the house and window taxes; and that they will neither buy nor sell goods that may be taken from those already borne down by the non-fulfilment of a former minister’s pledge to the nation, that the entire repeal of these taxes should take place two years after the ratification of peace.
The London Evening Standard reprinted an editorial from the Cambridge Chronicle that characterized the resisters as a natural outgrowth of the popular insurrection that had forced the Reform Act through:
Their scheme has succeeded.
The government will give up the assessed taxes, — not because they think them impolitic, unjust, and partial — not because they think their abolition is a measure likely to benefit the country — not because they have devised some more equitable plan of meeting the expenditure of the country: for then they would have repealed these taxes long ago — but because they are foiled at their own weapons: because they have conferred a degree of importance upon popular assemblages which they never before possessed, and taught them the use of means which were never before avowed.
The assessed taxes will be repealed.
But let us hear nothing about economy and retrenchment of the government in the repeal.
They have kept us these taxes, and exacted them most rigorously as long as they could.
They will give them up now, when they can no longer collect them.
Perhaps, however, the most serious part of this business is the plain intimation which it gives, that we are rapidly approaching the condition of France, in which the metropolis, and even an inconsiderable part of it gives law to the whole kingdom.
We have heard of no public meetings, of no general petitions, of no stir in the country for the abolition of assessed taxes.
Yet a few shopkeepers and brokers in London have proved that, in this point, it is they who govern the country.
What effect may be produced upon the payers of other taxes, now they see what a formidable weapon “passive resistance” is, may give rise to very grave considerations.
It is plain, at all events, that, thanks to the policy of the Whigs, we are now in such a state that any reasonable number of men, with or without any reasonable cause, may compel the government to repeal any tax whatever.
That same issue of the London Evening Standard also reproduced this article from the Morning Paper:
The Assessed Taxes.
The Seizures in Marylebone.
there was much excitement in the neighbourhood of Crawford-street and Circus-street, St. Marylebone, relative to the late seizures for assessed taxes; and the question asked by many was, “What will be done — how will this end?”
It appears that Mr. Savage’s goods, which were rescued from the Sheriff’s officer, have not been found, notwithstanding great exertions for that purpose have been made by several parties; and no notice has been given as to the time or place when Mr. Brain’s goods will be sold to defray his arrears of taxes.
Of course those persons who have refused to pay their taxes are in considerable suspense; and especially as it is confidently stated, that if the Sheriff’s officers and his men had not allowed themselves to be foiled by the mob, there would have been numerous seizures.
Mr. Brain exhibited a large placard in front of his shop, to the effect, that he had been a respectable tradesman for twenty-two years; that he had paid his taxes and all claims upon him during that time; that he was unable to pay the assessed taxes any longer, having sustained various losses, and trade being in a distressed state.
Under such circumstances it was cruel on the part of the government to endeavour to crush him, by seizing upon his goods.
… Mr. Savage’s tavern, the Mechanics’ Institute, was crowded during the whole of , and persons were continually coming in and inquiring, “Well, are the goods found; how do you get on, Savage?”
Mr. Savage’s reply was, that he knew nothing about them.
All that he could say was, that articles of the value of 50l., as valued by his brokers, had been taken from his house, and he now did not know what had become of them.
It is stated that he was from home when the goods were taken from the van and brought into his house.
On being sent for, he found his wife in a fit, and the whole place in confusion; but he at once insisted on the goods being taken away from his house, as he would not act contrary to the law.
While Mr. Sheriff Harmer, Mr. Stokes, the Under Sheriff, the officer, and Mr. Savage, were going over the house, in order that it might be satisfactorily ascertained that the rescued goods were not on the premises, a considerable mob, inflamed with their previous success, ranged themselves at the entrance of the house.
At the conclusion of the search, Mr. Savage led Mr. Sheriff Harmer to another door, and took him by the arm in order to escort him to his carriage.
The mob, on seeing this, imagined that Mr. Savage was in custody, and a number of them shook hands with each other, exclaiming, “Don’t let him be taken.
We will rescue him; and if we die in so doing, we may as well die here as rot in the workhouse.”
They then rushed forward and cried out, “Come, come, you are not going to take Savage away, or if you do, you must take our lives first.”
Mr. Savage was pulled away, and it was some time before the mob were convinced of their mistake.
Mr. Sheriff Harmer expressed considerable regret and surprise that he had not been informed of the intended seizure; for if he had, he said, he should have endeavoured to make some arrangement with Mr. Savage, with whom he was acquainted, and not have adopted on the instant the summary course that had been pursued.
To show the close feeling that prevails among the members of the different associations against the assessed taxes, it may be stated, that in , by which time the news of the riot had spread over the town, several persons belonging to associations at the east end of the metropolis, drove up in cabs to Mr. Savage’s house, and with great anxiety asked him what they could do for him?
“Say but the word,” the exclaimed, “and we will do any thing you wish — shut up our shops, and make the resistance to the taxes general.”
This statement may be considered somewhat exaggerated, but we are assured of its accuracy.
It is generally expected that other seizures will shortly be made, and that effective measures will be taken for preventing a repetition of the scenes of .
We have not heard that any of the rioters have been apprehended.
Active preparations are making to hold a general meeting on the subject of the seizures.
The Freeman’s Journal also covered this, in its edition:
Seizure for Assessed Taxes — Passive Resistance.
the vicinity of Marylebone was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement, owing to a legal process against Mr. Savage, of the Mechanics’ Institution, in Circus-street, and also Mr. Brain, a dealer in pictures, &c., of Crawford-street.
At , Hemp, a sheriff’s officer, attended by several of his men, with an exchequer writ, took possession of the goods of Mr. Brain, consisting of valuable pictures and articles of furniture to the value of 50l., for assessed taxes due, amounting to more than 11l. A van which was at hand, conveyed the property away to Mr. Crook’s, auctioneer to the sheriff, Skinner-street.
On the officer making his claim for 35l. on Mr. Savage, he was informed by that gentleman that he might take what he thought proper.
Some of the best goods on the premises were at once laid hold of, when, on the van being brought up, Mr. Savage warmly protested against the illegality of the proceedings, and accordingly called in six brokers to value the goods seized.
No sooner had this gained the ears of the inhabitants than Circus-street was literally crammed with people, anxious to witness the process, and who were loud and vehement in their expressions of disapprobation of the glaring injustice of so vile and scandalous a mode of supplying the exigencies of the state, drawing from the pockets of the industrious part of the community their hard earnings by taxes, iniquitous and unjust.
The police on duty having been aroused by the loud and long continued vociferations of the crowd assembled, hastened to the spot, and succeeded with some difficulty in assuaging their excited feelings, and preventing them from resorting to acts of violence on the instant.
When our reporter left, the van continued at the door of Mr. Savage’s residence, in waiting to move off the goods, which there is but little chance of their being able to effect in a quiet manner, as Mr. Savage continues inflexible in his determination to resist the seizure.
The crowd, so far from having dispersed, continues to increase, from the deep interest which this highly populous parish has taken in the proceedings.
Destruction of the Van — The Goods Seized by the Populace.
About a large banner, bearing the words, “The People of Marylebone,” was placed in the middle of the street, and the crowd continued to increase, but no violence was attempted.
At , the van which had been loaded with the drove off, and it was followed along the New-road by several persons.
In a short time a rush was made at the van by the crowd, who gained possession of it, while the officers fled.
The van was then taken back to Mr. Savage’s, and the furniture would have been carried back into his premises, had not Mr. Savage peremptorily refused to receive it.
It was then deposited in a warehouse opposite his residence.
The furniture having been taken away, the owner of the van, who is said to be a person named Pope, residing in St. Andrew’s-hill, Doctors’ Commons, endeavoured to get out of the street with his vehicle; but he had not proceeded more than half way when a female ran into the road, and seizing the reins of the horse, turned the animal and the van round.
This was the signal for a general attack by the populace, who broke the sides of the vehicle with large stones.
There was great confusion, and the shopkeepers in Circus-street put up their shutters.
The horse was next taken away, and the van having been upset, was entirely demolished in the space of a few minutes.
A small party of police then arrived, but the scene of destruction was over, and the owner of the van was glad to escape with his horse safe.
Interview Between Mr. Mayne, Commissioner of Police, Mr. Savage, and Mr.
Sheriff Harmer.
About Mr. Savage and Mr. Potter went to the station-house in Little Harcourt-street, where they gave Mr. Stokes a pledge that every exertion should be used to obtain the restoration of the property which had been taken from the van.
During the conversation, Mr. Sheriff Harmer arrived.
He said that he knew nothing of the seizure of the goods until a short time before.
He had been sent for by Mr. Lamb, of the Home Office, who supposed that he as sheriff, would have to communicate something respecting the seizure and the subsequent disturbance.
He had therefore come to the station-house for information.
Mr. Sheriff Harmer was then informed by Messrs.
Savage and Potter, that the goods would, no doubt, be restored; but the Under Sheriff expressed an opinion that the goods were secreted in Mr. Savage’s house.
On this, Mr. Sheriff Harmer, Mr. Stokes, Hemp the officer, and Messrs.
Savage and Potter, proceeded to Mr. Savage’s house, and went over the premises, but without finding any of the property in question.
Mr. Stokes then expressed himself satisfied, and the assurance was repeated that the goods should be restored.
The sheriffs then took their departure.
Mr. Mayne stated to Mr. Potter in the outset, that he was in the station-house in order that he might be ready to act should any fresh disturbance be attempted.
Mr. Savage is one of the persons who took very active steps in getting up the Marylebone Association, which was the forerunner of those now numerous societies.
Meetings of Associations.
At a meeting was held in the large room on the ground floor of the Mechanics’ Institution upon the subject.
The place was crammed almost to suffocation by persons of various classes, all of whom seemed to take the most lively interest in the proceedings.
Several gentlemen immediately mounted the platform, when Mr. Birch was unanimously called to the chair.
Loud and long continued acclamation followed, and as soon as the deafening shouts had in some measure subsided, the business of the day was proceeded with.
Blah blah blah “the crisis was at hand when Englishmen would be found to do their duty” blah blah blah “[t]hey were engaged in a praiseworthy warfare, their object being to endeavour peaceably to rid themselves of the oppressive burthen of the assessed taxes, and to prevent, by every means in their power, the hardworking industrious man from being stripped of his all by the ruthless hands of the agents of government.”
The Chairman then went on to state, that with respect to the demolition of the van, after it was cleared of its contents, it would be borne in mind that neither the principals of the Mechanics’ Institution, nor any of its members, sanctioned or assisted in any way in the proceedings; their object was to attain what they wished to accomplish by resolution and firmness, but not by riot and disorder; let them not, however, forget that the other sex could feel as deeply and as strongly as they the oppression of hard-hearted and cruel legislators, who, by a continuance of the abominable assessed taxes, were grinding the poor to the earth.
He entreated them to remember that it was a woman — aye, a woman, who arrested the progress of the van, who led the way, and called on the countless multitude around her to show, by following her example, their detestation and revenge: fired at the courage of her, and wondering at their own supineness, they obeyed the call, and in triumph conveyed the goods just before destined for sale to the dwelling-place of the industrious and rightful owner, whose conduct on the occasion was beyond all praise.
Mr. Birch concluded a long speech by exhorting all around him to orderly and peaceable conduct, and sat down amidst the most deafening applause.
The paper also covered a meeting of householders in the Pimlico neighborhood at which, among other things:
A resolution “thanking the auctioneers and brokers of Manchester for their manly and independent conduct in refusing to sell the goods of a poor man who was seized upon the assessed taxes,” was then moved and carried.
One broker said that he had been involved in government seizures in the past but vowed “that he would neither buy, sell, or condemn goods distrained upon the house and window duties.”
People signed up to a new “Association” at the meeting, paying dues for the privilege.
The paper reported on similar meetings at Lambeth and in St. Giles at which more or less insurrectionary words were spoken.
An editorial from the Leeds Intelligencer was quoted in the London Evening Standard:
Government is now in actual conflict with its own disciples — the tax-resisting Hampdens of Westminster, Marylebone, and St. Pancras; and London, during several days of the past week, has been in a ferment.
Seeing that a shilly-shally policy added strength to the evil, ministers determined to take what their journalists call “a stand.”
The agents of the law were despatched to make the first example of a Mr. Savage, and caption of his goods to an amount sufficient to cover his arrears of assessed taxes was effected with no more than passive resistance; the household-stuff was put into a van, and borne away for the behoof of my Lord Althorp.
But the fates were inimical to the inroad upon Lord Fitzwilliam’s sacred principle.
A mob collected; the “beaks” were hooted and pelted; and a valiant Trulla rushed into the thick of the fray, seized the van-horse with Amazonian arm, and led it back in triumph, amidst loud shouts of congratulation, to Mr. Savage, who, however, had too much prudence to meddle with the goods.
The van was ultimately broken in pieces.
As to the officers, though a body of police had been stationed hard by under cover, they sought their safety in flight.
In all likelihood they are themselves members of “passive resistance” clubs.
A similar transaction had previously taken place in Manchester.
There a table had been seized for arrears of assessed taxes; the people kept watch and prevented a sale; and at the end of five days, the table was taken out of limbo, carried round the town as a token of victory, and then restored to the wife of the owner as “the gift of the people.”
Now, although there was in these movements a mixture of the petty and the ludicrous, they indicated a feeling which could not safely be trifled with.
Ministers met in solemn conclave.
Expresses were sent to Lord Grey; the Lord Chancellor hastened from the north; the First Lord of the Admiralty gave over his sailing-excursions and repaired to council; and it was solemnly resolved to enforce the laws.
Better late than never.
The levelling Whig journals have chopped round with their masters, the ministers, and the highest Toryism is not a whit more Conservative than they all are.
Resist the laws, indeed! monstrous! shocking! and so forth.
The sheriffs of Middlesex were called in; the horse and foot guards put under arms; and an “imposing force” was sent round from one recusant to another, most of whom paid, and some were distrained upon, but there was no active resistance, “passive” being the motto of the Fitzwilliam disciples.
Ministers, however, are not at ease.
They see around them signs which are calculated to alarm wiser and more courageous men, and they are greatly increasing the numerical amount of the troops stationed in and near the metropolis.
A Westminster “Central Committee” met in to agitate for repeal of the house and window tax, and exposed some divisions between a cautious, petition-oriented wing, and a more radical, direct-action-oriented wing of the movement.
The following is taken from the London Evening Standard:
The chairman urged on the meeting the necessity (now that parliament was on the point of re-assembling) of adopting every legal and constitutional means for the repeal of those obnoxious duties.
Measures had been resorted to in opposition to them which did not meet the sanction of the committee; but upon that subject he did not wish to dwell.
It was the desire of the committee to appeal to reason, and not to violence, which was indeed, unnecessary in the present instance, because when public opinion was once fairly and decidedely expressed upon the subject, it became impossible for any set of men to resist it, or withhold what was unanimously demanded…
Mr. Crouch objected to the implied censure which was cast on persons who withstood the payment of those obnoxious taxes, and expressed his opinion that the individuals who had thus boldly resisted them were entitled to the praise of having effected more good than the committee.
(Hear.)
Deputations from the parishes of St. James, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and St. Anne’s then presented certain resolutions agreed to at meeting of the rate-payers and householders of those parishes, which were received and ordered to be entered on the minutes.
Mr. York, in presenting the resolution from St. James’s, observed that the inhabitants were of opinion the committee had been too lukewarm in its proceedings hitherto, and they now called upon that body to stand forward boldly and labour strenuously for the repeal of the obnoxious taxes.
The committee must use more decided language to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and tell him plainly that if the taxes were allowed to remain longer unrepealed there would be a confirmed resistance, not merely on the part of individuals, but by streets upon streets, to pay those imposts in money.
(Hear, hear.)
People were determined that all the Chancellor of the Exchequer should get was their goods.
(Hear.)
In fact, matters were well nigh arrived at this pitch — that ministers must either relinquish the present seat of government or repeal these unjust and unequal taxes.
(Hear.)
[The resolution of the St. James ratepayers, which embodied most of the foregoing sentiments, was then read.]
Mr. Lawford (a deputy from St. James’s) spoke in favour of every kind of passive resistance to the obnoxious taxes.
Mr. Kemp (another delegate) supported the resolution and censured the committee for want of vigour.
Mr. Brown defended the conduct of the committee; they had told the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the most explicit manner that the time was approaching when those taxes could no longer be collected, because they would not be paid.
(Hear.)
The resolution of members of the Society of Householders of Saint Martin’s in the Fields was then read.
It censured the apathy of the parochial deputies in not forcing upon ministers a conviction of the necessity of repealing the house and window duties; and declared that by such apathy the deputies from Saint Martin’s had forfeited the confidence of their constituents.
The resolution urged upon the delegates and the central committee the duty of conveying to the government the determination of the people no longer to pay those taxes in money, or of at once resigning the power entrusted to them.
Several members strongly denied the truth of the imputations cast upon the St. Martin’s delegates and the Central Committee by the resolution.
Mr. Pouncey (who had quitted the chair on this resolution being brought forward) defended his conduct and that of the other delegates from St. Martin’s. He did not wish to underrate the value of the resolution, but must observe that it by no means represented the feeling of all the inhabitants of the parish, a circumstance fully evinced by his brother delegates and himself having received the approbation of a parochial meeting convened upon the subject.
He had addressed Lord Althorp in the most decided and unqualified manner on the impolicy of those taxes, and the impossibility of much longer collecting them.
(Hear, hear.)
Several gentlemen bore testimony to the zeal and determination evinced by Mr. Pouncey, who then resumed the chair.
Mr. Cripps, in presenting the resolution from St. Anne’s parish, took occasion to censure the committee for the timidity of their proceedings.
It had been said that they told Sir J. Hobhouse that the repeal of the house duty would do for the present.
(Cries of No, no.)
They asked for a repeal of the entire house tax, and Lord Althorp only took off half of it.
This was the result of the undecided and wavering conduct of the committee.
The resolution complained that some of the parochial delegates had not discharged their duty by enforcing the repeal of the whole house and window taxes.
It stated that the public was determined to accept nothing short of a total repeal, and called upon the committee to impress upon Lord Althorp that the time was at hand when the people would pay no more till their request for the remission of those taxes was complied with.
(Hear.)
The Chairman said he thought the result of this meeting would prove highly beneficial, inasmuch as it must convince the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the House of Commons that the committee, so far from having made representations of too strong a nature on this subject, had been rather behind their constituents in expressing their opinions upon it; and when it was ascertained that the public sentiment was so unanimous, a speedy and total repeal of the obnoxious taxes must follow.
(Hear.)
Fast forward to for the next article in my sample, published a bit after the events it describes, in the Liverpool Mercury.
It’s a letter to the editor from someone who, failing to pay his window tax, had two tables seized and sold at auction.
In the course of the letter, the writer (a Thomas Robertson) shows how the tax and costs were itemized in the course of the distraint and sale: to 18 shillings, 1½ pence of original tax, enough expenses were added for “Levy,” “Possession,” “Bills and posting,” and “Brokage” to bring the total up to £2, 6 shillings, 4½ pence.
The writer also noted that the tax per window varied in an irrational way depending on how many windows one had, so that houses with many windows were charged less per window than those with few, but with some buildings with an amount of windows in-between the two being charged considerably more.
He concluded:
I hope my countrymen will bestir themselves about this odious tax, and endeavour by all the means they possess, to get it repealed.
This tax was a war tax; and yet after a peace of twenty-two years, we are saddled with it.
I hope this question will be brought on again this year, and that the representatives of the country will show some concern for the pockets of their constituents, by at once repealing it.
As for myself, my resolve is taken, — I will never pay it again.
So evidently the tax was still galling at that point, but the organized resistance had dissolved into sporadic individual resistance.
The final article in my sample comes from the London Daily News and indicates that organized resistance was again brewing:
the delegates selected by the various parishes in London, in which meetings have been held for the purpose of promoting the repeal of the window tax, assembled at the Marylebone Court-house, previous to waiting, according to appointment, as a deputation, on the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr. Wyld, M.P., said he understood it was to be communicated to the Chancellor that if this tax were not repealed they should stop the supplies.
(Hear.)
It is ambiguous from the context whether he meant that he and his fellow legislators would obstruct the passing of a budget (the usual use of the phrase “stop the supplies”) or whether he and his fellow agitators would refuse to continue paying the tax.
Several other parliamentarians were in the delegation which wended its way through town to Downing-street in fifty or sixty vehicles placarded with signs reading “Unconditional Repeal of the Window Tax.”
Many speeches were given there to a somewhat exasperated Chancellor of the Exchequer, and a few threatened tax resistance or related tactics.
Mr. Freeth, one of the Marylebone delegates, spoke… At a meeting at which he was present a resolution was carried that if the tax were not repealed their members be instructed to stop the supplies.
(Loud cheers.)
Mr. George, churchwarden of St. Ann’s, said he represented a large parish in Westminster… He should be the last man in the world to resort to threats, but he was bound to tell the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the parish he represented would not pay this tax any longer.
They should take no active steps, but they should offer a passive resistance to it; and other metropolitan parishes, he believed, were prepared to do the same.
[Mr. Wakeley, M.P.] had received those instructions [from his constituents, to stop the supplies if the tax were not repealed] unequivocally, and he was bound to state, not in the shape of a threat, but as a conscientious duty, the he should act up to those instructions when the time arrived.
He looked upon this tax as of so foul a character, that he considered it a duty, if the Chancellor of the Exchequer was determined to have this tax, to do what he could to prevent him having any other.
Mr. Wyld, M.P., remarked… There was at this moment an organisation going on which, if this tax were not repealed, would cause great inconvenience to government, and impede its operations.
This time the agitators were successful.
The tax was repealed in .
The following is an excerpt from The People’s Charter; an abstract from ‘The Rights of Nations,’ giving a condensed view of the great principles of representative government, and the chief objects of reform ().
The author, whose name doesn’t appear as such in the book, was apparently William Carpenter.
The book was part of the pro-reform agitation associated with the Reform Act of 1832.
It shares a title with (and perhaps was inspiration for) The People’s Charter that started the Chartist movement .
The book alludes to the tax resistance campaign that was part of pro-reform activism:
The hour, then, is now come for the people to resolve better, and yet more firmly, than a weak-minded man [the king], the insolent intriguers who beset him, and the robbers who think they have again the revenue in their hands.
The House of Commons has, by the constitution, the power of withholding the supplies; and, if this be insufficient, the people have the power of withholding the taxes.
The latter is, under the present circumstances, perfectly lawful; for Englishmen may not be taxed without consent of their representatives — the House of Commons admits that having been extensively corrupted, it has ceased to be truly representative of the people — therefore, the House of Commons is not authorized to impose taxes.
Happily, every petition now presented to the House of Commons, enjoins it to withhold the supplies from the executive government, until the reform bill shall have passed into law; and everywhere the resolution is declared not to pay taxes, till the representative authority necessary to their imposition is restored to the House.
And to this, the House has responded, by some of its most independent members declaring that they themselves will refuse taxes.
Mr James, in the House, said, he knew that, if, in support of the boroughmonger faction, the soldiers should forget their duty as citizens and as a part of the people, still that would not be of the slightest account; for he was sure that guns, cannons, swords, bayonets, and even dungeons, could not compel that House to vote supplies for the support of the army.
Neither could the people be prevented from resisting the payment of taxes: they were not obliged to pay in money, and who would buy goods distrained for them?
Mr Gillon, in the House, said that if they consented to vote supplies to an unreforming or wavering government, they would forfeit all character for consistency — all claim on the confidence of their constituents.
This, he declared (and he believed the feeling to be general) that until a bill, at least as extensive as the one lately before the House, should have become a law, he should not pay one farthing of taxes.
A despotic government, if such ventured to assume the reins of office, might imprison his person or distrain his goods; but they should not enslave his mind.
If any man ventured to purchase these goods, a brand would be set on him like Cain, and he would be marked for the execration and detestation of his countrymen.
Even the late lord chancellor’s declaration of the illegality of refusing to pay taxes, has now received an explanation from his brother at the Southwark meeting.
Mr W. Brougham there observed that “something had been said about the people not paying taxes, and a resolution to that effect would be highly illegal.
People, however, might individually refuse taxes without rendering themselves amenable to the law. Now, this was an affair easy to be arranged.
If a tax-gatherer were to call upon him, and ask him to settle his little bill for taxes, he might say to him in reply — ‘I have got a little bill of my own, Sir, which I should like to have settled by the gentlemen down at Westminster, who owe it me, and unless that little bill of mine be satisfactorily settled, you must never expect me to settle yours.’ ”
For the reason assigned above, however, this particular scheme does not seem essential; public meetings have everywhere passed resolutions for the refusal of taxes; and the following placard, in print, of which the form seems excellent, has, accordingly, been extensively exhibited in the windows: “I ⸺, housekeeper, do solemnly declare, that I will pay no more taxes, until the reform bill, with the 10l. or a less property qualification, disfranchisement to rotten boroughs, and enfranchisement to the metropolitan districts and populous towns, is secured whole and unmutilated to the nation.”
But this is not all.
It is evident, that if the people carry their notes to the bank, every banker in the kingdom must at once join them, and ministers must be recalled.
Every man, therefore, who has a 5l. note, ought to turn it into gold, and hoard it till the charter of the people’s liberties is won.
If, then, the people of England demand gold of the bank, refuse the payment of further taxes, and, by appointing commissioners to receive the present supplies, prevent their reaching the treasury, bloodshed may be prevented.
The horrors of physical revolution are otherwise inevitable.
