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British nonconformists
A century ago, British Nonconformists (that is, people who were not members of the official church) responded to government funding of establishment church schools with a campaign of tax resistance.
Today I’ll share some contemporary newspaper excerpts that covered the campaign.
The following comes from the edition of The San Francisco Call:
PASSIVE RESISTANCE.
When the new education bill was under consideration in Parliament a number of the more earnest opponents of the feature of the bill providing for the support of church schools declared that if the Government undertook to collect taxes for the support of such schools they would refuse payment.
The programme thus defined, became known as the policy of “passive resistance” and was the chief object of political discussion in the kingdom until Chamberlain’s imperial tariff issue distracted popular attention from the subject.
The opponents of the measure, however, are standing by their guns, and we learn from our London exchanges that the passive resistance movement has already become formidable and is steadily extending throughout the country.
The Westminster Gazette deems the issue of sufficient importance to devote almost an entire page of a recent edition to publishing a record of the summonses that have been issued to compel the payment of taxes by the resisters.
It appears that the first act of resistance occurred on , when four residents of the parish of Wirksworth were summoned before the local magistrates for refusing to pay the school taxes.
Warrants were issued against their property and the sales took place without disturbance.
, the day of the publication of the Gazette, upward of 3000 summonses were issued and the number of distraint sales amounted to sixty.
In most cases the resistance was strictly passive and no attempt was made to interfere with the officers in the sale of property seized for taxes, but at times there were evidences of a feeling that may give rise to trouble later on should the number of resisters ever become large enough to encourage a resort to an active resistance in place of a passive one.
Reviewing the movement in another issue the Gazette says: “In large numbers of cases proceedings have not yet been taken and several months must elapse before the full extent of the resistance can be adequately measured.”
A careful study of the summonses shows that a majority of the resisters who have thus far been brought before the courts belong either to the Baptist, Congregational or Primitive Methodist churches, but other free churches are well represented, notably the Wesleyans.
Some surprise has been felt at the indifference to the issue of the Society of Friends, as the members of that church were strenuous leaders in the former battles against church rates.
Members of the “Passive Resistance Committee” are quoted as saying that upward of 400 local leagues have been formed to resist the tax and that the movement is still extending.
In describing the manner in which the distraint sales are received by the public the Gazette says:
“At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.”
“There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as ‘the fighting parson,’ entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
Six distress warrants were issued at Loughborough, in Leicestershire, while at Brighton the magistrates made orders in nearly one hundred cases.
There was much demonstration in the court, the magistrates after one outburst leaving the bench and ordering the room to be cleared.
Some people were put out, but others clung to their seats and would not move.
The chief constable appealed to all to leave quietly, but realizing the ugly aspect of things, he consented to act as mediator and ask the magistrates to proceed on the understanding that there was no further disturbance.
Thus the situation was saved.”
It will be remembered that when the tariff question was precipitated by Mr. Chamberlain some of the opponents of the education bill declared that the new issue had been raised solely for the purpose of evading the educational issue.
The charge was unfair, but there can be no doubt that the Ministers were quite glad to get away from the denominational controversy which was threatened.
Even as it is, however, there is going to be trouble with the law, and in some localities the struggle between the magistrates and the resisters may become quite serious before all is over.
Here’s more, from the New York Times:
RELIGIOUS CONFLICT IN ENGLAND RENEWED
“Passive Resistance” Movement Against the Education Act.
The Rev. R. J. Campbell of the City Temple Says He Will Refuse to Pay Rates for Sectarian Purposes.
LONDON, .
— There was a remarkable scene at the City Temple in the City Temple at the mid-day service , when the pastor, the Rev. R.J. Campbell, the successor of the late Dr. Parker, announced his adhesion to the “Passive Resistance” movement against the education act.
Mr. Campbell, who may be regarded as the head of the Nonconformists in this country and as voicing their determination, said he would tender payment of the portion of the rates which was not devoted to sectarian purposes, but that the collector would have to seize his hall clock and other chattels for the balance.
The congregation, numbering about 3,000 persons, stood up and cheered lustily for several minutes.
The pastor added that he had heard that Colonial Secretary Chamberlain was likely to advocate the imprisonment of those who participated in the “Passive Resistance” movement, but he believed that if Mr. Chamberlain imprisoned him (Mr. Campbell) his days as a colonial secretary would be numbered, for Nonconformity represented half the religious life of the nation.
The English Nonconformists, after the introduction of the Education bill in the House of Commons, made many threats that they would refuse to pay the taxes to carry out the provisions of the bill, but since the passage of the act these threats became less frequent and up to it was supposed that the idea of fighting the measure in the way suggested had been abandoned.
It now seems that the Nonconformist leaders have decided to carry out their original plan, and another bitter religious conflict is consequently expected.
“Mr. Perks said he did not believe it was their duty to pay a rate for the propagation of a faith or tenets which they believed to be obnoxious in the sight of God.”
R.W. Perks, M.P., who was one of the most active opponents of the Education bill before its passage, speaking at Oxford on at a meeting convened by the Free Church Council of that city, said that, if they had been told two or three years ago that a Government would come into power and make it one of its cardinal measures to sweep out of existence the great school boards of England and to strengthen the priestly control over the elementary education of their children, they would have said that it was beyond belief.
There were certain cardinal features in the education act which they as Free Churchmen never could and never would admit.
First of all, in every voluntary school in the country the majority of the foundation managers were not elected by the people, and that must be reversed.
In the second place, they had 14,000 appointments of headmasters and headmistresses in the voluntary schools where the masters and mistresses were subjected to sectarian tests, and none of these appointments could be legally held by Nonconformists.
This was bad, because it limited the area of choice, and because it was a serious temptation to a boy or girl to change religious opinions simply for the purpose of securing a public appointment.
In conclusion Mr. Perks said he did not believe it was their duty to pay a rate for the propagation of a faith or tenets which they believed to be obnoxious in the sight of God.
These remarks were received with loud cheers.
Some Americans got into the act, according to the San Francisco Call:
LONDON, .
— The first foreigners to join the “passive resistance” movement against the educational act are two American taxpayers living at Wimbledon, the Rev. R.W. Farquhar, formerly pastor of Portland, Or., and E.H. Gaston, who at one time lived in Chicago.
They have both refused to pay the education rate and consequently their household goods will be seized and sold at auction to satisfy claims for a few shillings.
A follow-up article from the same paper reads:
Property of Americans Seized.
LONDON, . —
The police have seized several pieces of silverware belonging to the Rev. R.W. Farquhar, formerly of Portland, Or., and E.P. Gaston, who at one time lived in Chicago, two American taxpayers living in Wimbledon, who were the first foreigners to join the passive resistance movement against the education act.
The silver was sold by auction to satisfy the rates, amounting to a few shillings, which they refused to pay.
The pieces include wedding gifts and church presents made to them in the United States.
A New York Times article noted that the movement seemed to be growing:
…This movement, far from showing any signs of subsiding, is every day gathering new strength throughout the country.
“Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.”
Magistrates in many places openly express their sympathy with those who from conscientious motives refuse to pay the education rate.
Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.
Crowds, numbering in some cases thousands of people, assemble to give their support and sympathy to these lawbreakers for conscience’ sake.
With a fine affectation of indignation the church party publishes letters and articles innumerable denouncing the tactics of the resisters as subversive of law and order and as leading direct to anarchy.
Nothing makes any impression on the resolution of these irreconcilable Nonconformists, who maintain that they are prepared to go to prison rather than pay taxes for what they regard as Romanizing education calculated to imperil the Protestantism for which their forefathers fought and suffered.
One fiery spirit declared the other day that he would be delighted to suffer martyrdom at the stake rather than obey this law.
Passive resistance, in short, is rapidly producing a state of things which no government can afford to ignore.
Its result will ultimately be the removal of the grievances which weigh so heavily on the “Nonconformist conscience.”
By , things were looking up (The Washington Bee ):
TAKES RELIGION FROM SCHOOLS
British Court Decides People Need Not Pay for This Instruction
London.
— A decision given by the court of appeals leaves the question of religious education in Great Britain in a peculiar position.
The education act of was intended to compel local authorities to pay for religious instruction in the voluntary [publicly-funded, private] schools, and led to the notorious “passive resisters” movement under which numbers of nonconformists refused to pay the rates levied to cover this expenditure for church schools.
In the meantime the county council of the west riding of Yorkshire refused to pay teachers for the time devoted by them to religious instruction.
The board of education then sought the assistance of the courts in the matter, with the result that the court of appeals decided in favor of the Yorkshire council.
If this decision should be upheld by the house of lords, whither the case now will be carried, it will practically accomplish by a stroke what the bill now in parliament of Augustine Berrell, president of the board of education, aims at, and, furthermore, it may possibly enable a large number of “passive resisters” to bring action for false imprisonment.
The entire trouble appears to be due to careless drafting of the bill of .
An article from the Washington Herald looked at the state of the campaign:
Passive resistance continues to resist in the most active manner among the members of the Passive Resistance Leagues throughout Great Britain.
The education bill of the government having been destroyed by the bishops and the temporal peers, the passive resisters have issued new and very vigorous manifestos for sympathy and recruits.
Every man who has been to prison for refusing to pay the sectarian school rates declares he is willing to go again, though it costs him 30 shillings every time, and a working man declares he will withhold payment of the tax, even if it does cost him 6 shillings 3 pence to keep back the rate of 11 pence.
There is very little that is passive about the resisters, except the manner they meet imprisonments and fines for their refusal to pay taxes they think — and rightly think — unjustly imposed.
Their energy, force, and determination in their conscientious stand for freedom and self-government in educational matters are indisputable.
From the edition of the San Francisco Chronicle comes this short bit that demonstrates some of the creative tactics of nonconformist tax resisters in Great Britain a century and change ago:
The passive resistance of the nonconformists to the tax levied under the new education law is growing throughout England and Wales, where it applies.
Those refusing to pay the tax are allowing their property to be seized by the taxgatherers and sold at auction to the highest bidder.
In some districts the cases are reported to be multiplying by the hundreds.
In Lincolnshire, the sitting magistrate recently refused to try cases of resistance, and left the bench.
Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament.
The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters.
Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.
The upshot of the opposition to the obnoxious sectarian law will be an assault on Parliament at the next session to repeal it, which will probably be done.
The following report on Annuity Tax resistance in Scotland comes from Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine Volume 3, Number 18, published in .
It has some interesting details about the use of social boycott, rallies, and disruption of auctions by the resisters and their supporters.
The Passive Resistance of Edinburgh, to the Clergy-Tax.
A system of Passive Resistance to the iniquitous local impost, disguised under the name of the Annuity Tax, has been brought to a crisis by the imprisonment of Mr. Tait, the proprietor of this Magazine, for his proportion of the tax by which our clergy are maintained.
How he should have had the honour thrust upon him of inflicting the death-blow on this obnoxious tax, it is easier to know than to tell.
Mr. Tait had neither been an active, nor obtrusive resister: though, like thousands of the most respectable citizens of Edinburgh, and particularly the booksellers, he refused to pay annuity.
This tax has ever been hateful to the people, from almost every reason which can render an impost odious.
It is considered a tax on conscience with many.
It is a tax unknown in the Kirk Establishment, and peculiar to Edinburgh; unequal in its pressure; and arbitrary and irritating in the mode of exaction; and it is one which gives, as has been seen, power to the clergy to disgrace themselves and their profession, and wound the cause of Christianity.
Power of imprisonment over their hearers and townsmen, is not a power for ministers of the Gospel.
For four years, measures have been taken to resist this impost; and for the last eighteen months it has been successfully opposed, so far as goods were concerned, by a well-concerted Passive Resistance.
Many of the citizens were (and are) under horning1 and liable to caption, at the time the clergy selected Mr. Tait.
For Passive Resistance, during the last eighteen months, has been, as we shall have occasion to explain, so well organized, and has wrought so well to defeat the collection of the tax, that, unless the ministers had turned the kirks into old-furniture warehouses, it was idle to seize any more feather-beds, teakettles, and chests of drawers; either from those who could not, or those who would not pay this irritating and unjust local impost, marked by every deformity which can render a tax hateful.
The legal right of the ministers of the Kirk in Edinburgh, to imprison for stipend, was questioned.
Mr. Tait is probably the first imprisoned victim of the Kirk; nor will there be many more, or we greatly misunderstand the character of the people and of the times in Scotland.
A few weeks back, it was decided by the Law Courts that the ministers had the right of imprisonment; though an appeal to the Lord Chancellor still lay open to the inhabitants, who have petitioned against the tax, till they are tired of petitioning.
The clergy, to give them their due, lost no time in exercising their new power. Hornings and captions were flying on all sides;2 though no one would believe that Presbyterian Divines, the Fathers of the Scottish Kirk, calling themselves ministers of the gospel of love, and peace, and charity, would ever proceed to the fearful extremity of throwing their townsmen and hearers into jail.
The first experiment was made on a gentleman in very delicate health, about a fortnight before Mr. Tait’s arrest.
This gentleman was attended to the jail door by numbers of the most respectable citizens — resisters — in carriages.
He paid, and the procession returned home.
Two of his escort were Mr. Adam Black, publisher of the Edinburgh Review, and Mr. Francis Howden, a wealthy retired jeweller, of the highest respectability.
These two gentlemen were, some few months before, chairman and deputy-chairman of the Lord Advocate’s election committee.
These are the kind of men who have actively opposed the tax.
There was a lull for ten days. A Quaker was expected to be the next victim;
but the unexpected honour fell on Mr. Tait. The clergy could not have
committed so capital a blunder if they had aimed at it; or so effectually
have laid the axe to the root of the tree. This grand stroke of policy was,
doubtless, intended to finish the thing at once. Once compel him to submit,
and glory and gain were secure. That there might be no more processions, he
was waylaid coming into town in the morning; and, to the consternation of
the clergy themselves, submitted to the alternative of going to prison
rather than pay the tax. His first letter, which is
subjoined,3 explains the nature of our
clergy-tax, which has now been opposed and resisted in every peaceful way.
The scenes in Ireland were faintly brought to our own door; and so great
excitement never certainly prevailed in Edinburgh against a Kirk tax, or
against the Establishment altogther, since “The dinging down o’ the
Cathedrals.” At the request of the Inhabitants’ Committee,
intimated in the newspapers, Mr. Tait consented to be
liberated;4 and having remained four days in the
bonds of the clergy, he was released with every mark of honour and
distinction his fellow-citizens could confer. His conduct, they thought, had
given an example of patriotism and moral courage needed
everywhere,5 and the death-blow to the
clergy-tax. We take the Scotsman’s account of the triumph of
passive resistance, as being shorter than some of the others, and,
containing everything necessary to be told:—
“He stepped into the open carriage, drawn by four horses, which stood on the street, and beside him sat Mr. Howden, Mr. R. Miller, Mr. Robert Chambers, and Mr. Deuchar.
At this moment, one of the gentlemen in the carriage, waving his hat, proposed three cheers for the King, and three cheers for Mr. Tait, — both of which propositions were most enthusiastically carried into effect.
The procession was then about to move off, when, much against the will of Mr. Tait and the Committee, the crowd took the horses from the carriage, and with ropes drew it along the route of procession, which was along Waterloo Place and Prince’s Street, to Walker Street.
As the procession marched along, it was joined by several other trades, who had been late in getting ready; and seldom have we seen such a dense mass of individuals as Prince’s Street presented on this occasion.
In the procession alone, there were not fewer than 8,000 individuals; and we are sure that the spectators were more than thrice as numerous.
Mr. Tait was frequently cheered as he passed along, — and never, but on the occasion of the Reform Bill, was a more unanimous feeling witnessed than on that which brought the people together yesterday afternoon.”
A respectable Tory print in Glasgow — for there are Tory prints that have
decent manners — in denouncing “the revolutionary movement in that
rebellious city,” states, “that Edinburgh requires a Coercion Bill as much
as Kilkenny.” We confess it. So do many of the English towns. The agitation
against tithes and church-rate is as great in England as in Ireland. And if
a Coercion Bill is to be the substitute for justice, the more universally it
is applied the better. The whole people of the United Kingdom are of the
same spirit.
No church-rate can be more oppressive than the Annuity; and the evil does not rest here. “A poor Kirk only will be a pure Kirk,” is exemplified in Edinburgh.
This is a tax levied on members of the Church Establishment; and on every
denomination of Dissenters, Catholic, Quaker, Jew, Turk, or Pagan, to raise
the Edinburgh clergy above their brethren of the Kirk; and to set them above
their proper functions. With a few honourable exceptions, the Edinburgh
clergy are anything but a working clergy. Edinburgh, among its other
felicities, holds all “the great prizes” (as the Duke of Wellington calls
the bishoprics) of the Kirk. It is too much that the inhabitants should also
monopolize the honour of maintaining “the great prizes,” in a style which
has set them above their duties, and given “a high tone” to Presbyterianism,
by making a few of its humble clergy fit associates for our Tory and Whig
Coteries, and the legal aristocracy, at the expense of the pastoral office.
The worst fault that we hitherto know about them, after all, is, that they
know nothing of their parishes; for, till now, they had no power of
imprisonment, a power of which they should be the first to try to denude
themselves. Ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Church! — a Church
boasting its purity, its poverty, its tolerance, “rob widows’ houses,” and
throw men of all persuasions into prison for fractions of stipend! — and
this, too, with ample funds for their maintenance from other sources, — the
same kind of funds, and to a larger amount than those by which their
brethren are respectably supported in every other Scottish city. Shade of
John Knox! could you
have looked up from that old station in the Netherbow on the scenes
exhibited at the Cross of Edinburgh within the last ten years, by order of
your successors! and their proctors; seen the miserable furniture of poor
widows and destitute persons rouped for stipend! One scorns the
miserable fiction by which the Edinburgh clergy try to skulk behind their
agents: the Parsons in Ireland have given up the hypocritical pretext, “It
was not I, but the proctor.[”] Passive Resistance has put
an end to these revolting scenes, and introduced others, which the sincere
friends of the Kirk can regard as no less dangerous to its stability.
Mr. Tait’s letter explains the nature of the church-tax, but not all its deformities. First, it is peculiar to Edinburgh, and to a limited part of Edinburgh, rigorously visiting the shop-keeper, the physician, the artist, the half-pay officer, the poor and needy, while it totally exempts the class best able to contribute to the support of the Church, — the lawyers of all grades; those who, according to our Glasgow friend, drain the blood, and live on the marrow of Scotland; till, Jeshurun-like, our whole community, by their suckings, have waxen fat and are kicking, requiring to be put in strait waistcoats, and dieted on bread and water. Secondly, It is a shop tax; the people of London know what that means.
The rent of a man’s dwelling-house is a fair measure of his means, and in “our city of palaces,” every man likes a house rather above what he can afford than under it.
A shopkeeper who rents a house at from L.30 to L.50, may pay L.200 a-year, or more, for his place of business; and on this L.200, and on all the other premises he may rent in carrying on his trade, as well as on his dwelling-house, which is almost invariably at some distance from his place of business, he is liable to pay L.6 per cent. to the clergy, or be sent to jail, — be he Jew, Turk, Quaker, or Baptist.
The garret of a widow, the cellar of a porter, must contribute their proportion to the maintenance of “the great prizes” of the Kirk, and of the “tone” which now elevates Established Presbyterianism, in the gentility of its teachers, almost to equality with Episcopalian Dissent.
Of late years, since the Irish settled among us, many Catholics are called on to contribute to the maintenance of what they must think, our heretic clergy; an imposition on conscience, from which we hope to see Scotland soon freed for ever.
But, while the darkest den6 in the lanes, and
poor streets, of that central portion of Edinburgh (which, for the
Established clergy, may look for religious instruction where its inhabitants
please) must pay, every lordly mansion, of the first-born of Egypt, is past
bye. Our Lords of Session, and Clerks of Session, and Deputy-Clerks of
Session; and Clerks of Justiciary, and Deputy-Clerks of Justiciary, and Lord
Advocates, and Deputy-Advocates, and Sheriffs, and Substitute-Sheriffs; and
the whole tribes, kindreds, and languages, of our barristers; and every man
whose profession is symbolized on his door-plate by the mystic letters — W.S., or
S.S.C., the tax-gatherer respectfully passes. The
clergy themselves do not pay poor-rates in this city; for which rate another
6 per cent. on rent is levied from
the unfortunate shopkeeper, and householder. Is it surprising that the
people of Edinburgh have “rebelled,” since rebellion it must be called, and
refuse longer to submit to the hornings and gorings of the watchmen
of the flock?
The exemption of the College of Justice — this is the phrase, College of Justice — among a nation remarkable for the propriety of its names — is, however, the grievance of a past time; and the inclusion of the fifteen hundred, or two thousand, exempted lawyers will not now satisfy the people of Edinburgh; though this is the bait held out to make us bolt the Bill the Lord Advocate has been bungling at, “to enable the Edinburgh parsons to live like gentleman.” The people of Edinburgh will have their clergy live like their brethren in other towns, and like Christian ministers.
They will have no compulsory tax for their support.
They will have no Dissenter, no Catholic, no Quaker, or Jew, liable to a fraction of rate to maintain a Presbyterian minister.
They cannot more admire propagating religion by the tithe-pound, the Cross-rouping, and the Calton jail, than by the sword or the faggot; and will resist to the last every attempt to continue a power in the hands of the Edinburgh clergy, which they have recently used, and are still employing, to the violation of the first principles of the merciful faith they are bound to teach, and to the disgrace of their sacred office.
It is too late for compromise.
The principle which places this power in their hands is more dangerous, and much more to be guarded against, than the mere amount of the tribute levied.
Our ancestors, at some peril, and by despising persecution, won for us freedom of conscience and a Free Kirk: it will go hard but we maintain the right.
As this Magazine circulates through England and Ireland more widely than at
home, we have hitherto forborne afflicting our distant readers with local
grievances. Heaven knows that every town has abundance of them, local and
general; but, in passive resistance, Edinburgh is making common
cause with many other communities; and it may amuse strangers to learn how
it has been managed in the country of
the Porteous mob.
For years the spectators looked on with indignation and shame when furniture was rouped (sold by auction) at the Cross of Edinburgh, for annuity to the clergy.
At first such furniture belonged exclusively to very distressed persons; for though every one grumbled, no one who could scrape up the money durst refuse to pay, and thus incur the additional penalties of prosecution.
Not unfrequently generous individuals redeemed the miserable sticks so cruelly wrested from the more miserable owners.
The first act of passive resistance may have taken place about two years back; and we admit that since then it has been most actively passive, and has given rise to many melancholy and some humorous scenes.
Fortunately for the resisters, the goods must, by law, be exposed for sale at the Cross, which so far concentrated their field of action.
This, by the way, was a capital omission when the Annuity clause was smuggled over.
We hope the Lord Advocate (but the clergy’s agent will see to it) takes care, in the new Bill, that our goods, when confiscated for stipend, may be sent away and sold anywhere.
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale;7 and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
Our Edinburgh clergy could hitherto only operate round the Cross. If any of
our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was
tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross
about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale. Latterly the passive
hubbub rose as if by magic. Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross
passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate;
and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of
Passive Resistance. The tax had grinded the faces of the
poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation. Irish,
Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges;
Irish traders flew from St.
Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable
auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but
what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy. And here were the black
placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude—
ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
These are among the things done and provoked in this reforming city of John Knox, in the name of supporting religious instruction!
Dr. Chalmers is reported to have said, the other day, in one of our Church
Courts, “Too little money is devoted to the religious instruction of the
city.” He is quite right: Too little indeed — almost none is so applied; — a
good deal goes into the pockets of the ministers, nevertheless. The condition
of the poor of Edinburgh — their want of the due means, from the
Establishment, either of religious instruction at home, or church
accommodation, is not the smallest evil in this system of setting Scotch
Presbyterian clergymen above their callings by high salaries. We might
imagine, that after a poor man or woman has paid annuity, or had their goods
sold, they might at least find a church door open to them somewhere in the
town. They will find exactly the door open, but a surly door-keeper to push
them back, and if they do get in, no seat in church. In addition to the
odious Annuity Tax, the rents of the pews in Edinburgh are, on the average,
three times higher than in any other Scottish city. Thus we pay for
our “great prizes”8 trebly; and, in their
diligence and fidelity as ministers; in their meekness, forbearance,
long-suffering, patience, gentleness, as Christains, have our reward.
We dare not inflict upon our English or Irish readers more about our Collegiate Charges; our royal chaplainships; our union of the pastoral office with the professorships in our university; our church jobs of all kinds.
We have not complained till now: Now complaint is redress.
The legal jargon of which the Edinburgh prints are full just now, must
amuse and perplex the English and Irish. What can they think of widows
under caption; and hornings issued by the ministers? By one of the many
beautiful fictions of our law, no man can be imprisoned for debt. His
crime is rebellion. The King having sent “greeting,” ordering the debtor
to pay his creditor, if the debtor refuse to comply, he is presumed to
be denounced rebel at Edinburgh Cross and Leith Pier by the
horn, and is sent to jail for resistance of the King’s command.
The whole thing is admirably described by the Antiquary to his nephew,
Hector Macintyre, who remained about as wise as before; or as wise as
a recusant Irishman in the Cowgate, on whom our clergy lately made a
charge of horning. “Horning! horning! — by the powers! if they
bring a horning against me, I’ll bring a horning against them.”
When the King’s messenger-at-arms, as tipstaves are called in Scotland,
brought his horning to the Cowgate, the Irishman, previously
provided with a tremendous bullock’s horn, blew a blast “so loud and
dread,” that it might have brought down the Castle wall; and a
faction mustered as quickly as if it had sounded in the
suburbs of Kilkenny. The messenger-at-arms took leave as rapidly as
possible, and without making the charge of horning at this
time.
The agent of the clergy, Mr. H. Inglis, son of the Reverend Dr. Inglis,
the leader of the Church, and the grand instrument in smuggling the
clause into the Bill under which the clergy distrain and imprison, — acted in such energetic haste against the citizens, in obtaining these
profitable hornings, that it is said he forgot to take out the
attorney license before be commenced horning; which neglect
infers a penalty of
L.200. Will it be
exacted? — Every tax-payer is against the tax, but every one would
neither have gone to jail nor incurred prosecution. “Mr. Tait should
just have paid,” said one of the cautious disapproves. “No man will
uphold the tax; but where’s the good of putting two-three more guineas
in the pouch of Pope John’s son.” The argument has
force. Surely, for the sake of common decency, another of our
multitudinous W.S.’s might have been found for the lucrative office
devolved on the son of the great leader of the Kirk Assemblies.
To the Editor of the Caledonian Mercury
Sir, — I wish to be allowed, through the medium of your paper, to
explain the reasons which have induced me to submit to imprisonment,
rather than pay the annuity or ministers’ stipend. My reasons are
these:—
The tax was imposed by the act 1661, and preceding acts, to
raise 19,000 merks, which were to be applied to the maintenance of only
six of the twelve Edinburgh clergymen; whereas a sum very much larger
has been collected, under the name of annuity, and applied to the
maintenance of all the Edinburgh clergymen, and to other
purposes.
The collection and application of the annuity was illegal up
to ; and was only then made legal (if
legal it yet is) by a clause surreptitiously and illegally inserted in
an act of Parliament, which had been intimated as one for simply
extending the royalty of the city. Unless an act of Parliament,
fraudulently obtained by the clergy, can make the annuity, as now
collected and applied, legal, the collection and application
are still illegal.
Altogether, by the annuity, impost, seat rents, shore dues
at Leith,
&c.,
about L.21,000 are
collected, in name of the Church Establishment, while only about half
that sum is applied to its legitimate purposes.
The sum levied from the citizens of Edinburgh is not only
too large, but is unequally levied, and absurdly applied; 55,000 souls,
in the extended royalty, having 13 churches and eighteen ministers, to
whom about L.9,000 per
annum is paid, while 70,000 souls, in that part ol Edinburgh which is
called the parish of St.
Cuthbert’s, pay no part of the annuity tax; the two clergymen of this
parish; and those of the Chapels of Ease belonging to it, being paid by
the heritors, or from the seat rents.
The above inequality of the assessment is further aggravated
by the exemption of the Members of the College of Justice; also, by the
tax being laid upon shops,
&c., as
well as dwelling-houses, although the latter are the proper measures of
the incomes of the inhabitants.
For those and other reasons, detailed in a petition to
Parliament, and a report by the Committee of Inhabitants, the collection
of the annuity has been considered unjust and oppressive. Payment has
been refused by the inhabitants; and when the clergy proceeded to
distrain the goods of the recusants, their proceedings were rendered
ineffective by the impossibility of finding purchasers for the
distrained goods. Finding their seizure of the citizens’ goods
inoperative, the clergy are resorting to the extremity of imprisonment.
Mr. Wilson, pocket-book maker, was the first seized on. He, as was
publicly announced, submitted immediately on being imprisoned to the
imposition of the clergy, on account of the state of his health. I have
been selected as the second victim. And, as I have not Mr. Wilson’s
reason for instant submission to what I conceive unjustice and
oppression, I have permitted the clergy to imprison me; and send you
this statement from my place of confinement, the jail, Calton Hill.
In reference to
St. Peter’s name, our
Saviour said — “Upon this rock I have built my Church.” It is now seen
upon what rock the Edinburgh clergy rest their Establishment — the rock
on which stands the Calton Jail.
Let no man tell me that I ought to petition Parliament for an
alteration of the law, instead of opposing this passive resistance to
the law. Petitioning has been tried once and again; and what has been
the result? Why, that the Lord Advocate of Scotland, one of the
representatives of our city, and a Minister of the Crown, has attempted
to sanction the hideous injustice of which we complain, by a new act of
Parliament, fixing down the odious annuity tax upon us more firmly than
ever, with no amelioration of the injustice, except the doing away with
the exemption of the College of Justice!
I believe there is no hope of redress but from refusal of
payment until the extremity of imprisonment is resorted to. In that
belief I have acted, — and
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
William Tait.
The spirit of the people of Edinburgh may be inferred from the following
anecdote:— Mr. Tait spent one Sabbath in jail On that day the debtors
posted a bill on their door of the jail chapel intimating, “No
attendance on Divine Service during Imprisonment for Annuity
Tax.” This was, of course, quite spontaneous, as the Church
prisoner of the clergy was kept apart from all the other prisoners; and
treated by every one of the officials with the greatest indulgence and
consideration, during his brief sojourn in prison.
“We have need of many such men; we ought to find them in places where it
is in vain to look for them. But our consolation is, that to have a
few, nay to have only
one, is to be sure of having thousands hereafter. The moral
force of such examples is slow to subside, even though they be not
instantly acted upon. The recollection of them survives long, and acts
alike as a check to the oppressor, and a sustaining hope to the
unredressed — an assurance that there is a glorious power unemployed,
that can, when it pleases, rise up and baffle the oppressing one that
is ever at work. An odour rises out of such actions, that becomes as
the breath of a new life to others. The language they are related in,
is as the melody so exquisitely described in one of Wordsworth’s
ballads:—
‘The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.’ ” — True
Sun.
Many capital hits have been made during the Three Years’
War between the citizens and the clergy of Edinburgh, which
should not be forgotten. The Bible Society of London had, it appears,
at one time resolved, that no subscription in aid of the circulation of
the Scriptures, should be taken from Socinians, Unitarians, Infidels,
and Blasphemers. The Bible Society denounced all such
characters; and our clergy piously agreed. “Now, surely you won’t take
stipend from such wretches?” said some writer in the
North Briton. Tainted money becomes sweet in passing
through the fingers of Mr. Peter Hill. Mr. Manager Murray’s synagogue
of Satan, at the end of the North Bridge, pays about
L.50 per annum to the
clergy of Edinburgh; and many smaller sanctuaries of sin, in the old
town, must contribute their proportion.
The agents of our clergy had a sort of barracks. They made the enclosure
in the Cowgate, called the Meal-market, a depot for confiscated
furniture when the people drove the auctioneers from the Cross.
[“]Every clergyman should have
L.400 in each pocket,”
said the Whig Solicitor-General, the other day at some Kirk meeting,
where the Magistrates themselves were speaking of uncollegiating the
churches, and reducing the stipends. Some twenty or thirty years back,
those stipends were L.300
a-year, with as much more as they could scrape up. Be it remembered,
that the faculty to which Mr. Cockbum belongs, have never yet paid one
farthing of church-tax since the Kirk was established; and as
Presbyterianism is neither the fashionable religion, nor even the
genteel mode of faith in Edinburgh, it is but a proportion of
the learned faculty that even pay for a seat in the Kirk. Speeches like
the above move the multitudes in the Cowgate, and even the wealthiest
shopkeeper in the finest streets, in rather an unpleasant way. Mr.
Cockburn cannot have forgotten the anecdote of King James
Ⅰ. and his Bishops,
Neale and Andrews. “Cannot I take my subject’s money when I want it,
without all this formality in Parliament?” — “God forbid, Sir,” said
Neale, “but you should — you are the breath of our nostrils.” — “Well,
my Lord,” rejoined his Majesty to Andrews, “and what say you?” He
excused himself on the ground of ignorance in Parliamentary matters. “No
put-offs, my Lord,” said James, “answer me presently.” — “Then, Sir,”
said the excellent prelate, “I think it lawful for you to take my
brother Neale’s money, for he offers it.” The clergy are fully entitled
to take Mr. Cockburn’s
L.800 a-year.
This note is appended to the article:
Imprisonment of a Baptist. — As this sheet was going to press, we have seen the spectacle, novel in a Presbyterian country, of a respectable and aged man of the religious persuasion of Fuller, Robert Hall, and John Foster, haled to prison for ministers’ stipend, under circumstances which shame the very name of Presbyterianism.
Mr. Ewart, shoemaker, one among upwards of three hundred citizens put to the horn, (at least a two-guinea process before it is ended,) when presented with the caption by the messenger, said he was quite unable to pay his arrears.
He was indulged with a little time to go and plead his case with the scion of Establishment, Dr. Inglis’s son, who is reaping the fruits of a lawyer’s rich harvest, amid our tears, shame, and sorrow.
He told that young agent of the clergy, that he neither could, nor would, if he could, pay stipend.
Ho belonged to a denomination of Christians who had been tortured and burned by an established priesthood; and the Established Clergy of Edinburgh were welcome to send him to prison if it seemed good to them.
On he was marched off to the Calton Jail, accompanied by the usual hasty muster of people carrying flags and poles, having placards on which were a variety of devices and inscriptions, to which we shall not at present advert.
His daughter, a fine young woman, in a fit of heroic indignation which overmastered her grief and the natural timidity of her sex, seized one of the flags, and would have walked before her father to prison with the crowd, but was prevented by him and the interference of the humane bystanders. this ruined man’s shop, in Hanover Street, was seen shut up, and a bill stuck on the door, “In Prison for Ministers’ Stipend.”
In earnestly recommending Mr. Ewart’s case to the friends of freedom of
conscience everywhere, and particularly to the Baptists of England, we would
humbly ask the casuists among our clergy, is this man imprisoned to recover
a just debt, or to gratify a cruel, despicable revenge? We know what men of
plain understanding, in this city, think and say loudly.
By the laws of Scotland, a creditor who indulges his cruelty by keeping a needy man in jail, is bound to maintain him.
Mr. Ewart has claimed and been allowed a shilling, paid per diem, as aliment-money — a liberal allowance, — as fortunately the fixing the amount of aliment does not rest with the imprisoning clergy.
Today, some news accounts and testimony of resistance to the annuity and other
church taxes by Scottish and other British nonconformists in the
.
These accounts include such tactics as passively-resisting arrest (going
limp), disrupting auctions of seized goods, boycotts of such auctions by
sympathetic auctioneers and carters, intimidation of auctioneers, public
shaming of businesses that participated in tax auctions, publicizing of
tax auctions so as to draw a crowd of sympathizers, disrupting arrests of
resisters, going into hiding to evade arrest, use of barricades to prevent
property seizure, resignation of government officials, and raising money by
subscription to assist resisters who had property seized.
An Address to the Inhabitants of St. Austell, on the Subject of the Church Rate.
It is painful to our feelings to be engaged in differences with our friends
and neighbours; but when matters of principle are in question, and especially
those connected with civil and religious liberty, we dare not shrink from
avowing our sentiments, and maintaining them to the utmost of our power. The
subject of the church rate, which is now agitating this parish, is, with us,
one of these matters of principle. We consider that the end and object of
every good government is the protection of our dearest rights; that is,
person and property, and the worship of God in the manner which we
conscientiously believe to be most acceptable to Him.
Perhaps many of you are not aware of the forcible seizure of our goods to
support a place of worship from which we conscientiously dissent. We
therefore deem it to be our duty to give you the following information upon
the subject:—
For a church rate of 7s.,
demanded of J.E. Veale, articles were taken value £1
7s.
For a church rate of 5s.
1d., demanded of R. Veale,
articles were taken value £1
12s.
For a church rate of 2s.,
demanded of W. Veale, articles were taken value £1
5s.
For a church rate of 12s.
5½d., demanded of W. & A.H.
Veale, articles were taken value £2.
For a church rate of 7s.
1d., demanded of W. Clemes,
articles were taken value £2
10s.
You see, then, that our property has been forcibly taken from us in direct
opposition to all the precepts of the Gospel. Christianity is to be spread
through the world by persuasive and spiritual means. The people who meet in
an Episcopal place of worship have no more moral right to forcibly take our
property from us to support their worship, than we have to take their goods
to support ours.
Now, if we honestly pay the taxes levied by Government for the support of
civil society, we have a right to its protection. While a man does
this, and fulfils the social and relative duties of life respectably,
conscientiously refraining from doing any injury to any one, the State has
nothing to do with the manner in which he conceives it to be his duty to
worship his Maker. This is a matter entirely between his God and himself,
with which no earthly power has a right to interfere; and therefore, since
mutual protection is the sole object for which we submit to a form of
government, and pay taxes, laws made to compel subjects to support any
particular form of religion are unjust in their principle, and ought not to
be complied with.
Now, overlooking for a moment the circumstance, that these rates can be
legally enforced only by a majority of rate-payers in any given parish, let
us examine this position, on which, the advocates for the compulsory
maintenance of an ecclesiastical establishment take their stand. The whole
force of their argument lies in the very words employed by those who
condemned the Saviour of men, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to
die,” (John ⅹⅸ. 7.) We will, in the first place, tell them, that the
mere circumstance of having a law, is not sufficient to justify them
in the execution of it. Have they never heard of unjust, cruel, and wicked
laws? Can they forget, that Bishops Ridley and Latimer, and a glorious
company of martyrs, were burnt to death according to law, because
they could not conscientiously conform to the State religion? Had these
champions for law lived in Spain and Portugal, when the laws of the land in
those countries subjected conscientious men and women to the horrors of the
Inquisition, would they have considered it their duty to support those
proceedings, because there was a law for it? But we will tell them,
that every law which is contrary to the precepts and doctrines of the Gospel,
is more honoured in the breach than in the observance; and ought not to be
considered binding upon any Christian. And be it ever remembered, that it was
because they could not conform to the State religion, that the early
Christians suffered martyrdom; that the Protestants on
St. Bartholomew’s-day were
butchered; and that a great number of the members of the religious society to
which we belong, laid down their lives in prison, in the time of King Charles
the Second.
Under these circumstances, we appeal to the liberal portion of the Church of
England resident in this parish, whether they think it right to
compel their brethren to support forms of worship to which they
conscientiously object? and whether it is fair, or consistent with common
honesty, to put their hands into the pockets of their Dissenting neighbours,
for the support of their own particular forms and ceremonies of religion?
With best wishes for all our neighbours, we are, their sincere friends,
John Edey Veale.
Riciunn Veale.
William Veale.
Andrew Kingston Veale.
William Clemes. St. Austell, .
We direct attention to the Address, in another column, by some Friends at
St. Austell to their townsmen,
on the subject of church-rate exactions. Their case is calmly, yet pointedly
reasoned; and we feel persuaded, these Friends have the sympathy of their
brethren in religious profession throughout the nation. In connection with
the above, we have given an account from the pages of a cotemporary, of
certain proceedings at Edinburgh for refusal to pay the Annuity Tax; this Tax
being the mode adopted for obtaining the stipends of Clergymen belonging to
the Established Church of Scotland in that city. We quote these proceedings,
not by any means because we approve of the conduct of the parties who
attended the Roup, and obstructed the Auctioneer in disposing of the
articles; but as evidence of the strong feeling which exists in the minds of
the citizens of Edinburgh, against the unjust and oppressive system by which
the State Church is upheld;— a system, the agents of which may, for aught we
know, be one of these days laying their hands, as they have done before, on
the goods or furniture of some of our own members; thus robbing those to whom
the Clergy “perform no services, and on whom, consequently, they can
have no equitable claims.”
At a public meeting of the inhabitants, held subsequently to the attempted
Roup, resolutions approving of the refusal of the poinded parties to pay the
Annuity Tax, and condemnatory of the State Church oppression and in justice,
were passed; and it affords us pleasure to find the Chairman, Professor Dick,
disapproving of the uproarious conduct manifested by the populace on occasion
of exposing the Furniture for Sale:— “He was not at all surprised,” he said,
“at the offering of passive resistance in Edinburgh to tho Annuity Tax, on
the ground, first, that they considered the principles of an Established
Church to be unsound; and on the ground, secondly, that they did not believe
in the doctrines of an Erastian Church. He must take leave to say, that he
did not agree with all the steps which had been adopted at the sales for
Annuity Tax the other day. They did not want anything like physical force to
put down the Annuity Tax. He did not consider that it was proper to defeat
the officers of the law in their purpose. He deeply sympathised with the
feeling which existed against the Annuity Tax, but he did not think that the
exhibition made the other day was the best way of showing that feeling. The
proper way to get quit of this obnoxious impost was by a quiet, determined,
and peaceful agitation. He was persuaded that by a moral force resistance,
they would eventually overcome the iniquity. He was convinced that if they
showed a bold front — if they told the Government that there was an
unparalleled injustice perpetrated on the inhabitants of Edinburgh — with the
exception of the town of Montrose — they would be successful in getting
exempted from it.”
These sentiments are highly creditable to the learned Professor; they were
warmly applauded by the meeting, and encouragingly indicate an advance
towards the views and the practice of our Society; and we do sincerely trust,
that should any Friends in Edinburgh be called upon to suffer after a similar
fashion, they may be enabled to “adhere stedfastly to the original grounds of
our testimony; not allow themselves,” in the words of the
Book of Discipline, page 260, “to be led away by
any feelings of party spirit, or suffer any motives of an inferior character
to take the place of those which are purely Christian. May none amongst us
shrink from the faithful and upright support of our Christian belief, but
through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ seek after that meek disposition,
in which our Society has uniformly thought it light to maintain this
testimony, and which we desire may ever characterize us as a body.”
Next, from the
Portland Guardian and Normanby General Adviser
(Australia):
“The Established Church of Scotland,” says the Spectator, “is in
very hot water at this moment, in consequence of the wrong-headed policy
which has maintained the Annuity-tax, and which now logically compels the
responsible official functionaries to enforce payment. Strange scenes have
occurred in Edinburgh. An order went forth that the tax should be demanded
from certain persons. Three were pounced upon. Two, a Mr. Fairbain and a Mr.
William Brown, went quietly to gaol, rather than pay. A third, Mr. Hunter,
conceived the brilliant idea of refusing to pay the tax and of offering no
resistance, beyond a passive resistance, to the constables. Forthwith ensued
a scandalous scene of lugging and hauling. Hunter, a heavy person, was
carried out of his shop by the head and feet. Thrust into a hack cab, he lay
on his back with his legs dangling outside. Handcuffs were placed upon him
in order apparently that the chief of the arresting party might obtain a
greater purchase on their passive prisoner. A mob intervened. Resistance to
the law is not a Scotch characteristic. If a felon were apprehended in the
streets of Edinburgh, the mob would, if it were needed, assist in the
capture. But in this case, the phrase ‘arrested for refusing to pay
Annuity-tax,’ roused the passions of a people who have always been ready to
take fire at the sight of what looks like religious persecution. When it was
the fashion to seize the goods of those dissenters who refused to pay the
odious tax, a great array of soldiers and police was required to protect the
auctioneer instructed to sell the goods; and when purchasers could not be
found in Edinburgh, they were sought for and found in Glasgow. Opposition to
the payment of this impost, therefore, is an idea familiar to the minds of
the people of Edinburgh. Moreover, there was an air of novelty in the attempt
to imprison the malcontents. It was deemed a harsh measure to distrain, it is
regarded as odious to arrest. To the multitude, the officers, hauling at the
passive and manacled Hunter as he lay helpless beneath their hands, appeared
somewhat in the light of familiars of some Scottish inquisition. The people
acted on the impulse of the moment, obstructed the constables, and put them
to flight; and we have no doubt it would now require a strong armed force to
arrest the man in broad daylight. He therefore goes free; but we hear that
the constables are on the alert each night to catch the marked men; and that,
fearing a visit in the dark, these persons quit their homes and sleep abroad.”
Another annuity tax seizure has been made in Edinburgh on behalf of the city
clergy. The victim in this case was Mr. James Millar, an extensive furnishing
ironmonger in Princess street. From Mr. Millar’s residence, Hope-terrace, the
whole dining-room furniture was carried away, even to the carpet, which was
torn off the floor. The goods taken are in value upwards of £150; the tax
refused to be paid is less than £8. “Such,” says the Caledonian Mercury, “is
a specimen of Christian Edinburgh, with its Synod sitting, and its
assemblies, with her Majesty’s representative, about to sit, to further the
cause of Christ and His kingdom.”
“Abolition” as used here was a misnomer, if not a deliberate attempt at
deception, since the act did not abolish the tax, as many had hoped it would,
but instead tried to disguise it by subsuming it within the police tax and
explicitly refraining from itemizing it, as critics quickly pointed out:
By the 11th section it is enacted that the
“increased assessments under the powers of this Act shall not, in the
imposing, levying, or collecting thereof, or in the notices or receipts
relative thereto, be in any way separated or distinguished from the
assessments to be imposed, levied, and collected under the said Edinburgh
Police Act, , and Edinburgh Municipality
Act, .” It will be observed that the only
object of this clause is to conceal from the inhabitants the amount in which
they are assessed for the support of the established clergy…
David Lewis, a member of the Edinburgh town council, testified about the
effects of the Bill that lumped the annuity tax in with the larger police tax.
People who conscientiously resisted the small annuity tax and only paid the
police tax portion found that their entire tax bill was rejected for being
underpaid, and then the sheriff came after them (and penalized them) for the
whole amount. The sheriff had a good motive to do this, as he could then
collect a percentage of the total and keep it for himself.
Q: Just to illustrate the working of the
arrangement, supposing a shop or a house is rated for the police rate at
60l., and the police rate
1s.
3d., that would be
3l.
15s., would it not?
A: Yes.
Q: Then there would be
5s. added for this penny
[annuity tax] which is in dispute?
A: Quite so.
Q: Then for your house, which is rented at
60l., you tender
3l.
15s. for the police, and
you tender all the small rates for registration and everything else, but you
refuse to pay this
5s., unless you are
compelled, for the penny?
A: Yes.
Q: Then the collector gets 12½ per cent. on the
4l., because you have refused
to pay 5s.?
A: Yes.
Q: You offered the town council
3l.
15s., and they would not
take it, but they have taken
3l.
10s. through the sheriff’s
officer — because they never levy the
10s. from the recusants at
all; they cannot recover it, and it is a loss to the city fund, is it not?
A: Quite so; I have a case which illustrates the
question perfectly. One of my neighbour’s (a clergyman) rates come to
2l.
19s.
7d., he refuses to pay this
penny, which amounts to 3s.
4d.; in consequence of refusing
to pay the 3s.
4d., there are expenses to the
amount of
1l.
1s.
4d. charged against him in the
recovery of the 3s.
4d., and the city are charged
12½ per cent. on the entire amount of
2l.
19s.
7d.
The effect of this was that for tax years
, the government pursued 861 tax
refusers (of some 3,475 warrants they issued) in order to try to get £2,981,
of which only £497 were actually being resisted for conscientious reasons. In
order to get this disputed £497 from the resisters, the town paid the
sheriff’s office 12.5% of the total, which is to say, £372. Some of this
included costs of prosecution, which were charged against the resisters:
“although the warrants cost the council only
3d. or
4d. per head,” Lewis testified,
“those who are prosecuted were charged from
1s.
6d. to
2s.
6d. per head; so that we are
making a large profit out of the prosecutions in addition to the enforcement
of the rate.”
Q: Are you personally sure of that fact; because
it is a serious charge to make against the council that they collect money
under false pretenses?
A: I am personally sure of it.
Q: Besides those expenses, am I correct in
assuming that the sheriff’s officer charges all the legal expenses and the
expenses of cartage, and everything of that kind over and above?
A: He does.
Q: And these expenses amount to a very
considerable sum?
A: I should say they average about
10s. where there are no
sales, and from
15s. to
18s. where there are sales,
in addition. There is one statement I should like very particularly to submit;
and it is with regard to a gentleman, a Quaker, one of the most respectable of
our citizens, and I should say one who upon no condition could be objected to
as not having conscientious scruples. His rates amounted to
2l.
18s., the amount which he
disputed was 3s.
3d.; he offered to pay the whole
of the money less the 3s.
3d.; it was repeatedly refused;
the officer carried away goods to the amount of exactly
9l.; (I have the receipt here);
the goods were sold; in conscience he refused to purchase them; and he got
back out of the 9l. the sum of
9d.; so that refusing to pay
3s.
3d., cost him
8l.
19s.
3d.
Lewis also testified about the solidarity area businesses were exhibiting
with the tax strikers and against the government seizure-and-sale apparatus:
Q: Does it consist with your knowledge that no
auctioneer could be got to sell the goods?
A: It does.
Q: Does it consist with your knowledge that none
of the dealers in old furniture in Edinburgh will buy the goods that are
exposed?
A: None, to my knowledge
Q: Is it pretty generally arranged that somebody
buys them at the Cross?
A: Yes; in many cases there is such an
arrangement.
Q: Does it consist with your knowledge that
there has been great difficulty in getting any carter to hire his cart for
carrying away the property?
A: Yes.
Q: In point of fact, were the council checkmated
in their efforts to get a carter?
A: They were.
Q: You know that personally?
A: I do.
Q: Can you mention an instance?
A: I may mention that, after two carts had been
engaged belonging to two different parties, there was an action of damages
raised on both occasions against the proprietor of a journal for having
notified the circumstance that these parties had so hired their carts.
Q: It was held to have a damaging influence on
the business of the carters, was it?
A: Yes; these were the points argued in court.
Next interviewed was John Greig, who had been a town council member:
Q: Do you remember the introduction of the lorry
or police cart?
A: I read it in the newspapers.
Q: Has that made a considerable difference in
inducing people to pay?
A: Applying the screw, which has been done very
severely, has had very great effect in bringing in arrears.
Thomas Menzies, a dissenter, was questioned next.
Q: Was there a feeling among the Dissenters so
strong against the tax, that it induced some of them to leave the Council,
and prevented others from coming forward as candidates at the municipal
elections?
A: That was very striking indeed, in the case of
such men as Bailie Russell, Bailie Grieve, Ex-Counsellor Burns, and other
distinguished Dissenters, who retired from the Council rather than administer
the Act.
Q: Until the last year, has it prevented others
from coming forward as candidates for the vacant wards?
A: Most decidedly there has been great difficulty
in getting voluntary Dissenters to go into the Council, and in consequence of
voluntary Dissenters not going into the Council, the Free Church dissenters
have found great difficulty in carrying out this measure in the Council, and
many of the most influential of them also retired.
Q: Have great complaints been made in consequence
of expensive prosecutions being brought forward in the Court of Sessions
against parties?
A: An intense feeling of indignation has been
roused at the selection of some of our most distinguished citizens, and
dragging them into the Court of Session. We felt that we were under
persecution, and as to two of the parties in particular, subscriptions were
raised to mark our indignation at such a mode of prosecuting Dissenters. I
refer particularly to the late Thomas Russell, who when the money was
presented to him, said, “We shall give it to the Annuity Tax League, to
enable them to carry out their operations in the abolishment of the tax.”
Q: When was that?
A: That was in . A similar sum was raised for Mr. M‘Laren, of Saint Andrew’s
Hotel, and the expenses in each of those cases were from
27l. to
30l. Mr. M‘Laren was dragged
into Court the year following, and very summarily dealt with, because Mr. Caw
would not take the money, unless it was immediately presented to him,
although a very respectable citizen; Mr. Dixon, of the firm of Knox, Samuel,
and Dixon had offered him the money. The furniture was taken away; his
dining-room was left almost empty; and he spent to the extent of between
30l. and
40l. in pleading for redress
before the sheriff. He employed Mr. Trainer as his advocate.
Q: Do you know the result of the application to
the sheriff?
A: The sheriff decided against Mr. M‘Laren, and
he had, of course, to pay all costs.
Q: What was the amount for which he was sued?
A: I could not get the accounts before I came up,
and I am ignorant of the expense.
Q: Was it a large sum?
A: In the first prosecution, between
20l. and
30l.
Q: In that case was there a distraint?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know that 52 police officers were
employed to distrain?
A: I have seen police officers in great numbers,
in several detachments, waiting on these sales, in quiet corners.
Q: Has any action been taken against you for the
recovery of your arrears?
A: Yes; I was summoned to the Sheriff’s Court for
three years’ arrears, and a decree was obtained against me, but no action has
been taken, and those three years’ arrears are still in my hands; I tendered
to the sheriff’s clerk, the police tax proper; the sum for the clerical tax
is 4s.
2d. Previously to this, I also
tendered it to Mr. Thomson, the collector, by a draft on the bank, and the
same to Mr. Saunders, who was employed as his agent. I have their respective
letters, showing that I have done so, but it was refused, because I would not
pay the clerical portion of the tax.
Q: Did you ask for a discharge for the whole
amount, or were you willing to acknowledge that a balance remained?
A: In the year that partial payments were agreed
to be paid I had not signed a document that it was due, because I considered
the tax to be unconstitutionally put on, and that we ought to protest against
such measures being thrust upon the community.
Q: Did the sheriff’s officer come to your house
and carry off your things?
A: He did.
Q: When?
A: ; he carried
off a hair-cloth sofa, and a hair-cloth easy chair, which I purchased back.
We were in the habit at these sales for the clerical portion of the tax, of
allowing our furniture to be taken as a protest. The auctioneer and sheriff
officer who are one person (Mr. Caw) put them up slump, and put this out of
my power, so that we could not make our protest so decidedly on that point.
Q: What do you mean by “slump?”
A: Instead of putting them up singly he put them
up in one lot.
Q: You have stated that you have always taken a
deep interest in this class of questions; did that induce you to go and see
several of the sales?
A: Yes, it induced me to go to the sales under
the small debts summons at the house of the parties to sympathise with them.
Q: Were you present at a sale at the house of Mr.
Hope, a wholesale merchant in West Preston-street?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you state briefly what you saw?
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable
citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the
arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very
strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was
entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the
auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were
such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No. The cabman who brought the officers,
seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and
they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a
back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Was there a strong body of police present in
case, of an outbreak?
A: Not so many on this occasion as on succeeding
occasions. They gradually increased.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that
occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
Q: Were you present at a sale of Mr. Stewart’s
furniture, in Rankeillor-street in ?
A: I was.
Q: Did anything of the same kind occur?
A: The house was densely packed; it was
impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third
and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not
force their way up, except with great difficulty. The consequence was, that
nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger
both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the
heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys
down. Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled
and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he
was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so
much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were
considerably subdued.
Q: Was the officer (Mr. Caw) then present?
A: Mr. Caw and his assistants.
Q: Were you present at the sale at Mr. Adair’s
hotel?
A: I was. That produced great sensation in the
city. The whole of the Highstreet between
St. Giles’s Cathedral and Tron
Church was crowded. I am not a great judge of numbers, but I should say there
were from 5,000 to 10,000 people. There was a miller’s cart passing, and some
of the policemen were powdered with flour out of the bags by the public.
Q: Is Mr. Adair a Roman Catholic?
A: Yes. I was present at that sale, and Mr.
Linton, the superintendent of police, ordered me to be pulled out; but Mr.
Adair protected me in his house, and I was allowed to remain. They carried
off a sofa, a piano, and a picture to the police office. In that case Mr.
Adair was able to give his protest.
Q: What were you doing at the time the
superintendent of police ordered you to be taken out?
A: Quietly observing the sale.
Q: Were many complaints made of the rough way in
which the police acted on those occasions?
A: Very many complaints, because the inhabitants
were very severely handled at these sales, and pulled out of the rooms by the
policemen; and even when there was room for them, as at Mr. M‘Laren’s sale,
they would not allow them to enter; and at Mr. Musgrove’s sale only six were
allowed to enter.
Q: You were also present at Mr. Musgrove’s sale?
A: Yes, but I was refused admittance; although it
is a large shop, and will hold 150 persons, Mr. Musgrove had cleared away all
his counters, being afraid of damage to his haberdashery goods, and yet only
six people were allowed to go in, and the policemen stopped the right of the
public to get in.
Q: Is Mr. Musgrove an intimate friend of your own?
A: A very intimate friend.
Q: And the police would not allow you to go into
the house and witness the sale?
A: No.
Q: Practically the police prevented people from
bidding by excluding all but six?
A: Yes; and I saw them refuse another gentleman
besides myself. I tried it again, but was refused again.
Q: Were you present at Mr. Dun’s, iron merchant,
in Blair-street, when his effects were distrained?
A: Yes: I saw sledge hammers and other
instruments there to open the premises and get at the goods, but after
labouring for half an hour or more they could not effect an entrance.
Q: Was that because Mr. Dun used some of the
metal in which he was a dealer to barricade his premises?
A: Yes; tons of metal were put up against the
back door, and it was impossible for them to get in. On the second occasion
they got the goods after removing about ten tons of iron from the top of
them; but they disputed the things, and Mr. Dun threw them out, and I saw
children running away with copper springs, and tossing about sheets of brass.
Q: You were present at the sale at Mr. M‘Laren’s
hotel, in St. Andrew’s-street?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you briefly describe the state of matters
there?
A: That sale reminded me a good deal of the
features of the former annuity tax agitation, when the cavalry and infantry
were turned out in Hanover-street; although there were no such accompaniments
on this occasion, the interest of the public was very great, and so great was
it, that when a sofa (for in this case the protest was to allow the clerical
portion to be sacrificed), when a sofa was thrown out by the crowd it was
burned, and continued to burn half an hour, large crowds occupying each side
of the street, and creating a very great sensation; and this is close to one
of our great public thoroughferes, Prince’s-street, and at 12 o’clock in the
day.
Q: Were there several thousand people there?
A: Altogether there would not be so many as in
Mr. Adair’s case; I should think 1,500 people.
Q: Did the police act very roughly to the crowd
on that occasion?
A: In driving off, the officers used the whip
very freely, because they always came and went off in cabs.
Q: Do you see any prospect of this feeling being
diminished?
A: By no means; it is getting more intense every
day.
Q: Do you think it will continue to be so as long
as any portion of this tax remains?
A: I have not the slightest doubt of it; it is
not the amount, but it is the principle, which the Dissenters feel.
Q: Do you think, although greater progress was
made last year in collecting the tax by means of that new engine, the lorry,
that indicates any change of feeling?
A: By no means; it has just irritated the public
more and more; and the indignation against the lorry is so intense, that it
has become associated with Treasurer Callender’s name, as the party who
invented it and ordered it, and brought crowbars, and everything connected
with it.
Q: Is the lorry one of those large low carts such
as are used in Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool, to take away goods?
A: Four wheel carts, with a large surface.
Q: Is there anything particularly obnoxious in a
cart of that shape?
A: Yes.
Q: It is an English invention, I suppose?
A: It is obnoxious if crowbars and sledge hammers
form part of its fittings.
Q: Is there a contrivance for putting instruments
of war behind it in a chest?
A: Yes.
Q: Crowbars and sledge-hammers?
A: Yes; otherwise the machine is like any other
lorry.
Q: What do you say about the “implements of war”?
A: They are carried in case they are required.
Q: Is there in the lorry a place kept apart for
conveying arms?
A: I do not think there are any arms; but I
think, on one occasion, our citizens were threatened with arms from one of
the officers, but I do not suppose they carried any.
Q: Perhaps they attacked the officer?
A: No; there was some altercation, and the
indignation was so great that they came to high words.
And later, under the more hostile questioning of Major Cumming Bruce:
Q: Do you consider that the proceeding in
resisting this tax, which you have described in your evidence, favourable to
the spread of true religion and morality?
A: I think so.
Q: And in accordance with the spirit of Christian
religion?
A: Yes.
Q: Then you consider that any minority of people,
however small, are entitled to resist a law passed by the Legislature of the
country?
A: Not to resist it with violence, but to take
the spoiling of their goods joyfully.
Q: Do you consider they took the spoiling of
their goods joyfully when the police were called in and the peace of the city
endangered?
A: I assure you that the Voluntaries of Edinburgh
have sacrificed large sums of money, and it has cost them a great deal to
resist this tax.
Q: My question was, whether you considered they
took the spoiling of their goods joyfully when the police were called in, and
the peace of the city endangered?
A: I believe it will bring about a happy
termination of this iniquitous tax system.
Q: Then you consider that the end justifies the
means?
A: Not to use violence, but simply to submit to
the penalty of the law.
Q: According to your own statement, was there not
violence used?
A: Not that I witnessed, although I was told
there was some riot.
Q: Do you believe that report which was told you?
A: Yes; I saw one of them, a Sabbath-school
teacher, taken along the street with his coat off, irritated by the officer,
and he was carried to the police office. I cannot explain how the thing
happened; but the officer was blamed for irritating and first attacking.
Q: There was a certain going on?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you consider that a minority, however
small, were justified in resisting a law which was passed by the Imperial
Legislature of this country?
A: On the same principle that John Hampden
resisted a law, when it was unconstitutionally put on.
Q: By violence?
A: Submit to the penalty, but not by violence.
Q: You cited the case of John Hampden as
analogous. Are you aware what it was John Hampden resisted?
A: He resisted ship-money, because it had been
put on by the king, and not by the Parliament.
Q: In this case there is an Act of Parliament by
the Legislature of the country, and an act having the force of law by the
decision of the Legislature of the country. In John Hampden’s case, was it
the law which he resisted, or was it merely a tax levied by the despotic
authority of the king?
A: Perfectly so, and in this case it has been
despotically put on.
Q: In this case the Act was passed through both
Parliaments?
A: Yes.
Q: Then there is no sort of analogy with the
resistance of ship-money which had been ordered to be levied by the king’s
authority?
A: To my mind things pass through Parliament, and
are put into Acts of Parliament which are not facts; for instance, that Act
states that which is not the fact, because it states that it is an abolition
of the annuity tax.
Q: I ask you whether you consider the case of
John Hampden’s resistance founded upon an illegal act of the king a parallel
case?
A: Not quite parallel, but there is some parallel
between them.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland was examined next. He was one of the
authorities who attended some of the auctions of seized goods. Early in his
testimony he quoted from some of the newspaper announcements of these auctions
as a way of explaining why he expected trouble:
Rouping for Ministers’ Money. Come and see. R.H. Whitten selling off. East
Preston-street. .
Poinding for the Clerico-Police Tax. — Instructions to the Public. — In order
to defeat the illegal attempts made to roup the goods of Dissenters for
payment of ministers’ stipends, without notice of day or hour given, and
without, therefore, the possibility of a real sale being effected, it is
recommended that so soon as the goods are poinded, the individuals to whom
they belong should have a placard printed, in terms like the following, and
posted at their doors: “Poinded for Clerico-Police Tax.” “Goods to be sold
here for city clergy, on [give day when notice expires], or following days,
between 12 and 3.” “Who’ll buy. Shame! Shame! to so outrage Dissenters and
religion!”
In cases where the door may not be suitable, it is recommended that a black
flag, bearing the notice or suitable inscription, be suspended from the
windows, so as to be generally seen. It is also suggested that in the event
of an attempted sale, the proprietors of the goods should bid to the full
amount of the police portion of his tax on the first article put up, whether
that article be worth 10s.
or 10l., leaving the
clerico-police portion to be satisfied in whatever way the officers of the
law find themselves best able to effect it.
Efforts being made in the name of religion and law to sacrifice goods by a
mock sale, or sale without due notice, corresponding efforts must be made in
the same name to secure the utmost publicity, and as large an attendance as
possible.
To this end it may be worthy of consideration whether the doors of the houses
in which the sales are to take place should not be kept locked till they are
unlocked by the sheriff officers. This process of unlocking the doors by the
police officers will excite the attention of the general public, and an
opportunity thus afforded of a fair sale taking place.
Robbery and Religion. — Fellow citizens, the furniture of one of your number
is to be sold by public roup, at 4, Rankeillor-street, on
, for the behoof of the city clergy. As the
effects have been poinded at less than one-sixth of their real value, it is
expected that those who “love justice and hate robbery” will be in time to
ensure a vigorous competition.
Christians are informed that, among other valuable articles, there is a
beautiful engraving of the “Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles” (name of
auctioneer unknown).
Another example was given in an appendix:
“To your Tents, O Israel.” — Anti-Clerico Police Tax.
He also describes some of the tactics of auction disruption used by the
resisters and their supporters:
A: On the first sale that I attended at Mr.
Hope’s in Prestonstreet, I only took two or three police officers with me,
and they were in plain clothes to make as little show as possible; but we
were very much obstructed in carrying out that sale; we were hustled and
rudely used by the crowd, and there was a great deal of noise during the
sale. Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much
inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those
sales. At the second sale, I arranged with Mr. Linton, the superintendent of
police, that he should have a body of police in attendance in case I should
require to send for them, and I considered that necessary in the case of the
sale in Rankeillor-street.
Q: What took place at the sale in
Rankeillor-street?
A: On proceeding there, I found a considerable
crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that
I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who
on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as
I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all
the rooms crowded with people. I said that it was necessary to carry out the
sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare. I said that I should send for
the police to clear the place, if they did not allow me to carry out the
sale. They hooted and jeered again. I sent for Mr. Linton, and he brought the
police. There was a good deal of opposition to the police at the head of the
stairs, and it looked a little serious for a time. The stairs are protected
on the outside by a banister and railing, and that banister and railing gave
way in a dangerous manner. I was afraid if the resistance was maintained
there might be an accident or a breach of the peace, and I sent for the
sheriff. Before he arrived, Mr. Linton and his assistants had ejected the
most troublesome into the street, and the sale was being carried out when the
sheriff arrived.
Q: Did you see on that occasion any of those
persons whose faces had become familiar to you?
A: Some of the parties there had been at the
former sale, and I noticed them again at subsequent sales.
Q: Was that the most serious of the obstructions
that you met with?
A: It was; because after that sale the police
went down beforehand, and kept the door pretty clear, so that we could get in
without obstruction. At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an
orderly way as far as the sale was concerned. We got in, and only a limited
number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had
gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance. Certain goods were knocked
down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old
sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those
were the only things which had to be taken away. There was no vehicle ready
to carry them away. Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them. After the
police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken
possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
Q: What is the last sale that took place?
A: Mr. Dunn’s, in Blair-street; I was not present
on the first occasion at that sale, where the officials were defeated in
gaining entrance; Mr. Dunn had barricaded the door of the room where the
poinded effects were, so that an entrance could not be had. My deputy was
there, and the other officials; they gave the matter up, and reported that
they could not get in. Sometime afterwards the warrant was attempted again; I
went down myself on that occasion; I found that the room where the poinded
goods were was filled up to above the centre of the room with boxes filled
with plates of iron of immense weight. We were told that the poinded goods
were lying beneath those, and that we might get at them as we could. I sent
for labourers, and had the whole of those boxes removed into the front shop
until I got access, after great trouble, to the sheets of brass, which were
the poinded articles. These were then declared by the sheriff officers to be
of a different description, and inferior to what they had previously poinded;
they refused to take them; and the only articles they recognised were some
coils of copper wire; those they took to the police office, and those were
all that were obtained on that occasion. Mr. Dunn afterwards settled the
amount due by him. That was the last sale that was carried out under
proceedings at common law; after that sale the summary form of application
was adopted, and has been found to work well, I should say principally
because the parties who refused to pay on presentment of the summary
application having now no notice of the exact day or hour their goods are to
be taken, have no opportunity of getting up a scene; and the expense is
certainly less to them under the summary form than under the other mode of
proceeding.
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for
declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who
declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
The report then quoted, in one of its appendices, from a paper submitted by a
public meeting in Edinburgh which said in part:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to
procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who
conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and
they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s
officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they
provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police
funds. In , it was found necessary
to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had
to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and
registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this
per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the
police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from
the recusants. But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or
vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a
lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing
payment of the arrears. All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely
to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds,
induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is
felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
Ready for some more exiting archival digging about British nonconformists and their resistance to funding sectarian education?
Thought so.
From the San Francisco Call:
When the new education bill was under consideration in Parliament a number of the more earnest opponents of the feature of the bill providing for the support of church schools declared that if the Government undertook to collect taxes for the support of such schools they would refuse payment.
The programme thus defined, became known as the policy of “passive resistance” and was the chief object of political discussion in the kingdom until Chamberlain’s imperial tariff issue distracted popular attention from the subject.
The opponents of the measure, however, are standing by their guns, and we learn from our London exchanges that the passive resistance movement has already become formidable and is steadily extending throughout the country.
The Westminster Gazette deems the issue of sufficient importance to devote almost an entire page of a recent edition to publishing a record of the summonses that have been issued to compel the payment of taxes by the resisters.
It appears that the first act of resistance occurred on , when four residents of the parish of Wirksworth were summoned before the local magistrates for refusing to pay the school taxes.
Warrants were issued against their property and sixteen days later the sales took place without disturbance.
Since that time down to , the day of the publication of the Gazette, upward of 3000 summonses were issued and the number of distraint sales amounted to sixty.
In most cases the resistance was strictly passive and no attempt was made to interfere with the officers in the sale of property seized for taxes, but at times there were evidences of a feeling that may give rise to trouble later on should the number of resisters ever become large enough to encourage a resort to an active resistance in place of a passive one.
Reviewing the movement in another issue the Gazette says: “In large numbers of cases proceedings have not yet been taken and several months must elapse before the full extent of the resistance can be adequately measured.”
A careful study of the summonses shows that a majority of the resisters who have thus far been brought before the courts belong either to the Baptist, Congregational, or Primitive Methodist churches, but other free churches are well represented, notably the Wesleyans.
Some surprise has been felt at the indifference to the issue of the Society of Friends, as the members of that church were strenuous leaders in the former battles against church rates.
Members of the “Passive Resistance Committee” are quoted as saying that upward of 400 local leagues have been formed to resist the tax and that the movement is still extending.
In describing the manner in which the distraint sales are received by the public the Gazette says:
“There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as ‘the fighting parson,’ entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
Six distress warrants were issued at Loughborough, in Leicestershire, while at Brighton the magistrates made orders in nearly one hundred cases.
There was much demonstration in the court, the magistrates after one outburst leaving the bench and ordering the room to be cleared.
Some people were put out, but others clung to their seats and would not move.
The chief constable appealed to all to leave quietly, but realizing the ugly aspect of things, he consented to act as mediator and ask the magistrates to proceed on the understanding that there was no further disturbance.
Thus the situation was saved.”
It will be remembered that when the tariff question was precipitated by Mr. Chamberlain some of the opponents of the education bill declared that the new issue had been raised solely for the purpose of evading the educational issue.
The charge was unfair, but there can be no doubt that the Ministers were quite glad to get away from the denominational controversy which was threatened.
Even as it is, however, there is going to be trouble with the law, and in some localities the struggle between the magistrates and the resisters may become quite serious before all is over.
A tactic that I’ve encountered on many occasions in my research into tax resistance campaigns is that of disrupting government auctions of goods, particularly those of seized from tax resisters.
Here are several examples that show the variety of ways campaigns have accomplished this:
Religious nonconformists in the United Kingdom
Education Act-related resistance
Some disruption of auctions took place during the tax resistance in protest of the provisions of the Education Act that provided taxpayer money for sectarian education .
The Westminster Gazette reported:
There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as “the fighting parson,” entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
The New York Times reported that “Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.” And the San Francisco Chronicle noted:
Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament.
The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters.
Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.
Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance
Auction disruptions were commonplace in the Annuity Tax resistance campaign in Edinburgh.
By law the distraint auctions (“roupings”) had to be held at the Mercat Cross — the town square, essentially — which made it easy to gather a crowd; or sometimes in the homes of the resisters. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reported of one of the Mercat Cross roupings:
If any of our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale.
Latterly the passive hubbub rose as if by magic.
Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate; and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of Passive Resistance.
The tax had grinded the faces of the poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation.
Irish, Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges; Irish traders flew from St. Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy.
And here were the black placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude — ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland appeared before a committee that was investigating the resistance campaign.
He mentioned that “Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those sales.”
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
It was difficult for the authorities to get any help at all, either from auctioneers, furniture dealers, or carters.
The government had to purchase (and fortify) their own cart because they were unable to rent one for such use.
Here is an example of an auction of a resister’s goods held at the resister’s
home, as described in the testimony of Thomas Menzies:
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No.
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
He then described a second such auction:
A: The house was densely packed; it was impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not force their way up, except with great difficulty.
The consequence was, that nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys down.
Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were considerably subdued.
Sheriff Clerk Maitland also described this auction:
I found a considerable crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all the rooms crowded with people.
I said that it was necessary to carry out the sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare.
On another occasion, as he tells it, the auction seemed to go smoothly at first, but the buyers didn’t get what they hoped for:
At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an orderly way as far as the sale was concerned.
We got in, and only a limited number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance.
Certain goods were knocked down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those were the only things which had to be taken away.
There was no vehicle ready to carry them away.
Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them.
After the police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
A summary of the effect of all of this disruption reads:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police funds.
In , it was found necessary to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from the recusants.
But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing payment of the arrears.
All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds, induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
The Tithe War
William John Fitzpatrick wrote of the auctions during the Tithe War:
[T]he parson’s first step was to put the cattle up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
The Sentinel wrote of one auction:
Yesterday being the day on which the sheriff announced that, if no bidders could be obtained for the cattle, he would have the property returned to Mr. Germain, immense crowds were collected from the neighbouring counties — upwards of 20,000 men.
The County Kildare men, amounting to about 7000, entered, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq., in the most regular and orderly manner.
This body was preceded by a band of music, and had several banners on which were “Kilkea and Moone, Independence for ever,” “No Church Tax,” “No Tithe,” “Liberty,” &c. The whole body followed six carts, which were prepared in the English style — each drawn by two horses.
The rear was brought up by several respectable landholders of Kildare.
The barrack-gates were thrown open, and different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the passes leading to the place of sale.
The cattle were ordered out, when the sheriff, as on the former day, put them up for sale; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain.
The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity, throughout the entire meeting, when the huzzas of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed.
The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain.
At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double-quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust.
Thus terminated this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained, by their steadiness, a complete victory.
The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.
Similar examples were reported in the foreign press:
Cork. — A most extraordinary scene has been exhibited in this city.
Some cows seized for tithes were brought to a public place for sale, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and followed by thousands of infuriated people.
All the garrison, cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir George Bingham, were called out.
The cattle were set up at three pounds for each, no bidder; two pounds, no bidder; one pound, no bidder; in short, the auctioneer descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared.
This scene lasted for above an hour, when there being no chance of making sale of the cattle, it was proposed to adjourn the auction; but, as we are informed, the General in command of the military expressed an unwillingness to have the troops subjected to a repetition of the harassing duty thus imposed on them.
After a short delay, it was, at the interference and remonstrance of several gentlemen, both of town and country, agreed upon that the cattle should be given up to the people, subject to certain private arrangements.
We never witnessed such a scene; thousands of country people jumping with exulted feelings at the result, wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling.
At Carlow a triumphant resistance to the laws, similar to that which occurred
at Cork, has been exhibited in the presence of the authorities and the
military. Some cattle had been seized for tithe, and a public sale announced,
when a large body of men, stated at 50,000, marched to the place appointed,
and, of course, under the influence of such terror, none were found to bid
for the cattle. The sale was adjourned from day to day, for seven days, and
upon each day the same organised bands entered the town, and rendered the
attempt to sell the cattle, in pursuance of the law, abortive. At last the
cattle are given up to the mob, crowned with laurels, and driven home with an
escort of 10,000 men.
In a somewhat later case, a Catholic priest in Blarney by the name of Peyton refused to pay his income tax on the grounds that the law treated him in an inferior way to his Protestant counterparts.
His horse was seized and sold at auction, where “the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings.”
There was precedent for this. During the Tithe War period and thereafter, the
authorities had to go to extraordinary lengths to auction off seized goods. As
one account put it:
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale; and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain were particularly adept in disrupting tax auctions and in making them opportunities for propaganda and protest.
Here are several examples, largely as reported in the movement newsletter called The Vote:
“On a sale was held… of
jewellery seized in distraint for income-tax… Members of the
W.F.L.
and Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn
(Hon.
Sec.) assembled to
protest against the proceedings, and the usual policeman kept a dreary
vigil at the open door. The day had been specially chosen by the
authorities, who wished to prevent a demonstration…”
“The sale of Mrs. Cleeves’ dog-cart took place at the Bush Hotel, Sketty,
on afternoon. The
W.F.L.
held their protest meeting outside — much to the discomfort of the
auctioneer, who declared the impossibility of ‘drowning the voice
outside.’ ”
“Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets
off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’
League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political
Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after
to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had
been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes. Before the
sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred
people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the
importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without
representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for. Miss Leonora
Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this
sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence]. A. Underwood, and supported
by Miss Brackenbury. The resolution was carried with only two
dissentients, and these dissentients were women!”
“The goods seized were sold at the public auction room. Before selling
them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How Martyn to make a short explanatory
speech, and he himself added that it was an unpleasant duty he had to
perform.”
“A scene which was probably never equalled in the whole of its history
took place at the Oxenham Auction Rooms, Oxford-street, on
. About a fortnight before
the bailiffs had entered Mrs. Despard’s residence in Nine Elms and seized
goods which they valued at £15. Our President, for some years past, as is
well known, has refused to pay her income-tax and inhabited house duty on
the grounds that taxation and representation should go together; and this
is the third time her goods have been seized for distraint. It was not
until the day before — — that Mrs. Despard was informed of the time and place where
her furniture was to be sold. In spite of this short notice — which we
learn on good authority to be illegal — a large crowd composed not only of
our own members but also of women and men from various Suffrage societies
gathered together at the place specified in the notice. ¶ When ‘Lot
325’ was called Mrs. Despard mounted a chair, and said, ‘I rise to
protest, in the strongest, in the most emphatic way of which I am capable,
against these iniquities, which are perpetually being perpetrated in the
name of the law. I should like to say I have served my country in various
capacities, but I am shut out altogether from citizenship. I think special
obloquy has been put upon me in this matter. It was well known that I
should not run away and that I should not take my goods away, but the
authorities sent a man in possession. He remained in the house — a
household of women — at night. I only heard
of this sale, and from a man
who knows that of which he is speaking, I know that this sale is illegal.
I now claim the law — the law that is supposed to be for women as well as
men.’ ”
“[A] most successful protest against taxation without representation was
made by Mrs. Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction
Rooms, 120, High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs.
[Emily] Juson Kerr; and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the W.F.L.,
went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and
not only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted
taxation, but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the
sale was over.”
“One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever
held in St. Leonards was that arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax
Resistance League and the Hastings and St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage
Propaganda League, on ,
on the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at
the residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of
Inhabited House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest
was the fact that members of all societies in Hastings,
St. Leonards, Bexhill and
Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of
all shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of
many societies were seen in the procession.… The hearty response from the
men to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for ‘three cheers for Mrs.
Darent Harrison’ at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came
as a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.”
“On , the last item on
the catalogue of Messrs. Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was
household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude
Eaton, of Kensington. Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical
world and interested in social reforms, and
hon. secretary of the
Prison Reform Committee. Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest
in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the
large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they
do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot,
by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it. A procession then
formed up and a protest meeting was held…”
“At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on
a silver cream jug and sugar
basin were sold. These were the property of
Dr. Marion McKenzie, who
had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s
suffrage. A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which
proved far too small to accommodate them all. Mr. Parnell said he regretted
personally having the duty to perform. He believed that ultimately the
women would get the vote. They had the municipal vote and he maintained
that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote. (Applause.)
But that was his own personal view. He would have been delighted not to
have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down.
Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked
Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them. A protest meeting was afterwards
held on St. Nicholas
Cliff.”
“Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson, representing the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, was, by courtesy of the auctioneer, allowed to explain the reason
of the protest. Judging by the applause with which her remarks were
received, most of those present were in sympathy.”
“The auctioneer was entirely in sympathy with the protest, and explained
the circumstances under which the sale took place. He courteously allowed
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr to put clearly
the women’s point of view; Miss Raleigh made a warm appeal for true
freedom. A procession was formed and an open-air meeting subsequently
held.”
“The auctioneer, who is in sympathy with the suffragists, refused to take
commission.”
“[A] crowd of Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s
Sale Rooms, Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support Dr. Frances Ede and Dr.
Amy Sheppard, whose goods were to be sold by public auction for tax
resistance. By the courtesy of the auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were
allowed, and Dr. Ede
emphasized her conscientious objection to supporting taxation without
representation; she said that women like herself and her partner felt that
they must make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very
considerable inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she
trusted that the grave injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers
were given for the doctors, and a procession with banners marched to
Marble Arch, where a brief meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the
usual resolution was passed unanimously.”
“An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last
week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston
Villa, Bath, was the sale held , at the White Hart Hotel. To cover a tax of only £15 and
costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once
decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends
that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and
exposed. The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was
much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on
the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired
to possess. The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite
inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about
50s. and £3 for an
ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the
auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust
of the assembled dealers. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at
the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate
gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and
that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to
satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to
go.”
“Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom
League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on
, on the occasion of the sale
of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the
well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes. Their
property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and
through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to
the protesters to explain their action.”
“At the sale of a silver salver belonging to
Dr. Winifred Patch, of
Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on
by members of the Women’s Freedom
League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies.
The auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation
before the sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League,
was well supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the
reasons why Dr. Patch for
several years has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A
procession was then formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large
open-air meeting was presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of
the Women’s Freedom League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.”
“Practically every day sees a sale and protest somewhere, and the banners
of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, frequently supported by Suffrage
Societies, are becoming familiar in town and country. At the protest
meetings which follow all sales the reason why is explained to large
numbers of people who would not attend a suffrage meeting. Auctioneers are
becoming sympathetic even so far as to speak in support of the women’s
protest against a law which demands their money, but gives them no voice
in the way in which it is spent.”
“The sale was conducted, laughably enough, under the auspices of the
Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League; for, on
obtaining entrance to the hall, Miss Anderson and Mrs. Fisher bedecked it
with all the insignia of suffrage protest. The rostrum was spread with our
flag proclaiming the inauguration of Tax Resistance by the W.F.L.;
above the auctioneer’s head hung Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard’s embroidered
silk banner, with its challenge “Dare to be Free”; on every side the
green, white and gold of the
W.F.L.
was accompanied by the brown and black of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, with its cheery ‘No Vote, no Tax’ injunctions and its John Hampden
maxims; while in the front rows, besides Miss Anderson, the heroine of the
day, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Fisher, were seen the inspiring figures of our
President and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, vice-president of the
W.T.R.L.”
“…all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which
the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the
certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration…”
“From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women
had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets. In the
afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John
Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags. These marched
through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the
sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags
and colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Mr. Croome, the King’s officer,
conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table
silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles. The prices
fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the
goods in for her.”
“Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able
to give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the
weapons employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of
women. Then came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not
been aware he was to sell ‘distressed’ goods, and he very much objected to
doing so.… The meeting and the auctioneer together made the assembly chary
of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great triumph for the
tax-resisters.… Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting
by carrying placards round the crowded market.”
“There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings
by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he
attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his
capacity as tax collector. After the sale a public meeting was held… At
the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the
League…”
The authorities tried to auction off Kate Harvey’s goods on-site, at her
home, rather than in a public hall, so that they might avoid
demonstrations of that sort. “On
morning a band of Suffragist
men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the
device, ‘I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay
taxes over which she has no control,’ and long before
, the time fixed for the
sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the
little town of Bromley, and made their way towards ‘Brackenhill.’
Punctually at the
tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the
former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd
assembled that this was a genuine sale! Mrs. Harvey at once protested
against the sale taking place. Simply and solely because she was a woman,
although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no
voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent. The tax
collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the
cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs.
Harvey in her protest. He tried to proceed, but one after another the men
present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods. The
tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine
sale! ‘One penny for your goods then!’ was the derisive answer. ‘One
penny — one penny!’ was the continued cry from both inside and outside
‘Brackenhill.’ Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine
auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in
the room. There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be
sold and what wasn’t. The men also objected to the presence of the
tax-collector’s deputy. ‘Tell him to get down!’ they shouted. ‘The sale
shan’t proceed till he does,’ they yelled. ‘Get down! Get down:’ they
sang. But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy.
‘He’s afraid of his own clerk,’ they jeered. Again the tax-collector asked
for bids. ‘One penny! One penny!’ was the deafening response. The din
increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme. During a temporary
lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas.
Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement. ‘Illegal sale!’ ‘He
shan’t take it home!’ ‘The whole thing’s illegal!’ ‘You shan’t sell
anything else!’ and The Daily Herald Leaguers,
members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies,
proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands. Darkness was quickly
settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled
wearily. ‘Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan
could manage,’ roared an enthusiast. ‘My word, you look sick, guv’nor!
Give it up, man!’ Then everyone shouted against the other until the
tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had
lost £7 over the job! Ironical cheers greeted this news, with ‘Serve you
right for stealing a woman’s goods!’ He turned his back on his tormentors,
and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over. The protesters
sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to
take away the sideboard he should take them with it! With the exit of the
tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter,
and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell
Hotel. But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard
to the tax-collector. Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey
is still in possession of the sideboard!”
“The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell to conduct the sale, was most
unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking during the sale; but Miss
Boyle was able to shout through a window at his back, just over his
shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized because Miss Cummins
refused to submit to taxation without representation, after which quite a
number of people who were attending the sale came out to listen to the
speeches.”
“The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to
make a short speech before the waggon was sold. He then spoke a few
friendly words for the Woman’s Movement. After the sale a meeting was
held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident
interest by a large number of men. The Vote and
other Suffrage literature was sold.”
“A joint demonstration of the Tax Resisters’ League and militant
suffragettes, held here [Hastings]
as a protest against the sale of
the belongings of those who refused to pay taxes, was broken up by a mob.
The women were roughly handled and half smothered with soot. Their banners
were smashed. The police finally succeeded in getting the women into a
blacksmith’s shop, where they held the mob at bay until the arrival of
reinforcements. The women were then escorted to a railway station.”
“The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps,
the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had. It was
made the occasion for widespread propaganda. The newspapers gave columns
of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the
auction room…”
“When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to
the auction-room. The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the
proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and
explained to the crowd what it all means. Here are the banners, and the
room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress
upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is
a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for
which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation
is tyranny. … The women remain at these auctions until the property of the
offender is disposed of. The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized
from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be
called.”
American war tax resisters
There have been a few celebrated auction sales in the American war tax resistance movement.
Some of them have been met with protests or used as occasions for outreach and propaganda, but others have been more actively interfered with.
When Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home was seized, for example, there were
“months of continuous picketing and leafletting” before the sale. Then:
The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group.
While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk.
At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps).
Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal.
Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person.
As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people.
Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold.
The protests, odd as they were, eventually paid off, as the IRS had in the interim been caught improperly pursuing political dissidents, and as a result it decided to reverse the sale of the Bromley home and give up on that particular fight.
When Paul and Addie Snyder’s home was auctioned off for back taxes, it was
reported that “many bids of $1 or less were made.”
Making a bid of pennies for farm property being foreclosed for failure to meet mortgages was a common tactic among angry farmers during the Depression.
If their bids succeeded, the property was returned to its owner and the mortgage torn up.
In some such cases, entire farms plus their livestock, equipment and home furnishings sold for as little as $2.
When George Willoughby’s car was seized and sold by the IRS,
Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.
The Rebecca rioters
On a couple of occasions the Rebeccaites prevented auctions, though not of goods seized for tax debts but for ordinary debts.
Here are two examples from Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca phenomenon:
A distress for rent was levied on the goods of a man named Lloyd… and a bailiff of the name of Rees kept possession of the goods.
Previous to the day of sale, Rebecca and a great number of her daughters paid him a visit, horsewhipped him well, and kept him in safe custody until the furniture was entirely cleared from the house.
When Rees was freed, he found nothing but an empty house, Rebecca and her followers having departed.
Two bailiffs were there in possession of the goods and chattels under execution… Having entered the house by bursting open the door, Rebecca ran upstairs, followed by some of her daughters.
She ordered the bailiffs, who were in bed at the time, to be up and going in five minutes, or to prepare for a good drubbing.
The bailiffs promptly obeyed, but were driven forth by a bodyguard of the rioters, who escorted them some distance, pushing and driving the poor men in front of them.
At last they were allowed to depart to their homes on a sincere promise of not returning.
Reform Act agitation
During the tax resistance that accompanied the drive to pass the Reform Act in the in the United Kingdom, hundreds of people signed pledges in which they declared that “they will not purchase the goods of their townsmen not represented in Parliament which may be seized for the non-payment of taxes, imposed by any House of Commons as at present constituted.”
The True Sun asserted that
The tax-gatherer… might seize for them, but the brokers assured the inhabitants that they would neither seize any goods for such taxes, nor would they purchase goods so seized.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr Philips, a broker, in the Broadway, Westminster, exhibited the following placard at the door of his shop:— “Take notice, that the proprietor of this shop will not distrain for the house and window duties, nor will he purchase any goods that are seized for the said taxes; neither will any of those oppressive taxes be paid for this house in future.” A similar notice was also exhibited at a broker’s shop in York Street, Westminster.
Another newspaper account said:
A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced to take place at Ashton Tavern on , at Birmingham.
From forty to fifty persons attended, including some brokers, but no one could be found except the poor woman from whose husband the goods had been seized, and the auctioneer himself.
A man came when the sale was nearly over, who was perfectly ignorant of the circumstances under which it took place, and bid for one of the last lots; he soon received an intimation, however, from the company that he had better desist, which be accordingly did.
After the sale was over nearly the whole of the persons present surrounded this man, and lectured him severely upon his conduct, and it was only by his solemnly declaring to them that he had bid in perfect ignorance of the nature of the sale that he was suffered to escape without some more substantial proof of their displeasure.
Railroad bond shenanigans
There was an epidemic of fraud in the United States in in which citizens of local jurisdictions were convinced to vote to sell bonds to pay for the Railroad to come to town.
The railroad never arrived, but the citizens then were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bonds.
Many said “hell no,” but by then the bonds had been sold to people who were not necessarily involved in the original swindle but had just bought them as investments.
In the course of the tax resistance campaigns associated with these railroad
bond boondoggles, auction disruption was resorted to on some occasions. Here
are some examples:
St. Clair [Missouri]’s taxpayers joined the movement in to repudiate the debts, but the county’s new leaders wanted to repay the investors.
Afraid to try taxing the residents, they decided to raise the interest by staging a huge livestock auction in , the proceeds to pay off the railroad bond interest.
On auction day, however, “no one seemed to want to buy” any animals.
To bondholders the “great shock” of the auction’s failure proved the depth of local resistance to railroad taxes.
Another attempt was made the other day to sell farm property in the town of Greenwood, Steuben county [New York], on account of a tax levied for the town bonding in aid of railroads, and another failure has followed.
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.” The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
The White League in Louisiana
In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, white supremacist tax resisters disrupted a tax auction.
There was a mob of fifty or sixty armed men came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all.
Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector.
The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices.
I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed.
I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.
Mr. [Valsin A.?] Fournet came with eight or ten.
When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him.
The deputy then shoved him down.
As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.
…very few people attended tax-sales [typically], because the white people were organized to prevent tax-collection, and pledged themselves not to buy any property at tax-sales, and the property was generally bought by the State.
Miscellaneous
The First Boer War broke out in the aftermath of the successfully resisted
auction of a tax resister’s waggon. Paul Kruger wrote of the incident:
The first sign of the approaching storm was the incident that happened at the forced sale of Field Cornet Bezuidenhout’s waggon, on which a distress had been levied.
The British Government had begun to collect taxes and to take proceedings against those who refused to pay them.
Among these was Piet Bezuidenhout, who lived in the Potchefstroom District.
This refusal to pay taxes was one of the methods of passive resistance which were now employed towards the British Government.
Hitherto, many of the burghers had paid their taxes, declaring that they were only yielding to force.
But, when this was explained by the English politicians as though the population were contented and peacefully paying their taxes, some asked for a receipt showing that they were only paying under protest and others refused to pay at all.
The Government then levied a distress on Bezuidenhout’s waggon and sent it to public action at Potchefstroom.
Piet Cronjé, who became so well known in the last war, appeared at the auction with a number of armed Boers, who flung the bailiff from the waggon and drew the waggon itself back in triumph to Bezuidenhout’s farm.
When the U.S.
government seized Valentine Byler’s horse because of the Amish man’s
conscientious objection to paying into the social security system, no
other Amish would bid at the auction.
Between the Wars in Germany, the government had a hard time conducting
auctions of the goods of tax resisters. Ernst von Salomon writes:
Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.… Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid.
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a Bureau of Land
Management auction by making winning bids on everything that he
had no intention of honoring.
During the Poujadist disruptions in France, “They also took to spiking
forced tax sales by refusing to bid until the auctioneer had lowered the
price of whatever was up for sale to a laughably small figure. Thus a tax
delinquent might buy back his own shop for, say 10 cents. At an auction
the other day, a brand-new car went for one franc, or less than one-third
of a cent.”
in roughly the same region
of France:
It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government.
A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction.
The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.
In York, Pennsylvania in , a group
“surrounded the crier and forbid any person purchasing when the property
which had been seized was offered for sale. A cow which had been in the
hands of the collector was driven away by the rioters.”
In the Dutch West Indies in “The
household effects of a physician who refused to pay the tax were offered
for sale at auction today by the Government. Although the building in
which the sale was held was crowded, there were no bids and the articles
were not sold.”
In Tasmania, in , “Large quantities of
goods were seized, and lodged in the Commissariat Store [but] Lawless mobs
paraded the streets, tore down fences, and, arming themselves with rails
and batons, smashed windows and doors.… The fence round the Commissariat
Store was torn down…”
During the Bardoli tax strike, “There were meetings in talukas contiguous
to Bardoli, not only in British territory, but also in the Baroda
territory, for expression of sympathy with the Satyagrahis and calling
upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the
authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by bidding for any
forfeited property that may be put to auction by the authorities.”
From the Daily Saratogian comes a jaunty telling of resistance to the “Vicars’ Rate” across the pond:
The non-conformists in the English town of Coventry refuse to pay tithes and all the country round is having a good deal of fun over it.
The bailiffs attempted to levy on the pigs of a farmer who refused to pay, but the farmer had carefully lathered the porkers with grease and the bailiffs gave it up.
A Birmingham auctioneer tried to sell some goods that had been seized but he no sooner opened his mouth to announce the sale when an ancient egg cracked over his teeth and a cabbage hit him on the nose.
The auctioneer immediately retired to Birmingham.
There is great excitement and the police hesitate to answer the demands of the tithe collectors for assistance fearing a riot if they interfere.
This seems to be an abbreviated and altered version of a dispatch I found in the Boston Evening Transcript from :
Humorous Incidents Connected with the Collection of Church Dues.
London, . The tithe war in Coventry culminated today in a riot, in which thousands took part.
For a long time there has been bad blood in Coventry on the subject of the payment of tithes, a large proportion of the inhabitants protesting against the exaction.
The Nonconformists have declared that they would never pay, and a good many of the church people are in sympathy with the anti-tithe movement.
The quarrel was attended by a good many fights and some funny episodes as when a farmer, living in the suburbs, upon whose stock it was proposed to levy, greased all his pigs, so that they slipped through the hands of the bailiffs at every attempt, much to the delight of a crowd that witnessed the spectacle.
The bailiffs at length gave up the chase in disgust.
Today goods which were seized were exposed for sale in the market place.
Thousands gathered to the scene and the mob showed a determination to prevent the sale if possible.
The auctioneer was a man from Birmingham, as no local auctioneer could be procured for the dangerous undertaking.
He started to put up the goods and was just about to state the conditions of the sale when he was assailed by all kinds of missiles.
The Birmingham auctioneer had enough, and notwithstanding the protestations of the tithe collectors and police who offered to protect him from any further violence, he made his escape, though not without difficulty.
Meantime the mob scattered through the streets, some of them whose goods and chattels had been seized recapturing the articles and taking them home again.
The people are greatly excited and the police have wisely refrained from aggressive measures.
A London Times piece on the Coventry anti-tithe movement, reprinted in the New York Times , explained that the campaign grew slowly out of a single resister’s persistent and public stand of conscientious objection:
History of a Curious and Unrelenting Conflict — Livings of Famed and Noble
St. Michael’s and Holy Trinity Dependenton a Rate Levied on All Householders — Their Ancient Origin
From the London Times
The agitation now proceeding in Coventry against the Vicars’ rates is a fresh chapter in an old story.
The rates have never been paid with goodwill by Nonconformists, though hitherto there has been no organized resistance to the law.
A few individual citizens have maintained a consistent protest against a tax which they declared offended their consciences, and one tradesman, whose goods have been distrained year after year, has retaliated with equal regularity by issuing handbills setting forth his woes, and the rapacity of what he was wont to describe as “Mother Church.”
The leading Nonconformists, and it may be said the Nonconformists as a body, have until lately refrained from all open sympathy with this suffering brother, whose controversial tactics were generally regarded as somewhat wanting in good taste.
In the annual testimony borne in this quarter attracted more attention than usual in consequence of an open-air indignation meeting by which it was followed.
The meeting was by no means influentially attended, and it was not believed at the time that it would have any important consequences.
It led, however, to the formation of an Anti-Vicars’ Rate Association, whose action has brought about the present crisis.
The article goes on to give a history of the controversial tithe, then continues with a description of the resistance campaign:
When, in , the Anti-Vicars’ Rate Association set seriously to work and propounded a policy of passive resistance to the law, the announcement was deprecated by influential inhabitants who in political matters have been accustomed to act with the Nonconformist party.
The defense made by the association was, in brief, that this policy had been determined on to compel attention to the grievance.
In this it was successful.
The settlement of the rate in Trinity being considered the weightiest part of the question, negotiations were opened up between the Vestry of that parish and the Anti-Rate Association.
The result of the negotiations were disclosed in .
The Vestry had agreed that for the future the Church estate should be chargeable with the greater part of the Vicar’s stipend; the sum that could be thus spared was estimated at £500 per annum.
It was proposed to raise another £100 a year from investments of money to be otherwise obtained.
The £600 thus secured the Vicar was willing to accept in lieu of the rate on the understanding that the congregation undertook, by a weekly offertory, to raise sufficient to pay the assistant curates.
The arrangement involved a sacrifice on his part of about £150 per annum, and to carry it out £7,000 would be required, £3,600 of which would be devoted to paying off a debt on the Church estate.
Of the £7,000, the rate-payers of the parish were asked to contribute £5,000, the remaining £2,000 would be met by a subscription among churchmen.
The Nonconformist party were sanguine that the needed £5,000 could be raised by voluntary means, but there was not among churchmen the same confidence.
The Nonconformist feeling was, however, deferred to, and a committee was appointed to make the necessary appeal, it being hoped that each rate-payer would be willing to make a subscription equal to five years’ value of his share of the rate.
But it didn’t work out.
From those asked to subscribe, churchmen and dissenters alike, about £2,328 of the £5,000 were raised, and, according to the article, “there seemed no other alternative than to raise the needed funds by a legal commutation of the rate.”
A meeting proposed a new plan whereby ratepayers could pay five years’ worth of the rates at once, or six years’ worth, spread out over those six years, at which time the tax would be abolished.
Some of the Nonconformists seemed to be willing to go along with this, as it would finally (though not immediately) put an end to the offensive tax.
But the Anti-Vicars’ Rate Association had had enough:
The proximate cause of the present crisis was a refusal on the part of Trinity Vestry to cooperate with the Anti-Vicars’ Rate Association in a second attempt to raise the needed funds by voluntary means.
The Vestry seems to have felt that the fresh overtures on this basis made by the association indicated a resolution to settle the question in only one way — a way which had already been proved to be impracticable.
The recovery of the rate, which had been suspended for months, so far as Nonconformists were concerned, was therefore resumed, and, the policy of passive resistance being persevered in, the city is now divided into two camps.
It is indisputable that the Anti-Vicars’ Rate Association is largely supported by the Nonconformist party, but there are influential Nonconformists, and among them the Mayor, who strongly deprecate its policy.
It is still too early to estimate the strength of the forces on either side of the probable issue of the contest.
It is only just to record that the part played by the Vicar of Holy Trinity throughout the controversy has been most conciliatory, and that he has made great efforts, and no small sacrifice, to bring about its peaceful termination.
This has been generally admitted by the Nonconformists, who before the failure of the voluntary scheme expressed themselves tolerably satisfied with the concessions that had been made to them.
Until the other day they took their stand on the principle that while, as citizens, they were willing to unite with churchmen in an effort to extinguish the rates by voluntary means, they could not consent to pay them any longer as a legal impost.
In other words, if the Church was to be helped to a new and less objectionable form of endowment, the process must be accomplished consistently with Nonconformist principles.
The fatal objection to this policy is that it has already been proved impracticable and that a legal commutation presents the only peaceable solution of the difficulty.
Since the institution of legal proceedings for the recovery of the rate the Anti-Rate Association has withdrawn its offer of voluntary assistance, and its leaders are apparently hopeful that the collection of the tax, so far as resisting Nonconformists are concerned, will before long be abandoned.
On the side of the Church there are at present no signs pointing in that direction.
Here are a couple of archival bits concerning the tax resistance campaign against taxpayer-funded sectarian education in Britain.
To those who, like ourselves, are full of sympathy and admiration for the Nonconformists, and who believe that the English people owe them a deep debt of gratitude for maintaining a high and noble standard of action not only in things spiritual but in things political, the attitude of paradoxical violence that they have adopted over recent educational developments is a cause of deep regret.
To speak plainly, it is pitiable to see good and self-respecting men so far carried away by rhetorical clap-trap as to imagine that they are compelled by conscience not to pay rates for the same objects for which they were quite willing to pay taxes.
We admire intensely men who will sacrifice everything for conscience’ sake.
It is to such men that England owes her greatness.
But the more we admire that steadfastness and independence in our past history the more we must dislike to see it parodied and made ridiculous by the followers of Dr. [John] Clifford.
If such enactments as the present Bill are to produce resistance to the law, and if the spirit which inspired [John] Hampden’s resistance to ship-money is to be invoked every time that the majority decides against a minority on a question of educational administration, what would be left for us to do if real oppression were to take place?
Consider for a moment what has happened.
Up till now the Nonconformists have been regularly paying taxes which in part have gone to schools in which religious doctrines disliked by Nonconformists have been taught.
They have never thought of going to prison in order to resist those taxes.
Now, however, they tell us that it is a matter of conscience to them to break the law and not pay rates part of which will go to schools in which religious doctrines which they dislike are being taught.
There is no attempt to prove that the new Act has in any way altered the situation for the worse as regards the Nonconformists.
On the contrary, it has to be admitted by all sincere persons that the new Act changes the situation for the better, not for the worse, as far as the Nonconformists are concerned.
Their conscientious scruples, that is, are less, not more, infringed upon by the new Education Act than by the old.
The only difference is between rates and taxes.
The Nonconformist who means to resist with Dr. Clifford cannot avoid being the sport of a paradox.
He must argue that it is perfectly right to pay taxes which help to teach a religion not his own, but so wrong to pay rates for that purpose that he will resist the law rather than do so.
Next, from the New York Press of , a much more flattering portrait (excerpts):
Parade of the Passive Resisters up the Thames Embankment in London
There are now 70,000 Passive Resisters, and so far 7,100 of them have been summoned to court to show cause why their goods should not be sold for taxes in support of a religious creed in which they do not believe, and some 350 of such sales have been held.
Each sale breeds new “Resisters,” and the movement has been growing steadily ever since it was begun, , under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. John Clifford, former president of the National Council of Free Evangelical Churches, pastor of the Westbourne Park Church in London, and probably the foremost Baptist in England.
The Rev. Dr. John Clifford, Leader of the “Passive Resisters”
Suppose a large population of the day schools of the United States were supported and managed by one religious denomination, with teachers of that denomination and with instruction of all the pupils in that one creed.
Then suppose the government enacted a measure taking over those schools and — without changing the sectarian religious instruction o[r] the requirement that the principal teachers should be of the one denomination — should call upon the general taxpayer to support those schools.
Wouldn’t there be a beautiful row before many hours had passed?
Wouldn’t the taxpayers of every other faith except the favored one rise to a man and tell the Government what they thought about it, in terms that couldn’t be mistaken?
Well, they move more slowly over here, and the favored church is, of course, the Established Church, to which, nominally, half the people in England belong.
Yet the American parallel will serve to give an idea of what a big, significant and deep-seated conflict is now going on in this country, despite the fact that outsiders hear little of it.
What in the United States is called the Episcopal Church is in England the Established Church, and all the others — Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, what you will — are bunched together in the Episcopal mind under the sweeping title of “Nonconformists” or “Dissenters.”
They are looked upon with some condescension socially and theologically.
Only the other day a clergyman, touching from his pulpit on the present controversy, said magnanimously that he hoped — yes, he hoped — that Nonconformists would not be excluded from heaven!
They form the great body of the solid, obstinate, hardworking, law-abiding “middle class,” as it is called on this side of the ocean.
What might be dubbed their cathedral is the famous City Temple, from whose pulpit Dr. Joseph Parker thundered for so many years, and which of late has been the scene of several excited gatherings addressed by such noted pulpit orators as the Rev. F.B. Meyer, the Rev. R.J. Campbell, who succeeded Dr. Parker; Dr. Clifford and other leading Nonconformists, all arrayed against the Government.
Some of them were doubtful about Dr. Clifford’s scheme of refusing to pay taxes to the enemy, but all were united in saying that the Government must either repeal the hated Education bill or be overthrown.
The great Liberal party of Gladstone, disunited over the Boer War, came together again in fighting the Government on this act, and now hopes to get back into power as much because of the Education bill as because of Chamberlain’s tariff scheme.
The size of the struggle becomes apparent when one realizes that half the churchgoers in England are arrayed against the other half.
A careful census conducted by a London daily newspaper shows that in actual worshipers the Anglican Church in London does not outnumber the Nonconformists, while in the country districts the Established Church falls short of the Dissenters.
Estimating the respective strengths according to the numbers of communicants, both in London and the provinces, the Nonconformists are outnumbered.
The latter, however, are not disturbed at this, for they declare that every man who is nothing claims the Anglican Church, and they say, as well, that the figures include the “twicers” — that is, those who attend two services each Sunday.
Most of the Nonconformists decided at first to pay the hated tax and take it out in voting against the Government when they got the chance, but the “martyrdom” of the 7,000 who have been warned that they are to be sold up, and the steadfastness of the 70,000 who intend to be sold up, bring on converts to such an extent that no one can tell where the affair will end.
“It is my opinion,” said Dr. Clifford to the writer [Curtis Brown], “that nothing but a general election, bringing a change of Government, will stop this fight.
As long as the Tory party remains in power we have little chance of getting anything permanent, but the Liberal leaders have pledged themselves to two things, which, if granted, will probably suspend the campaign for a time.
These are popular control over the support of the public schools and the abolition of sectarian tests for teachers.
Until these, at least, are granted, the Passive Resisters movement will continue to grow — how much I do not pretend to predict.”
Although almost nothing has been written in the United States about this big contest, letters from sympathizers across the ocean are beginning to pour in by every mail.
In New York and Boston committees have been formed, and funds are being solicited to send across the ocean.
The Rev. Dr. Hill of Valley Falls, N.Y., is the head of the American movement, and nearly all the contributions reach England through him.
Drs. Lorimer and Haw of New York are associated with Dr. Hill, while the Rev. Dr. McArthur of Boston is furthering the cause in that city.
For the benefit of American readers Dr. Clifford summed up the Passive Resistance creed in these words: “We contend that no taxpayer should be obliged to support schools in which dogmatic and ecclesiastical instruction contrary to his belief is taught, nor to help pay teachers who must undergo a denominational religious test before they are allowed to practice their profession.
It is precisely the same spirit which caused the Pilgrims to emigrate to America in , for just as the Government was trying to force a state religion upon the people then, so it is trying to strengthen that religion now by proselytizing the children of Nonconformist parents.”
One of the most unconventional of the auction sales was held recently in a suburb of Birmingham.
A Nonconformist minister who had refused to pay that portion of his taxes which was to be devoted to the support of schools of another faith surprised the officers who visited him to seize his goods by inviting them into his little front parlor, summoning his family and reading the Psalm in which appears the words: “Surely, He shall deliver them from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome pestilence,” and then, asking officers and all to kneel in prayer, in the course of which the pastor besought special grace for the dear friends who had called upon him that afternoon.
After this ceremony the “dear friends” carted off the pastor’s piano.
At Sutton some of the goods of a minister 90 years old were sold off, and in Berwick a Methodist minister was sentenced to seven days’ imprisonment for “passive resistance.”
At Fulham the Mayor himself was among the number summoned to court for withholding the educational part of his tax.
He told the Magistrate that he felt his position keenly, but, come what might, his conscience would not let him pay any portion of a tax for sectarian teaching.
Near Bristol a woman who owned a little farm, and who had tendered all of her tax except the two dollars which was to be devoted to the local sectarian school, was told that part payment could not be accepted, and the horse and cart on which she was depending for a living were seized for the payment of the whole sum.
Friends finally bought in the property for her, but the Government had the last word by charging for a week’s board for the horse.
In another place some vases for which the “resisters” had paid $50 were knocked down to a stranger for the $2.50 of taxes which had been withheld.
In most cases, however, the goods have been bought in by friends of the “resisters” and returned to the original owner, who would thereafter find some way of recouping his rescuers without damage to his conscience.
At one sale in fashionable Brighton the auctioneer was so much in sympathy with his victims that he refused to accept any fee, and sold the goods to friends of the owners for the precise sum required to satisfy the warrant.
Strangers present on the lookout for bargains found it impossible to make themselves heard when they offered more than the friendly bidders.
That auctioneer became a local hero, and was the chief guest after the sale at a meeting in which the local parson proposed to the crowd to send him to Westminster to see what price he could get for a damaged Tory Cabinet.
Eighty would-be martyrs at Ipswich were highly disgusted on the morning of the intended sale of their goods to find that some anonymous benefactor had paid their taxes for them the night before.
A meeting was actually held afterward, at which some of the would-be “resisters” protested against the action of the “ill-disposed” unknown person.
At Northwood the refused tax for six persons made a total of $14, and the goods sold to meet this tax were bought in, as usual, by friends.
But a heavy police guard had been necessary to protect the auctioneer, and the fees of the police and the auctioneer and other expenses made a total of nearly $100. All of the persons concerted were so poor that they could not meet this additional sum, and in consequence a further sale was held, in which the six “resisters” were well-nigh cleaned out.
An officer who called to seize the goods of a “resister” at Stoke-on-Trent was confronted at the door by a hearse, in which the coffin of the “resister’s” son was being placed.
The house was barred to the officer, so he went around to the stable and seized the saddle which had belonged to the dead boy.
Although, as a rule, the local Nonconformist ministers have attended the sales and have exerted themselves to the utmost to keep the sympathizers from doing anything more than chaff the man whose unpleasant duty it was to sell the goods, yet some of the auctioneers have been pretty badly mauled, and one or two have had to run for their lives without effecting sales.
One of them was saved from unpleasant experiences by a Methodist preacher, who laid down on the floor above the room in which the sale was being held and quieted the crowd by an address through a trap door.
Some of the local magistrates before whom the “resisters” have to appear in response to summonses let themselves be fairly submerged by the floods of oratory that break loose on such occasions, but one of the, W.S. Gilbert — none other than the librettist of Gilbert and Sullivan fame — distinguished himself by cutting short the oration of the first “resister” who came before him.
“This court shall not be made an arena for declaiming against an act of Parliament,” quoth the author of “Pinafore.”
The “resisters” have a powerful voice in the House of Commons with the brilliant young Lloyd-George as the leader, and they have a big representative in the financial world in R.W. Perks, who is the English adviser and backer of C.T. Yerkes in the underground railroad schemes.
They have also established a weekly newspaper, The Crusader, and appear to be gaining steadily in confidence that sooner or later they will turn Arthur Balfour and his Cabinet out of office.
Open-Air Auction of Passive Resisters’ Goods.
Dr. Clifford Addressing the Crowd from the Auctioneer’s Stand
From the Spectator comes an example of tax resistance that demonstrates a variety of tactics and shows that even a group that the magazine characterized as an undisciplined and incoherent mob had a sophisticated understanding of the techniques of grassroots tax rebellion:
The Tithe Riots in Wales.
No doubt it would be possible to exaggerate the importance of the recent resistance to the collection of tithe in North Wales.
The Welsh have always been liable from time to time to outbreaks of crime of the Irish kind.
They have the Celtic proneness to and aptitude for the organisation of common action by mobs and half-constituted and tumultuous assemblies.
Englishmen are fond enough of a row; but English riots are mere free-fights, begun without special premeditation, and carried out with very little principle but that of “wherever you see a head, hit it.”
In Wales and in Ireland, as in France, it is very different.
There a mob is always created, directed, and controlled by some combination, some conscious head or group of heads, — has always attached to it something in the nature of a conspiracy.
The Rebecca Riots were exactly typical of this peculiarity.
They were the direct outcome of a small secret conspiracy.
Yet, owing to the facility with which the conspiracy spread, they rose to a height which has made them one of the memorable events in the history of the Queen’s reign.
But if reflection shows that there is thus nothing abnormal in the organised lawlessness of the crowds that have lately been engaged in resisting the distraints which Christ Church, Oxford, and the Ecclesiastical Commissioners are seeking to levy in Montgomeryshire, it is not the less necessary that the law should be vindicated, and that riot should be put down.
It may be prudent, and even necessary, for an autocratic ruler to tolerate occasional lawlessness when such lawlessness is directed only against individuals, not against his own government.
There have been plenty of instances of this toleration.
The Russian, and even the German and Austrian Governments, allow riots against the Jews which they would never hear of for a moment if the riots were directed against the civil authority.
A democratic Government need not and will not tolerate such breaches of order.
The will of the majority must prevail, and no one can doubt for a moment that in Great Britain the will of the majority is that the law shall be obeyed, and that whatever force may be necessary to put down resistance to the law shall be employed.
The peculiar circumstances of the late riots so well illustrate what we have said of the nature and organisation of mobs among a Celtic population, and of the necessity of putting down the spirit of lawlessness before it grows to the dimensions of the Rebecca Riots, that we propose to sketch briefly the course of events.
On , a body of bailiffs acting on behalf of the owners of the tithe rent-charge, and accompanied by an auctioneer, Mr. Roberts, and an appraiser, attempted to sell the cattle of certain farmers previously seized under a distraint at Llangwm, Cerrig-y-druidion, in Montgomeryshire.
News of the intended sale, however, had reached the valley by .
The means taken to summon the neighbouring farmers and their labourers to resist the seizure and sale were as picturesque as the gathering-signal of a Highland clan.
From twelve anvils cannons were fired, and at the doors of thirty farmhouses immense horns 6 ft. long were blown by the farmers’ wives.
On the mountain-path — we quote the description given by the Standard correspondent — was raised a long pole, with a faggot saturated with paraffin attached to its top.
This beacon set ablaze soon summoned from their homes nearly a thousand persons, armed with stout cudgels.
When the auctioneer and his assistants drove upon the scene, their way was blocked by this crowd.
On their attempting to force a road through, the rioters clubbed the horses on the face.
The frightened animals rushed forward, smashing the carriage, so that a piece of the shaft entered the body of one of them, and then dashed through the crowd and down the road at a furious pace.
Some constables who were accompanying the bailiffs were flung out, but the auctioneer and his assistant clung to their seats.
The crowd followed the flying carriage, and since the horses soon fell, exhausted from loss of blood, overtook it about a mile off.
An extraordinary scene seems to have ensued.
The crowd, drunk with rage and excitement, surrounded the unfortunate men, and seemed about to give way to some sudden access of tumultuary fury.
It appeared as if nothing could save the two men from being torn in pieces.
They were preserved, however, by one of those sudden revulsions of feeling in the mob such as we read of in the tumults of the French Revolution.
Two of the farmers under distraint, Mr. Jones and Mr. Thomas Thomas, with a courage and heroism that do them the highest honour, seized Roberts and his assistant, and declared that they would die with them.
This act seems at once to have taken effect on the crowd, and they desisted from their furious attack.
They were not, however, content to let the men go till the auctioneer had gone down upon his knees in the road, and sworn a solemn oath never again to enter the district, or to assist in the collection of tithes.
This oath was extorted from the appraiser also; the coats of both men were then taken off and turned, and in this condition they were marched along at the head of the crowd, a red flag being borne in front of them and a black one behind.
On entering the town of Corwyn, a “boycott” appears to have been proclaimed against the principal hotels, because they had had dealings with those connected with the attempted seizure.
The two men were then taken to the station and put into a train.
As the train steamed off, Mr. Roberts is reported to have called out that he would soon be among them again.
Such was the result of the attempt to distrain on the farmers of Montgomeryshire.
On the previous day, a scene somewhat similar was enacted in another part of the county, and it was only owing to the great forbearance displayed by those in charge of the police that a very serious encounter between them and the mob was avoided.
We are now told that it is considered impossible to carry out any distraint without recourse to the military, and that soldiers are being held in readiness, and the latest news describes mounted scouts posted day and night by the farmers on the hills, ready to give instant warning of the approach of the distraining parties, and to summon the valleys to resistance.
It is certainly anything but pleasant to read of such resistance to the ordinary law within three hundred miles of the capital.
Whether the agricultural depression has or has not made some reduction in the tithe rent-charges advisable, cannot be discussed in the face of such lawlessness.
If the resistance had been a matter of conscience, as in the case of Church-rates, the problem would doubtless be more difficult; but there can be no conscientious scruple, when a man who is quite willing to pay his tithe with 10 per cent. reduction, defies the law without that reduction.
Indeed, from the point of view of those who justify the anti-tithe agitation as a protest against the injustice of the Establishment in Wales, the present case is quite worthless.
The tithe due is, in fact, of the nature of lay tithe, and has no more to do with the Welsh clergy than any ground-rents in London which a Corporation like that of Christ Church may hold.
By accident, the biggest of the Oxford Colleges is connected with the Dean and Chapter of an English Cathedral; but by far its most important side — its educational side — is as unsectarian as any other part of the University.
Its fellowships and scholarships are open to men of all shades of religious opinion.
The very money that the Welsh farmers are withholding goes in part to scholars and exhibitioners who may be now, for all we know, and who certainly have been, Nonconformists.
It is therefore impossible for any one to countenance the disgraceful riots on grounds of religious equality.
We notice that the Rev. E. Owen, Rector of Ebenechlyd, speaking in Montgomeryshire, appears to consider, however, that the College should conciliate those who are withholding its property — for, after all, the right to receive tithe is as much property as any other possession — by devoting the money drawn from this particular source to giving scholarships exclusively to Welsh candidates.
Surely this extraordinary proposal is retrograde in the extreme.
It must, we suppose, be set down as the first fruit of Mr. Gladstone’s attempts to reawaken the before quiescent separatist aspirations of the Welsh.
When such schemes are proposed, we wonder if the proposers ever consider that a point might easily be reached where retaliation would begin.
Of course, it is very pleasant for Wales to keep certain benefits exclusively her own, and at the same time to share what are ours; but if the process is carried too far, even a people so illogical as the English will at last awaken to the inequality of the bargain.
Wales must learn that as long as she is part of England, and shares in the benefits of the English connection, English individuals and English corporations are not to be deprived of their property because the income of that property is not spent in the particular locality from which it is derived.
The Welsh Tithe War continued to blaze through . In , the government shifted the tax so that it was due from landlords rather than tenants, though it’s unclear to me whether this really changed the incidence of the tax so much as its symbolism (and salience).
In a bill was passed that ended the establishment of an official government-sponsored church in Wales.
John Clifford, leader of the Passive Resistance movement
The “passive resistance” campaign against the Education Act continued to heat up in .
Here are some excerpts from news reports of from the time.
First, from the Chelmsford Chronicle comes a report of a meeting at the Braintree Baptist Chapel with designs to form a passive resistance coalition.
The following comes from remarks made by “A.C. Wilkin, of Tiptree,” who presided:
There was no weapon left nearly so effective as passive resistance.
[Hear, hear.]
If it were largely adopted it would have the power of law.
Believers in passive resistance would use their influence in the polling booths and on every convenient occasion; but in another way some meant to form citizens’ leagues in order to protect the poor who should resist the rate.
In their cases all goods seized should be bought in for them, and richer people could afford to buy in their own goods.
[Applause.]
Stand by the poor!
[Applause.]
The citizen’s undoubted right could be used without a breach of the constitution.
[Hear, hear.]
Later…
The Rev. A. Curtis, Baptist minister, Braintree, moved a resolution re-affirming detestation of the Act, expressing sympathy with those who passively resisted the rate, and promising assistance to such.
“The resolution was carried without dissent.”
Mr. Henry Gibbs moved that a Citizens’ League be formed, and said that while he had not taken up the position of passive resistance he honoured those who had.
The league would comprise full members, who resisted, and associate members, who did not.
This motion was also carried and “[a] number gave in their names as members of the League.”
An article critical of the passive resistance movement in the Leamington Spa Courier and Warwickshire Standard included this detail:
At Hastings, on , and again at Stroud, on , auction sales were held on goods seized under distraint for the non-payment of the education rate.
The Sussex sale proved abortive; the auctioneer, a Mr. Firdinando, having to leave the town under police protection.
“The blackguardism of Hastings was let loose,” he said when subsequently interviewed by a London press representative.
“We will not answer for your life” was the declaration of the constable, who in the hall forced a way for him through the mob.
At the Gloucestershire sale, the crowd abstained from violence, amused itself by song and banter, and ultimately permitted a prominent Nonconformist townsman to bid for the spoil — ten chairs and a couch.
These the generous sympathiser secured for £3 7s. 6d. the lot, presumably his own price.
He returned the chattels without delay to their respective owners.
At Hastings, as also at Stroud, the “passive resisters” themselves behaved as gentlemen.
To the rowdy element and the comic element in the respective cases is to be ascribed all the demonstration.
It may be taken that neither the rowdies nor the comics cared in the remotest degree for the issue which the “resisters” imagine they have at stake.
The Evening News of Portsmouth carried this news in its issue:
Passive Resistance.
Bournemouth Ladies in Court.
Free Church Ministers of Bournemouth, led by the Rev. J.D. Jones and the local secretary of the Citizens’ League, with a number of people, crowded the Court at Branksome , where two Bournemouth ladies — Misses Townsend — were summoned to show cause why distress warrants should not be issued against them for 3s. 9d., being the balance of the rate for educational purposes.
Defendants refused on religious grounds.
The Magistrates ordered distress warrants, remarking that it was contrary to good citizenship because they thought the law was bad to take it into their own hands.
This was the first case heard in the district, and the ladies were loudly cheered in Court.
The Court was ordered to be cleared, but the police could not carry out the instruction.
A public demonstration was held outside the Court.
A letter by an “E. Hopkins” dated which appeared in the Shields Gazette complained that the overseers had returned his partial rate payment with a statement saying that they could not accept anything but a full payment.
Hopkins clarified his[?] grounds for refusal and gave the justification for the amount he intended to refuse, along with the usual arguments against the Education Act.
He concluded “I understand a number of ratepayers have tendered part payment and have met with a similar refusal.”
An anti-passive-resistance editorial in the Kent & Sussex Courier added a bit more about the supposed goings on at the auction in Hastings:
Even those whose passivity assumes a paradoxically aggressive form will, we are sure, recognise that no good purpose can be served by a display of physical force against an auctioneer, or by meeting a legal process by the illegal method of smothering in flour a Sheriff’s Officer, as the passive resisters of Hastings did.
The Derbyshire Times of reported:
The Nonconformist View.
The Rev Ambrose Pope at the service at the Bakewell Congregational Church announced his intention to decline payment of that portion of the rate recently levied that would be required for educational purposes and he invited those sympathising with this attitude to meet in the schoolroom on for the purpose of formulating a plan of campaign.
Rather go to Gaol than have his Goods Sold.
At this meeting there was an attendance of about 30. The Rev A. Pope, as chairman of the Bakewell and District Free Church Council (under whose auspices the meeting was called) explained the purpose of the meeting, and thought that considering the shortness of the notice given — time did not permit of longer — the attendance was very satisfactory.
The meeting was not for the purpose of discussing the Act or even for the consideration of whether or not a Passive Resistance League should be formed.
The Free Church Council at its meeting on were unanimously of opinion that such a league should be formed, and that meeting was called to enlist sympathisers, and to form the machinery of the league.
That sympathy might take two forms. A few might feel that they could not conscientiously pay the Education rate, and there would be others who had not yet reached that stage, who would want to know a little more about the question but were prepared to sympathise with the movement.…
Mr Joshua Barrett was elected to the chair and said he had long since determined that he must resist payment of the rate under the new Education Act.
He said he would rather go to gaol than have his goods sold.
“Same here,” was the cry from several others.
The league was then formed… The names of members were then taken in two divisions: (1) those determined to “passively resist” payment of rates; and (2) those “sympathising” with the movement.
The same issue carried a few articles about Citizens’ Leagues in other regions and about actions taken against, or expected against, passive resisters elsewhere.
A letter in the Bristol Western Daily Press from F.W. Bryan, “Co-Secretary of ‘Bristol Citizens’ League’,” complained that some of the leaders of the passive resistance movement had had their rates paid for them by some anonymous “benefactor” in a way that was decidedly not cricket:
The announcement in your columns this morning that some person has paid the Rev H. Arnold Thomas’s rate calls for vigorous protest on the part of all right-minded people.
However others may differ from us in our principle of passive resistance, we at least are open in our dealings, giving the greatest publicity to our names and motives; and this anonymous, mole-like method of fighting us, as already practised on Mr Thomas, Mr Hiley, and others, is most unsportsmanlike and un-English.
The man who will do it is no gentleman, and most certainly reveals a lack of any fine sense of honour.
I believe men on both sides of this controversy most strongly condemn this unworthy method of tampering with the sacred convictions of others.
Mr Thomas calls him “friend” in his usual courteous and kindly way, but the man who would practise this lie upon the Rates Office, and by stabbing me in the dark tend to injure my reputation in the eyes of the public by making them believe I am a hypocrite, can be no friend, however kindly I may feel towards him.
There appears to be no legal redress; it is simply a position in which one must trust to the honesty and honour of our fellow citizens; and the man who imperils that sense of trust is a menace to the highest life of the city.
It is unlikely that this “friend” (?) will have compassion on the rank and file of the hundreds of “Resisters.”
I presume he aims at weakening our cause by removing our prominent leaders from the fighting line.
Poor misguided man; he evidently thinks the spirit of resisters is as weak as his own.
Does he dream that in this matter of conscience the absence of the active co-operation of these esteemed leaders would have a damaging effect?
We still retain their sympathy, influence, and support, and two or three out of the hundreds who will be proceeded against can make little difference.
Neither does it delay the issue in the slightest.
These gentlemen will still refuse to pay, and next time will refuse in such a way as to prevent any recurrence of such measures.
The attack upon good and true citizens like the Rev Arnold Thomas will tend to embolden many of the rank-and-file who may have been wavering.
The Gloucester Citizen carried this news:
Passive Resistance.
Magistrate and Minister.
At Wirksworth Police-court the Rev. Macdonald Aspland, secretary to the first contesting Passive Resistance League, was summoned with another Nonconformist minister and others for failing to pay poor-rate tax.
Aspland’s defence was that he had not refused as stated in the summons.
The Court held that neglect to pay was refusal.
In the case of the Rev. B. Noble, one of the magistrates said: “You must understand if every fool in the place were to refuse to pay there would be no rates or taxes to collect.”
The defendant answered: “I have no reply to make to language of that kind.”
Distress warrants were issued.
Mr. T.B. Silcock, the Liberal candidate for the Wells Division, is among the latest additions to the ranks of the passive resisters.
Summonses against 45 passive resisters, including several well-known people, were applied for at Weston-super-Mare Police-court on by the overseer.
The North Devon Journal reported on the launch of the passive resistance campaign in Barnstaple, under the auspices of the newly-formed Barnstaple Citizens’ League, in its edition.
It described the meeting as “largely-attended” and said “it was a highly successful gathering, the addresses being listened to with deep interest and appreciation, and not a dissentient note being struck throughout the meeting.”
Among the things reported at the meeting was that someone had investigated what percentage of the rate would be going to offensive expenses in their area (1½ pence in the pound) and that the recommended method of resistance would therefore be to refuse to pay that percentage of their rates.
Much of what is reported of the speeches given is a recitation of complaints about the Education Act, the sinister motives behind it, and the control of the local education authorities by Church of England adherents with a few lurking Roman Catholics in the background.
The Rev. J. Hirst Hollowell, representing the National Passive Resistance Committee, gave a nice shout-out to the Concord civil disobedience set: “Ralph Waldo Emerson had said that the progress of the world had been greatly promoted by the refusal of good men to obey bad laws; let them write that on their banner of passive resistance.
(Applause.)”
The Northampton Mercury brought us up-to-date in its issue:
Passive Resistance.
William Ramsill and Samuel Newbold, of Donisthorpe, were summoned at Ashby-de-la-Zouch on for the nonpayment of poor rates, amounting to £1 2s. 8d. and 12s. 7d. respectively.
The Bench decided to issue an order for the recovery of the rate and for the payment of the costs.
They refused to state a case.
The number of passive resisters to appear before the Bath Bench on has now been increased to 65, which is believed to be the record batch for any borough in the country so far.
Nine of them will be Nonconformist ministers:– Baptist: The Revs. F.J. Benskin, T.R. Dann, A. Sowerby, B. Oriel, and Mr. J.R. Huntley.
Congregational: The Revs. J. Turner Smith and T.B. Howells.
Primitive Methodist Revs. Thomas Storr and T.H. Bryant.
At Brigg, on , goods seized from “passive resisters” were sold by auction by Mr. Grassby.
The effects included a hearthrug, the property of the Rev. J. Spensley, Primitive Methodist; a swing chair, belonging to the Rev. H.J. Parry, Congregationalist; a wicker chair, seized from Miss Blanchard.
Bidding was brisk, and the articles were mostly bought in for the owners.
Though there was considerable excitement no disturbance took place.
A demonstration followed.
At the Bath County Police Court, on , the adjourned summonses were heard for nonpayment of a portion of their rates against three parishioners at Bathford.
An adjournment had been allowed as the result of a point of law raised by Mr. W.F. Long, representing the Bath and District Passive Resistance League, that the rate was invalid because the Somerset County Council had no power to raise money for the administration of the Education Act before that Act was in force in the county.
After hearing the arguments, the Bench made orders for the payment of the rate, and declined to grant a stay of execution or to state a case.
Lively scenes were witnessed at Pocklington on on it becoming known that the goods of nine passive resisters were to be sold, and excitement prevailed.
All the auctioneers in the place refused to sell, and Mr. Sharp, of Market Weighton, was prevailed upon to officiate.
He arrived at the railway station and was met by a large crowd of passive resisters and sympathisers.
Accompanied by the assistant overseer, he made for the solicitor’s office, followed by a hooting crowd.
A rotten egg was thrown, and just missed his hat.
He remained inside the office some time, and the crowd, becoming impatient, erected a tailor’s dummy on a trolley, which created great amusement.
At last Mr. Flint, a prominent resister, announced that the auctioneer had declined to sell, owing to being unable to come to terms. Cheers followed the announcement, and the crowd, which numbered about 500, marched in procession to the marketplace, where an enthusiastic meeting was held, and the Education Act was strongly condemned.
The auction mart in Herne Bay was filled to overflowing on , when the distrained goods of the Rev. J.S. Geale, the Rev. C. Pockney, Mr. J. Watkinson, and Mr. E. Ellwoof, who had refused to pay that part of the poor rate for the maintenance of Sectarian Schools, came under the hammer.
Mr. P.E. Iggulden, an auctioneer of the town, officiated, and by his consent Mr. Beale made a short speech before the sale, in the course of which he denounced the Education Act as retrograde, unconstitutional, and unjust.
Mr. Pockney also vigorously attacked the measure.
As the distrained goods were preceded by more than 200 other lots, the interval of waiting was filled by an enthusiastic meeting in the Baptist Church, almost opposite the mart.
Addresses were delivered by ministers from Whitstable, Margate, and Ramsgate.
Returning to the mart just as the passive resisters’ goods were to be offered, the Rev. C. Pockney moved the following resolution:– “That this assembly protests against the Education Act of , that makes the sale of respected citizens’ goods possible for the payment of an unjust rate, and sympathises with those in the stand they are taking for conscience sake, and hopes that it will result in the speedy amendment of the law.”
This was carried amid tremendous enthusiasm, and the sale then proceeded.
The articles were all bought by a friend of the resisters.
Outside the mart the Doxology was sung, the street being crowded.
Another article on the same page briefly mentions a meeting between “a deputation from the Wellingbborough Citizens’ League” and “the overseers” to try to convince the latter to accept partial payment of the rates from resisters and only pursue them for the part they were refusing, rather than refusing to accept payments not in full.
The Sunderland Daily Echo reported on a passive resistance meeting that had been held alongside the United Methodist Free Churches Assembly .
It “was only moderately attended,” according the account, which the speakers attributed to the weather and to the fact that most of their target audience had already been in meetings all day.
One “Councillor Hardy (Riddings)” said:
He used to be an overseer of the parish in which he lived, but two weeks after the Bill passed he made it known that he could not be a party to levying, collecting, or receiving the rates under this Act.
His Council elected him again, and pointed out that, if he was elected, he must accept the position.
He admitted the law compelled that, but also made it clear that the law could not make him do the duties.
They, therefore, elected his successor, who, it was strange to say, was stronger in his convictions than he (Councillor Hardy) was.
(Laughter.)
The Northampton Mercury of reported:
Passive Resistance.
At the Bath County Police Court on , Mr. T.B. Silcock, an ex-Mayor of Bath, and Liberal candidate for the Wells Division of Somerset, was summoned as a passive resister, and an order of distraint was made.
The first sale in Huntingdonshire in connection with the passive resistance movement took place at Alconbury, six miles from Huntingdon, on .
Mr. R.C. Grey, of Brooklands Farm, had been summoned at Huntingdon Divisional Police Court, and ordered to pay 9s. 7d., but he refused, and a distress warrant was issued.
For a long time, however, the police could not get an auctioneer to act, and eventually the sale was conducted by a gentleman named Bingham, from Peterborough.
There was a large and excited crowd, including many prominent local Free Churchmen, and the proceedings were characterised by considerable feeling.
The auctioneer was met with a perfect storm of booing and shouting, so vehement that nothing else could be heard till all was over, when it was understood a set of harness had been sold to a friend of Mr. Grey for 51s. When the sale was over, the auctioneer, who was accompanied by a number of police officials, retired to a constable’s house.
The crowd remained discussing the event; but threw rotten eggs at him as he eventually rode off on a bicycle.
Cheers were given for Mr. Grey, and groans for Mr. Balfour and the auctioneer.
Remarkable proceedings took place at Bath Police Court on , when 70 passive resisters were summoned.
The defendants included two lady members of the Church of England — the Misses Goldie — Mr. Walter, a supporter of the Government at the last election, chairman of the Bath Chamber of Commerce, and nine Nonconformist ministers — the Revs. F.J. Benskin, A. Sowerby, B. Oriel, T.R. Dann, W. Burton, and Mr. J.R. Huntley, Baptists; the Revs. T.B. Howells and J. Turner Smith, Congregationalists; the Revs. T. Storr and T.H. Bryant, Primitive Methodists.
The Court was crowded with sympathisers, who welcomed the summoned, but after their first attempt to applaud during the proceedings they were sternly rebuked by the magistrates’ clerk.
The demonstration being renewed, an officer was stationed to watch for any one not “keeping order,” but the officer’s vision must have been like Sam Weller’s, for there were no ejections and many applauders.
In fact, towards the end of the lengthy proceedings applause was unrestrained, and as the Court cleared hearty cheers were given for the passive resisters.
— Mr. W.F. Long appeared for all the defendants.
An unexpected point was scored as to the powers of magistrates in hearing applications for distress warrants.
On at Bath another Bench held that the magistrate could not go behind the rate-book if on the face of it the rate was in order.
On the present occasion, however, the Bench expressed the opinion that if it appeared from evidence that the rate was illegal they would have a discretion in enforcing it.
Counsel’s second objection that the rate was illegal, inasmuch as the City Council issued the precept in April before the Education Act had come into force, was overruled, the Bench deciding that the rate was justified under the Municipal Corporation Act, .
A distress warrant was issued against Mr. Pitt, and the other cases were then taken in rotation, orders for payment being made.
Among the protests of the defendants were the following:– Mr. James Hewitt: I gladly render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, but I cannot render unto Cæsar the things which are God’s. — The Rev. T.H. Bryant: I have a conscientious objection, and that for me is enough.
— The Rev. T.B. Howells: I admit the rate, but will not help to endow the Church of England again.
— Mr. C.H. Hacker: I admit the rate and deem it an honour to fight for religious freedom.
(Much applause.)
— The Rev. B. Oriel, asked if the rate was all right, replied: “No, wrong — wrong to compel us to pay for the proselytising of our own children.
The amount is right, but the principle is wrong.”
— A mild sensation was created when, after the names of the Revs. F.J. Benskin, T.R. Dann, and J. Turner Smith, and Mr. Hodges had been called, the assistant overseer said that the rates in their cases had been paid.
Demands were made to know by whom, but the assistant overseer only replied: “I cannot tell.”
This was met with loud cries of “Shame.”
— At a subsequent protest meeting the Rev. T.R. Dann described the act of the person who had paid his rate as “contemptible cowardice.”
Dr. Clifford writes: “I am asked what those persons should do who have had to suffer the indignity of having the ‘tax on conscience’ which they have refused to pay paid for them by somebody else.
A ‘Catholic Priest’ pays for a Nonconformist minister.
An individual appropriating to himself the title of ‘Charity’ pays for a citizen, and then insults the whole Free Church people of the land by writing a letter which insinuates that they have caused the present strife, and ignores the patent fact that this unjust and immoral policy is the work of the Bishops of the Anglican Church.
For myself, I should meet such tactics as those of the ‘Catholic Priest’ and ‘Charity’ by refusing to acknowledge any such payment as mine, and should accordingly deduct the amount of the rate from my second payment; and again, if necessary, from a third payment; and so on ad infinitum.
Probably the ‘Catholic Priest’ and ‘Charity,’ and others like-minded, would thus be induced to cease from interfering with the rights of citizenship.”
The reverend A. Gray of Briercliffe penned a piece for the Burnley Express of that included these observations on the nonviolence strategy:
There have been up to the present time about 300 summonses issued against those who for conscientious reasons refuse to pay that portion of the education rate which goes to the support of non-provided schools — or rather the religious education in such schools.
In most cases distress warrants have been issued and distraint has taken place.
In some cases goods far exceeding in value the amount of the rate and the costs of distraint have been taken.
The illegality of such excessive distraint is being considered by the legal advisers of the National Passive Resistance Committee.
If the decision be that such excessive distraint is legal, nevertheless right-minded citizens, even though opposed to passive resistance, will undoubtedly condemn it as unjust and dishonest.
Such excessive distraints, together with the harsh and tyrannical treatment Passive Resisters have received at the hands of certain magistrates, may explain, in part, the unseemly behaviour of the crowd at certain sales of distrained goods.
Such scenes as were witnessed at Hastings, Bury St. Edmunds, etc., are deeply to be regretted.
Were, though, the Passive Resisters in those towns responsible for the uproar?
We think not.
The auctioneer at Hastings has borne this testimony:– “The Passive Resisters behaved like gentlemen.”
We have no doubt if impartial eye-witnesses in other towns where disturbances have taken place were asked for their opinion it would be in the same strain.
We are not responsible for the actions of the crowd.
Passive Resisters may be relied upon to carry out to the utmost the principle of the movement.
Our resistance will be passive.
We deprecate any scene whatever at the auction.
As we cheerfully admit the bailiff to our homes to mark and take away our goods, so we in like manner shall abstain from any interference with the auctioneer.
Both perform their respective duties in a purely professional spirit.
Our opportunity to demonstrate may be before or after the sale, but not at the sale, and our demonstration must be characterised by good humour, courtesy, and fairness.
The more calmly we bear our suffering, the more courteously and honourably we fight this battle, the more converts shall we win, the stronger will be our cause, and the sooner will victory be won.
An article in The Derbyshire Times of under the unflattering subhead “Belper Passive Resister’s Stupid Action” concerned a Mr. James Bakewell, whose goods were sold under distraint at auction to cover his income tax and the costs of the sale.
Bakewell bid on and won the goods himself, making this a convoluted way of paying.
Although the article refers to Bakewell as “one of the ‘passive resisters’ of Belper,” it’s not entirely clear whether he was acting along with the Education Act protest, which did not typically involve the income tax.
The overseers in Portsmouth decided they would not take partial payment of the rates, but would insist on all-or-nothing.
This angered the resisters there.
One wrote a letter to the Portsmouth Evening News saying in part
That we resent the treatment goes without saying, and the gentlemen responsible for the harsh decision cannot expect us to go out of our way to make things work over-smoothly after what they have done for us.
… The question of the day for Portsmouth is not… whether “Passive Resisters will be distressed,” but is it to be peace or war.
The Overseers can decide.
Also noted was a “largely-attended” meeting of the Portsmouth Passive Resistance League at which “It was decided to form an indemnity fund for the benefit of members with slender means, and to open the membership to residents in the surrounding district.
On the same page was this article:
Prosecutions and Sales.
The batch of Passive Resisters before the Oxford City Magistrates on included some well-known citizens.
Among them was Dr. Massie, until recently Vice-Principal of Mansfield College.
The amount claimed of Dr. Massie was £9 5s. 4d., and he had tendered £8 19s. 1d..
In a letter to the collector he said he neglected to pay the 6s. 3d. as a protest against the Education Act, .
The Magistrates having consulted, the Mayor said they had come to the conclusion they must make an order for the full payment of £9 5s. 4d. and costs.
At the Longeaton Police Station, on , Mr. Webster, of Wirksworth, auctioneer, held a sale of goods of Passive Resisters.
A force of 50 police were present, but they did not prevent the crowd from jeering at the auctioneer, who sold the goods in a doorway.
After the sale an indignation meeting was held in the Market Place, at which a letter was read from Dr. Clifford, urging the continuance of the fight “till we win.”
Good humour prevailed, and police interference was unnecessary.
At Ashford, on , summonses were issued against two ministers and four other Passive Resisters.
Goods have been seized at Tenterden, but a difficulty is being experienced in finding an auctioneer to sell them.
All of this represents only a portion of what I found being printed at this time on the subject.
I have omitted many examples of people arguing back and forth about the legitimacy of the grievance that led to the passive resistance campaign, in order that I might concentrate on how that campaign was carried out, what challenges it faced, and how it met such challenges.
Henry Joseph Wilson, member of Parliament and tax resister
Nobody knew at the time that the struggle would go on for years.
In the tax resistance campaign against the provisions of the Education Act that allowed for taxpayer funding of sectarian religious education was still ramping up.
It was a campaign that would inspire the later tax resistance struggles of the women’s suffragists and of Mahatma Gandhi, and which would associate the term “passive resistance” with nonviolent civil disobedience and with tax resistance in particular (a phrase that Gandhi chafed at, leading him to coin his own term: satyagraha).
The editions of The Sheffield Daily Telegraph and Evening Telegraph carried a letter from Henry Joseph Wilson, a Liberal Party member of parliament, to the assistant overseer for Sheffield in which he explained his refusal to pay the complete taxes.
Some excerpts:
I beg to enclose cheque for the amount of your demand note, less the sum of £1. I decline to pay that sum, as a protest against the education policy of the Government, and particularly against the Education Act of
I wish to state, briefly, why I make this protest.
He then makes the by now familiar case against the Act’s “encroachments on popular rights, and on freedom of conscience, which, so far from enduring any longer, we are bound to resent, and to oppose to the utmost of our power.”
Under these circumstances, my wife and I, having protested in every way hitherto open to us, have decided that I ought to make the further protest involved in the indignity of a summons, magisterial proceedings, and distraint.
Below this were these articles:
“Passive Resisters” in Sheffield.
The Sheffield magistrates will be busy with “Passive Resisters” in a few days.
Already 47 summonses have been issued at the instance of the Sheffield overseers, and now the overseers for Ecclesall are about to take action against some 67 defaulters.
In both instances the lists contain ministers of religion, and leaders of the “Nonconformist conscience.”
The Sheffield cases will be heard on , and those from Ecclesall township probably .
The amount involved in Sheffield is about £14, out of the £117,000 that the rate will produce.
One of the Ecclesall “resisters” had a singular experience.
He had appealed against his assessment, but while awaiting the result of the appeal, his rate fell due, and he paid it less a small amount, which he withheld because of his so-called “conscientious objection to pay for the maintenance of Church Schools.”
His appeal was successful, and the balance in his favour was greater than the amount he had withheld, so that he has been robbed of all the glory of posing as a “Nonconformist martyr.[”]
The overseers of Nether Hallam have agreed to allow “Passive Resisters” to pay the undisputed portion of their rates.
A “Case” at Chesterfield.
The assistant overseer for the borough of Chesterfield (Mr. George Broomhead) has received a letter from the Rev. J.E. Simon, who is the pastor of the Congregational Chapel, Brampton, which the Mayor (Mr. C.P. Robinson) attends, stating he is unable to pay that part of the rate “which is levied for the support of sectarian schools.
By this rate I am required to pay directly for the teaching of Romanism and doctrines of the Established Church, which I believe to be untrue.
This I, as a Protestant and Nonconformist, refuse to do voluntarily.”
The amount which Mr. Simon was “prepared to pay” has been tendered to the rate collector, but as it was not the amount the last-named was “prepared to receive,” the sum was refused.
Interesting developments are anticipated.
The Rights of Overseers.
Mr. Vicary Gibbs, M.P., has sent the following reply to a constituent in the Albans Division, who asked whether he could obtain from Mr. Walter Long a definite opinion in regard to the rights of overseers in accepting or refusing part payment of local rates in connection with the Passive Resistance campaign:– “Mr. Walter Long writes me that he has looked very carefully into the question, and finds that the overseers are vested by law with the responsibility of deciding whether or not they will accept part.
I think you will agree that nothing would be gained by my asking him a public question.”
The Burnley Gazette of told the tale of another new resister:
Rev. W. Robinson as a
Passive Resister
This week, Rev. W. Robinson, formerly pastor of Hollingreave Congregational Church, Burnley, and now pastor of Market street Congregational Church, Farnworth, was one among others summoned before the magistrates for not paying a portion of the Education rate.
Mr. Martin, assistant overseer, produced the poor rate book for the rate laid .
Mr. Robinson’s rate was £7 19s., of which he had paid £6 16s. 11d., leaving £1 2s. 1d. unpaid.
He had received the following letter from Mr. Robinson:–
, — Dear Sir, — Herewith find my cheque to cover the amount of the demand made by the overseers on the note enclosed, less that part of the amount demanded for the Education Committees’ expenses.
This I shall not voluntarily pay, as it goes to the support of schools not popularly controlled, and to some schools in which teaching is given that has for its end the destruction not only of Free Churchmanship, but the overthrowing of English Protestantism.
— Yours, sincerely, William Robinson.
Mr. Martin, continuing, stated that he had received a precept from the Farnworth Education Committee for £1,650, to be devoted to educational purposes.
The Rev. W. Robinson was sworn in the Scottish fashion [this apparently means that he was sworn in by raising one hand, rather than by kissing the bible which was the default; this may have been for a number of reasons, hygiene among them], and Mr. Hall suggested that as he admitted owing the rate, he should simply be asked if he refused to pay on conscientious grounds.
They had all their own opinions on this matter.
The magistrates had theirs, and he didn’t think it worth while going further — Mr. Robinson said he objected to payment of the rate on conscientious grounds, and had deducted the amount which would be devoted to what he termed sectarian schools.
He would have deducted this money if all demanded had been going to the education of children in Congregational schools.
He was a Congregationalist minister, but objected to pay money towards any denomination whatsoever.
He thought if any man held a religious opinion or a negative opinion on matters of religion it was no affair of the State, and that no man ought to be penalised because he did not believe or because of what he believed. he would have objected to pay this money were it all going to Francis-street Congregational School — Mr. Hall: I suppose you pay income tax?
— Mr. Robinson: I do.
— Mr. Hall: And you know that a proportion goes to the Consolidated Fund, and for educational purposes?
— Mr. Robinson: The matters are entirely different.
My income tax is a mere trifle.
I know I may be charged with inconsistency, but surely you do not suggest that I should object to pay the income tax.
It would lead to much more contention than this.
— Mr. Hall: I suggest that to be consistent, you should.
— Mr. Robinson said that supposing he had two properties, and in order to have the opportunity of expressing his conscientious objection he paid the rate on one and not the other, would that not be equally inconsistent?
— Colonel Ainsworth: It depends upon the law.
— Mr. Robinson: Of course, and we Congregationalists are among the most law-abiding subjects.
When, however, the law encroached on a man’s conscience, he could not pay the money.
— Mr. Hall: With all due respect to you, I think we have heard enough.
— Colonel Ainsworth: We are here to administer the law, and we cannot help it if you think the law is wrong.
It is your business to get the law altered…
Here the article begins to lose legibility.
There is an interesting exchange in which Mr. Hall asks whether the defendants would pay up without going through the process of distraint (the panel evidently having decided against them).
On hearing that they would not, Hall asserts: “I remember the Church Rate days, when the Quakers refused to pay [illegible].
They, however, did not go to the extent of having their goods taken.
If shopkeepers, they would leave [illegible] open, and tell the officers to help themselves to the cash.”
Distraint warrants were issued.
The article notes that “The Court fees… were considerably reduced owing to the cases being taken together…” — evidently Robinson had been joined by some others at some point in the illegible paragraphs — “This will be much less than if they were not acting in concert.”
On the same page as the above article appears a letter from the Rev. J.B. Parry to the Burnley Borough Treasurer explaining why he was under-paying his general rate, giving a subset of the usual arguments.
The Rev. A. Gray, who seems to have become a spokesperson for the movement, penned an article for the Burnley Express and Advertiser:
The Passive Resistance Movement
The Right Hon. W.H. Long, President of the Local Government Board, in an address delivered at Devizes, Wilts, on , “appealed to passive resisters not to defy the law, but to try by constitutional means to obtain a repeal of the Education Act if they considered it to be unjust.”
We are glad to note that at least one member of the Government is sufficiently impressed with the strength of the movement as to “appeal” to the passive resisters on the point at issue.
Whilst we appreciate the spirit of the right hon. gentleman towards us, we cannot acknowledge the ground of his appeal.
We disavow any intention “to defy the law.”
Perhaps the name we bear is responsible somewhat for that misconception of our attitude toward the law.
Just as the term “Nonconformist,” which is purely negative, is being slowly but surely changed for that of “Free Churchman,” which is positive, and more truly expresses our position to-day, so the term “resister,” which is negative, should be changed to obeyer, which is positive.
Whilst we cannot, for conscientious reasons, pay the education rate, that is, the portion of the rate which is to be devoted to denominational schools, but leave the authority to collect it in such a way as it deems good, we thereby do render obedience to the law.
It is “not active obedience,” but it is “obedience.”
It is “passive obedience.”
We intend “to give the State the honour which is due to it, without depriving the conscience of the honour which is due to it.
The State was entitled to assistance only within its own proper sphere, and when the State went beyond its own sphere, it could not rightly claim the assistance of the citizens.”
I’m not sure what Gray is quoting there at the end.
A little further on, he continues:
Because we feel [the Act’s] injustice we have taken this step.
The injustice will be impressed upon the minds of the people as they see the goods of their fellow men distrained and sold to pay this rate.
Further, we can assure Mr. Long, that we shall in addition to passive resistance work earnestly for the repeal of the sectarian clauses, and the general amendment of the Act.
He quotes a Sir Walter Foster, member of parliament for Ilkeston Division, who said in part: “As to passive resisters, he was glad that he had hundreds of them in his own constituency.
If there was one thing that could save the nation, it was the men of strong conscientious conviction…”
He also addresses the dilemma of Free Church schools that qualified for funding under the same objectionable clauses that might fund Catholic or Anglican schools.
Some of these Free Church schools were refusing to accept such funds, but others, like the schools in the Wesleyan Conference, could not resist the temptation.
This raised the spectre of some nonconformists being distrained upon for their refusal to pay education rates that were destined for sectarian schools run by their own sects, which threatened to appear ridiculous.
Gray reprinted the remarks of Robertson Nicoll, who condemned the Wesleyan Conference’s decision.
Nicoll also wrote:
“Public opinion will shortly make it impossible for overseers and magistrates to refuse part payment, and as soon as the slow processes of the law permit, we shall know how far the authorities are entitled to make excessive distraints.
We believe it will be found that they are not entitled, and that they can be punished for going beyond their commission.
If so, steps will be taken to call every transgressor to account.”
Gray continued:
Whilst we are waiting the decision of the legal authorities consulted by the National Passive Resistance Committee on the question of excessive distraint, attention may be called to the fact that at Sheffield the following declaration by a K.C. was quoted:– “It is beyond question illegal to make an excessive distraint.
The bailiffs have no right to remove more goods than are estimated in reason to meet the account of the rate and the cost of distraint.
If the people who are taking part in the passive resistance movement feel that the bailiffs have been unreasonable, they can claim damages in court, and it is for the jury to decide.
A vindictive distraint is also illegal.
A distraint has been held to be vindictive where valuable goods have been removed against the wishes of the occupier, who has tendered other goods.
A bailiff is not necessarily to take what is offered him, but if he take things that he is requested to leave, he may be convicted of vindictive distraint, and the owner may be awarded damages.”
The Shields Daily Gazette reported in their edition:
The Policy of Passive Resistance
In not a few Tyneside towns, including South Shields, the past few days have witnessed the painful spectacle of the invasion of the homes of respectable law-abiding citizens by police and bailiffs, and the carrying off of household treasures to be stored in common sale rooms and sold “for non-payment of the rates.”
In most places the overseers have taken what we cannot but think the very high-handed course of refusing to accept part of the rate when tendered, and of levying execution for the whole amount.
This may be law — although the question is not yet definitely settled, pending the appeal from West Ham to the High Court — but it is certainly not equity.
Moreover, it is contrary to what appears to be the general usage of the overseers, whose collectors frequently accept part payment of the rate.
Indeed, every demand note issued bears the significant line at the top “arrears of former rates” and arrears could hardly exist unless the collectors were in the habit of accepting part of the rate when tendered.
…it seems nothing short of monstrous that warrants should be issued and costs imposed for the full amount of the rate, when in reality the defendants have only declined to pay a very small proportion thereof.… The local authorities who are apparently bent upon making matters as unpleasant as possible for the Passive Resisters are unquestionably arousing deep and wide-spread sympathy for those sturdy protestants, even amongst those who do not see eye to eye with them in the course they have taken.
The following article comes from the Kent & Sussex Courier:
Passive Resistance at Tunbridge Wells.
Auction Sale Under Distraint Warrants.
.
Scene in the Police Yard.
“Boohing” the Auctioneer.
Prayer Meeting Precedes Sale.
the sale by auction of the goods and chattels of the four defendants who were recently summoned for non-payment of the Education Rate took place in the police yard, adjoining the Town Hall, in the presence of some hundreds of sympathisers and other spectators.
The local Passive Resistance Committee had organised a demonstration for the occasion of the sale, on the morning of which the Town Crier was sent round to remind the public of the fact contained in the auctioneer’s announcement placarded about the town, as follows:–
In the County of Kent.
Borough of Tunbridge Wells.
Sale by Public Auction, under distress warrants, in the yard adjoining the Police Station, Calverley-street, Tunbridge Wells, on .
MR. W. LAING, Auctioneer, will OFFER for SALE, at the time and place above-mentioned, by PUBLIC AUCTION, the undermentioned goods, which have been seized under warrants of distress, issued by the Court of Summary Jurisdiction acting in and for the Borough of Tunbridge Wells:–
Lot 1.—Silver Cake Basket and Silver Salver.
Lot 2.—Thirteen Silver Spoons.
Lot 3.—Five Mahogany Chairs.
Lot 4.—Copper Coal Scuttle and Scoop, and Silver Fish Servers, in case.
Each Lot to be paid for and cleared immediately after the Sale.
Chas. Prior, Chief Constable.
.
A big crowd had consequently assembled and awaited the unlocking of the gates of the station yard, and a good many people had evidently come in from the surrounding districts to witness the proceedings.
, the Chief Constable escorted the Rev J. Mountain and the Rev H.C. Palmer, with several ladies, to the gates, and the crowd, recognising the ministers, gave them a very cordial reception, to which they bowed their acknowledgments.
As soon as the gates were open there was an excited rush to enter the yard, in which a considerable proportion the fair sex came in for some derangement of their toilette, and in a very few seconds the crowd in the street had transferred itself en masse into the yard, where a posse of stalwart constables was drawn up on either side of a temporary rostrum erected for the auctioneer, and directly communicating with the door leading into the police officer — a strategic arrangement in view of possible contingencies.
The Chief Constable had very diplomatically discounted any likelihood of a disturbance of the peace by affording the demonstrators the greatest possible latitude.
The platform erected for the sale was placed at their disposal for a protest meeting both before and after the sale.
It was eminently judicious of Mr Prior not to confine himself to the strict letter of the law, but to permit the demonstrators to demonstrate as much as they pleased within orderly limits.
The station yard being full and a further crowd in the street beyond, the preliminary protest meeting was at once proceeded with.
The Chief Constable smilingly escorted the Rev. Dr. Usher, the Rev. J. Mountain, the Rev. W.H.C. Palmer, and the Rev. Dennis Cooper to the rostrum, and an outburst of cheering greeted their appearance, which was renewed when the word went round that the redoubtable Dr. Clifford was also present.
Placards of protest were affixed to the rostrum to give place later to a bill of the auction, and then Dr. Usher gave out the hymn “O God our help in ages past,” after which the Rev. Dennis Cooper engaged in prayer.
The Rev. Dr. Usher then explained that they were allowed to meet by the courtesy of the Chief Constable, a gentleman whose acquaintance they had been proud to make.
He had met them in the kindest and most conciliatory manner (hear, hear).
They had met as citizens to protest against a law which went against the religious beliefs of millions of his Majesty’s subjects.
The grievance was as real as those under the Uniformity Act, the Conventicle Act, and the Five Mile Act, or as the progress of Ritualism in the eyes of their evangelical brethren.
It had been said they did this for political purposes, but Free Churchmen had been in advance of political leaders in this matter.
They were called law breakers, but he denied that they were.
They submitted passively.
Their doors were open and their furniture could be seized for that which they could not as matter of conscience pay voluntarily.
But if they were law breakers, they were proud to bear the shame in such company as Latimer and Ridley, who went to the stake when the Law said do one thing and God said do another.
They heartily sympathised with their four friends in what they had had submit to.
They protested not against the auctioneer or the Chief Constable, but against the political power of the land and particularly the Bishops, for the way in which they had misused political power.
If those present wished to show true sympathy with their cause, they would allow the proceedings which were to follow to be conducted in an orderly manner.
Those proceedings would be repeated if need be a dozen times.
There were plenty more defaulters waiting to have their goods seized for conscience sake, and he asked them never to forget that in , in a town like Tunbridge Wells, they had seen the goods of true citizens sold for religious purposes.
The protesters then proceeded to vacate the platform, but the Chief Constable informed them that they had another five minutes yet in which to demonstrate, as the sale would not commence before .
Accordingly the hymn, “Stand up, stand up for Jesus,” was given out, and was immediately succeeded by a decided contrast.
The hymn-singing changed to a different sound as the crowd proceeded to booh at the top of their voices when the auctioneer made his appearance and hung his card over the rostrum.
This bore the inscription, “Wm. B. Laing (late Savage and Son), Auctioneer, 127, New Road, and Whitechapel Road.”
Above the groaning and hooting could be heard various insulting expressions hurled at the auctioneer, who smilingly informed the crowd that he was not in a hurry and could wait.
The address appeared to take the fancy of the crowd, who shouted “Whitechappeler,” “Coster,” “Hooligan,” “German-Jew” until they were hoarse.
Dr. Usher appealed in pantomime for silence, and Mr Fryer, who was standing conveniently near the rostrum to buy in some of the effects, was heard by those near to shout to the crowd that the auctioneer was not a German, but a Scotchman.
“More shame to him” roared the crowd, and the boohing was renewed with redoubled vigour, in which even the shriller voices of the ladies present could be heard above the hubbub.
The auctioneer lost no time in announcing the sale and putting up the first lot.
“You have not read out the conditions of sale,” bellowed a gentleman, who had been doing his best to drown the auctioneer’s voice.
“I have just done so,” retorted the auctioneer.
“I never heard you,” retorted the gentleman, with unconscious humour, as he proceeded to booh louder than ever as the auctioneer attempted to make himself heard.
Had the devotional exercises failed to soothe the passions of the crowd?
The auctioneer, amid laughter, removed his silk hat to a place of greater security, and pointed to the auction bill as he stentoriously called for Lot one.
Several gentlemen who had arranged to buy in goods stood on the alert, and Mr Mountain and Mr Palmer supported each other in the absence of the other two defaulters — Mr Alexander and Mr Edmonds — who are enjoying themselves on the Continent.
The Chief Constable, notwithstanding the eulogy just passed on him, found it quite as difficult to obtain a hearing as he stated, amidst renewed hooting, that he was there to do his duty by carrying of the magistrates’ orders under the distress warrant, and that the auctioneer, who was doing his duty, had come down at a very moderate charge to carry the law into effect.
Amidst considerable hubbub, the articles in the first lot were then handed out from the police office window under the guardianship of the constables.
This lot consisted of a silver cake basket and silver salver, the property Mr Edmonds.
“Who bids £1”? shouted the auctioneer.
Mr Elwig promptly bid £2 15s on behalf of the owner, and the auctioneer knocked down the bid, and before the crowd realised it, the goods were handed back into the police office.
Lot 2, a dozen silver spoons, the property of Mr Alexander, were next handed up in the same way, and at once knocked down to Mr Drake, acting for Mr Alexander, for £2. Lot 3, five mahogany hair stuffed chairs, the property of the Rev J. Mountain, were promptly bought in by the Rev Dennis Cooper, for £2, and the concluding lot, a copper coal scuttle and silver fish servers, the property of Rev. W. Palmer, were similarly knocked down to Mr Fryer, on Mr Palmer’s behalf, for 30s.
The auction, which concluded in dumb shew had not lasted five minutes, was over before the crowd had finished hooting the auctioneer, and then some missile was heard to strike the window behind the auctioneer.
It turned out to be only a match box, and the police, who were interspersed in the crowd, at once seized the offender, bat as he appeared to have only jocularly thrown the missile, which was first thought to be a stone, he was not arrested, and no proceedings will taken against him.
The auctioneer and his clerk, Mr E. Smith, promptly vanished within the police office, where the bidders followed them to write out their cheques, and claim the furniture, after which the protest meeting was resumed, and proceeding without incident, except that an elderly man, named Sewell, living in Kirkdale road, was overcome by the heat, and had to be removed to the Hospital on the police ambulance.
Dr. Clifford then mounted the rostrum, and had an enthusiastic reception.
His remarks were somewhat inauspicious, as they related instances of other sales, where the auctioneers had “not dared show themselves,” but the doctor as he went on cleared himself from any suspicion of arriere pensee by congratulating the crowd on their orderly behaviour.
He went on to add that their protest was not against magistrates or chief constables, but against the bishops.
He congratulated Tunbridge Wells on having a Chief Constable of such fairness and moderation — a remark which the crowd, who had just hooted Mr Prior, now responded to by cheering in the utmost good humour.
He was glad that the vindictiveness of magistrates at other places was passing away, and they were being treated with consideration.
They were being forced to pay for religious teaching they did not believe in, and to submit to their children being proselytized.
A Voice: That is Christianity.
Dr. Usher: No, Churchianity.
Dr. Clifford: It illustrates the tyranny of the Established Church.
It was one of the most atrocious spectacles that the opening of the 20th Century could witness — a pampered, favoured, law-established sect forcing itself by political means upon those who conscientiously differed from them.
This Act could not last.
It would have to be repealed, because it would injure the Established Church more than it would injure these who resisted it.
These scenes would have to go on until the Act was repealed.
His father took him as a boy to witness a distraint sale for refusing to pay a Church rate, but the Education Act was more iniquitous than that.
The Church rate was to maintain church buildings, but the education rate was to proselytise their children.
This Act would be swept away, and they would not rest till they had a free system fair to the children, fair to the parents and teachers, and fair to the ratepayers.
J. Mountain spoke next, saying nothing particularly unexpected, unless it was to call Clifford “the Oliver Cromwell of this century.”
Then W.H. Palmer spoke:
Rev. W.H. Palmer said they had been taunted that this was a matter of pocket, but it was not so.
His education rate was 4s 9d but the recovery of it would cost him 30s.
They had the expense of an auctioneer from London, because no local auctioneer would lower himself to perform the task of selling goods which were suffered to be seized for conscience sake, or, rather, the Chief Constable had not asked any local auctioneer to so degrade himself.
At a local auction the goods could have been sold more cheaply, viz, for 2s in the £, but they were glad no local auctioneer could be found, even though to obtain 4s 9d from him 30s had been spent.
This would show it was not a question of pocket, and they did not keep their conscience in their pocket.
He was proud to be one of the first to be summoned, but there were plenty more waiting to stand in the same position.
Some 40 persons had already intimated their readiness to be summoned.
The Rev. Dr. Usher expressed the sympathy of those present with the four martyrs, and added that he himself expected to be in the next batch, and they should go on till the victory was won.
In conclusion, he asked those present, for the sake of the ladies, to leave the yard with less of a rush than they came in.
The Doxology and a verse of “All hail the power of Jesu’s name,” and a verse of the National Anthem concluded the proceedings; while outside the cheering was renewed as the furniture was displayed on a cart decorated with flags and evergreens, and bearing an inscription.
“This the furniture of gentlemen who refused for conscience sake to pay the Priest’s rate.”
The cart was drawn in triumph to the owner’s residences, and a sale of memorial cards adorned with coffins, to represent the burial of the Education Act was proceeded with among the crowd.
The proceedings, though noisy, were orderly; and the Chief Constable is to be congratulated on his excellent arrangements.
Immediately following this article was another, featuring many of the same cast of characters, describing a meeting “on the Common in the evening,” and then another, describing an “evening meeting at the Great Hall” that followed.
These were rallies that were meant to remind attendees of what was at stake and to encourage them to keep up the struggle to the bitter end, but the reports do not otherwise shed much light on how the campaign was progressing.
One thing I thought was noteworthy was a slideshow that included scenes from that afternoon’s distraint auction:
The room was then darkened for local views of passive resistance taken by Mr Lankester and Mr Jenkins, to be exhibited and explained by Dr. Usher.
The views commenced with portraits of passive resisters, commencing with Alderman Finch, who was introduced as the first Nonconformist Mayor.
Then came portraits of the Chief Constable, the Town Clerk, and Alderman Stone, the latter two being loudly boohed.
A series of views were next shown taken outside the rate collector’s office (a group of resisters refusing to pay rates), outside the Town Hall (after the hearing of the summonses), outside the residences of the several defendants (at the distraining of the goods), and lastly, a series of snapshots taken of the sale that afternoon, and of the meeting on the Common.
A portrait of Mr Hedges, with an injunction to vote for him at the next election concluded the series.
Clifford then spoke, saying among other things:
He asked them to regard this as one of the services a town could render an Empire.
They were assisting a national work.
Nothing was so characteristic of the movement as its spontaneity.
It was springing up not only in large towns, but in little hamlets.
He quoted cases of resisters upwards of 70 and 80 years of age, of resisters in poor as well as affluent circumstances.
A nation was judged by its ideals, and we were at a turning point in national history.…
The Evening News of Portsmouth reported in its issue:
[T]he Passive Resistance movement seems to be spreading like a prairie fire.
Over sixty persons will shortly be proceeded against in the Sheffield Police-court.
Ninety-nine resisters have now appeared before the Magistrates at Bath; a huge furniture van has been driven round Edgbaston, Birmingham, by the bailiffs and police, who carried off drawing-room suites, clocks, and other articles of furniture in great quantity.
No part payment is accepted in the city of Mr. Chamberlain, but relentless thoroughness has been thus far the order of the day on the part of Overseers and Magistrates.
It is remarkable how the well-to-do people are joining the movement.
In Bath some of the best known public men are Passive Resisters.
Mr. Ansell, of Birmingham has been a leader among the “Unionists”; Mr. Percy Rawson, the Liberal candidate for the Stamford division, is among those whose goods have been seized; while Mr. W.B. Bembridge, a Magistrate of Ripley, Derbyshire, has resigned his position on the Commission of the Peace because he cannot conscientiously apply the penalties of the law to Passive Resisters.
Some of the Resisters are looking to Portsmouth J.P.’s to take sides with them and become Resisters too, but it is hoped they, like the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, will not resign unless called upon by the proper authority to do so.
But they should refuse to sign summonses of distraint upon others.
The article goes on to say that Clifford and others had met with “Liberal leaders” and had gotten their promise “that should they come into power at the next election the repeal or amendment of the Education Act should be their first business.”
The Liberals would come to power in and hold the reins of government .
Any guesses as to whether they’ll keep their promise?
This, and the resistance slide show that ended pointedly with “[a] portrait of Mr Hedges, with an injunction to vote for him at the next election” show that then, as now, politicians are quick to swoop in on a grassroots activist campaign and coopt it for the purposes of furthering their careers.
Following that article was this one:
Some Lively Scenes
At a Passive Resistance Sale.
Auctioneer Goes with a Revolver.
Lively scenes were witnessed on at a sale of goods of sixteen Wimbledon Passive Resisters in Plough-road, Battersea, and the auctioneer, fearing an attack from the crowd, armed himself with a revolver.
Over 2,000 persons besieged the closed saleroom, and the large staff of police could not prevent a rush being made for the auctioneer, Mr. Thomas Spearing, who is an elderly man of slight build.
Mr. Spearing was severely handled before he could reach the saleroom, and two Pressmen who found themselves mixed up in the crowd were arrested.
When the auctioneer reached the saleroom the attitude of the crowd became more threatening.
Mr. Spearing, therefore, before admitting the public, and, beginning the sale, took up a loaded revolver.
The police, however, anxious to prevent anything in the nature of a riot, persuaded him to put the revolver away, and after some difficulty they succeeded.
At first only about a dozen persons were admitted to the saleroom, but the crowd clamoured for admission, and protested that the auction was not public, and therefore illegal.
Four times the auctioneer postponed the sale, but at last, at the request of one of the overseers, he proceeded, amid laughter and hooting, a portion of the crowd gaining admission.
With the exception of a perambulator and a baby’s chair, for which the late owner had no further use, all the lots were bought in by Mr. Robert Hunter, on behalf of the Resisters.
Courteous Magistrates.
At Nailsworth (Gloucestershire) Police-court, on , two Baptist ministers, of Stroud and Minchinhampton, and five other Passive Resisters were summoned.
The court was crowded, and several Nonconformist ministers were present.
The Bench decided to allow all the defendants to pay part of the rate, and to allow a fortnight to pay the balance.
The defendants had made their protest, said the Chairman of the Bench, and now he hoped the remainder of the money would be paid.
If not, it must be recovered in the usual way.
Defendants thanked the Magistrates for their courtesy.
Distress Warrants Granted
There were several cases before the county Magistrates at Kidderminster on in which Nonconformists were summoned for refusing to pay their poor rates.
In each case they objected to pay because of the education rate forming part of the amount demanded.
The Magistrates declined to hear any objections except as to the validity of the rate.
The defendants admitted its validity.
In each case an order for distress was granted.
The Berwickshire News and General Advertiser quoted from the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch in its issue:
In an English newspaper devoted to this resistance movement accounts are given of the rowdyism of the mob and the vehement protests of the clerical resisters.
In one case “several townsfolk were ready with a sack to capture the auctioneer with,” and this functionary has invariably to be protected by strong bodies of police from being subjected to bodily violence.
Below this was an article about eight Passive Resisters being charged at Berwick Police Court, and applications for distress being granted.
In that case, the overseers were willing to accept partial payment.
The edition of the same paper gives an account of a trial that gives a feel for some of the jousting between resisters and officials, the former trying to turn their trials into opportunities to demonstrate against injustice, the latter trying to reduce this inconvenience:
Spittal Passive Resisters Summoned.
A Minister and Town Councillor Proceeded Against.
A Scene in Court.
At Berwick Police Court, on , Rev. Archibald Alexander, Minister of St. Paul’s English Presbyterian Church, Spittal, was summoned for non-payment of poor rate in full, the sum of 1s 7d being left due.
On being charged, defendant said— I am summoned here to show cause why I have refused to pay.
Am I at liberty to show cause?
The Clerk— Do you acknowledge the summons?
Defendant— I believe I am here to answer the Magistrates.
The Mayor— You must answer the Clerk’s question.
That is your first duty.
Defendant— I decline to answer that question.
Robert Lambert, rate collector, Tweedmouth, was accordingly called to prove the rate.
The amount required from Mr Alexander was £1 1s 10d of which £1 0s 3d had been paid, leaving 1s 7d for which defendant had been summoned.
The Clerk— The rate was one which was legally made and allowed by the Magistrates.
Do you wish to ask any question from witness?
Defendant— I have no desire to ask any question from witness.
The Mayor— Have you anything to say about the legal aspect of this?
Defendant— It is an outrage that I should be called upon to pay to support schools which are sectarian and which are to detach our young people from the religion of their fathers, and make them indifferent and even opposed to that religion.
I protest against this outrage before this Court.
The Bench decided that the usual order for payment should be made.
Three other cases were decided in a similar way.
Another article on the same page gives a little more detail about how the property seizures were carried out:
Berwick Passive Resisters’ Goods Seized.
On , the distress warrants issued is the case of Berwick Passive Resisters — 8 persons including 3 ministers — were carried into effect.
Mr George Moor, Assistant Overseer, accompanied by Police-Sergt. Wm. Moor, drove round to the houses of the 8 defendants, and seized goods to the amount required, the proceedings passed off quietly.
In all cases payment of the rate, less the disputed portion, with expenses up to the issue of the warrants, was tendered and accepted, the balance being distrained for.
The articles taken were of small value.
They will sold by public auction next week.
The articles that have been seized include biscuit-boxes, and boxes of cigars, and one case a picture.
Three of the Resisters brought the articles down to the Police-station themselves.
As has been said the portion of the rate not in dispute was tendered along with expenses up to date, 1d in the £ being deducted as the amount at present levied for educational purposes, and this was accepted.
Some article in the household was then accepted to realise the amount disputed and the expenses to be yet incurred.
In the majority of cases the articles seized were small.
It is alleged that the Overseers are having difficulty in securing the services of an auctioneer to dispose of the goods.
The next example comes from the North Devon Journal:
Passive Resistance at Barnstaple.
Eight Persons Before the Magistrates.
Great Demonstrations.
Barnstaple is the first town in Devonshire to furnish passive resistance cases, eight summonses having been heard before the Borough Bench on .
The day was marked by two great demonstrations under the auspices of the Barnstaple Citizens’ League.
At a prayer meeting in the Congregation Schoolroom was conducted by the Rev. F.J. Kirby, (President of the League), and shortly before , the hour at which the Borough Bench sat, the passive resisters and friends marched to the Guildhall in procession singing “Onward, Christian soldiers.”
There was a crowded attendance at the Guildhall, sympathisers with the passive resisters appearing to predominate; and the proceedings were very lively from start to finish.
In these cases, the overseers were not willing to accept partial payment, which increased the amount of antagonism between the resisters and the authorities.
The individual cases proceeded on a now-familiar track, with the resisters trying to plead the injustice of the rates, the mayor trying to rubber stamp distraint orders as quickly as possible, and impatient crowds siding with the resisters giving cheers, boos, and other peanut gallery calls.
Here is one example
When Mrs. Martha Blackwell, of Alexandra-road, the first lady to be proceeded against in Barnstaple, entered the box, she received a tremendous ovation.
— When the cheering had subsided, Mr. Ffinch [the mayor] said to the Head Constable (Mr. B. Eddy): Take some of them into custody.
We shall know how to deal with them.
That didn’t seem to deter anyone, as “renewed cheering” greeted the following defendant.
Some of those summoned were only willing to pay the offensive portion of the rate when ordered by the court to do so; others were unwilling to do so even then, and would only relinquish the money involuntarily via distraint.
The defendants also raised a number of procedural points about their cases that had nothing to do with their conscientious objection, which suggests to me that they had adopted the strategy of trying to clog the courts and make each case take as long as possible to resolve.
After the proceedings, the resisters held a rally in the marketplace.
Rev. F.J. Kirby announced that the overseers had decided, after all of that courtroom fuss had annoyed the Mayor, that they would accept partial payments after all, so the resisters won that particular skirmish.
The speeches were rousing rally cries urging the crowd to resist what was painted as an Anglican/Papist conspiracy to wipe out nonconformity by indoctrinating children.
The rally ended with the singing of the national anthem.
There was a second demonstration in the evening at the Music Hall: “a crowded and enthusiastic attendance [with s]everal hundreds of persons [who] were unable to gain admission” and the Salvation Army Band playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” as they marched in “followed by a large contingent of young people.”
The Rev. H.J. Crouch spoke first, and, among other things, explained that he had been one of the token nonconformists on the Walton-on-Thames School Board but realized that he had no influence and was disgusted that the board was grilling prospective teachers about what religious denomination they belonged to during the hiring process.
He said he resigned from the board in disgust and resolved to join the passive resistance movement.
The Rev. G.F. Owen exemplified the increasing rhetorical temperature when he concluded his speech this way:
He was not born to have a saddle upon his back, and he would not be sat upon by the despotism of kings or Parliaments either.
He was free, and every bone in his body should be broken, and every drop of blood shed, before he paid a penny to help the priest to degrade the children and lock them up in the darkness of heathenism and superstition for generations to come.
(Cheers.)
F.J. Kirby spoke next and gave some more detail about how the authorities were proceeding against the resisters:
Up to he was unaware that any proceedings were to be taken against any of those who had been made known as active members of Barnstaple and District Citizen’s League.
To his great surprise on , on opening the North Devon Journal — that paper cherished by North Devon people next to their Bible — he read that summonses had been issued against eight citizens who had decided not to pay the Education rate.
Not more than ten minutes afterwards a ring came to his door and a gentleman in blue presented himself.
“Well,” said Mr. Kirby, “I believe he was more afraid than I was.”
(Laughter and applause.)
He was most courteous, as had been all the authorities, with one or two exceptions.
All had been as kind as they could be under the circumstances.
When they knew that they had to appear before the magistrates that day they had at once in their minds the determination to make some means of voicing their convictions before the public of Barnstaple.
They soon got together speakers and sympathisers, and were able to put upon the bills the names of those who spoke and at that meeting.
But that meeting did not require eloquent speakers.
It was itself eloquence.
Kirby also issued a plea to the Wesleyans and Brethren to show solidarity with them by refusing to take Education Act funds for their own schools, something they had apparently thus far been unwilling to do.
A Councillor Hopper spoke next, advocating that resisters insist on stating the conscientious grounds for their stand in court, and replying to one of the magistrates’ suggestion (or threat) that the authorities strike nonconformists from the voter rolls if they refuse to pay their full rates.
Finally, an article in the Dover Express and East Kent News covered a meeting of a passive resistance group:
Passive Resistance at Dover
Nonconformists’ League Describes Its Policy and Aims.
On a public meeting under the auspices of the Dover Citizens’ League, an association for the promotion of “passive resistance” against the Education Rate, was held at Salem Chapel.
There was an enthusiastic gathering of Nonconformists, the chair being taken by Mr. John Scott (the President of the Dover Free Church Council), who was supported on the platform by Mr. W. Bradley, the Rev. W. Holyoak, the Rev. W.H. Parr, G. Clark, etc.
Scott put the struggle in the context of other civil disobedience struggles that nonconformists had to go through over the ages, just to be allowed to hold their own services for instance, and said that it was the duty of modern nonconformists to stand up like their predecessors had and to refuse to submit to an unjust law.
The other speakers addressed various arguments concerning the Act and the tactic of tax resistance.
Finally:
Mr. Lewis explained at the conclusion of the meeting that the Dover Citizens’ League consisted of members who agreed not to pay the Education Rate, and also Associates who approved of the policy of passive resistance not being ratepayers, or for other reason, would not offer passive resistance.
The subscription was not less than 6d. per quarter, paid in advance.
That takes us through the end of in what I’ve collected (certainly only a sample) of the newspaper coverage of the opening year of this tax resistance movement.
“Passive Resisters: A Distraint Sale by Auction in Surrey” by Frank Dadd (from a copy of The Graphic)
The tax resistance campaign targeting the aspects of the Education Act that allowed for taxpayer funding of sectarian education continued to heat up in nonconformist circles in Britain in .
A story in the Nottingham Evening Post told of three resisters who appeared at Shire Hall in Nottingham, summoned for non-payment.
Each explained that they were willing to pay the bulk of their rates, but would withhold the portion they believed would go to sectarian education.
The magistrates said nothing doing, and issued distraint warrants for the whole amount.
Below that article, a second one concerned an auction at which the goods of 23 resisters from Long Eaton were sold as the gains of previously-granted distraints.
“A good deal of interest was manifested in the proceedings,” says this report, from “a crowd of some 150 persons, chiefly women and youths, with a sprinkling of the leading Nonconformist representatives in the town.”
The people whose goods were sold are listed, along with the amounts they had refused to pay (ranging from one shilling, one pence to eight shillings, three pence):
As soon as the auctioneer put in an appearance the passive resisters cheered ironically and with frequent interruptions the various articles, including boots, sewing machines, bicycles, gold and silver watches, and two volumes of an historical work, were disposed of.
The whole of the goods were brought in by Mr. J. Winfield, jun., C.C., and the aggregate amount of the sale was £17 17s. 10d.
The proceedings were very formal, and there was practically no bidding, all the transactions being conducted inside the vestibule of the police-station.
The crowd kept up continual hooting, but with the exception of one demonstrative young lady, who threw a small bag of flour at the auctioneer, and missed him, there was practically no disorder.
A detachment of the county constabulary under Deputy Chief Constable Airey, had concentrated at Lower Eaton, but their services were not required.
An effort was made to organise a meeting in the Market-place, but the crowd declined to leave the neighbourhood of the police-station until Mr. Webster [the auctioneer] left, and during the period of waiting the Rev. F.J. Fry, of Nottingham, entered his strong protest against the iniquity of the Education Bill, and the Rev. J.T. Hesleton, and the Rev. — Cottam addressed brief observations, expressing indignation that they should be required to pay such a rate.
Below that, a third article concerned the cases of nine people, including resisters but perhaps not exclusively so, from Hathern, who were tried at the Loughbourough Petty Sessions.
“The court was pretty well filled with Nonconformists from Loughborough and surrounding districts, including several Baptist and other ministers.”
In this case, the court allowed the defendants to go on at greater length about their grievances, and the overseer was willing to accept partial payments, though the magistrates overruled this and issued distraint orders for the full amounts.
A new Citizens’ League was forming in Nelson to coordinate resistance to the Education Act, according to the Burnley Express and Advertiser.
The Rev. J. Hurst Hollowell spoke, saying, among other things:
[I]f they paid for such authorities, such finance, such management, such superstitious teaching — they were paying for such things under this Act — they would make themselves responsible for such things.
They could not say it was the County Council or the Borough Council that was responsible — it was the people if they paid for it.
Parliament had no moral right to lay that charge upon them.
Surely there was a limit to what a country would stand from Parliament.
They were now at the parting of the ways, they were in a temper of revolt, and may God speed the right.
They were trying by passive resistance to break the law of an unprincipled Government, and a contemptible tyranny — (hear, hear) — and he hoped they in Nelson would come forward in the spirit of those who had gone before.
Rev. A.S. Hollinshead took that ball and ran with it, saying that “[h]e should regard himself as one of the basest of cowards, and unworthy of the noble people who worshipped in that building [the Carr-road Baptist School], if with his own hand he paid the money that was to keep up that damnable injustice.”
A resolution was moved, seconded, and unanimously carried declaring the meeting’s “fullest sympathy with the Passive resistance movement for refusing that portion of the education rate which is to be applied to schools under sectarian management.”
A second resolution led to the forming of the League, formed in the now-usual way, with members both of tax resisters and of sympathizers with the resisters who for whatever reason could not resist the rates themselves.
As lengthy as these excerpts are turning out to be, I should point out that I aborted my search early when I realized what I was getting in to (there is an enormous amount of material about this campaign in the British newspaper archives), and I’m omitting a tonne of stuff from what I did collect.
Just the competing letters to the editor from duelling Christians tossing Romans 13 and Acts 5 back and forth at each other would probably fill a volume.
In The Derby Daily Telegraph of , John Wenn wrote in to say that he had learned that someone had anonymously paid the portion of his rates that he had refused to pay.
Seeing this as an attempt to extinguish his passive resistance, he fought back with this declaration:
I give this public notice that the amount paid for me will be sent to the Derby and District Passive Resistance Fund, and that any such gratuitous insult offered to me in the future, and for so long as the obnoxious Act remains unamended, will be treated in the same way.
Let the busybodies, therefore, know that by such conduct they are promoting, not stifling, passive resistance after all.
The Western Daily Press of Bristol, in its issue, printed a letter from Richard Glover which gave an update on the campaign there.
Excerpts:
between 60 and 70 persons of highest Christian character, kindliness, and usefulness were brought before the magistrates, and subjected to the ignominy of punishment as law breakers.
25 of similar character have been similarly treated.
Two or three hundred more of our very best citizens are to be similarly dealt with.
This sort of thing is to be repeated six months hence, on doubtless a much larger scale; for while many Nonconformists do not feel free to refuse lawfully imposed rates or taxes, many whose consciences do not bind them to refuse will be certain, from motives of admiration and sympathy, to take their stand by the side of those who suffer for conscience sake.
Then, in its issue, The Western Daily Press reported on “the third detachment of passive resisters” to go to court in Bristol.
“A knot of spectators who evidently sympathised with the defendants stood in the vicinity of the police court in Bridewell Street, and the seats in the court allotted to the public were filled.”
The paper listed 44 of the defendants, alongside the amounts they were being summoned for (ranging from £0.2.3 to £2.16.6½) and said there were 20 to 30 more that they did not manage to learn about.
The magistrates seemed to be sympathetic, though they were unwilling to deviate from the law, and they allowed each defendant to vent in turn.
Most simply repeated one or more of the usual grievances against the act.
One, a Mr. Belcher, added that “They could get no respectable auctioneer to take any part in it.
(Laughter.)
With regard to the magistrates, those who rose above mere officialism declined to lend a hand to carry it through.”
That aside, at the end of the hearing (which resulted in the usual distraint orders), the secretary of the local Citizens’ League thanked the magistrates for their atypical courtesy.
The following article covered a protest meeting held to prepare the resisters for the next phase in the local campaign: this round of summonses and hearings before the magistrates was complete, and next the property seizures and auctions would begin.
Hymns were sung on the way to the meeting (“Hold the fort” and “Onward Christian soldiers”) and the national anthem was sung to end it, and in-between some of the more prominent resisters gave speeches meant to inspire continued resistance from what the paper described as “a large congregation.”
Below this an article described an auction at Axbridge at which the property of four resisters was being sold for their rates.
This sale seems to have attracted less attention and less opposition.
In at least one case, one of the items auctioned was purchased not on behalf of the resister it was taken from, but by “an opponent of the passive resisters.”
The auction was followed by a protest rally at which speeches were given to a modestly-sized crowd.
A one-paragraph note below that mentioned six resisters summoned to the Trowbridge petty session, and then followed one last article in the sequence which concerned distraint summons issued at Cambridge.
An editorial in the Coventry Herald reported that “The Passive Resisters of Coventry have had the unpaid remnant of their rates — corresponding to the amount devoted to the support of denominational schools — paid for them; and, as is to be expected, they do not like it.”
The article tweaked the nonconformists for this, saying that while their hoped-for martyrdom had been spoiled, their consciences had been spared and so perhaps they should be pleased.
The editorial shrewdly analyzed this and was not content to dismiss it as hypocrisy.
Instead it concluded that this revealed that conscientious objection was not really at the root of the passive resistance campaign, but rather the campaign was an attempt to use civil disobedience to provoke a crisis that would pressure the government to rescind the offensive parts of the Education Act.
The editorial gave some estimates about the size of the movement:
The passive resisters who have had their rates paid for them [in Coventry] number about seventy; amongst them are most of the local Nonconformist minister.…
It appears from statistics giving the progress of passive resistance that the number of summonses issued throughout the country slightly exceeds 3,000… Three thousand is a considerable number, but the Nonconformists of England are still more considerable; they claim to be half of the professedly religious part of the nation.
The Cambridge Independent Press reported on the seizure of goods from 34 resisters .
[T]he Assistant Overseer… spent over five hours on Monday in a task, the unpleasantness of which was only lessened by the entire absence of any animosity or opposition on the part of the Passive Resisters.
When he commenced his round, Mr. Campbell was accompanied by the Warrant Officer, Acting-Sergt. Fuller, but so courteous was the behaviour of the persons visited that there was not the slightest need of the police officer’s services, and they were dispensed with before the work of collecting the goods had been completed.
The article goes on to describe the goods seized — “a miscellaneous collection” — including bicycles, violins, opera glasses, and a case of condensed milk.
One resister announced that he “intends to have his silver cake basket, which was taken, engraven with the date of this and all subsequent seizures.”
This was immediately followed by an article that reflected on the persecution meted out a generation or two before to nonconformists who refused to pay the “Church rates,” including a Baptist who had had goods seized and a Quaker who had been imprisoned.
Among the other articles on the same page touching on the passive resistance movement was one concerning a sale of goods seized from three resisters at St. Ives.
An auctioneer was brought in from out of town, “it being understood that local auctioneers declined to conduct the sale.”
Police were in attendance, but no disturbances were reported, “though the auctioneer was subjected to a good deal of banter and chaff.”
The sale to a great extent was a farce, as no one could hear the bids, but it was understood the goods were bought in by persons employed by the Passive Resisters…
After the sale there were loud cries for the auctioneer, but he remained in the Police-station, and after waiting about for some time the crowd went with the promoters to a meeting on the Market-hill.
The auctioneer was subsequently escorted by the police up a back road to the railway station, where there were ten members of the Police Force to see him off, and others to travel with him.
The Market-hill meeting featured the usual speeches, a motion of support for Passive Resisters, and also “a vote of thanks… to the magistrates and police for the courteous way in which the cases were heard, seizures made, and sale conducted.”
An article following this one concerned the “second batch of Passive Resisters at Wisbech,” ten of them, summoned to Police-court.
The magistrates in this case seemed also to be conciliatory, and agreed to make out a single distress warrant for all of the resisters in order to reduce the costs.
Following this was a brief article about summonses issued against eleven resisters in Huntingdon, including two sisters of a parliamentarian.
The Western Daily Press of covered the cases of a dozen or so resisters who were summoned to the petty sessions at Weston-super-Mare.
In these cases, the overseer had refused to accept partial payments and so was seeking distraint warrants for the whole of the tax.
The magistrates requested the police to turn out anyone who behaved disorderly, and the sergeant remarked, “This is not a theatre” to the large number of interested spectators.
Below this was a similar article about seven resisters summoned to the Stroud petty sessions (in this case, partial payments had been accepted, and distraint orders were issued for the remainder).
The article noted that the resisters who had been summonsed the week before “have had their rates paid, whether by friend or foe is not known.”
The edition of the same paper covered the Axbridge petty sessions, at which eight resisters were summoned.
A new legal tactic was tried here:
[Harry Cook] Marshall objected to three of the magistrates, viz., the Chairman, who was on the County Education Committee, and two others on the ground of prejudice.
Mr C.L.F. Edwards: To whom do you object?
Mr Marshall: I shall hear whether my objections hold good, and then I can mention the names
The Clerk said they must hear more of the objection before it could be considered.
Mr Marshall: They are prejudiced because I am a Nonconformist.
I have been sworn at and blackguarded by one of the magistrates on account of my Nonconformity, worse than I have ever been insulted in my life before.
(Cries of “Shame” were instantly suppressed by the police.)
The objection didn’t go anywhere with the magistrates.
Neither did this one:
Mr Marshall said the summons was an absolute lie, inasmuch as he had only refused a part of the rate.
They had come to a court of justice and they expected the truth.
As that (pointing to the summons) was to be handed down as a heirloom in his family, he would like the truth put on it.
(Applause.)
Following this was an article about eleven resisters summoned at the Westbury petty sessions.
“The court was crowded and several times there was some excitement.… Subsequently a meeting was held outside the Town Hall, and protest speeches were made.”
A third article covered “[s]ome 34 passive resisters of Cheltenham” who “were the centre of attraction, both in and outside the court, by large crowds.”
The usual complaints were aired, the usual distraints granted, and “[i]n the evening a meeting was held in protest…”
A fourth article concerned two resisters summoned to the Chard Guildhall; a fifth concerned several resisters who tried to state their cases at Branksome, including this one:
Mr. Norton, another well-known magistrate, emphatically declined to enter the dock and be treated as a criminal, but was told he would not be heard unless he did.
This aroused the indignation of the crowd, who hooted the magistrates, and they straightway adjourned the case.
Two additional brief articles concerned a property seizure and an auction:
Goods Seized at Birmingham.
At Birmingham the police levied further distraints upon passive resisters.
When they reached the house of the Rev. J.O. Dell, who is the leading spirit in the passive resistance movement, that gentleman called his family together and invited the officers to join with them in a short service.
The 91st Psalm was read, and all present knelt down whilst Mr O’Dell prayed.
The police seized a piano, and when this had been taken into the street they were asked to stand themselves around it, the group being then photographed.
Scene at an Auction.
During the second sale of passive resisters’ goods at Cambridge , a crowd of young men twice tried to rush the auctioneer, but were frustrated by the police.
About 36 lots were sold, the goods being bought in.
The Manchester Courier and Lancaster General Advertiser of included a set of articles on the campaign.
The first considered “[t]he last batch of passive resisters in Altrincham” to be summoned before the magistrates, who refused to combine their cases into a single distraint order (which would have reduced expenses) as another court had done.
F. Cowell Lloyd, “chairman of the Altrincham Passive Resistance League,” disrupted the court by standing up to complain that someone had been paying some of the resisters rates for them.
The usual protest meeting was held afterwards.
The second article told the same story of the cases tried at Branksome that the The Western Daily Press covered, above.
The third covered the J.O. Dell or J. O’Dell case (this article, to confuse the matter further, calls him “J. Odell”).
A forth concerns “the first batch” of resisters to be summoned in South Manchester, says that there’s at least one such resister in North Manchester (which had not yet attempted to collect rates), but that “[t]he overseers in the Manchester township have not as yet been troubled with the passive resisters.”
Some excerpts from article #5:
A Lady Resister’s Threat
Exciting scenes were witnessed at Willesden , when close upon 200 passive resisters appeared in answer to summonses.
The court was crowded, while outside 500 or 600 persons assembled, including a number of ministers.
During the hearing of objections the crowd frequently burst into applause, and it was only after a threat to clear the court that the interruptions ceased.
Amongst other objectors who came forward were two ladies, one of whom said she felt it incumbent upon her to always appear every six months and give as much trouble as she possibly could in the collection of the infamous rate.
The set of articles concludes with these two brief notes:
In Reading, “the passive resisters” have been allowed to pay the portion of the rate not objected to, and the authorities are delaying any steps to recover the balance, although it has been long overdue.
Some “resisters” at Tilehurst, a suburban village near Reading, were to be proceeded against, but the magistrates directed that the signed authority of the overseers must first be obtained.
The overseers, however, unanimously refused to give their consent in writing.
The Essex County Chronicle for carried several articles about the passive resistance struggle:
“The Grays and District Passive Resistance League is reported to be growing daily in numbers,” read one.
Another reported on the summonses of six resisters from Tiptree for amounts ranging from eight shillings and change to a little over ten pounds.
“There was a crowd in court, including several Nonconformist ministers.”
The paper prints a representative transcript of what took place in the courtroom, which is unusually jovial in its sparring, and more than usually eloquent in the way the Education Act was denounced, but for all that adds little to what I’ve already excerpted.
The cases of 34 resisters were heard at the North London Police-court, and distress warrants were issued in each case.
Heddington Petty Session heard the cases of three resisters.
Afterwards “a protest meeting was held in the road near the Bell Hotel [at which v]igorous addresses, condemning the Act, were given… [And it was] alleged that the magistrates that morning had not given fair play to the passive resisters.”
A resister was summoned to the Chelmsford Petty Session, who was particularly defiant, saying in part: “And pay, I never will.
You can have my body and my goods, and I will go to gaol first.
[Applause.]
I know what my forefathers paid for my liberties, and do you think I would come to England” [he being from Scotland, apparently] “and give those liberties away?
Never!
I want to hand down the liberties to my family as they have been handed down to me.”
An auction of seized goods was held at Romford.
“About 100 persons assembled, and the proceedings were very orderly.”
A family Bible, which fetched 15s., drew the remark: “Distrained for religious education.”
After the sale a meeting was held in the Market-place.
Mr Walter Young, LL.B., presided.
He said the police of the country were with the passive resisters, and did not like the dirty work which had been thrust upon them.
Dr. Clifford, their leader, regretted his absence, and had written that the movement was only in its beginning.
The meeting passed its usual motions of indignation, and was unusual for entertaining a dissenting voice: a vicar who defended the establishment Church, saying “that Church people contributed fully sufficient to pay the cost of teaching their children.”
Some “good natured argument” ensued.
Two resisters were summoned to the Braintree Petty Session.
One concluded by saying “at Braintree they had a great aversion to rowdyism.
The resisters hoped that none of the scenes which had taken place elsewhere would occur at Braintree.
[Hear, hear.]”
A subsequent Braintree Citizens’ League meeting enrolled five new members, bringing their total to 55.
“A large company assembled” at the sale 55 lots of distrained goods at Brentwood.
A new element I see for the first time in this article is this:
A yellow banner with “We will not submit” in red letters was unfurled, and was received with cheers.
At the conclusion of the auction “Cheers were given for the passive resisters and for the police, and ‘God save the King’ was sung.”
The usual indignation meeting was held after.
The Bucks Herald of covered “the inaugural meeting of the North Bucks [and Aylesbury] Citizens’ League, formed in connection with the ‘passive resistance’ movement”.
The acting secretary explained that 50 people had joined up before this first meeting had been held, and he hoped they’d eventually have ten times that number (the article itself notes that “[a] number of members were afterwards enrolled”).
Another speaker summed up the strength of the movement thus far this way:
Some good Nonconformists could not go so far as to passively resist, but at the present time 3,000 persons had been summoned, and there were 35,000 others waiting to be summoned.
The Chairman then noted “that fourteen ‘resisters’ would appear at Chesham on , and fifteen more were ready to step into the dock the following week.”
The meeting passed a resolution condemning the Education Act (but no mention is made of the usual resolution that was paired with this: commending the passive resisters).
The Dover Express reprinted a manifesto issued by the Dover Passive Resistance or Citizens’ League in its issue, and noted that some members of the League had appeared in court to respond to their summonses.
The manifesto is largely a recapitulation of by-now-familiar grievances about the Act and doesn’t give much more information about the tax resistance campaign itself.
An interesting letter appeared in the Derby Daily Telegraph of :
Passive Resistance: ’s
Sale
To the editor of the Derby Daily Telegraph–
Sir,– Allow me to express my indignation at the way the sale was conducted at the County Hall.
Until I have always been opposed to, and never was in sympathy with, those who were reported to have been at the various sales and caused disturbances, but on attending this morning’s sale I was astonished at the un-English way the whole thing was arranged and carried out.
When we take into consideration that we are only human we cannot wonder at the voices of protest being raised.
If this sale is a sample of those which have been carried out in the past it appears to me that unless they are conducted by those in authority in a more business-like manner we may look for trouble ahead.
I feel I am now more than justified in placing myself side by side with the passive resisters.
Fair Play. .
The Manchester Courier and Lancaster General Advertiser of covered the first set of passive resisters to be brought to court in Manchester.
“Long before the hour for the commencement of the proceedings,” the report read, “the court was filled with male and female sympathisers, admission being gained by ticket.”
The usual distraints were issued, and the usual protest meeting held thereafter.
The following article showed that someone was upping the ante:
Commitment Sought Against a Minister
William Swarbrick, assistant overseer of the Garstang Union, appeared before the Garstang justices on and applied for a commitment order against the Rev. J. Angell Jones, Congregational minister, Garstang.
A fortnight ago, Mr. Jones was summoned for non-payment of the education rate, and Mr. Swarbrick informed the Bench that when he visited Jones’s house on he was informed that he had no goods, all of which belonged to his wife.
After retiring the Bench adjourned the application until next court.
Additional brief articles told of “ladies who applauded [and] were removed from the court” at the trial of a Methodist minister, of nine resisters at Chester who were treated curtly by the court there, and of a pastor at Newton-le-Willows who was summoned for failure to pay the education rate.
The trial of another set of passive resisters from Manchester was covered in the Manchester Courier and Lancaster General Advertiser, though these were described as “the first which have come before the magistrates in the Manchester Division of the County” so I may be confused about the jurisdictional boundaries.
In any case, “the court was filled with spectators.”
One of the defendants slid in a suffragist point:
Mrs. Webster remarked that she desired simply to state two reasons for objecting to that rate.
In the first place she objected to pay for sectarian teaching, in which she did not believe, and secondly, as a woman, who had no Parliamentary vote allowed to her, she had no other means of publicly protesting against that act of injustice.
A public meeting was held thereafter, but being outdoors in the rain, was not well attended.
A second article covered the distraints from those resisters from Manchester discussed in the earlier edition of the paper.
The way in which the distraints went off gives us some clues about how the movement was preparing itself for this eventuality and trying to best react to it:
[T]he two officers drove in a cab first to the house of the Rev. C.W. Watkins… There was no demonstration; the officer quietly entered the house, and Mrs. Watkins offered them a gold watch and chain.
The inspector said he thought the watch would be sufficient to meet the claim, and departed with it.
The officers next drove to the house of the Rev. Dr. Leach… In the front garden there is a notice on a board to the following effect:– “The bailiff is going to take my goods because I will not pay rates for the teaching of Popery and Anglicanism.
— Chas. Leach.”
On their arrival at the house Dr. Leach asked the inspector for his authority, and the distress warrant was accordingly produced.
The rev. gentleman then asked the officer, “Do you, as a policeman, like this work?” but Mr. Clegg did not vouchsafe any reply.
Dr. Leach expressed his regret that any policeman should have to do such work, and then asked the officer to look round the room, remarking “You can tell those who sent you they can take every stick, but even then the rate won’t be paid.”
The officer, in reply to a further question, said that the claim was for about £1.
“Cannot you take me instead of the goods?” queried the rev. gentleman, and the inspector, with a smile, said that he could not.
The next question asked was, “Would you like something heavy or light?” and Mr. Clegg, naturally, replied that he would sooner have something that was light.
“Then,” said Dr. Leach, “you had better take my theology, for that is very light.”
The officers were eventually handed half a dozen solid silver serviette rings, and expressing themselves as quite satisfied, they departed for the next residence on the list.
There were only three or four persons assembled outside Dr. Leach’s house.
Subsequently Dr. Leach informed our representative that he was well pleased with the courtesy that had been shown by the officers, who had done their best to make the business as pleasant as possible.
Mr. Edwyn Holt’s residence, Appleby Lodge, Rusholme, was next visited, and the officers were cordially greeted and shown into the drawing-room.
After the usual questions, Mr. Holt said he intended to hand over his gold watch, and produced a case containing that article.
Mr. Holt then shook the officers by the hand, and remarked “I am as pleased to have seen you as if you had been the King, whose representatives you are.”
On arrival at Mr. R.D. Darbishire’s house in Victoria Park, the officers were shown into the dining-room.
Mr. Darbishire produced the silver casket containing the freedom of the city of Manchester presented to him by the Corporation in , and in handing it over to the officers he said that he was giving up the most precious possession he had.
(A note in the edition of the paper indicated that “a gentleman who does not wish his name to be disclosed redeemed the casket containing the freedom of the city which Mr. R.D. Darbishire handed to the police in satisfaction of the distress warrant…”)
A brief note further down the page notes that a sale of distrained goods at Warrington attracted “several thousand people… but the proceedings were quiet and orderly.… After the sale a meeting was held on the fair ground.”
Finally, from the Gloucester Citizen of :
Passive Resistance.
A Mayor Distrained On.
Twenty Wimbledon passive resisters had their goods sold at a Battersea auction-room on .
All the goods were “bought in” except those belonging to Mr. Peter Lawson, Mayor of Fulham, who insisted “on principle” that his goods should be sold outright.
Revolting Magistrates.
At Market Harborough on , 25 passive resisters appeared before the magistrates.
Mr. John Smeeton, who sat on the Bench, rose from his seat and stated that he declined to have anything to do with the administration of “the iniquitous Education Act.”
This action was loudly cheered by a large crowd in Court.
Distress warrants were ordered to issue.
Mr. Samuel Rathbone Edge, a justice of the peace for the county of Stafford, an income-tax commissioner, and a former member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme, was summoned at that town as a passive resister.
The usual order was made.
Offered His Wife.
The warrant officer of Penge went round on distraining on the goods of passive resisters.
A well-known Nonconformist, who owed 2s. 10d., offered his wife, but the warrant officer declined to “seize” the lady, remarking that he had one at home.
Bundled Out of Court.
Summoned at Maidenhead County Police-court on for non-payment of the education rate, Mr. Thorpe, Fifield, village missioner, protested against entering the prisoner’s dock, but finally submitted.
After the order for payment was made, Mr. Thorpe proceeded to address the magistrates on his conscientious objection.
He was told to desist, but continued his remarks until the Deputy Chief Constable ordered the police to eject him.
He was then seized by three or four officers, and forcibly turned out.
The East Berks Liberal agent was in Court, and called the police cowards, whereupon he was seized and bundled out as well.
A colporteur was threatened with similar summary punishment if he did not hold his tongue.
Police-Sergeant Charged with Assault.
At the Petty Sessions at Wiveliscombe on , Police-Sergeant Frederick Charles Woolley was charged with assaulting Edward John Thorne at Wiveliscombe Police-Court on .
On Mr. Thorne, who was for many years chairman of the local School Board, was summoned for non-payment of the poor rate as a passive resister, and he persisted in making a statement.
Thereupon, it was alleged, the police-sergeant put his hand upon Mr. Thorne’s arm and dragged him a step or two.
Complainant contended that defendant had no authority from the Bench to do this, but the presiding magistrate said he used the words, “Turn him out.”
The case was dismissed.
