Tax resistance in the “Peace Churches” →
Quakers →
18th century Quakers →
Samuel Allinson
During the American Revolution, the issue of taxes and the Quaker peace testimony was a complicated one.
There were some who felt that to pay any taxes whatsoever to the rebel government was to acknowledge and legitimize rebellion and revolution.
Others extended this to a refusal to use the rebel government’s currency.
On the other hand, some Quakers had no problem paying taxes to Congress, or selling goods and services to its army.
Possibly the most thorough look at the debate among American Quakers at this time is in an essay by Samuel Allinson that he did not have widely distributed at the time and hasn’t been republished since.
Thanks to someone on-line who has offered help on my Tax Resistance Reader project, I got my hands on a photocopy of the original manuscript.
It’s hard to read in some places, but I was able to decipher the bulk of it.
He starts by explaining the Quaker objection to war itself, and then gives his argument against paying war taxes:
On this head it may be most proper simply to suppose,
1st:
That if we are forbidden by him who has a right to our obedience in heaven and on earth, personally to engage in war, it seemeth of consequence to follow that we ought not mediately to promote it by actively giving our money for that use; for can we so effectually bear our Testimony against any thing as to withhold an active compliance with that which facilitates the carrying it on.
The apostles exhortation was “be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.”
Many have in times past been pained on this account, and their minds have been renewed in seeing what they apprehended to be “that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” in this matter; and time and circumstances run now fully to have matured the child, and if so, death must ensue if the birth is not accomplished.
3d:
Because, by our ancient testimony, we profess to have “no hand or connivance in setting up or putting down Kings and Governments” but the present war was and is evidently to put down one and set up another.
Hence, those Taxes which are for its support not only oppose that testimony, but differ also from any hitherto paid by us, which difference will be spoke of hereafter, being a reason only peculiar to this war.
4th:
Because it is apprehended to run counter in its known consequences to many Christian precepts the observance of which we hold essential.
“Abstain from all appearance of evil.”
It leads to corruption and violence, which were the two causes assigned for destroying the old world (Genesis 6:11).
Because of violence the land formally mourned and does now; and how can we say we are clear, or bear a faithful Testimony against it while we voluntarily contribute towards carrying it on.
5th:
Because we are accountable stewards for what has been given us.
“The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”
And ought we to apply his goods to that which we are led out of as displeasing to him?
6th:
Because being in different states at war against each other, we thereby contribute to the opposition, blow up the flame in each country, and advance contradictory things, for both cannot be right, it is not so in the support of civil justice and order which never contradicts or opposes itself in different places, though it may vary a little according to the laws constituted and different circumstances of each.
These reasons are but secondary, and flowed subsequent to… an outward confirmation of an inward persuasion which several times showed me what I believed to be the “light of Truth, teaching those who look for it above all things, the way of peace and true happiness, which though it requires not the help of anything outward to support it, never contradicts right reason and argument, but will ever be found supportable by them, all corresponding with each other.
But it is objected, 1st:
That our Savior paid tribute in general terms without inquiring its use (Matthew 17:24) and commanded to render Cæsar his dues (Matthew 22:17).
That St. Paul (Romans 13) strongly enjoins subjection to the higher powers, and the payment of tribute also to whom it is due.
Answer. — In the first, where our Savior worked a miracle to pay the tax, different authors disagree about its use, some affirming it was a tax formerly paid to the temple, which is not, perhaps, very material as it was then at the disposal of the Roman conqueror to what use he pleased.
Burkitt says, it was “changed from an homage-penny to God, to a tribute-penny to the conqueror.”
In the second, the question put to our Savior on the point was with evil intention to ensnare and render him culpable to one of the great parties or sects then existing, who differed about the payment of taxes, his answer, though conclusive, was so wisely framed that it left them still in doubt, what things belonged to Cæsar and what to God, thus he avoided giving either of them offence which he must inevitably have done by a determination that tribute indefinitely was due to Cæsar.
Our first and principle obedience is due to the Almighty, even in contradiction to man, “We ought to obey God rather than men.”
Hence, if tribute is demanded for a use that is antichristian, it seems right for every Christian to deny it, for Cæsar can have no title to that which opposes the Lord’s command.
Both these texts, as well as that of Romans 13 may also be fairly satisfied without applying them to war.
It is well known that the government of Tiberius Cæsar was peaceable and quiet; and at the time when Paul thus wrote, which, according to Locke, was about , it was also a time of Peace, neither of those reigns appear to have been much or any disturbed by wars, though the latter was very tyrannical and shamefully depraved, hence it may be informed, that the tax which our Savior paid, if not applied to the temple, which seems most probable, was appropriated to the purposes of civil government.
It is however sufficient that it does not appear to have been applied to war, although some, too boldly seem to take it for granted that it was, being paid to a warlike nation.
It looks likely from the word rulers, among others, used by St. Paul in the text above cited, that he alluded only to civil order and regulations, to municipal justice in government, and not to military exertions.
The latter often puts down civil rule, and is not instituted for “the punishment of the evildoer and praise of those who do well” nor for the determination of “that which is evil” each party contending that the Lord is on their side, and the question at the end of the war is as unanswered as at the beginning, it is not so in civil matters, mankind having agreed what is evil, and what is justice, and upon a certain mode of determining it, and then punishment is regularly inflicted on the guilty.
But military force is for offensive or defensive war which generally includes the innocent with the guilty and often falls heaviest on the former.
It is observable that a suspicion arose among the People, that our Savior intended to establish an earthly kingdom, hence he cautiously guarded against such an opinion, was careful to undeceive them and to give no occasion of offence, of which the acknowledgment of his being a subject by paying tribute was a strong proof; and this it is thought he did that they might be more attentive to his doctrine.
Besides, it might not be proper at this early period before the Gospel was a little spread and known to touch upon a matter which would have, so materially, alarmed the powers of the earth, hence divine wisdom might refer it to a future day.
Nor can it be a just construction of Paul’s words “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers, for there is no power but of God: whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God” to suppose, that he meant implicit obedience should be rendered to every requisition of the governing powers, this appears plain by Acts 5:29 as well as in the cases of the three children Daniel mentioned in Scripture, and must therefore be understood in a qualified, limited sense.
The apostle Peter is to be understood in the same manner “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake; whether it be to the King as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well” and if governments were thus exercised few would refuse an active compliance with every demand, for virtue would thereby be promoted and vice discouraged, but since it is not so, when tribute or any other thing is required which opposes the Christian duty “he ought to obey God rather than Men.”
It is remarkable, that when Paul speaks on the subject of tribute, he does not determine what, or to whom, but speaks in nearly the same language with our Savior, “render therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due.”
2d:
It is alleged, that our Society have always owned and honored government, paid their taxes of all kinds, apprehending it to be their duty so to do and supposing that they were not accountable for any erroneous applications of them though they know it before hand.
Answer. — It is true that until the instance of John Churchman, John Woolman and others in , and since, Friends have generally paid their taxes, except those in lieu of personal service, and for the purchase of drums, colors, etc. called Trophy Money in England.
It is as true also that for many years Friends bought and sold Negroes, held them as slaves, and took the profits of their labor, which is condemned now.
While evil remains in the world it is probable war may be suffered to continue and rage at times, but whether those who profess to be and are in a good degree redeemed from the causes whence it proceeds, and from the spirit with which it is supported, should voluntarily contribute thereto in any respect is the question.
It looks most consistent, even in the eye of the degenerate world, and it feels sensibly so at times to a remnant who desire to be clear of a business so dark and destructive, that we should avoid the furtherance of it in any and every form.
This therefore seems to be the criterion; whenever an act strikes the mind with a religious fear that the voluntary performance of it will not be holding up the light of the Gospel of Peace, or be a stumbling block to others it ought carefully to be avoided, thus being faithful to every manifestation of Grace, righteousness would rise higher and higher, and the light thereof would not only open the path of its true votaries but be seen by others, to the advancement of the Kingdom of the Messiah, that it may be established, and his will be done on earth as it is done in heaven; a state possible, I presume, or he would not have taught us to pray for it.
And nothing, perhaps, will more contribute to the hastening of this kingdom than a patient suffering for well doing, or for a refusal to do ill, mediately as well as immediately.
Friends formerly were a favored people, and were no doubt in a good degree, or fully, faithful to what was required of them; they suffered much and were persecuted even unto death; their patience and the purity of their lives at length obtained them the kindness of government and laws were made for their relief and worldly promotion; being a grateful people, and wearied with their sufferings, they might possibly stop a little to enjoy the smiles of power, and whether their distinctions between a fine or tax in lieu of personal services, to be applied to warlike purposes, and a tax, immediately for the pay of men hired to perform the same services?
between a tax to purchase drums, colors etc., and the common taxes to arm, cloath, victual etc., was not too great a refinement?
whether they did not lean too much, though to themselves imperceptible, on the arm of flesh, the power of military force?
and were not leavened into too great a complaisance for mankind they engaged, when it favored their outward interest, care, and conveniency?
I shall not determine:
But, without breach of charity, may suppose, that this complaisance to the outward protection, force of government, added to the acquisition of much wealth, which sometimes seems to need the arm of power to secure, might a little dim their eyes and stay them from that full and earnest pursuit of their religious duties which before now would have more exalted the Truth and cleared up some painful difficulties, which the present day produceth, without the trials which now attend in their successors, some being at present under the purifying hand in diverse respects.
The Christian is exhorted to put on the whole armor of light, and nothing less will enable him to discover the perfect day (Proverbs 4:18, Romans 13:12).
We cannot have too much complaisance to men where it tends to shew forth our good works, and to convince them of the beauty of virtue and excellence of Love; nor too much firmness against the erroneous customs of the world and the whiles of Satan, by which he deceives mankind, if it is in the meekness of wisdom which beareth much and is kind, which when reviled reviles not again.
It is sorrowfully evident that our connection with offices of government, and mixing with the world in their human consultations, manners and policy, hath been a loss to many, and a general departure from the purity of our Principles hath been too prevalent amongst us; and whether it has not crept in from this cause among others (to wit) our raising up and relying on the kingdoms of this world, joining with the spirit of them, although our Savior expressly told those of his day, that his kingdom was not of this world, if it was his soldiers would fight, and leave to the consideration of others.
3d:
But it is said, taxes are due to government, as much as the payment of a debt on performance of a contract is obligatory upon the party engaged; that we receive a consideration therefore, and this debt therefore must not be withheld on account of the use it may be put to though fixed and the payer cannot approve it.
Answer. — The cases do not appear parallel; Every valid contract is voluntarily entered into, and as it is the duty of every one previously to see that his engagement is innocent, so when his promise is purchased by a consideration given it would be dishonest and deceitful not to perform it, the other party having, as it were, deposited so much effects in his hands, which he is to render back according to agreement and when received the receiver has a right to apply it as he pleases without any account to the payer, but in the case of taxes he who gives has a right to call to such an account and therefore seems himself liable for and privy to the application.
Every man has or has not given his assent to the government he lives under, in the first, he has formally declared his allegiance thereto, in the latter, that allegiance is implied in consideration of his receiving the protection and benefit of it in the safety of his person and the security of his property, in both, it is no more than to be “true and faithful” which can never mean a compliance with every requisition, for we owe a superior allegiance to the King of Kings, and whenever the requisitions of man run counter thereto we “ought to obey God rather than men.” This, as already mentioned, is further proved by the example of Daniel and the three children.
Indeed this allegiance, express or implied, seems only to guard against treason in a subject which he who “lives a peaceable quiet life in Godliness and honesty” the professed principle of our Society, will never be in danger of committing — We pay our proportion to the support of the poor, the maintenance of roads and the support of civil order in government if the demand is unmixed with war or tithes.
These include every benefit we ask or receive; we desire not war or any of its consequences, nor do we apprehend any benefit arising from it, but the reverse to mankind in general is, we think, very evident; hence a refusal to pay taxes for war and tithes (which latter are demanded of our brethren in England) ought not to exclude us from any advantage of civil government, so especially as we quietly suffer the distraint of our effects for these uses also, government taking the load of thus spoiling us for endeavoring to preserve a consistent conduct and a conscience void of offense towards the almighty, upon themselves; yet we desire no guilt to be laid to their charge but that they may see the error for their own sakes.
Nor would these sentiments if fully adopted be prejudicial to mankind, virtue would then stand at helm, and the bark would be conducted by religion, with peace and amity, to every part of the globe.
We have never entered into any contract, express or implied, for the payment of taxes for war, nor the performance of anything contrary to our religious duties, and therefore cannot be looked upon as disaffected or rebellious to any government: for these refusals, if this be our Testimony under all, which many believe it will hereafter be.
Some may indeed say that the sword of war is as necessary to be unsheathed against a foreign enemy as the sword of municipal justice is sometimes against an internal malefactor, but there is a manifest difference — municipal justice is conducted by known rules agreed upon in stillness and quiet, and may be done without injury to any one; war makes no distinction, proceeds by violent arbitrary measures, and makes havoc of the innocent peaceable inhabitant as well as those who are in the spirit of it — the rights of all where it comes are trampled upon.
If the most inoffensive subject of either power sends his vessel abroad on the most necessary occasion it is liable to be captured and the property confiscated thought he has been in no fault.
Civil justice is an innocent dispassionate remedy; this cannot be said of war.
And without asserting that war is not necessary but to the pride of man let it be considered that it is for want of due regard to the Christian virtues, mostly on both sides, that the amicable means of treaty and accommodation are not heartily adopted or they would effectually settle every difference.
War generally springs from known causes which might be remedied and both sides are generally in fault; Civil wrongs happen often to the most innocent on whom no blame could be fixed, and as the sufferer did not foresee so he could not prevent them.
Hence there appears to be a wide distinction between the military part of government and the civil, the former springing out of evil, and seems to be a general punishment for evil, the other may be compared to the various regulations or powers of a machine, each tending to keep the whole in order, and may be executed in harmony and good will; or to the government: or authority of a parent over his children and family.
It is not to be wondered at, or an argument to be drawn against a reformation in the refusal of taxes for war at this day, that our brethren formerly paid them; knowledge is progressive — every reform had its beginning, even the disciples were for some time ignorant of many religious truths though they had the company and precepts of our Savior, and they continued so for some time after his ascension; — instance the conversion of the Gentiles, for they could not at first believe that they were to preach the Gospel and initiate them in the Christian church, until a miracle was wrought to convince them of it; the doctrine of circumcision is another instance, to which rite as well as water baptism Christ submitted, but we do not argue thence that they ought to continue.
Our Savior told his disciples he had many things to say to them which they could not then bear, but he promised, that when he left them he would send them the comforter, and he should teach them all things; guide them into all truth and shew them things to come.
Some things which our Savior taught them not when on Earth, or at least which they understood not, having by this comforter or spirit of truth, been afterwards disclosed, other things may yet.
The Christian life is gradual and the irradiations of the Gospel are not all at once.
The prophecy of peace and love must go slow: and be perfected though it is now much oppressed, but before its completion war must be laid aside so as not ever to be “learned.”
A faithful testimony in all respects borne against this great engine of Satan will lead to a reformation in many other essential matters and narrow the path of life.
Let us remember the exhortation and who gave it, “Enter ye at the strait gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction and many there be who go in thereat; because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth into life, and few there be that find it.”
The refusal to pay taxes is not peculiar to these times.
John Churchman, John Woolman and others had the scruple in the last war .
Friends in England many years past have had an uneasiness on this account as appears by John Richardson’s Journal.
On Rhode Island he was asked by Friends, on a query in their meeting what Friends might do in case there should be a tax laid for building some fortification and to provide men and arms for the security of the Island?
and what they did in England in like cases?
after having some time and the meeting waiting for his answer he said “I have heard the matter debated both in superior and inferior meetings and privately, and the most general result was this; Friends did not see an effectual door opened to avoid the thing, that tax being mixed with the other taxes; although many Friends are not so easy as they could desire: neither have we any other sway in the government, than only giving our voices for such as are concerned therein; therefore as things appear to me there is a great disparity between our circumstances and yours; for you have a great interest here and a great share in the government, and perhaps may put such a thing by in voting, therefore look not for help to the Mother, as they called England, or Friends there, wherein she is not capable of helping herself, but mind your own way in the Truth and look not out.”
Samuel Fothergill also, , was averse to and advised Friends against the payment of taxes for war, and though Friends in England disapproved this scruple , it at least shows the scruple to be an ancient one, and under the old government when the war did not run counter to another of our principles, above hinted at, (to wit) the destruction of one and erecting another government by the sword. — And though I distinguish not between war so as to approve it in any case, it may a little account for the Society having their eyes more opened now than formerly in proportion as the consideration is brought more strikingly before us from its now violating one of our religious principles untouched then, as well as by several other considerations entirely new to us; of which the great frauds committed, and injuries occasioned to many, by a currency made for the purposes of war; the evil, profanity and destructive tendency of the war, now brought to our doors are not the least.
Can we look at the dismal consequences of war and immediately reflect that we give our voluntary aid to it any way and to be easy under it? or think we are consistent throughout?
As some of the preceding sentiments run counter to the received opinion and practice of our predecessors in the Truth, if we apply them simply to any government as appears by George Fox’s Journal, Thomas Story’s Journal… and diverse other parts of Friends’ writings; and as I know my attainments are small and very far short of their experience, I desire to be understood with tenderness; I write with caution and great deference to others of more extensive thought and abilities, who either have not seen the change that has opened and appears to be further opening to some; and to those also who in sincerity still approve the former conduct of the society in respect to taxes, and their intercourse with mankind even to the supplying of the Army and furthering military matters, for it is certainly true that some Friends did formerly act as commissaries, charter their vessels to the crown for transporting soldiers, sell their effects for the use of the Army, etc. and often educate their children under persons not in union with us, though many now find an insuperable scruple in their minds on these and other accounts, and are desirous of standing as clear of any connection or aid which tends to strengthen the sinews of war or corrupt our offspring, as our present mixed state amongst mankind admits.
It is clear that there never was a time in all respects similar to this; nor can we say that even our worthy ancestors would not be led to differ from themselves if they were now living, it is rather highly probable that they would.
To hear a collector say to a Friend, that he must have the tax for war of him, to a raise a fund for the payment of certain other Friends who have sold their products to supply the Army with necessaries and want their money, and some other circumstances of the like kind, sounds very unpleasant, and is what we have not been accustomed before now to hear.
We are called upon to take up our cross daily and follow Christ; that may be a cross today which has not been so heretofore, but as soon as it is fixed on the mind, obedience after is a duty.
“Love is the fulfilling of the Law.”
Let us then strive to possess ourselves of this efficacious love towards one another in a particular manner, and towards others also, as the most effectual means of carrying conviction with us, that it is the fulfilling of the law of righteousness and true holiness that we are always aiming at, and that this is “the mark for the prize of the high calling of God which we press after” and “whereto we have already attained let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing” and let us affectionately endeavor to feel each others scruples and concerns as well as patiently to forbear with each other in love where a sincere desire after the Master’s will and a faithful discharge of our known duties appear to be uppermost.
The above sentiments, whether right or wrong are adopted by great numbers, and are even from thence become of importance, and I hope may repeatedly be adverted to and viewed with the calmness of true wisdom; and a sincere desire possesses me, that, without judging one another in matters wherein we may differ from our ancestors and one from another for a time as a trial of our patience, love and forbearance, we may earnestly strive, after the life of religion, for if we evidently feel ourselves grow in this we shall be dear to each other under every dispensation of providence, but if the spirit of censure and fault-finding insinuates itself; if the love of this world or the things of it takes up the room of our minds, if darkness, from these or other causes, prevails over us or dissension raises its head amongst us, then are we in great danger.
It is clear that whatever is of God will prosper and cannot be overthrown, but that which is of men must come to naught (Acts 5:38–39);
Whatever is elementary or expressive of the substance must have an end though it may be right for a time; and if John, the forerunner of Christ, who by our Savior himself was declared to be “one of the greatest born of women” was to decrease but our Savior to increase (John 3:30) alluding to their dispensation, practice and doctrine in matters religious; may it not be questioned whether the governments of this world, as practiced in their present form, may not in the future be found insubstantial and replaced by something better; hence why are we tenacious about anything which the pure truth is superior to?
and which in its most perfect state is imperfect, for all imperfection must perish?
“Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect” was a precept of our Savior.
Our first parents were placed in an innocent perfect situation, and nothing less than an innocent endeavor after, in order to regain that happy state of innocence unmixed can truly satisfy an immortal mind. — The humble christian, who, with his hands on his loins and his mind girt about with sobriety is daily endeavoring to work out his salvation with fear and trembling, knowing who it is that worketh in him, stands in need of few outward laws, and the nearer he approaches the image of the great Pattern the less necessary they become.
As I mentioned , a frequent point of contention in debates about conscientious tax resistance is whether (and if so, to what extent) paying taxes makes a taxpayer complicit in the deeds of the government.
Different people have taken positions at either extreme (not at all complicit, absolutely complicit) and at various points in the middle, and have deployed persuasive arguments and metaphors to argue their cases.
I’ll explore some of these arguments today.
I’m going to start off with some discussion of law and legal culpability.
The Nuremberg Principles
One reason a discussion of legal theory is important in what initially seems to be a discussion about moral, not legal, responsibility, is the Nuremberg Principles.
The people who drafted these Principles were trying to articulate what they supposed to be universal, eternal, and self-evident crimes.
(This was meant to solve the problems of jurisdiction and ex post facto law in the trials of Nazi war criminals, and also to formally outlaw such things as aggressive war.)
The Principles state, in part,
“Complicity in the commission of a crime against peace, a war crime, or a crime against humanity [elsewhere defined] is a crime under international law.”
and
“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
A number of war tax resisters have taken these Principles as an inspiration, and some have even adopted the conceit of saying that they are afraid that if they pay taxes they may risk being prosecuted under the theory the Principles articulate.
The United States government is certainly guilty of the crimes listed under that first bullet point, so — leaving aside the practical difficulties involved in holding anyone accountable for complicity with the United States government at this stage of the game — what must one do if one wants to avoid such complicity?
Must one resist paying taxes, for example?
Larry Rosenwald is one war tax resister who believes the answer to that question is an unequivocal “yes”:
To pay war taxes is to acquiesce in building weapons of mass destruction… what international law as derived from the Nuremberg principles arguably defines as a crime…
It is, simply, a wrong act for any pacifist, any adherent of international law, any person fundamentally opposed to American policy; and I do not understand what keeps such people from refusing taxes…
And he’s not alone.
Conspiracy theory
I quoted blogger FSK yesterday as saying, “If you pay taxes, you are as responsible for war as the soldier who kills people.
If you pay taxes, you are directly responsible for every bad thing government does.
Paying taxes is immoral.”
This representation bears some resemblance to the legal concept of conspiracy.
One set of jury instructions about conspiracy put it this way:
[W]here several persons conspire or combine together to commit any unlawful act, each is criminally responsible for the acts of his associates or confederates committed in furtherance of any prosecution of the common design for which they combine.
In contemplation of law, the act of one is the act of all.
Each is responsible for everything done by his confederates, which follows incidentally in the execution of the common design as one of its probable and natural consequences, even though it was not intended as a part of the original design or common plan.
There are a couple of glaring problems with stretching the concept of conspiracy to cover taxpayers.
For starters, it seems hard to take seriously once you consider all of its ramifications.
For instance, I don’t think FSK really believes what he’s saying he believes.
He’s said on other occasions that he has an above-ground job at which taxes are withheld from his paycheck, and that while he’d be willing to take a job in the underground or “agorist” economy in order to avoid these taxes, he wouldn’t be willing to take a pay cut to do so.
Can it really be true that as a taxpayer he feels “directly responsible for every bad thing government does,” — as responsible as the people who directly carry out those bad things, but that he feels so blasé about this that he wouldn’t stop doing it if it cost him any money?
His excuse may be that he has to earn a living, but how is this different from the same excuse given by a soldier, Senator, or bureaucrat — assuming you believe, as FSK says he does, that a taxpayer is just as responsible as they are for their actions?
Secondly, to prove “conspiracy” in the legal sense, you have to show that the parties to the agreement agreed to work together to achieve some common end, and that either the end itself, or the methods they chose to reach that end, were illegal.
This isn’t as hard to prove as it might sound at first.
You don’t necessarily have to prove that the conspirators actually met or signed onto a formal plan.
As one set of jury instructions put it:
[I]t is not necessary to constitute a conspiracy that two or more persons should meet together, and enter into an explicit or formal agreement for an unlawful scheme, or that they should directly, by words or in writing, state what the unlawful scheme was to be, and the detail of the plans or means by which the unlawful combination was to be made effective.
It is sufficient if two or more persons, in any manner, or through any contrivance, positively or tacitly come to a mutual understanding to accomplish a common and unlawful design.
and another:
[A]ll who take part in a conspiracy after it is formed and while it is in execution, and all who, with the knowledge of the facts, concur in the facts originally formed and aid in executing them, are fellow conspirators.
Their concurrence, without proof of an agreement to concur, is conclusive against them.
They commit the offense when they become partners to the transaction or further the original plan.
Do taxpayers meet this sort of qualification?
If you’re putting on your prosecutor’s-hat, you can probably look at these instructions and say, sure, I could make it stick.
But if you’re defending the taxpayer against a charge of conspiracy, you’ve got a good trump card to play:
In short, if my client is accused of illegally conspiring with a government, by paying taxes to it — how can you suggest that there was some sort of “agreement” or “mutual understanding” if the government had to threaten my client to comply?
That doesn’t sound like an agreement to me.
My client isn’t an accomplice, but a victim!
Duress — How much can it excuse?
But just how good of a defense is it to say that you were paying taxes under duress?
Can such an argument always relieve you of all responsibility, or does it only work when certain conditions are met, or only relieve you of a certain amount of responsibility?
How much compulsion must the government use before it absorbs responsibility?
Is there a threshold?
Does it depend on what they’re trying to absorb responsibility for?
It couldn’t be the case (could it?) that the government could “force” you to murder someone by threatening you with a $25 fine for refusing — and that the government could take all of the guilt off your shoulders in this way.
Alas, in the debates about tax resistance, usually government compulsion is seen as an all-or-nothing sort of thing, and questions like these go unanswered.
William Lloyd Garrison said at one point that willingly paying taxes to a government that upholds slavery was wrong, but that to acquit yourself it is sufficient for you to announce that you are not cooperating willingly, and to strike an attitude that is consonant with that declaration:
[A man] may consent peaceably to yield up what is demanded of him, but not without remonstrance, and only as he would give up his purse to a highwayman.
He will not recognize it as a lawful tax — he will not pay it as a tax — but will denounce it as robbery and oppression.
Tolstoy agreed, emphasizing that although it was wrong to voluntarily pay taxes, under the Christian non-resistance principle that he (and Garrison) adhered to, it was also wrong to resist the government in seizing taxes:
A religious man may not resist by force those who take any of the fruits of his labour — whether they be private robbers or robbers that are called “the Government”…
The proper thing to do when the government comes calling, in this school of thought, is to refuse to pay voluntarily but to submit peacefully to distraint of property.
But J.G. James argued against such passive tax resistance, by saying:
It may well be questioned if the payment of rates or taxes is voluntary at all, since the account is presented in the form of a demand, and not a polite request.
Inasmuch as payment is compulsory in any case, is not Passive Resistance merely an awkward, expensive, and an inconvenient mode of payment for all concerned?
It’s easy to confuse these two cases:
in which someone actually forces you to do something (such as forcing you to stay in prison by locking the doors)
in which someone threatens you with unpleasant consequences if you do not do something.
In the first case, you don’t have alternatives to choose from, so you don’t have any blame for what you’re stuck with.
In the second case, though, your options have merely been changed.
You still have a choice to make, and that choice can be praiseworthy or blameworthy.
Hannah Arendt wrote:
…in the words of Mary McCarthy, who first spotted this fallacy:
“If somebody points a gun at you and says, ‘Kill your friend or I will kill you,’ he is tempting you, that is all.”
And while a temptation where one’s life is at stake may be a legal excuse for a crime, it certainly is not a moral justification.
If the tax collector says “give me your money or else,” that isn’t the end of the inquiry, but the time to say “or else what?” and then to weigh the options.
If I believed FSK’s argument that what the tax collector was saying was “be directly responsible for every bad thing government does or else” I’d be asking my “or else what?” with bluff-calling incredulity.
When you eat a Chiquita you’ve done your part
Can you be found legally guilty for payments you made under duress?
You certainly can, under some circumstances anyway.
Look at what happened to Chiquita (you know, the banana company).
Chiquita had been operating in Colombia and, as a cost of doing business there, had to pay taxes to some of the governments that control parts of the country.
Three of those governments were designated as terrorist organizations by the United States government, which has passed a law prohibiting anyone from funding such organizations anywhere.
In addition, there is an international agreement (as of ) that prohibits funding terrorist organizations.
It says:
Any person commits an offence within the meaning of this Convention if that person by any means, directly or indirectly, unlawfully and willfully, provides or collects funds with the intention that they should be used or in the knowledge that they are to be used, in full or in part, in order to carry out:
(a) An act which constitutes an offence within the scope of and as defined in one of the treaties listed in the annex; or
(b) Any other act intended to cause death or serious bodily injury to a civilian, or to any other person not taking an active part in the hostilities in a situation of armed conflict, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act.
(On its face, this would seem to prohibit paying taxes to the United States government, but seeing as the government is a signatory to this agreement, and seeing as all of the signatories are governments, I’m sure there’s a loophole.)
In any case, Chiquita pled guilty in a plea bargain and was hit with a $25 million fine.
But I’m not sure if this really is relevant to the topic at hand.
Note that Chiquita was not charged with conspiring with these Colombian terrorist groups — wasn’t charged as a co-conspirator or accessory in their crimes — but was charged with a distinct crime of providing funds to terrorist organizations.
On the other hand, that crime may itself just be a sort of legal shorthand that amounts to essentially the same sort of thing.
I haven’t investigated the legal theory behind it.
It’s Caesar’s fault
J.G. James was a believer in law and government, and so he felt that when taxes or tax expenditures conflicted with conscience, the proper response was to do what could be done within the law to rectify the problem, but to go no further:
[I]t is the duty of a conscientious citizen to pay an unjust charge if he has tried in vain to prevent the measure passing into law, on the ground that he is no longer responsible for the expenditure of public funds, after he has done his utmost to control that expenditure by legalized means
This argument, that once the money is out of your hands you are no longer responsible for how it is spent, comes up frequently in debates about tax resistance — often even from tax resisters themselves, when trying to explain the limits of their resistance.
For instance, John H. Dadmun was a conscientious objector during the American Civil War who, in addition to refusing to serve in the military, refused also to pay someone else to serve as a substitute in his place (which was at the time a legal alternative to service).
This was because, he said, “that is the same as to go myself.”
But he was willing to pay a militia exemption tax (though it would take him some time to raise the money).
Someone chided him about this, noting that “the government can take the money and get a substitute.”
Dadmun responded:
“It might do so, but there is no provision into the law to carry that into effect; and furthermore, the Marshal has told me it had not been so used, but must be paid into government and he could not trace it further…”
Eventually…
[T]he brethren gave me almost a hundred dollars, and others lent me for Christ’s sake, not knowing whether I would be able to pay or not, and thus I was able to purchase my liberty, and satisfying the government, by “rendering Caesar his own,” with image and superscription thereon; and if he makes a bad use of it, he is responsible; as I have no further control of it.
G.W. Gillespe, another Civil War-era conscientious objector, had a nearly identical stand:
[T]he idea of hiring a man to kill for me would implicate me in the crime; so I refused to give even five cents for a substitute.
If I had had three hundred dollars, I could conscientiously have given it to Caesar as a last resort, to get exempt from the bloody field of carnal strife.
Some tried to persuade me that it was just as bad to pay the money as to hire a substitute, as the money was for that purpose.
The difference is great.
The Lord will not hold me accountable for the mischief that money, taken from me by force, would do when employed by others.
Caesar demands taxes of us; we pay them, according to the instruction and example of our Lord.
We render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and Caesar hires a man to shoot his enemies for him; are we to blame?
By no means.
But to hire a man to fight in my place, would be like hiring a thief to steal in my place.
Both guilty.
Rendering unto Caesar
Here we hit one of the big stumbling blocks that Christian tax resisters have run into.
The New Testament is distressingly explicit, in Romans 13:
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.
The authorities that exist have been established by God.
Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.…
[I]t is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also because of conscience.
This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.
Give everyone what you owe him: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.
If Jesus wanted us to know that we should resist taxes to governments that were going to apply the tax money in sinful ways, he was given every opportunity to make this clear when he was asked: “Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
Instead, he responded with the koan “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” which confused everybody at the time, and the meaning of which continues to defy consensus today.
The best the resisters could come up with to justify their position was either a confidently asserted, if somewhat strained reading of the “Give to Caesar” koan (one war tax resister insisted that Jesus delivered his koan during a time of peace in the Roman Empire, so Jesus was by no means countenancing war taxes), or the story from Acts 5 in which the apostles defied the law and continued to preach the gospel according to God’s explicit command.
Asked to explain themselves,
Peter and the other apostles replied: “We must obey God rather than men!”
Most Christian tax resisters took the “Give to Caesar” koan and certainly the Romans passage to mean that God does indeed command us to pay taxes, even to unjust governments, but took the Acts “We must obey God rather than men” statement to provide an occasional override:
Essentially “render unto Caesar and submit to the government, unless that means disobeying God.”
T.S. Grimké put it this way:
[If the ruler] require me to pay taxes, although one object of the taxes be the support of idolatry, or the waging of war, I comply, simply because he has a clear right to levy taxes, and the responsibility of applying them is with him, not with me.
He is lawfully possessed of the power on the principle of civil obedience, as taught us in the New Testament; taxes are among the usual and necessary instruments for the administration of government; the use to which he shall apply them, is not my province, but his: he requires nothing unlawful of me, and therefore I comply.
Here then is the distinction.
If he commands what is unlawful, as a means for the attainment of even a lawful end, I refuse obedience.
But if he commands what is lawful, intending when the command has been performed by me, to employ the fruit of my obedience in the accomplishment of unlawful purposes in which I have no hand, I obey, because he requires of me only what is rightful.
I have nothing to do with his motive or his object.
I would illustrate this by the case of a debt.
I am indebted to another.
He demands payment.
I am not at liberty to refuse, because I happen to know, or have reason to believe that he will employ the money, when paid, for unlawful or immoral purposes.
This follows from the principle already stated.
My duty is very clear, to pay the debt: the use of the money, when paid, is at once his right and responsibility.
This may be aptly illustrated by a modification of the case stated.
I am indebted to another; but the debt is not due.
He calls for payment, not having a right to do so, and I happen to know, that his reason for wishing the money then, is to make an improper use of it.
I am bound to refuse; because not being bound to pay then, I am volunteering to grant a favor, knowing that it will be abused.
On the same principle I can conscientiously pay taxes, knowing, that among other objects, the public money will be applied to pay judges and jurors for trying and condemning criminals to capital punishment; to pay the salary of the president of a college, who teaches that public prayer is unchristian, and the clergy a set of impostors; or to pay the expenses of war.
This seems to me the only safe and wise principle, and it furnishes a suitable criterion for civil obedience.
[However, if the] magistrate, instead of a general tax law divides the taxes, and lays on the advocates of Peace the war tax.
They cannot conscientiously pay it; because they are thus made the sole and direct instrument of carrying on the war, and without their compliance, it must be at a stand.…
…Obedience is due to the civil magistrate, not as a duty to society, but as a duty to God.
God only can then lawfully fix the land-marks of that duty.
This was also Edward Swaine’s argument against tax resistance by nonconformist Christians against government support for establishment churches.
And he was unafraid to take his argument to its logical ends:
If Cæsar say “Give me money,” we must give it; for God has nowhere said “Do not give Cæsar money,” or “Do not give Cæsar money without satisfaction that he will properly apply it.”
If Cæsar say “Do not preach,” Paul must refuse obedience, for Christ has said to him “preach!”
If Cæsar say to us, “Go to the North Pole” — or “wear a cocked hat” — we must do so; for God has not claimed our obedience to the contrary.
He has not said, “Do not go to the North Pole” or “go only where you please.”
He has not said, “Do not wear a cocked hat,” or “wear only what you like.”
Those things, then, concerning which God has claimed nothing of us, we must render unto Cæsar.
Swaine draws the line in this way:
God says to us in effect… If [Caesar] should say to you… “I resolve to establish the worship of Baal for the good of the Empire,” and to levy a tax for that purpose, the resources of the State are his, and you are bound to render the tax.
But, if he should say I hold it to be for the good of the land, that every one acknowledge Baal to be God, and therefore require the payment of the tax to be accompanied by a recognition by the payers of the godhead of Baal, you are bound, while you pay the tax, to refuse the recognition, though impaling or burning be the penalty.
Or, if the tax be collected under an enactment that every one who pays shall be considered as offering to Baal, you are bound to refuse the payment, for to pay in such case would be equivalent to worship, and a rendering to Cæsar of that which is God’s.
But I do not justify your refusal of taxes, because they may be levied for a purpose that my law condemns.
He who violates my law must answer, and that is not you who pay the tax, but he who levies it if a bad one.
It is he who misapplies the National Funds, not you who had no rightful command over them to apply or misapply.
You have no responsibility, and violate none of God’s laws, if your tax dollars are spent in sinful ways, according to Swaine, because “the tax-gatherer comes… not for a contribution, or subscription, or aid, but for property no longer the subject’s to give or to withhold, and no longer under his rightful control…”
Taxes for bad objects are to be paid, not because we can be excused for helping evil by any voluntary act, that we are morally free to forbear, nor because the payment of such taxes will not help evil, for it will help evil, just as much as the payment of a debt to one who is going to misapply the money will help the evil, — but because the tax is not the subject’s any more than the debt is the debtor’s to help with or to withhold.
The payment therefore is his duty, for he is not morally free to decline it, although it will help evil.
Is paying a tax like paying a debt?
This comparison of taxes to debts, as used by Grimké and Swaine above, was an important metaphor in the ongoing debate about tax resistance.
If paying taxes to the government is good in and of itself, because God has so decreed it, then taxpaying can’t simply be judged according to its consequences.
A tax payment, in this way of thinking, is not a donation or a subscription or a contribution that is made voluntarily, but is a duty akin to repaying a debt.
You can’t ethically refuse to repay a loan because you think the person you owe money to will spend it unwisely.
Here’s an example of how this metaphor was used by one tax resister:
Joshua Maule was a Quaker advocate of war tax resistance.
When a general tax was increased by a certain percentage in order to pay for war expenses (with the government explicitly saying this was the reason), Maule refused to pay this additional fraction of his taxes, and he insisted that this was the only position consistent with traditional Quaker teaching regarding war.
Maule’s critics asked him why he continued to pay other taxes (like excise fees) or the remaining portion of his general tax — since surely some of these taxes would also go to pay for war.
Nathan Hall compared Maule’s stand to someone trying to avoid drinking intoxicating beverages by, for instance, only drinking 75% of a bottle of 50-proof (25% alcohol) liquor:
We both have a testimony against the use of ardent spirits, but are, being very thirsty, placed in a situation where we can get no water except some that has a small portion of whiskey in it.
Being under the necessity of taking something, thee may, by inquiry and calculation, find what proportion of the objectionable article is contained in it, and leave just that much in thy bowl; while my understanding will be that in partaking I partake of both good and bad, and in refusing refuse both.
So that with me the question is and has been, not what portion I should pay so much as whether any at all.
Maule responded by trying to draw a sharp line between ordinary civil taxes, which like a debt he must pay regardless of how some of it may be used, and explicit war taxes, which fall under a different rule:
The arguments used in reference to what disposition the officers of the law might make of the money collected appeared to me to be valueless.…
I am not accountable for the acts of other men: if I owe a just debt, I must pay it; if the person receiving the money uses it for a bad purpose, the accountability is with him; but if he demand money of me avowedly to be used in any way to the plundering of my neighbor, destroying his property, or taking his life, then if I furnish money thus demanded I become an accomplice in the evil work and accountable for the sin.
I consider our civil taxes a just debt that should be promptly paid, but I am satisfied that no human authority has either a moral or a religious right to demand of me money or means of any kind to aid in destroying the lives and property of my fellow-men.
Samuel Allinson put forward the most forceful attack on the tax-as-debt analogy in .
First off, he denied outright that God has commanded us to give Caesar anything that Caesar plans to put to a sinful purpose: “if tribute is demanded for a use that is antichristian, it seems right for every Christian to deny it, for Cæsar can have no title to that which opposes the Lord’s command.”
Having knocked out the divine pillar upholding taxpaying as a moral duty, he then proceeds to attack the idea that taxation represents some sort of secularly-contracted debt, or part of an implied “social contract.”
Allinson argues that no Christian would agree to the terms of a contract that might require him to do the devil’s work:
Every valid contract is voluntarily entered into, and as it is the duty of every one previously to see that his engagement is innocent, so when his promise is purchased by a consideration given it would be dishonest and deceitful not to perform it, the other party having, as it were, deposited so much effects in his hands, which he is to render back according to agreement and when received the receiver has a right to apply it as he pleases without any account to the payer, but in the case of taxes he who gives has a right to call to such an account and therefore seems himself liable for and privy to the application.
Every man has or has not given his assent to the government he lives under, in the first, he has formally declared his allegiance thereto, in the latter, that allegiance is implied in consideration of his receiving the protection and benefit of it in the safety of his person and the security of his property, in both, it is no more than to be “true and faithful” which can never mean a compliance with every requisition, for we owe a superior allegiance to the King of Kings, and whenever the requisitions of man run counter thereto we “ought to obey God rather than men”
…
We have never entered into any contract, express or implied, for the payment of taxes for war, nor the performance of anything contrary to our religious duties…
Conclusion?
So have we made any progress here?
We’ve at least been able to review the question from several angles and to get some historical perspective on how it has been wrestled with.
I think I’ve demonstrated that both of the extreme positions — that paying taxes makes you a fully-guilty accomplice in whatever the government then does, or that paying taxes because it is involuntary is a decision without ethical import — have serious flaws.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the Christian and the legal viewpoints, but as an atheist and an anarchist, to me those viewpoints are often only tangentially advisory at best and mere curiosities at worst.
For me the question is an ethical one that has to be resolved with my reason and my conscience.
And as best as I can make out:
I am under no original ethical obligation to pay a tax.
Taxpaying is not in and of itself good, and I did not in reality enter into something akin to an agreement or contract that I would be unethically violating by failing to pay.
Given that, I have to evaluate my decision to pay or not to pay a tax by looking at what consequences I expect will result — in other words, by imagining two worlds, one in which I paid the tax and one in which I haven’t — and choosing from them which one I’d prefer to be in.
By doing this, I also imagine two of me, one who paid the tax and one who didn’t, and I choose which one I want to become.
In doing this, as with so many other decisions, some of my considerations are ethicalish (which of these worlds is more just? which of the possible me am I more proud of?) and some are more ordinarily self-interested (in which world am I more satisfied or better-off or esteemed?).
This is, as far as I can tell, how it is and how it should be.
And where this has led me so far is where I’m at.
Resisting some taxes completely (the federal income tax), others not-so completely (federal excise taxes), others hardly at all (the state sales tax), others dysfunctionally (the self-employment tax, which I don’t pay voluntarily, but which I accept will probably be seized).
Along the way, I recalculate my situation and recalibrate my decisions based on my best judgment and my evolving understanding.
And these wanderings through the thoughts of people who have grappled with these conundrums before me don’t hurt.
Anthony Benezet is one of the giants of 18th century American Quakerism, particularly well-known for his efforts towards the abolition of slavery.
He was one of the signers of the “epistle of tender love and caution” that can be considered the founding document of American war tax resistance.
I’ve tried to find some additional information about Benezet’s attitudes toward tax resistance, but have so far only been able to find a fragmentary record that hints at more extensive writings that either no longer exist or that I haven’t managed to locate yet.
I found some good information in George S. Brookes’s Friend Anthony Benezet ().
From a letter to John Smith, :
Some time last week we understood a meeting was proposed by William Brown and John Churchman [two other “epistle” signers] to be held with all those who had refused to pay the Last Year’s Tax, to which we understood our English Friends intended to attend; as this proposal begat some uneasiness in some of us O.J. [“Very likely Owen Jones” — George S. Brookes] and myself went up to William Brown and told the Friends there that we must declare our disunity with said meeting, and on our own and the behalf of many of our Friends who we were assured could not approve of it as it will have a tendency to prejudice the mind of many young people and induce them to come to hasty conclusions.
Howsoever we were told the time was too short to contradict the meeting, which was held.
Where after a pretty deal of conversation it was concluded that the matter was now grown to such a height as to make it necessary to carry it to the Yearly Meeting.
The only matter in debate seemed how it should be introduced there, which I understand to be concluded to be done by the channel of the Meeting of Suffering, and as the matter will be probably debated at that Meeting next Fifth day, thought it necessary to acquaint ffd. of Burlington of it.
I hope they will with me think it their duty to attend.
We are also to have a Meeting of Suffering next Seventh day morning, before the meeting of ministers.
I need not expatiate on the matter as it speaks for itself: but remain in great haste as the boat is just going.
We have professed to be called & redeemed from the spirit of the world, from that prevalent pride & indulgence so contrary to the low, humble, self-denying life of Christ & his immediate followers; but have we indeed been such, has not our conformity to the world, our engagements of life, in order to please ourselves & gain wealth, with little regard to the danger to the better part, been productive to all the evils pointed out in the Gospel, has it not naturally led us & begot a desire in our children to live in conformity to other people; hence the sumptuousness of our dwellings, our equipage, our dress; furniture & the luxury of our tables have become a snare to us & a matter of offence to the thinking part of mankind; and the mind has been raised in our children & often in ourselves from the meekness & self-denial of the Gospel, into resentment in defence of what is become as our Gods; and the meek humble & poor self-denying life of Christ is become of no repute, or rather as a Shepherd was to the Egyptians.
The suffering providence which now is displayed over us seems particularly calculated to bring us to our selves, in some respects, as the trials & devastation is greater upon those whose possessions are most expensive, & have been at the greatest pains & expenses in adorning their pleasant pictures.
I trust this, at least, will teach us, in future, to live more agreeable to our profession; whereby our wants being made less, the perplexing, dangerous snares & engagements which attend the amassing & use of wealth would be much lessened.
If this afflictive providence does induce us to begin anew upon the true foundation of our principles, in that low & humble state of mind & conduct which becomes & indeed constitutes the real followers of Christ, it will have done much for us.
In , French diplomat Gérard de Reyneval, who was stationed in America, reported back to his government on the troubles caused to the revolutionary war effort by Quaker pacifism.
He said he had interviewed Benezet and that Benezet “at last declared, yielding to my arguments, that, agreeing with most of the fraternity, he thought that the Quakers ought to submit to the actual government and pay taxes, without questioning the use to which these might be put; but that they had weak brethren among them, whose scruples they were obliged to respect.”
Perhaps so, but I hear tell that there’s a letter co-authored by Benezet and a “B. Mason” under the title “Some Brief remarks offered as Reasons why we ought not to pay Taxes to support War.”
Alas, I haven’t yet been able to find a copy of this.
(See The Picket Line for for the text of that letter.)
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your several favors… except your thoughts on the payments of taxes for war, which by some mistake I conclude was left out in closing the packet.
As that is a subject much under the consideration of Friends [it] would have been particularly satisfactory to have seen your thoughts upon it.
Inclosed I send a few of mine of that subject on the occasion therein mentioned as they are the first I have communicated to any friend in writing.
If there be anything too strongly suggested I shall take it kindly if you’ll note it, as I have a care on me that we do not, in furthering this testimony which I have faith to believe is founded in the truth, do anything to support it in a wrong zeal and not according to knowledge.
As it is a step in the reformation that crosses a received testimony in Society more than perhaps any other, we had need to step wisely in it.
The want of your thoughts on paying taxes has hitherto prevented my sending Timothy Davis an account of your care and concern for him, hoping they would before long come to hand.
I have not seen him for some time but often hear from him; he is doubtless too much in the love of, and conformity to the world, and not enough the meekness and simplicity becoming his profession, as, indeed is the case with too many others.
Our friend Abraham Griffith had a large opportunity with him and his adherents who stand out against the body, please to be referred to him for his state and that of the shattered meeting where he lives.
He has been writing against Friends under the character of vindicating of himself, with which I was grieved and sent him word by his and my friend, who had seen his performance, my prospects of such a procedure.
He has not fit yet to publish it.
Davis eventually did publish it, in , under the title “An Address to the People called Quakers, concerning the manner in which they treated Timothy Davis, for writing and publishing a Piece on Taxation.”
I haven’t seen this leaflet yet, but hope to get a peek at it through interlibrary loan.
(See The Picket Line for ) One of these days maybe I’ll have a chance to scavenge through the various Quaker archives back in Pennsylvania.
Brown continues:
I have several times felt much for Timothy and longed for his restoration, and though I have several times begun to write to him I have felt a cautious fear, and though when I saw him while under dealing, the way to freedom seemed open between us, yet it is not to write.
Perhaps you may not be so restrained.
His letter to Abraham upon the subject of taxes shows him to be in the reasoning.
Benezet wrote to George Dillwyn about Moses Brown’s letter (unmatched left-quote in the original):
What I mentioned to Sister Peggy was the desire I had to communicate parts of Moses Brown’s letter relating to the payment of taxes for the purposes of war.
This testimony he appears fully convinced is founded on truth, and sends me a copy of a letter he had purposed to send to friends in England on that head, but at the same time he appears very desirous friends should not do anything in a wrong zeal, not according to knowledge more especially as he says it is a step in the reformation that crosses a received testimony in society more than perhaps any other, we had need to step wisely in it.
He adds: “It is apprehended the many difficulties friends were under at their first appearance and the manner of the English collecting their taxes, being such that a refusal must have greatly encreased them, the first reformers were excused from that burden, and permitted to pay them, that by so doing they might (as George Fox said in an epistle on the subject in ) better claim their liberty.
The trials (he further says) of those who may refuse the payments of taxes will be increased at this time by their conduct being construed into a disaffection to their country; and we hope will be a bar to any’s running in a forward spirit to become reformers without feeling the meek & humbling evidence of truth.
“we fear some take up the testimony more on account of the authority that demands the taxes than because they are used for war”
Another letter to Benezet from Moses Brown, dated , touches on Timothy Davis again:
Having had a concern for some time for Timothy Davis I took an opportunity with our friend John Lloyd and paid him a visit, and while there introduced your concern for him and read your observations concerning him and his state, which he seemed to take well, and said they would be of service if attended to, and on the whole I believe Timothy sees he has missed it but can’t get down enough to submit to the cross and acknowledge his mistake whereby he might be reconciled to his brethren.
He seems to think friends have been too hard with him, but yet said he thought at times Friends were as near or nearer than ever.
He continues to have Meetings by himself and goes some in the neighborhood round and preaches to his adherents.
As to taxes, he told us he expected one account that he could not pay, which I have since to mention to others who have paid all, even some who had been on appointment to treat with Timothy.
I think if he could be prevailed on to drop his Meetings at home and not go abroad preaching to others he would very soon apply to be restored, which I mention believing if you attend to your concern on his account it may be useful to him.
Your notes on taxes are satisfactory.
We having for some time an apology for those who refuse the payment of taxes, our meeting for sufferings have of late appointed a committee to examine it, which has been done, and alterations & additions made, and it has been proposed to send it to your meeting for sufferings for your approbation before it is printed, and I expect it will be forwarded soon after our next Meeting for Sufferings.
It is pretty extensive on the subject, containing near 60 quarto pages.
Should friends think it suitable at this time to publish it, I have thought it might come in as an appendix although it has been written by one friend, diverse others having assisted in collecting material and suggesting their prospects, it is at present undetermined whether it will be best for one or more to sign it, which occasioned the proposal of sending it to you.
The subject is weighty and should be well considered, those friends in our meeting who pay the taxes of whom there are a number of concerned friends and leading members seem to be much more cordially consenting to the publication than could be expected.
The principle difficulty with some of them and those of us who decline is we fear some take up the testimony more on account of the authority that demands the taxes than because they are used for war.
Such we fear instead of forwarding will eventually retard the testimony, and as some Friends refuse all taxes, even those for civil uses as well as those clear for war and others that are mixed, and thereby dropping our testimony of supporting civil government by readily contributing thereto, it has been a fear whether this variety of conduct won’t mar rather than promote the work.
Could we be more united in the ground of our testimony and in our practice in it, I should have more hopes of its speedy obtaining in society.
A time will doubtless come when a smaller proportion will be for war than at present when the greater part being for civil uses, friends may pay as there is and ought to be according to the apostle, a conscientiousness in paying to the support of civil government as well as refuse that for war, to refuse the payment of such when even a lesser part be mixed for war before we applied to the authority to separate them would not at present be my place, but probably before that time come when the lesser part will be for war friends may be agreed to ask a separation which, if it should be refused, we might be united in refusing even those the greater part of which may be for civil uses.
I understand some Friends have fallen in with or been overpowered by the common argument that civil government is upheld by the sword, and therefore they decline paying to its support, which appears to me a great weakness, for I see a material distinction between civil government and military, or a state of war, and on this distinction our ancient testimonies was and remain to be supportable of paying tribute & customs for the support of the civil, and yet to refuse to pay trophy money and other expenses solely for war.
Civil government is in the restoring & supporting power, yet there is a separation, as of the precious from the vile, in respect of this subject, through the lusts and fallen ages under the specious claim of being the disciples and followers of the Prince of Peace, have greatly contributed to cloud and obscure it.
The thoughts on paying taxes of Samuel Allinson is well thought of even by those who yet pay them, and as he has got diverse arguments not in the piece now sent to the clerk of your Meeting for Sufferings, I have suggested to him if Friends with you should agree to the publication of anything, I thought some Friend might, out of them all, make the apology much more complete, which I could wish as done in preference to publishing this now sent.
On , Benezet wrote to Robert Pleasants, saying:
The consistency of paying tax for war is becoming so interesting a subject to the Society that I trust it will be agreeable to you to see some note which we have made on that weighty subject and which by a copy or other I request you will communicate to our dear Friend Edward Stabler with whom we much sympathize in the loss of his dear companion; but cannot write to him as I could wish, I have not even time to read over the copy so that you must help omission we have a care that is furthering this testimony which we have faith to believe is founded on truth not to do any thing to forward or support it in a wrong zeal and not according to knowledge.
As it is a step in the reformation that so directly crosses a received testimony in Society more than any other we had need to step carefully and wisely in it.
He that believes makes not haste.
And that’s the last word I’ve been able to uncover.
Benezet died in .
Timothy Davis rejoined the orthodox Meeting in .
It seems from these excerpts that a number of war tax resisting Quakers were working to assemble a major argument or statement of doctrine on the subject that could be published by the Society under the imprimatur of their Meeting — probably incorporating Allinson’s work.
I haven’t been able to find any drafts of this, though, if any exist.
Here are some excerpts from the journal of American Quaker David Cooper concerning Quaker conscientious objectors who were imprisoned for refusing to pay militia exemption fines:
On , my son Paul, my brother’s son James, and two other young men, were taken prisoners by a constable and several armed men, for a military fine of £15 each.
They were allowed to return in and ordered to attend on the Colonel at Haddonfield , when they were again permitted to return, with orders to meet in a short time at the same place.
I then felt a freedom to accompany them.
On our arrival, William Harrison, the Sheriff, the Colonel, Captains, and other officers were met.
I had much conversation with them; they appeared very moderate, but were very earnest for me to pay the fine, and not suffer our sons to be committed to prison.
I told them they were aware that our religious principles forbade it; the young men were in their possession, and I had no desire to persuade them to deviate from what they believed their duty as officers required; but only wished them to use their power in a manner that would afford peace hereafter.
It was a matter of conscience; they ought therefore to be very tender, and not use rigor.
If they were committed I saw no end.
They could never pay the fines without wounding their own minds, nor could their friends do it for them.
They appeared friendly, and the young men being under the Sheriff’s care, he directed them to go home, and meet him at Woodbury at an appointed day.
He afterwards sent them word they need give themselves no further trouble till he called for them.
So the matter rested.
In the fore part of the winter of same year, I went with Thomas Redman to Cumberland, to join with a Committee of Salem Monthly Meeting, in endeavoring to obtain the enlargement of a young man, who had been nearly a year in close confinement, for non-payment of military fines, and very severely treated.
But the Friends on the appointment were so timid and fearful, that little could be done.
I desired a meeting with some of their principal men, but it could not then be obtained.
John Reeve went with us to see their Colonel, one Holmes.
He was very sour, and told us the Quakers were only fit to live by themselves, as we would not defend our property.
We had much conversation with him.
He appeared bitter and severe against the young man, saying he would soon have more company, as warrants were out for several others.
We then visited the prisoner, whom we found in a calm, sweet disposition.
He had resorted to making shoe heels, and earned sufficient to maintain himself.
Although our labors afforded little prospect of benefit, we returned home with satisfaction and peace of mind.
On , I went down again in company with Samuel Allinson.
The season had been so warm, that this day we saw peach blossoms. We now obtained a meeting with several of their principal men, an ex-Congressman, a Counsellor, two Judges, several Assembly men, Priest, Sheriff, &c. We spent several hours in answering their questions and endeavoring to remove their prejudices against the present conduct of Friends.
In the main they appeared to be satisfied, and expressed much satisfaction with this opportunity, which we had reason to believe was of considerable use.
Though they alleged it was not in their power, consistently with law, to release the prisoner until his fines were paid, yet they appeared very uneasy with keeping him there.
His fines were soon afterward paid by one not a Friend, and he was discharged.
Notwithstanding the threat of the sour Colonel, they have not committed another since, that I have heard of.
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
There was plenty about war tax resistance in the Friends Journal in , but it seemed to involve tax resisting Mennonites as least as often as tax resisting Quakers.
The issue announced that the Center on Law and Pacifism was organizing a critical mass style tax resistance action:
The Center… has prepared and has available a “Conscience and Military Tax Resolution,” which may be signed by any conscientious objector to military taxes, witnessed (not necessarily notarized), returned to the Center.
When officially notified by the Center that there are 100,000 such resolutions on file, the signer may carry out his or her resolve to withhold the military portion of the federal income tax.
Alternatively, he or she may deposit the withheld taxes in an escrow account for the World Peace Tax Fund, pending passage by Congress of the WPTF Bill, deposit them in an alternative fund or donate them to some other peace purpose.
The issue was all about anti-war work, and it opened with an article on the history of Quaker war tax resistance by editor Ruth Kilpack.
Excerpts:
[W]e should not suppose that this is a new concern among Friends and members of other Peace Churches, who, by the very nature of our faith, have a conscience tender to such questionings.
For Friends, the searching extends back to the seventeenth century, when Robert Barclay, the English Quaker apologist, wrote in :
We have suffered much in qur country because we neither ourselves could bear arms, nor send others in our place, nor give our money for the buying of drums, standards, and other military attire.
This was the so-called “Trophy Money,” that could be distinguished as such.
But common or “mixed” taxes could not so readily be dealt with, since most Quakers believed it was their duty to pay taxes, and the part allocated to the military could not be separated out from the whole.
Today, like those earlier Quakers, we find ourselves in the same dilemma.
Law-abiding citizens, we continue to find ourselves troubled by the demand that we pay taxes for purposes we cannot in conscience condone.
We cannot pretend that we accept war as a legitimate function of the civil government which we support, and, just as some of our members have refused to serve in the armed services, many are beginning to question the contribution of our money for purposes we eschew for moral, humane, and religious reasons.
Quakers struggled with all these same questionings in the mid-eighteenth century and the period prior to the American Revolution.
One of the most articulate on the subject of war taxes was Samuel Allinson, a young Friend from Burlington, New Jersey, who in wrote “Reasons against war, and paying taxes for its support.”
The Samuel Allinson essay “Reasons against war, and paying taxes for its support” can be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.
Thus, in words written , he deals with the question of “a remnant who desire to be clear of a business so dark and destructive, that we should avoid the furtherance of it in any and every form.”
He describes it as a “stumbling block to others, [which] ought carefully to be avoided,” and sees such avoidance as advancing the Kingdom of the Messiah, that “his will be done on earth as it is done on heaven; a state possible, I presume, or he would not have taught us to pray for it.”
Further, says Samuel Allinson,
We have never entered into any contract expressed or implied for the paym[en]t of Taxes for War, nor the performance of any thing contrary to our Relig[ious] duties, and therefore cannot be looked upon as disaffected or Rebellious to any Gov[ernment] for these refusals, if this be our Testimony under all, which many believe it will hereafter be.
And finally, Samuel Allinson points out that even though earlier Friends paid their taxes (including that going to the military), that is no good reason for our continuing to do so.
It is not to be wondered at, or an argument drawn against a reformation in the refusal of Taxes for War at this Day, that our Brethren formerly paid them; knowledge is progressive, every reform[atio]n had its beginning, even the disciples were for some time ignorant of many religious Truths, tho’ they had the Company and precepts of our Savior…
Friends, we find ourselves in the very position of the Friends being addressed by Samuel Allinson two centuries ago.
For myself, I cannot think it is by sheer accident that I have stumbled upon his words now.
Neither is it by accident that a growing “remnant” of Friends are awakening to the ambivalence we feel in what we profess and what we practice regarding our involvement in the awesome “stumbling block” of nuclear warfare in our own age.
Friends in the past responded to the threats of the age in which they lived according to the light they had.
We of our generation have been given even greater light, and we must respond accordingly.
Given our heritage, if we don’t respond, who will?
In the meantime, I ask you to think on these things and, to paraphrase George Fox’s advice to William Penn, “Pay thy tax as long as thou canst.”
In the issue, Keith Tingle told readers that they should know “how easy it is to do” war tax resistance… at least in his experience:
My own experience in military tax resistance has been rewarding thus far.
By claiming a tax credit for conscientious objection to war on my income tax form, I was refunded $260 from my taxes.
Now that the IRS has discovered its mistake, I am resisting through federal tax court the recollection of this money.
My appearance in tax court has been reported favorably in three local newspapers, providing an opportunity to publicize the Quaker peace testimony, the history of war tax resistance, the economic impact of military spending, the pacifist position on the military draft, the concept of the World Peace Tax Fund, and the legal assistance offered by the Center on Law and Pacifism.
This has been accomplished with a total expense of about $30 and about thirty hours of time.
I have enjoyed the dedicated support of the Committee on War Tax Concerns of Friends Peace Committee and the legal guidance of lawyer Bill Durland at the Center on Law and Pacifism…
The issue noted that conscientious objection to military taxation was on the agenda at the Kent General Meeting in Canterbury, England — though from the sound of it, this was mostly in a theoretical way: presenting the argument that such a thing was a logical and practical counterpart of conscientious objection to military service.
That issue also reported on the case of Cornelia Lehn, an employee of the General Conference Mennonite Church who was trying to convince her employer to stop withholding federal income tax from her salary:
There was a “neither yes nor no” vote on this request by the 500 delegates present.
Those who favored a strong tax resistance program did not Nor did those who wanted members to unquestioningly pay taxes as a Christian duty.
There was a feeling, however, that neither side really lost.
Thirty percent of the delegates were ready for the conference to take action in “some sort of civil disobedience and tax resistance” and it was hoped the number will grow.
I’m struck by this last phrase — “it was hoped the number will grow” — which makes a pretty clear editorial statement of sympathy for those who favored corporate resistance by the Conference and antipathy for “those who wanted members to unquestioningly pay taxes as a Christian duty.”
At this time, few if any Quaker Meetings or organizations were willing to go out on that limb, in spite of strong urgings from Quaker war tax resisters that they do so.
But I don’t remember the Journal betraying an editorial bias when it reported on this debate in Quaker institutions.
One case in point is a report on the New England Yearly Meeting in which the lukewarm statement is made that “We approved a minute asking New England Friends to give prayerful consideration to non-payment of war taxes.”
The New York Yearly Meeting went so far as to “discuss” a “minute on Refusal of Taxes for Military Purposes” and to note that it “was to be commended for consideration by all monthly meetings and individuals.”
The issue had a followup in which the General Conference of the Mennonite Church was proposing launching a lawsuit in which it would seek a judicial ruling to legalize conscientious objection to military taxation, while at the same time it would increase its efforts to pass the “World Peace Tax Fund” legislation.
Maurice McCracken had a piece of autobiography in the issue.
Naturally, it touched on his tax resistance:
I had decided that I would never register again for the draft nor would I consent to being conscripted by the government in any other capacity.
In contradiction to this position, each year on April 15 I was letting the government conscript my money.
Thus I was voluntarily helping the government do what I vigorously declared was wrong.…
Realizing this inconsistency, I decided that in good conscience I could no longer make full payment of my federal taxes.
At the same time, I did not want to stop supporting civilian services supported by the government.
So, in my tax returns I continued to pay the small percentage allocated for civilian use.
The amount that I formerly had given for war purposes I hoped now to give to such causes as the American Friends Service Committee and to support other works of mercy and reconciliation which help remove the roots of violence and war.
As time went on I realized, however, that this was not accomplishing what had been my hope; for year after year the IRS ordered my bank to release money from my account to pay the money I had held back.
I then closed my bank account, and at this point it came to me with complete clarity that by so much as filing tax returns I was giving the IRS assistance in the violation of my own conscience, because the very information I was giving on my tax forms was being used in finally making the collection.
There is something else that those who withhold a portion of their tax on conscientious grounds should realize.
The IRS does not practice line budgeting.
All that it collects goes where the government wants it to go, which in ever-increasing proportion goes to finance wars, past, present and future.
I have not filed any tax returns, nor have I paid any federal income tax.
On , on charges growing out of my refusal to pay this tax, I was given a six-month sentence, which I spent at Allenwood, Pennsylvania, which is run by the Lewisburg penitentiary.
Some two years my release from Allenwood, in , the Presbytery of Cincinnati, on charges quite unrelated to the real issues, suspended me as a minister.
In , this action was upheld by the General Assembly, the highest court of the denomination.
In the presbytery declared my ordination to the ministry no longer valid, making a highly questionable presumption that they could cancel out whatever spiritual grace the Holy Spirit had bestowed on me when I was ordained at a meeting of Chicago Presbytery back in .
For nearly eighteen years our congregation has been a member of the National Council of Community Churches.
I have been accepted as a minister in full standing, and whatever validity my ordination had back in , is, for them, still valid.
A note in the issue recognized 86-year-old Pearl Ewald’s persistent activism: “Pearl Ewald continued her activities for peace, civil rights and war tax resistance, despite a recurring heart condition.
She has been arrested and jailed more than once for stubbornly refusing to discontinue her witness.
On one occasion, although desperately in need of medical attention, she refused to be admitted to a hospital, because it was a segregated institution.”
That same issue mentioned the case of Mennonite war tax resister Bruce Chrisman, “who was convicted of failure to file an income tax return in , was sentenced to one year in Mennonite Voluntary Service,” to which I can only think: “Please don’t throw me in the briar patch, Your Honor!”
“I’m amazed,” said Chrisman.
“I feel very good about the sentence.
The alternative service is probably the first sentence of its kind for a tax case.
I think it reflects the testimony in the trial and its influence on the judge.”
Chrisman could have been sentenced to one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.
A letter from Mildred Thierman in the same issue challenged Friends:
Could we now unite this year in sending a flood of personal declarations to President Carter and our government, saying that we can no longer, in conscience, allow part of our taxes to be used for the purchase of annihilating weapons?
Can we back this up by joining together in significant numbers to withhold whatever portion of our income tax fits our circumstances, in order to make our protest noticed?
A review of Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other Peace Churches in America, , Interpretation and Documents in the issue, summarized its version of the history of Quaker war tax resistance this way:
Testimony against participation in the military and refusal to pay Trophy Money — the English tax to raise money for military regalia (arms were, by law, furnished by the individual soldiers) — were traditional Friends’ observances by the beginning of the period covered by Conscience in Crisis.…
…Friends and other Peace Church members were, by and large, loyal subjects.
They paid taxes “for the King’s use” — including the royal decision to make war.
Friends began to question payment of taxes more broadly.
The essential issue, according to the authors, was that “the individual is responsible for the actions of his government in a free society.”
Israel Pemberton, John Pemberton, John Churchman, John Woolman, and nineteen other Friends petitioned the Assembly on the issue of taxes in :
…Yet as the raising Sums of Money, and putting them into the Hands of Committees, who may apply them to Purposes inconsistent with the peaceable Testimony we profess, and have borne to the World, appears to us in its Consequences to be destructive of our religious Liberties, we apprehend many among us will be under the Necessity of suffering rather than consenting thereto by the Payment of a Tax for such Purposes…
By the time of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting sessions, Friends decided not to discuss the issue of “mixed” taxes because of a significant lack of consensus.
Yet, Friends were increasingly beginning to question less direct forms of support for war not traditionally inconsistent with the peace testimony.
an illustration from the issue of Friends Journal
In the issue, Alan Eccleston wrote of his calling as a peacemaker, and how that manifested for him.
Excerpts:
For me personally, the witness to peace has led to war tax resistance.
Over the past six years of this witness I have been — and still am — strengthened by others who are not, themselves, war tax resisters.
The witness of war tax resistance is one that raises fear.
We have been conditioned to fear the Internal Revenue Service as something nearly equivalent to a ruthless secret police, in its imagined power to terrorize.
Most of us, unwilling to admit, even to ourselves, that fear alone would block us from a spiritual witness, find other reasons for willingly paying to produce weapons that can annihilate all humankind.
Based on my own experience, I would say fear imagined is greater in most people than fear actually experienced, and that this is by a factor of ten, at least — maybe 100. Fortunately, borrowing from each other’s experience and knowing others will be there to help us, we can find the courage to move ahead.
Then comes the surprise.
With dread and foreboding we make our stand.
Then, gradually, we become aware that a great weight has been lifted from us.
That nagging, cumbersome burden of blocking from consciousness our own complicity with this evil has fallen away.
We are lighter, more open, more truthful.
We are free, at last, to speak truth to power.
When this affirmation is truly clear in our lives, it will be seen and felt by the president and by Congress.
As in , when C.O. status was incorporated in the Selective Service Act, the tax laws will then be amended to create C.O. status for taxpayers and a “World Peace Tax Fund.”
That legislation, approved by the world’s leading arms supplier, will move the world one step closer to peace.
That portion of our population (approximately four percent during the Vietnam War) which is pacifist would then contribute to peace, not war, and these contributions would total in excess of $2.3 billion every single year — year after year.
For the first time in history, peace programs would have a significant budget.
The funds could be used to support: a National Academy of Peace and Conflict Resolution; research to develop and evaluate non-military, nonviolent solutions to international conflict; disarmament; retaining workers displaced by conversion from military production; international exchanges for peaceful purposes; improvement of international health, education and welfare; and education of the public about the above activities.
The Friends General Conference in drafted “A Statement of Conscience by Quakers Concerned” and collected signatures.
The statement said, in part:
We advocate conscientious refusal to register for the draft and wish young men of draft age throughout the United States to know that if, after thoughtfully considering the reasons and consequences, they refuse to register, we will give them practical and moral support in every way we can, even though our willingness to do so may result in our prosecution, fines and possible imprisonment for disobeying a man-made law that leads us in the direction of war.
Mary Bye wrote in response that although she signed the statement, it felt to her to be something “like a hollow gesture.”
[M]aybe we [adults] should make sure about the beam in our adult eyes before we concentrate on the motes in those bright young eyes of the nineteen- and twenty-year-olds.
“[W]hat would be our reaction to young Quakers pointing out that since it takes money as well as men to fight a war, they encourage Friends beyond draft age to refuse war taxes?
Finally, the issue presented the case of Ruth Larson Hatcher.
Excerpt:
Not wishing to contribute tax money for war-making purposes, she managed for years to have an income just sufficient for survival but not large enough to require payment of taxes.
Then in a friend persuaded her to accept the management and bookkeeping of a children’s art center.
Conscientious and religious beliefs caused her to oppose acceptance of insurance benefits under Social Security, as well as the payment of taxes for war.
Her claims for exemption under various sections of the Internal Revenue code of as well as under the First and Fifth Amendments were routinely rejected, until a Supreme Court judge approved her use of Form No. 4361. It seems that this form (and another previously ignored by the authorities) had been used by an Amish sect to avoid the taxes (and payments) of the social security system.
Although the Court of Appeals handed down the opinion that exemptions were enacted to accommodate individuals commanded by their conscience or their religion to oppose acceptance of insurance benefits, it refused to accept that this was the exact status of petitioner Ruth Hatcher.
It’s a little unclear what took place here, but it sounds like this is saying that the courts left an opening for people who were not members of sects that qualified for an exemption from the social security system but who held similar beliefs to gain the same exemption.
Interesting if true.
I was able to find the appeals court decision that ruled against Hatcher, and the earlier Tax Court decision to the same effect, and the District Court decision that affirmed the Tax Court decision.
I was not able to find any record of Supreme Court action on the case, but I did find some other cases that cited the Appeals Court decision as precedent, which seems to suggest that the Supreme Court didn’t overturn it (as the above excerpt implies).
War tax resistance in the Friends Journal in
Is the dilemma facing pacifist Quakers who are asked to pay a war tax best resolved by conscientious objection and civil disobedience, or by lawsuits and lobbying?
Both approaches could be found in the pages of the Friends Journal in .
On , the Supreme Court ruled, unanimously, in U.S. v. Lee, that an Amish person who conscientiously objected to the social security system did not thereby have a First Amendment right to opt out of it.
The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge it because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.
Because the broad public interest in maintaining a sound tax system is of such a high order, religious belief in conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax.
As a reductio ad absurdum on the losing legal argument, the court noted that if Lee were allowed to assert the right to opt out of social security on conscientious grounds, it would open the door to other similar challenges:
If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax.
A note in the issue of the Friends Journal noted that this had also slammed the door on the various First Amendment arguments for conscientious objection to war taxes that people had been pursuing:
In the light of a negative judgment rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court against an Amish employer on , the judicial action committee of the General Conference Mennonite Church has recommended to its General Board that a planned suit against the IRS on the issue of tax withholding “be put on indefinite hold.”
Having been turned away by the judicial branch, they decided to double-down on the legislative:
Rather than take a negatively-shrouded course of action at this time, the General Conference committee urged the General Board to make more money available “to promote the World Peace Tax Fund.”
an ad from the issue of Friends Journal
The issue reviewed two books on war tax resistance: Affirm Life: Pay for Peace from the Historic Peace Church Task Force on Taxes, and People Pay for Peace by William Durland.
The first of these opened with this challenging statement:
A wedge of contradiction is opening a wide fissure in our peace testimony.
While nearly all of us declare ourselves to be conscientiously opposed to war and preparations for war, and while many work tirelessly for its elimination, the overwhelming number of us continue voluntarily to pay for what we openly abhor.
The book, according to the review, covered the “biblical and historical basis for military tax refusal” and presented “a systematic exposition of the proposal for a World Peace Tax Fund.”
It also “gives large place to the significance and importance of achieving religious clarity and motivation.”
However, “[i]t does not… adequately address the mechanics of military tax refusal.”
That gap was filled by the second of the books, of which the reviewer said: “Most useful, I think, is the section entitled, ‘How to Refuse to Pay the Military Tax.’ ”
The same issue had an obituary for Lois Mae Handsaker which noted: “Before there were any peace marches in , she was apprehended during the picketing of the local post office to protest the use of income taxes for war.”
The issue announced that the Iowa Peace Network would be collecting money withheld from taxes by war tax resisters and using it to buy grain which it would submit to an IRS office in lieu of tactics to “symbolize opposition to taxes for the Pentagon and emphasize the need for funding human services.”
The article noted: “In the event that the IRS refuses to accept the grain, it will be donated to local meal programs for the needy.”
Alas, the notice followed-up that news with the silly idea of protesting against war taxes by writing “not for military spending” in the memo field of the check you write to the IRS.
“If enough people take this step, a class action suit against the IRS may be filed” — by some sort of magic, one supposes.
At Canada’s Parliament passed a “Constitution Act” which made it yet more independent of the British government.
The act enshrined “freedom of conscience and religion” as a fundamental freedom.
The Canadian Peace Tax Fund Committee said it was going to “test” this “by assuming that [our legislators] mean we can divert our defense taxes from killing to peaceful uses, on conscientious grounds.”
The notice of this, in the issue, didn’t give any details as to how this “test” would take place, but pretty quickly shifted to “hopes” that the legislature would enact a Peace Tax Fund in the spirit of the new Constitution Act, so lobbying may have been all the testing they planned to do.
ad from the issue of Friends Journal
Similarly vague was the report from the meeting of Carolina Conservative Friends, which decided on “asking ourselves and other American Friends to make some sort of statement against the use of tax money for military purposes, through coordinated activity in filing our returns .”
A report on the Lake Erie Yearly Meeting also vaguely mentioned “continued explorations within monthly meetings about war-tax resistance.”
Another report on the New York Yearly Meeting said that “[s]ome Friends planned to take further individual action supporting nonregistration and tax refusal.”
This consistent vagueness makes me suspect that there was some embarrassment and certainly no consensus about war tax resistance in these meetings.
Trudy Knowles brought things more in the brass tacks direction in the “Memoirs of a War Resister,” an article that concentrated mostly on the plight of Vietnam War veterans in the United States, that she shared in the issue.
Her resistance included tax resistance:
I do not pay the federal excise tax on my phone bill which is earmarked for the military.
I refuse to pay the 50 percent of my income tax that goes to preparing this country for war.
I put this money instead into an escrow account to be held until the government establishes a means by which this money can be used for the peaceful resolution of national and international conflicts — or until they take it by force.
There was a thoughtful overview of the “Holy Experiment” of William Penn’s founding of a colony run on Quaker principles in Pennsylvania by Margaret H. Bacon in the issue.
Toward the conclusion, it discussed war tax resistance as a possible way of advancing the experiment:
Through [John] Woolman we come to the most pressing unfinished business of our Holy Experiment: freeing ourselves from complicity in war.
Penn and his colonists hoped to govern without weapons, placing their hopes on “seeing what love can do,” as well as on the establishment sometime in the future of the instruments of arbitration, Penn’s Congress of Nations.
Neither the personal practice of nonviolence nor the best efforts of the United Nations have yet worked to rid the world of the threat of war, and now time is running out.
Earlier Friends were at least able to separate themselves from complicity in preparations for war by refusing to pay militia taxes as well as refusing to serve in the militia.
Today the principle of conscientious objection for the bodies of our young men (and perhaps young women) is well established with us, having been pioneered by a handful during the Civil War, a few hundred during World War Ⅰ, and some thousands in World War Ⅱ.
The idea of demanding conscientious objector status for our tax dollars is in its infancy.
In the past years, a few courageous souls have refused to pay the government that portion of their federal income taxes that supports war.
Today more and more monthly meetings and yearly meetings are beginning to wrestle with the problem.
Is it time for the Society of Friends as a whole to get behind this move?
Surely if we did it, and the Mennonites did it, and the Brethren did it, we could make a change in the law.
Is there not some simple, single forward step that we could make together in ?
Some Friends find this issue complicated, because the graduated income tax supports many good things, and Friends who designate their taxes solely for peace purposes are just making it necessary for others to pay solely for war.
The same arguments can be raised against conscientious objection to military service.
But is there not a deep and inward side to tax refusal?
Do some Friends feel, as Woolman felt, that they cannot pay these taxes and still keep in touch with the living and life-giving Holy Spirit?
Let us be tender before we argue with our tax refusers, for they may be pointing our way to new light.
The issue brought the news that “25 members of the Friends House staff in London” had embarked on war tax resistance.
The Meeting for Sufferings of London Yearly Meeting agreed to put 34% of the taxes withheld from the objectors into an escrow account, “the intention being to release it to Inland Revenue after assurances that it would be used for non-military purposes.”
An obituary notice of Roberta Dickinson in the same issue noted that “[s]he supported the peace testimony through organized war tax resistance.”
At the meeting of the Friends World Committee for Consultation, that group decided to refuse to submit withheld taxes to the government from its war tax resisting employees (according to a Journal report ).
Walter Ludwig reflected on contemporary and historical Quaker war tax resistance in an article he wrote for the issue.
Excerpts:
The writings from George Fox, John Woolman, Joshua Evans, Timothy Davis,
Moses Brown, and Samuel Allinson that are mentioned in Ludwig’s essay can be found in the book American Quaker War Tax Resistance.
Members of our meeting [Rahway and Plainfield (New Jersey) Monthly Meeting] several years ago began as individuals to withhold a percentage of their income tax in protest of its use for war.
No devastating consequences have resulted.
Courteous, almost sympathetic Internal Revenue Service agents have visited one member, telling her a red tab has been affixed to her folder in the file.
She hopes the IRS will soon run out of red tabs.
I have withheld the military third, sending it the first year to the American Friends Service Committee and since then to the Quaker Peace Tax Fund, custody of Albany (N.Y.) Monthly Meeting.
The first response from the IRS came just .
They want the “underpaid tax,” $939.58 in penalty and interest.
My refusal to support mass murder will likely be ignored, as have been my explanatory notes of “conscientious deduction” sent quarterly during the past three years
In my letters of refusal I have mentioned membership in the Religious Society of Friends.
Do I thereby leave with the IRS the impression that of course Quakers do not pay military taxes, as they once refused to pay tithes to a state church they could not in conscience support?
But has refusal to pay taxes for war been within the main stream of Quakerly testimony and practice?
May war-tax-resisting Friends today take aid and comfort from a tradition of military tax refusal?
George Fox was clear on the matter.
A restored portrait of Fox presents him as a man of property from a well-to-do family with enough investments to give him private means.
He paid his taxes.
If we pay we can plead with Caesar and plead with them who hath our custom and hath our tribute.
Refuse to pay and they will say: “How can we defend you against foreign enemies and protect everyone and their estates and keep down thieves and murders?”
And again:
To bear and carry weapons to fight with… the man of peace cannot act… but have paid their tribute [taxes] which they may still do for peace’s sake… In so doing Friends may better claim their liberty.
Sara Fell kept the Fox family account book after George married her mother, Margaret.
Her accounts disclose that the family paid the poll tax to carry on England’s war against the Dutch in .
When England fought the French, the entry reads: “ by M paid to the Poll Money by father and mother 1 pound 2 shilling.”
Robert Barclay, foremost Quaker theologian, wrote in :
We have suffered much in our country because neither ourselves would bear arms nor send others in our place, nor give our money for the buying of drums, standards, and other military attire.
Such “trophy money,” as these direct taxes were called, many early Friends refused to pay.
Most, however, paid the general or “mixed” taxes even in time of war.
Their willingness may be found in the advice of the gathering at Balby encouraging “all who are indebted to the world endeavor to discharge the same.”
As Fox put it in , “Keep out of debt; owe to no man anything but love… Pay to Caesar, as to your fellows, what is due.”
[H]omespun-clad John Woolman was given a cool reception by elegant London Friends.
They were securely of the propertied class with enterprises in heavy industry and were largely in control of the Atlantic trade.
They would not give their persons to the business of war-making, but did they make nice distinctions in how the empire used their tax money in extending colonial rule?
Philadelphia Friends, like London’s, were well placed in government and trade.
“The richest,” wrote a visiting London doctor, “talk only about selling of flour and the low price it bore.”
Using George Fox as authority, some Quakers tried to persuade others to pay a tax levied for an armed expedition against Canada in .
When war with the French and Indians finally came in , John Churchman, Anthony Benezet, John Woolman, and other Friends refused to pay war taxes that were mixed with taxes for civil uses.
In extenuation of Fox and early war-tax-paying Quakers in England Woolman said:
To me it appears that there was less danger of their being infected with the spirit of the world than is the case with us now.
[They] had had little share in civil government… our minds have been turned to the improvement of our country, to merchandise and the sciences… and a carnal mind is gaining among us.
When ten Quaker members of the Pennsylvania Assembly resigned rather than vote for the War Supply Bill of , the remaining “secular” Friends voted the war taxes and penalties for nonpayment.
The abdicating legislators and their supporters in the Society then began close cooperation with Mennonites, Dunkers, and other pacifist groups that carried on through the Revolution.
When military officers appeared in Mount Holly to draft for the French and Indian War, Woolman noted in his Journal, “In this time of commotion some of our young men left these parts and tarried abroad till it was over” (a prelude to Vietnam).
Woolman in had recorded his uneasiness about paying war taxes:
A few years past, money having been made current in our province for carrying on wars… by taxes laid on the inhabitants, my mind was often affected with the thought of paying such taxes… To refuse the active payment of a tax which our Society generally paid was exceedingly disagreeable but to do a thing contrary to my conscience appeared yet more dreadful.
Joshua Evans in wrote:
I found it best for me to refuse paying taxes on my estate which went to pay the expenses of war, and although my part might appear at best as a drop in the ocean, yet the ocean, I considered, was made up of many drops.
Committees appointed by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting agreed on an “epistle of tender love and caution to Friends in Pennsylvania” signed by those who felt free to do so and forwarded to monthly and quarterly meetings.
It was in keeping with William Penn’s earlier statement, made when he refused to send money to England for war against Canada:
No man can be true to God and be false to his own conscience, nor can he extort from it a tribute to carry on any war, much less offensive, nor ought true Christians pay for it.
I’ve tried many times to track down a source for this Penn quote, with no success.
The war was in full swing when queries sent annually by London Yearly Meeting to English Friends were adopted in by yearly meetings in Virginia, Maryland, Philadelphia, New York, and New England.
They asked:
Do you bear a testimony against bearing arms and paying trophy money or being in any manner concerned in privateers letters of mark, or dealing in prize goods as such?
Friends were expected not to pay voluntarily to hire a substitute for military service or voluntarily pay any tax solely and directly for military purposes.
Every other tax, even mixed taxes that would be used in part for the military budget, Friends were expected in conscience to pay.
The Revolution shifted the locus of tax-raising authority for Americans from London to state and federal governments.
Whereupon Timothy Davis in circulated his tract titled, “Advice of a Quaker to Pay Tax to American Revolution.”
War taxes, especially mixed ones, should be paid, wrote Davis, and he quoted a weighty Friend, Thomas Story, who had declared, “If the officer demand tax from me and tell me ’tis to maintain war, I’ll pay it.”
Sandwich (Mass.) Monthly Meeting took a dim view of the Davis publication and disowned its author.
Quaker books of discipline of the time counseled disowning members who paid war taxes.
During the Revolution Moses Brown reminded Friends:
Our ancient testimonies were and remain to be supportable of paying tribute and customs for the support of civil and yet refuse to pay trophy money and other expenses solely for war.
He suggested Friends might ask, with the war over, for a separation of taxes into their several budget purposes.
“If it should be refused we might be united in refusing even those the greater part of which may be for civil uses.”
The clearest Quaker statement on war taxes during the Revolution came from the pen of Samuel Allinson, a young Friend of Burlington, New Jersey.
In Allinson circulated manuscript copies of his “Reasons against War and paying taxes for its Support.”
War is not a defensible function of civil government, reasoned Allinson, and each generation must apply biblical truths to the issues of its own time.
Peace committees of monthly meetings might well spend a session with Friend Allinson’s cogent thinking.
Quaker support of withholders of war taxes was recorded in a minute approved by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in , reaffirmed in , and used as model for a minute approved by New York Yearly Meeting.
It reads, in part:
Refusal to pay the military portion of taxes is in keeping with an honorable testimony, fully in keeping with the history and practice of Friends… We warmly approve of people following their consciences and openly approve civil disobedience in this matter under divine compulsion… We ask all to consider carefully the implications of paying taxes that relate to war-making… Specifically we offer encouragement and support to people caught up in the problem of seizure, and of payment against their will.
The same issue noted that a minute passed at the gathering of the New England Yearly Meeting “supported efforts to establish a World Peace Tax Fund and current forms of war tax refusal.”
Also in that issue was an announcement about the formation of a war tax resisters’ penalty fund:
The Tax Resister’s Penalty Fund is a network designed to distribute the burden of penalties or interest levied against military tax resisters.
For example, 200 people would share a $500 penalty at $2.50 each.
For information contact TRPF, Box 25, North Manchester, IN 46962.
The fund was still in operation at that address until fairly recently.
It has not formally disbanded, though it appears to no longer be operating effectively.
At the upcoming national gathering of NWTRCC at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, I’m going to be presenting a summary of the history of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends (Quakers).
Today I’m going to try to coalesce some of the notes I’ve assembled about how the Quaker practice of war tax resistance evolved, particularly in America, during the period of time surrounding and including the American Revolution.
The American Revolution and Aftermath ()
When Quakers resisted tithes, militia exemption taxes, explicit war taxes, and things of that nature, the government would usually respond by seizing the resister’s property and selling it at auction in order to recover the tax.
(In the earliest years of the Society of Friends, many such resisters were imprisoned, but this practice later became uncommon.)
Quaker meetings developed a protocol that good Quakers were supposed to follow when such property seizures took place.
They were not supposed to cooperate in any way, but neither were they supposed to resist.
They were not supposed to suggest which property the tax collector might seize, and they certainly were not supposed to leave the amount of the tax lying out on the table in plain view (some Quakers evidently tried this way of getting out of resisting).
Instead, when the collector came and said he was going to seize property for unpaid taxes, the Quaker was supposed to step aside and say something along the lines of “do as you think you must,” perhaps explaining the reason for his refusal to pay, but not otherwise interfering.
If the collector seized property worth more than the amount of tax, and was able to auction it off for more than the amount owed, the collector (if honest) might try to return the surplus to the resister.
A Quaker was not supposed to accept such money, it having been tainted by the process.
(However, if the collector seized too many items, and only auctioned off some of them, the Quaker could accept the return of the additional items themselves.)
This part of the protocol made Quakers especially vulnerable to particularly unscrupulous tax collectors.
Such a collector could seize the most valuable thing he could get his hands on, sell it, apply some of the proceeds to the tax, and then pocket the rest.
Many other collectors were also accused of selling property at cut-rate prices to themselves, to their friends, or in exchange for kick-backs.
The result of all of this meant that tax resisting Quakers were often setting themselves up for considerable financial losses.
These “sufferings” were part of the glory of being a Quaker, and, as such, were well worth the price to some Friends, but to others they were just an unwelcome financial hardship.
Meetings had to be diligent to keep wavering Friends from trying to sneak out from under the requirements to refuse to pay certain taxes, to refuse the return of surplus money, and to not cooperate with the tax collector as a way of trying to ameliorate the burden of the seizure process.
If a Friend failed in any of these ways, someone at their meeting might “produce a testification” against them.
The meeting would then investigate the charges and would send out a delegation to talk to the wayward Quaker and try to bring them back into compliance.
This often would include the Quaker standing up at a future meeting to read an acknowledgment of their error and promise never to do it again.
If the Quaker refused to get with the program, the meeting could “disown” them — basically kick them out of the meeting.
Simply not reporting any “sufferings” to the meeting for failure to pay war tax might be enough to start this process.
(“We notice thou hastn’t had any property seized this year for failure to pay the bounty tax, Friend Johnson.
Care to tell us how thou hast been so lucky?”)
American Quakers during the American Revolution were, in many places, pillaged ruthlessly by the authorities by this process of property seizure.
Several things contributed to this:
The Society of Friends was not united.
Dissident Quakers promoted paying taxes to the rebel government, and some “Free Quakers” even abandoned the peace testimony entirely to enlist in the rebel army.
This made it even harder for resisting Quakers to appeal to Quaker beliefs and practices as an explanation for their stand.
Quakers had wavered in their war tax resistance stand in the recent past, for instance when the Quaker-led Pennsylvania Assembly voted to tax the colony to pay for fortifications during the French & Indian War.
This was deployed as a precedent to argue that Quakers only have scruples against war tax paying at convenient times or depending on their sympathy with the particular war or government.
The Quaker peace testimony was often publicly expressed with an eye to being reassuring to the authorities.
So often it would include phrasing like this:
[T]he setting up and putting down kings and governments is God’s peculiar prerogative; for causes best known to himself: And that it is not our business to have any hand or contrivance therein; nor to be busy bodies above our station, much less to plot and contrive the ruin, or overturn of any of them, but to pray for the king, and safety of our nation, and good of all men, that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all godliness and honesty, under the government which God is pleased to set over us.
For this reason, some Quakers felt that to adhere to this testimony they could not cooperate in any way with the rebel government, as to do so would be to contribute “to plot and contrive” against the king (others disagreed, feeling that the rebel government had become the one “which God is pleased to set over us”).
Such absolutist resisters were easy targets for patriotic anger.
Both armies were authorized to take any property they needed during the course of their campaigns.
They were usually supposed to pay for what they took, but Quakers, being under an obligation not to supply goods to belligerents, could not accept money in such cases.
This made their farms and stores particularly tempting targets for thrifty officers.
Quakers who would neither serve in the military, pay war taxes, nor take oaths of allegiance to the rebel government (Quakers generally would not take oaths of any kind) were suspected of using their conscientious scruples as a cover for loyalist sympathies.
Speaking of oaths, Quakers could be fined for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to the new American government.
They were forbidden by Quaker discipline from paying such fines.
So this became another opportunity for plunder and to me it looks like this was used deliberately as a revenue-raiser or as a way of punishing Quakers for their lack of enthusiasm for the rebel cause.
An additional complication for Quakers at this time was the fuzziness over what counted as a “war tax.”
For example, one of the ways the Continental Congress funded its military campaign was to issue its own paper currency and make the acceptance of this currency as legal tender mandatory.
This was certainly easier than trying to raise the money through an explicit tax, but it amounted to just as much of an imposition: as the Congress issued more and more currency to finance the war, the value of the currency plummeted, taking resources away from people who were forced to use it.
Some Quakers refused to handle the continentals, and some were imprisoned and others were threatened with execution.
In other cases, such refusers were declared outlaws and boycotts were enforced against them — in one example “it was publicly proclaimed that there was no protection for him [John Cowgill], that all persons were forewarned at their peril to have no dealings with him.
Even the miller was threatened with the destruction of his mill if he ground for his family, and the school-master forbid receiving his children at school.”
The official stand of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was neutral on the currency question, and asked Friends to come to their own decisions and not to chastise one-another about it.
The Virginia Yearly Meeting, on the other hand, formally forbade Friends from using continentals.
The official Philadelphia Yearly Meeting position on war taxes, as put forth in , was much as it had long been: “It is the judgment of this meeting that a tax levied for the purchasing of drums, colors, or for other warlike uses, cannot be paid consistently with our Christian testimony.”
Timothy Davis published a tract in laying out the case for why American Quakers should pay most of the taxes being demanded by the rebel congressional government.
He was disowned by his Monthly Meeting, both for the content of the tract and for publishing it without the Meeting’s approval.
He left and took a few other Quakers with him to found a rival Meeting.
This conflict was still dividing the Society a decade later, when the Revolution was over and American Quakers had pretty much all adjusted to the new government God was pleased to have set over them.
The tract was well argued.
Those Quakers who were trying to strengthen and broaden the practice of war tax resistance beyond what the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting was willing to advocate tried to come up with an authoritative and thoroughly scripturally-backed response.
Benjamin Mason, Anthony Benezet, Moses Brown, and Samuel Allinson all pursued efforts in this direction.
I’ve seen some drafts of their work and their correspondence, and Allinson’s draft, at least, seems to have been widely-distributed in manuscript form, but as far as I know, no official version ended up being published.
Benezet believed that because the stronger position they were advocating would demand more from Quakers than before, and would subject them to more persecution than before, it would make the Society of Friends stronger and less-corrupted by worldly riches:
[It] will not be like a passing storm but an abiding trial, which, as it will come heavier upon those who are most loaded & encumbered with the clay of this world, will have I trust a blessed effect to every one who will willingly receive it to keep us low & humble.
Part of what may have restrained them from publishing was caution about introducing new doctrinal innovations at a time when the Society of Friends was already beginning to show signs of fracturing on party lines.
Part also may be that the Meetings that would have to authorize the publication of such a pamphlet were probably hoping to quiet such debate rather than stir up a new hornet’s nest.
But there was also the emerging trouble of an ultra-radical war tax resistance position that was beginning to develop.
Moses Brown wrote to Anthony Benezet about this concern, saying:
[S]ome Friends refuse all taxes, even those for civil uses as well as those clear for war and others that are mixed, and thereby dropping our testimony of supporting civil government by readily contributing thereto, [and] it has been a fear whether this variety of conduct won’t mar rather than promote the work… I understand some Friends have fallen in with or been overpowered by the common argument that civil government is upheld by the sword, and therefore they decline paying to its support, which appears to me a great weakness…
Around this time, you start to see meetings supplementing their discipline about not paying explicit war taxes (“for drums, colors, and military attire”) with advice that Friends not criticize one another over their positions on whether or not to pay “mixed” taxes.
Apparently the arguments in Meetings had become troublesome and did not seem to be near a resolution.
The way Quaker Meetings recorded “sufferings” went something like this: When a Quaker was subjected to persecution of some sort for taking a conscientious stand required by Quaker discipline, that Quaker would report this to his or her Monthly Meeting.
That Meeting would periodically forward on a list of such reports to its Quarterly Meeting, which in turn would compile these into a report that it would submit to the Yearly Meeting.
At each stage, a Meeting might decide that some particular report wasn’t worth recording for some reason.
During this period, for instance, some Monthly Meetings were recording the sufferings of Quakers who were persecuted for resisting mixed taxes, as well as for explicit war taxes.
Some Quarterly Meetings dropped these reports from their submissions to the Yearly Meetings.
This could lead to debate in the Meetings, which would bring the issue of war tax resistance back on to the front burner.
The Rhode Island Yearly Meeting, for instance, decided to begin accepting such reports in .
The Salem Yearly Meeting debated the issue and eventually followed suit.
The war tax question didn’t end with the end of the fighting.
The war still needed to be paid for, and the continental currency that funded it needed to be redeemed, and the government used a variety of taxes to do this.
Among these were a new set of import duties instituted in to pay war debts.
A few Quakers took note of this and decided they could not pay.
For example, Joshua Evans stopped using imported goods.
Isaac Martin, who ran a drug store, stopped stocking and selling imported products.
The new government was also working on a unified militia law, which, though it enabled Quakers to be exempt from service, required any such conscientious objectors to pay a fine in lieu of service.
A representative of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting addressed Congress, telling them that Quakers would feel obligated to refuse to pay such a fine and to suffer the consequences.
Many Quakers did refuse to pay and were fined (and, as usual, the tax collectors took far more from them in property than the amount of the fines).
In one area, a law was passed exempting members of the volunteer fire department from militia service without necessity of paying a fine, and this led many Quakers to sign up.
Meanwhile, what was happening in England?
Quakers there were much more restrained than their American counterparts on the war tax question.
When they reprinted John Woolman’s Journal in , they omitted the parts where he talked about his war tax resistance.
There were some exceptions to this relative conservatism.
John Payne, for example, boarded up a third of the windows of his home to avoid a property tax, put his coach up on blocks to avoid a vehicle tax, and rode miles out of his way to avoid toll gates, all to avoid paying for the war to suppress the American rebellion.
He also wrote a tract chastising the Society of Friends for investing in government bonds, on the same grounds.
In the years before his death he gave away his property to members of his family so that he would not be liable for any estate tax.
The War of 1812 was largely funded, on the American side, by debt spending, and so explicit war taxes did not become such an acute issue, though the issue of “mixed” taxes again became a heated topic.
The military would again requisition supplies from Quakers, which Quakers felt obligated to refuse to voluntarily give them or to accept money for.
And Quakers were frequently fined (and then plundered for their refusal to pay) when they would not join the militia.
Influential Quaker Elias Hicks reported in (before the Hicksite/Orthodox split) that he had addressed his Meeting’s “meeting for discipline” to ask “whether while we were actively paying taxes to civil government, for the purpose of promoting war or warlike purposes in any degree, we were not balking our testimony in that respect and pulling down with one hand what we are pretending to build with the other.”
He compared this to abolitionist Quakers who nonetheless supported slavery by buying slave-produced goods.
In , several young Quaker men were imprisoned in Baltimore for their refusal to pay militia exemption fines.
The state court would not interfere, as they were imprisoned under a federal regulation at the pleasure of the military, and the judge recommended that they instead apply to President Madison for help.
They did, and the president said that he wouldn’t do anything about it, as the law was clear on the point.
But as the Quaker delegation was leaving the president’s makeshift office (the White House had been put to the torch by the British the year before), the president’s wife, Dolley Madison, called them aside and asked to speak with them.
She had been raised a Quaker.
When she heard what had happened, and what the president’s response had been, she told them “I am determined that the President shall never close his eyes in sleep until these children are liberated from confinement.”
It took the delegation two days to return to Baltimore, and when they got there they learned that the Quaker conscientious objectors had been released on the President’s orders.
I end this period, somewhat artificially, at .
This doesn’t represent a firm boundary in the evolution of the practice of war tax resistance in the Society of Friends, but it does mark a significant milestone in the Society itself.
By that year, the society had fractured into irreconcilable Orthodox and Hicksite factions that would each form their own structures of Meetings and would evolve separately in parallel for decades.
This was caused in part by a passion for strengthened religious purity among American protestant Christians that peaked in .
This striving probably both contributed to a strengthening of war tax resistance (among other traditional Quaker practices) and distracted from it by making other issues more central.
