Some historical and global examples of tax resistance →
religious groups and the religious perspective →
British Nonconformists →
19th Century Edinburgh Annuity Tax resisters
Some remarks
occasioned by the perusal of John Brown’s
The Law of Christ Respecting Civil Obedience,
Especially in the Payment of Tribute
and its various notes and appendices
concerning a nineteenth century flame war largely over
matters religious but touching on conscientious objection and the duty of refusing certain taxes
in multiple parts
which is to say: don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Part One.
In the mid-1830s, a Scottish nonconformist minister named John Brown (no relation, so far as I know, to the American abolitionist) stopped paying something called the “annuity tax,” the proceeds of which went to support the official Church of Scotland, which competed with Brown’s own, competing Christian franchise, the Presbyterian United Secession Church.
At first he paid the tax under protest, but then decided he couldn’t pay at all: “I have not paid, and, with my present convictions, never will, never can, pay it… I cannot do so without offering violence to a conscientious conviction, not rashly nor hastily arrived at.”
Brown held out, and eventually the government seized some of his property to satisfy the tax.
The episode engendered considerable debate, the residue of which can be found in such books as:
Brown’s own book went into at least three editions, each expanding on the last as he felt the need to pen new rebuttals to the various attacks.
The way Brown puts it, Haldane vigorously pamphletted Edinburgh and much of the rest of Scotland with an accusation that Brown, with his tax refusal, was violating the clear commands of Jesus and willfully misinterpreting the scripture in an attempt to justify his action.
So Brown felt forced to make a rigorous response, which he did in two lectures from the pulpit which he then published and expanded on.
The controversy, as you might guess, largely concerned the interpretation of those familiar passages in the New Testament concerning taxation and submission to civil authority, particularly good old Romans 13.
Brown hoped to demonstrate that in spite of what that verse says, “neither the doctrine nor the law of Christ has any affinity to slavish principles.”
His book has some remarkable and interesting arguments about civil disobedience and tax resistance, but also a lot of doctrinal quibbling and teasing of The Original Greek only of interest to Bible junkies and queer eggs like myself.
The book is dense… it has its own three page table of contents just for “the more important foot notes”!
I made some notes while I was reading it, and will summarize here the parts of his argument that concern civil disobedience and tax resistance, though mostly ignoring the parts of his book that argue for disestablishmentarianism and the separation of church and state without touching on those other two topics.
Romans 13:1–7
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers.
For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.
Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good.
But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.
Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.
For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God’s ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.
Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.
Much of the book is Brown’s rigorous explanation of how he interprets Romans 13 and why he believes his interpretation is correct.
He avoids the convenient dodges that some interpreters have tried to cast on the passage as a way of ducking out of its pretty clear instruction to Christians to be compliant, obedient subjects of whatever government they happen to be under.
Not that the passage doesn’t have its difficulties, just in trying to make it coherent.
What can you make of Paul’s assertion that “rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil” when he knew very well the opposite was often true?
Brown assumes that “good works” and “evil works” are here just synonyms for “law-abiding” and “law-breaking” behavior.
But then Paul seems to merely be making a ridiculously pedantic point about the law: don’t disobey the law, because you’ll get punished if you do, because rulers punish people who break the law and don’t punish people who obey it.
Did he really need to spell that out to his flock?
It seems much a much more plausible to read this as Paul saying that seeing as how the ruler is, as ruler, “ordained of God” and “the minister of God”, his actions in enforcing the law are extensions of God’s judgment.
You should obey the law “not only for wrath” — that is, fear of punishment — “but also for conscience sake” because the ruler’s laws are God’s laws by proxy.
The problem with this interpretation, for Christians anyway, is that it either makes Paul out to be an idiot, makes God out to be even more capricious than he was in Old Testament times, or makes Romans 13 look suspiciously like it was never intended to be an instruction to Christians so much as it was meant for the eyes of the Imperial authorities as a way of making the Christians out to be just the sort of harmless grovelers every tyrant would love to have for subjects.
In general, Brown seems to waffle between seeing Romans 13 as pragmatic advice to Christians on how to best get along under the current scheme of things without risking getting stepped on by the Imperial boot — which may be a good surmise of the intent of the chapter — and as a more metaphysical discourse on the nature of law and earthly government and its relation to God’s will and Christian duty — which seems to me a more accurate reading of the message of the chapter.
But he’s prevented by his understanding of how Scripture works (it’s not just something someone wrote for some reason, but is “given by inspiration of God… for instruction in righteousness”) from separating the intent and the message in this way, so he tries to hold on to both at once, but tends to just go back and forth between them depending on which suits his argument best at any particular time.
Romans 13 doesn’t itself allow for any exceptions to the general rule of civil obedience.
Brown believes this is because carefully delineating the scope of the obligations of the governed and the governing wasn’t Paul’s agenda when he wrote the chapter — he just wanted the Roman Christians to accept the Roman government as legitimate and not to toy with sedition and agitation or to consider themselves ungovernable as “subjects of the kingdom of heaven” or some such, but to make nice with the pagan overlords for the sake of the survival of the church.
It’s a mistake, Brown feels, to make this passage out to be the be-all and end-all of Christian instruction on political philosophy.
Naturally, Brown alludes to the episodes in which the apostles defied rulers in order to continue their preaching, or refused to offer incense at heathen altars when commanded, to demonstrate that an exception to the general rule of obedience clearly exists when man’s law contradicts God’s law.
Brown also notes that Paul himself defied magistrates on occasions when he believed they were exceeding their legal authority.
So, he infers that there is also an exception here: you don’t need to obey rulers when the rulers are acting on their own whim rather than upholding the law.
It is the authority of the legal office itself that must be obeyed and respected, not the person who happens to occupy it.
In cases that fall under this exception, you may or may not obey the law, depending on what you think is best.
Brown also says that there is a third exception: that only laws and rulings that are legitimately within “the limits of civil authority” must be respected.
More-or-less he means that the Romans had no business regulating Christians in their religious practices “except so far as these might interfere with the peace or good order of civil society.”
This will be crucial to the argument closest to his heart — separation of church and state.
He’s a little vague on this third exception, and doesn’t say where he finds scriptural support for it — he’s more likely to cite European political philosophers like Locke.
One logical argument he alludes to for this position goes something like this: If civil government were permitted to make rules governing religious belief and practice that Christians were obligated to follow, then clearly only those rulers “who know and teach the true religion” could be ordained of God, and Paul clearly wasn’t talking about Christian rulers, ergo… But this seems to prove exception #3 only at the cost of making it redundant to exception #1.
For laws that fall under this third exception, like the second, a Christian can feel free to disregard or obey them as seems best in the circumstances.
Even given these exceptions though, a Christian should be submissive in disobedience — never seeking to overthrow or subvert the government, but just accepting the consequences with no more than a complaint.
Given all this, he then asks to what extent Paul’s instructions to the Roman Christians in should be followed by Scottish Christians in .
For the most part, he says, the instructions are just as good now as they were then.
However, he cautions that just because Paul could write that the powers that were in “are ordained of God” doesn’t necessarily mean that all of the powers that are in get the same seal of approval.
The powers-that-be then-and-there meant Rome and jurisdictions subservient to Rome.
We shouldn’t overgeneralize from that one case:
[C]ivil government in general is of divine appointment… but as to any particular government being God’s ordinance to any particular individual or nation, that is to be inferred from a variety of circumstances.… The Roman Christians were directly informed that the Roman government was God’s ordinance to them.
We have not the same means of judging of any particular government…
In short: you have to decide for yourself whether the government you’re under (or which of the governments contending for your allegiance) is the legitimate one, ordained of God.
Usually, according to Brown, it’s a no-brainer, and the powers-that-be are ordained of God now as they were then.
The same three classes of exceptions to the general rule of obedience also still apply today, and with these also, it’s up to you and your understanding and your conscience to decide where to draw the line in any particular case:
nobody will become surety for the consequences at the last day, of my doing what I thought wrong, because another with great confidence, but, as appeared to me, little argument, pronounced it to be right.… Man is a responsible being.
His creed, his religion, his actions, are his own: he must answer for them, and therefore it is right he should look after them.
And the same instruction applies today: if you disobey, submissively accept the legal consequences.
Brown takes pains to distinguish civil disobedience of this sort from the “anarchy and bloodshed” of ordinary law-breaking.
The ordinary outlaw breaks the law and attempts to evade the consequences; the civil disobedient sees that under the law “obedience has always an alternative” — that is, the law’s penalty for disobedience — and chooses that alternative in an orderly, “legal” fashion.
This in my mind is a bit of a stretch, but he takes pains to quote the “obedience has always an alternative” bit from a commentary in “a Tory literary journal” to make it seem a conservative legal theory, and perhaps he’s right.
In any case, he insists that someone who is practicing civil disobedience has not thereby become an outlaw or a poor citizen:
He who, when he cannot conscientiously actively obey a command of a government, which he yet in his judgment approves of, as, upon the whole, a good civil government, quietly and patiently takes what he cannot help thinking a wrong, is certainly not a bad subject.
He honours the government by submitting to it, when he cannot obey it.
Brown goes further and says that there are circumstances in which a Christian is justified in not just passively disobeying the authorities but actively resisting them.
He approvingly quotes William Paley, who gives this liberal defense of revolution:
So long as the interest of the whole society requires it; that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God (which will universally determines our duty) that the established government be obeyed, and no longer.
This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redress on the other.
This, he says, is the clear right of citizens, and Christians are not called upon by God to give up their civil rights.
If that’s all that Christian submission to the powers-that-be comes down to, thinketh I, the powers-that-be had better watch their backs when there are Christians about.
Having painted this picture of the Christian duty of civil obedience, Brown moves on in part two of his book to look at the particular case of taxation.
I’ll save that for tomorrow.
Some remarks
occasioned by the perusal of John Brown’s
The Law of Christ Respecting Civil Obedience, Especially in the Payment of Tribute
and its various notes and appendices
concerning a nineteenth century flame war largely over matters religious but touching on conscientious objection and the duty of refusing certain taxes
in multiple parts
which is to say: don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Part Two.
In part one of my review, I introduced you to John Brown, a nonconformist Scottish minister who was refusing to pay a tax designated for support of the official government church, and to his interpretation of Romans 13 and the Christian duty of civil obedience it mandates.
Brown moves on in part two of his book to look at the particular case of taxation, and I’ll follow suit in part two of my review.
Brown notes that Paul singled out taxation as a specific example of the way Christians ought to submit to the powers-that-be: “for this cause pay ye tribute also… Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom…”
He says there are historical reasons for this: For one thing, Christians needed to distinguish themselves in Roman eyes from the Zealots, particularly from followers of that other notorious Galilean, Judas (no, not that Judas), who had led a violent tax-related rebellion under the theory that Jews ought not to pay tribute to pagan kings — one which was crushed.
He also notes that the “for this cause pay ye tribute also” phrase can also be accurately translated “for this cause ye pay tribute also” — turning a commandment into a mere description, though I’m not sure this really changes much, given its context, and in any case he is unconvinced that this is the correct rendering.
The gist of the passage, says Brown, was that Christians should voluntarily give whatever tribute was asked of them — neither refusing, trying to evade, or attempting to get away with underpayment — as a matter of moral obligation.
He paraphrases the section of Romans as follows:
Pay tribute, as well as yield obedience, from a regard to the divine authority; for not only are the higher officers of the imperial government to be considered by you as God’s ministers to protect the peaceable and to punish the lawless, but those very contemned and hated publicans are God’s ministers also, and the collection of tribute is the work which he, in his providential arrangements, has assigned them.
You cannot refuse compliance with their lawful demands, without disobeying God: you cannot cheat them, without robbing him.
Paul’s instructions about taxes, writes Brown, “are a reply to the question, Are Christians bound to pay tribute to a government administered by heathens?
And that reply is a very strong affirmative.”
Much as he did in part one, having established the strict general principle, Brown goes hunting for the particular loopholes.
He starts by saying that as taxation is just one of the class of duties of obligatory obedience that Christian citizens must honor, the general case of which he treated in part one, it’s likely that the same three exceptions that applied to the general case there apply to this specific case here.
He notes, however, that many Christians have taken Paul’s emphasis on taxation to mean that taxation in particular has a stricter obligation attached to it.
Brown feels that if Paul indeed meant this, he would have said so explicitly.
If taxpaying is obligatory above and beyond the limits of ordinary civil obedience, this is not because the Bible says so, but must be because of something peculiar about taxation.
And this is where it gets most interesting to me, because he addresses this question, which I’ve wrestled with here from time to time:
[T]here are only two conceivable causes… which could give this idiosyncrasy to this particular form of civil obedience: either that the parting with money is not in itself, properly speaking, a moral act — or, that supposing it to be in itself a moral act, if performed voluntarily, the compulsory nature of the exaction strips it of its morality.
The first of these possibilities — that monetary transactions are by their very nature devoid of moral import — he dispatches quickly.
The second one takes some more work.
I prefer the more pithy version he wrote in a letter-to-the-editor when he was responding to Robert Haldane’s criticism of his tax resistance:
To command a person to employ his property in doing that which, in his estimation, is sinful… to a man of plain common sense seems an act of the same kind as to command him to employ his hands in doing that which, in his estimation, is sinful, and I really think “expedients must be resorted to” [paraphrasing Haldane’s criticism of Brown’s arguments — ♇] in order to persuade him that to comply with the first command is right, while to comply with the last command is wrong.
Here’s how he puts it in the body of his book:
[I]t has been said that the compulsory character of tribute strips it of its moral character in one way, and invests it with a moral character in another.
Here is an object to which I could not voluntarily contribute without sin; but God has given another party authority to impose tribute on me, and he has power to compel me to make payment: so that whatever be the object, I have no concern with it, while, from the divine command, it is my duty to make the required payment.
Now, in the first place, we have to remark here, that in taking for granted that God gives to the magistrate the right to impose tribute for whatever purpose he pleases, the premise is made identical with the conclusion to be drawn from it — a convenient, but not a very reputable mode of arguing; and, in the second place, that compulsoriness is not a quality peculiar to tribute-paying — it belongs to all acts of civil obedience; the very principle of civil government being force.
If a Christian was commanded to pay a tax for the support of idol worship, the very same power that was ready to punish him if he did not do it, was equally ready to be put forth against him for refusing to go to the temple and worship; and if the compulsory nature of the requisition is a good reason for complying with the first, it would be difficult to see why it should not be a good excuse for complying with the second.
If actual absolute force were employed in either case, then indeed the moral character of the acts would be lost, obliterated, destroyed; for in that case the man would cease to be an actor and become a sufferer.
It appears, then, that there is nothing in the nature of tribute, to take it out of the general category of forms of civil obedience; — there is nothing to make the limitation of the precept an impossible thing.
But don’t get too carried away: under this principle, Christians are still required to pay taxes for wise, just, right, and efficient government, as well as for unwise, unequal, and oppressive government.
The duty to refuse to pay a tax is, in Brown’s opinion, rare and narrowly-defined.
He considers the explicit Christian obligation to pay taxes cheerfully to be a blessing, because without it, Christians might be obligated to scrutinize all government expenditures to assure that they were in line with Christian principles before paying up.
Wide, however, as was the sphere of the obligation of tribute-paying, we apprehend that it was by no means unbounded; and its limits were, and indeed must have been, materially the same as the limits of the other forms of civil obedience.
There is nothing arbitrary in the divine constitutions.
They all proceed on great general principles, and any thing that claims to be an exception, requires to produce very satisfactory evidence before its pretensions can be admitted.
That tribute-paying has no sound claims to the distinction of being the only duty of civil obedience which has no limits, will appear, we apprehend, very distinctly as we proceed.
If this law have limits at all, there can be but little doubt, that the payment of a tribute, exacted specifically for an immoral or impious purpose, or generally for a purpose conscientiously disapproved of by him from whom it is exacted, falls beyond these limits.
There is something absolutely revolting to those moral perceptions and feelings, which lie at the very bottom, which form the ima fundamina, of our spiritual nature, in maintaining the opposite opinion.
It is monstrous to suppose that, by any mere human arrangement, not only may what was not duty become duty, and what was not sin become sin; but what was sin become duty, and what was duty become sin.
The principle would need to have strong support that warrants such a conclusion as the following:— voluntarily to have contributed money for defraying the expenses of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, on the part of his disciples, would have been guilt, if possible, fouler than that which makes the name Iscariot the type of all that is base and impious; yet had the Roman authorities imposed a tax on them for this most immoral of all purposes, it would have immediately become their duty cheerfully to pay it.
This is the fair result of the principle.
I have heard of men who, on being made to see this, still held by it.
But such men are beyond the reach of argument.
Here he quotes in a footnote from A Hind let loose, or, an historical representation of the testimonies of the Church of Scotland, which has an interesting-looking section on “The Sufferings of many, for Refuſing to pay the wicked Exactions of the Ceſs, Locality, Fynes &c. Vindicated” (or, in the page headings, “Refusing to pay wicked Taxations vindicated”).
The argument therein encourages the reader to imagine paying taxes to the various tyrants who have oppressed righteous people throughout the ages: would you have voluntarily contributed kindling to the oven in which Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were to be roasted if Nebuchadnezar demanded it?
Would you contribute a thread to the noose for hanging a martyr if that were your tax?
Brown concludes “that had the Roman Christians been required directly to contribute to the support of heathen idolatry, it would have been their duty to refuse compliance.”
He looks at the evidence that perhaps the early Christians indeed had been required to pay such a tax (there is evidence that some time later this may have been the case), but sees also evidence that if this indeed was the case, in fact they did refuse to pay it.
Much of the evidence he cites in this regard he does not deign to translate from the Greek and Latin, and much of the rest indirectly addresses the question at best, so I can’t say much for it.
He does quote from William Cave’s Primitive Christianity: or the Religion of the Ancient Christians in the First Ages of the Gospel () in a letter-to-the-editor in response to Haldane, but this too is third-hand and inconclusive (it’s not certain, for instance, in spite of what Cave says so authoritatively, that Tertullian was speaking of “taxes” to maintain the temples as opposed to just donations and fees charged to worshipers):
Tertullian tells them, that although they refused to pay the taxes rated upon them for maintenance of the heathen temples, yet for all other tributes they had cause to give the Christians thanks for so faithfully paying what was due… they would easily find that the Christians’ denial to pay that one tax was abundantly compensated and made up in their honest payment of all the rest.
At this point, as he did in part one, Brown concludes his analysis of what early Christians understood was their duty regarding Roman taxes, and asks how this should guide modern Christians.
Basically, to no great surprise, he concludes that we should pay our taxes honestly and conscientiously.
He agrees that to evade taxes or to deal in black market goods is equivalent to robbing the public purse.
But still he thinks it is possible that the government may levy a tax that Christians are duty-bound not to pay.
He assembles quotes from several authorities to back him up on this, and then proceeds to try to draw the line over which taxes are unpayable.
“[F]irst… on the clearest principles of moral obligation, we are not — we cannot be bound to pay a tax levied for a specific purpose, if that purpose is immoral or impious…” That is to say that if the government raises a specific tax the revenue from which is designated for specifically immoral spending, a Christian cannot voluntarily pay it.
If the government raises a general tax and just happens to spend the very same amount on the same immoral thing just in the course of its general budgeting, however, the Christian is in the clear, and indeed is duty-bound to pay up in full.
This, you may recall, is much the same conclusion that many Quakers came to about war taxes.
Explicit war taxes should be resisted, but general taxes that paid for a general budget that just happened to include a war were okay.
If any of them that believe not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go; whatsoever is set before you, eat, asking no question for conscience sake.
But if any man say unto you, this is offered in sacrifice unto idols, eat not for his sake that shewed it, and for conscience sake…
He says that this same technique should apply to scruples about taxation: You don’t have to go out of your way to find out whether your taxes are being spent in sinful ways, when it’s ambiguous or when all the spending is mixed together, but if the ruler tells you explicitly that this is what he’s going to do, you have to draw the line:
[L]et the magistrate demand money of me for the general purposes of government, and I will conscientiously give it him; but if he say, Give me money to do what is impious and immoral, I cannot, without sin, give it, though, without sin, I may suffer it to be taken from me.
He put it better, I think, when he first announced his resistance:
If they to whom the management of the public funds is, by the constitution of the Government committed, misemploy them, that, so far as it is a question of moral responsibility, is more their concern than mine.
But it is obviously otherwise with a tax professedly levied for an object, which I consider as not only impolitic, but unjust, — not only unjust but unscriptural.
For me voluntarily to pay such a tax would be to assist in doing what I believe God disapproves, — it would be in inversion of the inspired maxim, “to obey” man “rather than” God.
Back in the main body of the book, he addresses war taxes specifically, and with a vehemence I found surprising:
On this ground all war taxes, i.e. all taxes for the support of a particular war, are objectionable.
In many cases, wars have been obviously unjust.
In the estimation of some of the best and wisest men the world has ever seen, all wars are necessarily unjust.
I cannot see how any man can consistently pay taxes levied avowedly for the support of an unjust war; and I am sure, a very great part of the subjects of any government are ill fitted to form a true judgment with respect to the character of a particular war.
It is far wiser to impose general taxes: for in proportion as men become more intelligent and more conscientious, the difficulty in obtaining payment for such taxes, as are levied for objects respecting the lawfulness of which doubts are entertained, except by means calculated to make a government odious, will increase.
Perhaps, however, the present system of providing for the expense of belligerent operations, by specific taxes, may be permitted to continue, and the growing difficulty of collecting such taxes may be one of the means to be employed by the Prince of Peace, to put an end to war among mankind.
Now, Brown can get to the meat and potatoes of his argument, which is that Christians ought not to pay taxes that are specifically designated for the support of an official church.
He argues several points simultaneously: that people ought to be Christians and particular church adherents through their own voluntary choice, that the civil authorities ought not to meddle in religious and church matters, and that Christians ought not to pay taxes for the support of state churches.
The latter point is the one that interests me, so I’ll concentrate my summary there.
Brown approvingly mentions the Quakers, who had already come to this conclusion, and who refused to pay mandatory tithes and church-rates to establishment churches.
He quotes the Quaker J.J. Gurney:
[W]henever these demands (tithes and other ecclesiastical imposts) are made on the true and consistent Friend, he will not fail to refuse the payment of them.… nor will he venture, by any action of his own, to lay waste his principle, and to weaken the force of truth, with respect to so important a subject.
Such an action, the voluntary payment of tithes must unquestionably be considered.
This conclusion is by no means affected by the consideration that the payment of tithes is imposed on the inhabitants of this country by the law of the land.… Faithful as Friends desire to be to the legal authorities… as Christians, they cannot render to the law an active obedience in any particular which interferes with their religious duty… [A]lthough they refuse to pay tithes, they oppose no resistance to those legal distraints by which tithes are taken from them.
It is surprising that any persons of reflection should form an opinion (not unfrequently expressed), that there is no essential distinction between these practices, and should assert that the suffering of the distraint, in a moral and religious point of view, is tantamount to the voluntary payment.
The two courses are, in point of fact, the respective results of two opposite principles.
The Friend, who voluntarily pays tithes, puts forth his hand to that which he professes to regard as an unclean thing, and actively contributes to the maintenance of a system which is in direct contrariety to his own religious views.
The Friend, who refuses to pay tithes, but who (without involving himself in any secret compromise) quietly suffers a legal distraint for them, is clear of any action which contradicts his own principles.
Gurney also states (and Brown agrees) that refusing to pay such a mandatory tithe to a government church is not just morally obligatory, but is socially valuable, in that it amplifies a justified protest against an ill-advised entanglement of church & state.
Of the present state of things in Scotland, Brown writes:
…I am sure I do not overstate the truth when I say, that in few questions are the minds of conscientious men at present more painfully interested, than how far they are warranted, by the voluntary payment of church taxes, to contribute to the permanence of an order of things, which they are fully persuaded is inconsistent with the mind of God and the law of Christ Jesus.
The question, Brown says, is whether when someone actively pays such a tax (as opposed to passively refusing), this amounts to the same thing as “to sanction and support that which he accounts to be sinful.”
He believes it certainly does.
There’s another, more mundane sticking point.
The annuity tax that Brown was resisting was a tax on a particular class of property in a particular region of Edinburgh.
This tax inevitably had an effect on the market for such property, in that the property was less valuable to the buyer because of this tax liability that was attached to it, and so the seller of the property could expect to get a lower price for it as a result than he could if there were no such tax.
So is it fair, asked Brown’s critics, for Brown — by resisting the tax — to get 100% of the value of his property, after paying for the property at this discount?
Is it fair that he was able to outbid competing buyers for the property for whom the property was inherently less valuable for having the tax (that Brown refuses to pay) wrapped up in it?
I don’t think this is a great argument, but in any case Brown doesn’t meet it head on so much as he notes that even though he doesn’t pay the Annuity Tax voluntarily, he does end up incurring at least as much financial loss through distraint, which makes the argument moot.
I hear a similar argument raised occasionally about proposed free market reforms today.
For example: the abolition of rent control.
I rent an apartment in San Francisco, which has vast regulations governing the residential rental market.
When I entered into a contract with my landlord to pay him rent in return for a place to live, enmeshed with our explicit contract were all of these legal regulations that formed the background of the deal.
The price we agreed to implicitly included the values of these legal protections and liabilities.
So what would happen if the mayor and county board of supervisors were replaced by a bunch of anarchists who set about abolishing these various regulations in the name of a free market?
Well, on the plus side, the government would no longer be interfering with our freedom to enter into contracts of our own choosing.
On the minus side, the government would be abruptly and dramatically changing the terms of the contract we’ve already entered into.
An interesting conundrum.
Another argument for the annuity tax was that it itself was a variety of rent — that the government, which was more-or-less the final arbiter of property rights in the land — had ceded a portion of a certain class of property to the Church of Scotland, and the Church, via the tax, was just claiming its just return on its property.
This wasn’t very convincing.
If the annuity tax amounted to a rent on property, it was a weird sort of property — no title, no right of sale or transfer, and so forth.
And furthermore, if the State did just up and grant a bunch of property to the Church like that, they should not have, and assuming they had the power to do so, they certainly have the power to undo what they did, which they ought to forthwith.
Brown notes, relying on Duncan Maclaren’s History of the Resistance to the Annuity Tax (), that the current establishment church in Scotland was once in dissent against King Charles Ⅱ’s state church — and that they resisted the Annuity Tax at that time — putting up with the “poinding and rouping” of their property, the quartering of soldiers at the homes of tax resisters, and worse — the government was not averse to using torture and execution against religious dissenters — rather than voluntarily paying.
These he deals with briefly.
The first, he insists, does not give Christians the sort of unquestioning duty to pay all taxes whatsoever that some people think it does.
Christians are to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but what is Caesar’s is an open question, and Caesar may indeed ask for things that belong not to him but to God.
The second episode he sees as evidence that while there is a class of taxes Christians are duty-bound to pay, and a set that Christians are duty-bound to resist, there may also be taxes that are in neither category, that Christians may pay or refuse to pay based only on pragmatic considerations — for instance, a tax that was assessed illegally, or one that is not for the support of civil government but for some crony’s private benefit.
Finally, there’s one additional argument that Brown relegates to an appendix, but which strikes me as worthy of more prominence.
Some of his critics wondered why, since the annuity tax only applied to high-rent properties in a particular part of Edinburgh, Brown didn’t just up and move somewhere else when he discovered that there was an odious tax there.
That way, he’d neither offend the civil powers by refusing to pay a tax, nor offend God by offering up a voluntary tithe to a government church.
Brown is dismissive of this argument:
And is it indeed come to this?
… [I]s a Dissenter, in consequence of holding a conscientious opinion, to be obliged, if he choose the metropolis of Scotland for a residence, to dwell in the suburbs?
It would not be discreditable for any man to take up his residence within the royalty of Edinburgh, with the direct intention of yielding a passive and peaceable resistance to an unjust and injurious impost, if he had the hope, in this way, of doing any thing effectual towards its removal…
(Though in his case, he admits he didn’t move into Edinburgh in order to resist the tax, but for more mundane reasons, and just happened to need to resist.)
Brown addresses two other arguments in his preface:
That a tax, like a debt, ought to be paid simply because it is owed, and not conditionally on how the proceeds are to be spent by the recipient
That arguments for refusing to pay a particular tax because the proceeds will be spent sinfully are arguments that would also apply against a general tax, certain portions of which will be spent sinfully
The first of these arguments Brown says begs the question of whether a tax really is like a debt — do we in fact owe a tax if the tax is being levied for a sinful purpose?
The second he thinks is not the reductio ad absurdum it is made out to be — if his valid arguments against a particular tax are indeed valid arguments also against a general tax, so much the worse for the general tax.
He concludes that:
…every attempt to show that the avowal, on the part of the government, of what appears to me the immoral purpose of a tax, does not affect the moral character of my act of paying it, has completely failed, and must for ever completely fail, while there is a difference between parting with property for what I know to be right, and parting with property for what I know to be wrong.
To part with property is a voluntary act, and no power on earth can make it right in me voluntarily to do what I believe to be wrong.
If it is taken from me for such a purpose, that is the exercise of might not right, and in such a transaction I may innocently be a sufferer, but I cannot innocently be an actor.
Disestablishment he thinks is inevitable and imminent, and he sees ominous signs that it could be a violent break.
(See Disruption of for some notes on the impending conflict.
Today, Scotland still has a national church, but it is substantially more independent of the government.)
Given that, he advocates non-violent civil disobedience like his tax resistance as a way of advancing the dissenter cause without risking violence:
Were all, or were even the great body of the Dissenters in this country, quietly, yet resolutely to refuse to yield support to the ecclesiastical institutions, of which they conscientiously disapprove, following in the peaceful and praiseworthy track of the Friends, the attention of the government and the legislature, would be irresistibly drawn to a subject, which has been but little considered, and is not at all understood by them; and the impossibility of long upholding the present system, would glare on them with an evidence which would persuade them, even against their will, that no time was to be lost in preparing for an approaching event, which, if met unprepared, may have consequences from which all sound-minded, right-hearted men, to whatever religious or political party they belong, would start back with alarm.
Were the Dissenters generally to refuse to pay church taxes, no government which could exist in this country, whether Tory, Whig, or Radical, durst continue from year to year the measures which would be necessary, in this case, to support the Establishments.
They would be obliged practically to repeal the law for their maintenance, so far as Dissenters are concerned, and this would be found equivalent to a dissolution of the connexion of Church and State.
It has been justly observed, that “nothing is so invincible as determined non-compliance.
He that resists by force may be overcome by greater force; but nothing can overcome a calm and fixed determination not to obey.”
Here, he’s quoting from the Quaker Jonathan Dymond’s essay on “Civil Obedience” (which also has an interesting section on non-violent tax resistance I need to dig up and post here some day), circa .
So aside from seeing his particular episode of tax resistance as a moral obligation of his Christian faith in its own right, Brown also saw it as a valuable tactic in his struggle for church/state separation.
As such, he was eager to use the “poinding” (distraint) of his property for tax debts as an opportunity for propaganda.
Here’s a letter-to-the-editor he wrote to try to publicly shame the establishment clergy over accepting tax money stolen from members of other churches:
Sir, — As I was going out this morning, I met, in the lobby, three persons, one of whom informed me, that they were come, to distrain, for the Annuity Tax, civilly apologising for coming on so disagreeable an errand, and assigning as the reason, that the Magistrates had informed them, that if they did not do their work, they must leave their service.
He then asked me if there were any articles which I would prefer being taken rather than others.
I declined availing myself of the choice offered to me; and was about to show them into the dining-room, when he said, looking towards a clock standing in the lobby, “This will serve the purpose.”
On this I left them; but found afterwards, that doubting, I suppose, whether an article, the price of which, a few years ago, was £10, would suffice to pay a charge of £3:3:6, they went into a bed-room and poinded a mirror, valued at about £4, leaving an intimation, that if the tax was not paid within eight days, the articles would be removed and sold.
For various reasons, I am desirous that these facts should be recorded in your columns “in perpetuam memoriam rei” — as an illustration of the true character of the Annuity Tax, and of the moderation and wisdom of its exactors.
While I take joyfully this “spoiling of my goods,” I abhor the injustice and despise the meanness of the system, by one of “the beggarly elements” of which, I am legally robbed of my property; and cannot help thinking, that every unprejudiced and reflecting mind must perceive that there is something very far wrong with that system, which can render it necessary and proper, in the estimation of a number of most respectable and amiable Christian ministers, to employ or (which in a moral point of view is the same thing) to sanction the employment of such measures in reference to another Christian minister, who has no ecclesiastical connexion with them — who never received from them any favour, and never did them any injury, — in order to obtain that maintenance to which, according to the laws of Christ, they are entitled from those who choose to avail themselves of their valuable labours — a body so numerous and wealthy, that I do not see how, without disgrace as well as criminality, they can allow their respected pastors to suffer even temporary inconvenience, from any difficulty, originating in the unequal, illegal, persecuting, and odious character of the impost from which, unhappily for all parties, their income at present is chiefly derived.
Sympathetic dissenters packed the auction room where Brown’s goods were sold to pay his tax debts, as a contemporary news account in The Scotsman tells:
On Wednesday forenoon, a great excitement was occasioned in the city by placards being carried through the streets upon poles, intimating that a sale of goods, poinded from individuals who had refused to pay the Annuity Tax, was to take place at the Weigh House.
Some years having elapsed since any sale of the kind had been attempted, considerable curiosity was evinced to see who, or if any one, would have the hardihood to purchase the goods of their fellow-citizens under such peculiar circumstances.
Purchasers, however, were found.
We need hardly state, that the crowd expressed their feelings pretty audibly both in reference to the general nature of the transaction itself, — the rouping of one minister’s goods for the support of other ministers to whom he was under no obligation, and in reference to the unenviable position in which the purchasers chose to place themselves.
Just one last post (don’t hold me to that; I’m on a roll) about resistance to taxes that propped up the state church of Scotland.
In our last episode we’d gone back to the 17th century to see presbyterians resisting taxes that went to support the official government church and repress any competitors.
Shortly after, the presbyterians gained the upper hand and wasted no time in making themselves the official government church and taking those taxes as their own prize.
Fast forward to the 19th century, and you see a new class of dissenters, like John Brown (see The Picket Line for and ) refusing to pony up to fund the salaries of ministers of a church not their own.
The annuity tax was the one John Brown was resisting — a tax on certain Edinburgh property that was designated to support the official Church of Scotland, to which John Brown’s own ministry was a competitor.
After going over the legal history of the Annuity Tax, and before going into an accounting of how much money had been collected over the years and how little there was to show for it, MacLaren recounts the history of resistance, as follows:
Resistance to the Annuity Tax
It has been asserted, with great confidence, that the resistance to the payment of the Annuity Tax is of recent origin, and that it has arisen solely from the agitation of the Voluntary question.
There never was a more unfounded statement hazarded on any subject.
The resistance began with the imposition of the Tax, and continued under all the changes took which place in the form of Church Government.
Resistance during the establishment of modified episcopacy,
, when it was abolished
It appears by a Minute of the Town Council, of date , that Edward Littell was appointed Collector of the Annuity, with a salary of £27, 15s. 5d., being rather more than 4 per cent. on the sum authorised to be levied.
Resistance to the collection of the Tax, appears to have been anticipated, if it had not actually commenced at this early period, for Littell and his two sureties are taken bound to account for the “particular sums contained in the said rolls, either by payment of the sums contained in the said rolls, or by production of poynding of the goods of the disobedients, or wairding [imprisoning] of their persons.”
Here, a footnote: “The power of imprisonment does not appear to have been employed until after the Ministers had established their right to the whole produce of the Tax.
The first cases occurred in and .”
Resistance during the presbyterian establishment,
, when it was abolished
When Presbytery flourished in all its glory, as the Established Church under the Protectorate of Cromwell, the resistance to the payment of the Annuity Tax on the part of those who did not belong to the dominant sect, for whose Ministers it was collected, was very great.
We have the authority of the Kirk-sessions, as quoted by the Burgh Commission, for saying that, at this time, “very many” refused to pay the tax, “Except they were compelled by the authority of the Magistrates,” and the following extracts from the Records of the Town Council, furnish ample evidence that the resistance continued during the whole period of the existence of the Presbyterian Established Church.
It appears from the following Minute of Council, of , that in consequence of the Annuity Tax being so difficult to collect, the Treasurer of the Kirk Sessions was directed to take out letters of horning against “the Deacons of the Kirk,” in order to quicken their diligence, and also against the inhabitants who refuse to pay.
— “Ordains Thos. Fairholm, Treasurer of the Kirk Sessions of this burgh, to raise new letters of horning against the Deacons of the Kirk Sessions and sic-like [also] to raise new letters at the instance of the Deacons, against the inhabitants of this burgh, and to put the same into execution, if need be, for payment of the Annuities to the effect, — the ministers shall be paid of their stipends, whereanent these presents shall be their warrand.”
.
— Appoints a committee “to meet with those who were elders [it will be remembered that at this period, the sessions were appointed by annual elections] of the Kirk-sessions, , and to find out a way to get in the bygone Annuities of those two years, for the better payment of the Ministers’ stipends, whereanent these presents shall be their warrand.”
The difficulties attending the collection having continued to increase, on , the Town Council “appointed John Straiton collector of the Annuity,” and as a stimulus to him to exert himself in recovering the outstanding arrears, which amounted to a considerable sum, they agreed to “allow to him ten of ilk hundred, [10 per cent.,] that he sall collect of the bygaine restis [arrears] due resting, and unpayit at Martinmas last, and six of ilk hundredth [6 per cent.; this is considerably more than the per centage which the salary of the present collector amounts to, on the sum collected by him] that he sall collect of the succeeding years and terms during his service.”
— Forsameikle as all fair and calm means has been used hitherto for payment of the bygane and present Annuities due by the neighbours, and nothing has succeeded answerable to expectation and commands, so that the Ministers are unjustly disappointed of their bygane stipends, through the unwillingness of the neighbours, and seeing necessity requires obedience, for the exoneration of the Council, and the Ministers’ better payment, the Council ordains John Straiton, their collector, to give lawful intimation to the neighbours, by three severall warnings, especially to such as are not as yet so lawfully warned, to pay their Anuitie; and in case of their failure or refusal, after such lawful warning, to use the last remedy, in quartering of soldiers upon them, aye and untill all bygane and present Anuities be payed, whereanent these presents shall be their warrand.”
There is nothing on the record showing that this act was ever carried into effect.
In , it was found so difficult to raise a sufficient sum for the stipends of the ministers, which were greatly in arrear, that several members of the Town Council, on , agreed to advance money out of their own pockets, to pay the stipends then resting; taking their chance of afterwards receiving payment from the city.
This act of Voluntary liberality met with the approbation of the Council, and the records show the names of the different lenders, with the sums which each of them advanced, and the ministers to whom each of the sums was paid.
— “Ordains the officers of the burgh, ordinary and extraordinary, to give assistance to Andrew Mitchell, or to any other the collector of the Annuitie shall think fit to appoint for poynding of such who are yet deficient for paying their bygane or present years Annuitie; and also to arrest in the tenants hands, the rent of such heritors who are hitherto obstinate and will not pay till the same [arrears] be satisfied, whereanent these presents shall be their warrand.”
This quotation throws considerable light on the status of the parties who at this time resisted the tax, and it is also of importance in several other respects.
It proves that some of the defaulters were persons of considerable substance — heritors of the burgh — owners of other properties than those in which they resided and for which they were assessed.
The Annuity Tax was never payable by the heritors as such but by the occupiers.
Hence the heritors referred to must have refused to pay the Annuity Tax exigible on those houses which they inhabited, and therefore, in order to secure payment, the Council directed the collector to arrest the rents of other properties belonging to them in the hands of the tenants to whom they were let.
It proves that at this period arrestment was employed as an easy and effectual mode of recovering payment from those who refused to pay the tax.
It proves that the persons referred to, did not object to pay the tax on the plea of poverty, or from any temporary deficiency of funds; their resistance was of the most determined kind.
The description of “heritors who are hitherto obstinate and will not pay,” could only apply to persons who objected to the principle of the tax, and who resisted it, conceiving it to be “persecution for conscience sake.”
Resistance during the episcopalian establishment,
, when it was abolished
After the restoration of Charles Ⅱ., Episcopacy became “the Church by law established,” and from that period, to the Revolution of , the resistance to the payment of the tax on the part of the members of the present Established Church, who were then Dissenters, was greater than at any period, either before or since that time, not even excepting the last ten years.
Like the Dissenters of the present day, they supported their own Ministers at their own expence, on the Voluntary principle, and they naturally objected to being compelled to pay for the support of the Ministers of a Church to which they did not belong, and which they believed to be an anti-Christian Establishment.
They did not, like the Dissenters of the present day, object to all Civil Establishments of religion, but in common with them, they considered it “persecution for conscience sake,” to be compelled to support any sect but their own.
The poinding and rouping of their goods for payment of stipend was carried on to a great extent, but this did not produce the desired effect.
They suffered “the spoiling of their goods” without being intimidated into compliance with demands which they believed to be essentially unjust.
In this state of matters, the Town Council, adopting the fashionable expedient of the day, ordered soldiers to be quartered on all those who refused to pay the tax.
This most iniquitous resolution was instantly carried into effect, but the “still small voice” of conscience was not to be subdued.
Proceeding from one degree of wickedness to another, the Town Council ordered the soldiers to be paid by the parties on whom they were quartered, and their goods to be rouped to provide the necessary funds; but notwithstanding all their ingenuity and all their iniquitous contrivances for enforcing payment of this hated tax, there was one discovery which they did not make, but which the superior light and civilization of the nineteenth century has enabled “the friends of the Church” to make, — that the imprisonment of the persons of those who resist the Tax, is the most effectual method of enforcing payment.
To the members of that Church, which is at present, “by law Established,” the inhabitants of this City are deeply indebted for the first determined and continued resistance to the payment of the Annuity Tax, and for the vindication of the rights of conscience under the severest trials, and amidst the greatest dangers.
By their resistance they had reason to believe they would incur the displeasure of the most arbitrary government which had ever existed in Scotland — of such men as Middleton, Lauderdale, Sharpe, Rothes, Dalzell, Perth, and the Duke of York — under whose direction every species of cruelty and oppression was perpetrated.
In other cases of resistance for conscience’ sake, they were in the practice of employing torture as freely as ever the agents of the Inquisition did; and not satisfied with the instruments employed by them, by a refinement in cruelty, they invented new instruments of torture, of a more dreadful kind.
These they frequently ordered to be applied in their presence, before the Privy Council, in torturing those who were prisoners “for conscience’ sake.”
They fined, and imprisoned, and banished, without law, and without mercy.
They caused hundreds to be put to death by military execution, without even the forms of justice; and others, after a mock trial, were ordered to be executed with every refinement in cruelty which the most fiendish ingenuity could suggest.
They spared neither age nor sex.
The barbarities which they committed cannot be read without exciting the most intense feeling of horror.
Yet all these enormities were perpetrated in the name of religion, for the professed object of supporting the Established Church, and, consequently, for promoting the glory of God, and spreading the knowledge of the Gospel of Jesus Christ!
To such lengths did these supporters of Church Establishments carry their love of compulsory principles!
Notwithstanding the dangers to which they were subjected from the character and conduct of their rulers, the Presbyterian Dissenters resisted the Tax in the most determined manner.
Each of these practical Voluntaries declared with respect to the Episcopalian ministers — “I think my religion better than theirs; and, therefore, I never will pay them one shilling — no, not one farthing.
They may seize my cattle, my corn, my furniture — they may distrain my tenants — they may sell, carry away, or destroy — I never will pay one penny; it is an unjust demand — I will not pay.
I will not resist the law, because, like so many other monstrous iniquities, there is law for this also; but I repeat I never will pay them one shilling — to them, or to their use, not one farthing.
Come what may, I never will pay them one single farthing.”
[Letter from Daniel O’Connel, Esq. M.P., to the People of Britain, .]
These conscientious and consistent apostles of the doctrine of passive resistance, were not to be deterred from performing what they believed to be their duty by the fear of personal danger, much less by the clamour that the Ministers of the Established Church were not adequately supported, and that they had an indisputable right, by the existing law of the land, to the proceeds of the Annuity Tax.
Believing that a tax for the support of a Church to which they did not belong was unjust in principle, they acted in the way which their own consciences approved, resisting all attempts to compel them to do what they considered evil, in order that what others considered good might come, and disregarding the consequences which might follow from their resistance.
The Ministers were reduced to the greatest distress.
Their stipends were small in amount, and very irregularly paid.
On , the Town Council resolved to apply to the inhabitants to know what they would lend for Ministers’ stipend.
Shortly afterwards, they resolved to consult the city assessors, to know what security they could give the inhabitants for any advances they might be inclined to make for this purpose.
On , they resolved that the stipends of six of the Ministers should be £138, and that the stipends of the other six, who were to be allowed for house rents, should be £83. Nearly one-half of the Records of the Town Council, about this period, are filled with matters concerning the Ministers and their stipends, and Churches and Sessions.
Judging from the Records, the support of the Church appears to have been a source of constant annoyance, and an intolerable burden on the inhabitants of Edinburgh, for the last two hundred years.
The fruits which have been produced by these expensive and troublesome Establishments will be afterwards adverted to; in the meantime, it may be proper, shortly, to explain the mode in which the business of poinding and rouping, for the support of the Church, was transacted.
It appears that the collector was in the habit of going to the houses of those in arrear, and carrying off to “the Anuity Office,” such articles as would sell by public auction, for a sum equal to the amount of the assessment.
These articles were called “poynds for Anuitie,” and were entered in a book, with the names of the parties from whom they were taken, in the same manner as is done by pawnbrokers at the present day.
They were redeemable at pleasure on payment of the arrears, until they had accumulated to an inconvenient extent, when the collector applied to the Council for an order to tell “the poynds for Anuitie,” which was granted as a matter of course, but generally with an intimation that public notice was to be given to “the neighbours to redeem their poynds within a fortnight,” otherwise they would be sold to the highest bidder for payment of the Ministers’ Stipends.
The “Anuitie Office” appears to have been a sort of general pawn-broking establishment and “Auction Mart” for the support of whatever Church was established by law for the time being, and consequently was one of the means employed for the promotion of the gospel!
How unlike the means employed by the Founder of Christianity and his Apostles!
The following extracts will show the nature and extent of the resistance made to the Annuity Tax by the Presbyterians of the present Established Church, in the palmy days of Episcopacy.
— “Compeared William Brown, collector of the Annuitie, and gave the overtures underwritten.”
“In respect, there are many poynds taken that are suffered to lie unrelieved, till the persons employed by those intrusted for collecting the Annuitie are gone [have left the town,] and then the poynds are challenged and called for, and oftentimes that sought [claimed] that was never taken from them; in respect whereof, the Council would ordain and declare all such poynds so taken, if not relieved by payment of the Annuitie, and satisfaction given to the persons employed thereanent, within ___ days after the poynding thereof, to be forefaulted, and the persons [to be] still liable for the Annuitie.”
[Although Episcopacy was substantially restored at the date of this act of Council, it was not until , that the Presbyterian Ministers of Edinburgh, were formally expelled from their offices.
Some of them were afterwards obliged to leave the kingdom.]
The Council approved of the same, and enacted accordingly.
.
“The Council appoints the hail poynds taken for Annuitie to be disposed of according as the Bailies shall think fitt, provyding the owners doe not redeem them betwixt and this day fortnight.”
The following extract shows that within 15 years after the passing of the act of , the resistance was so great, that the Council adopted the extraordinary expedient of enforcing payment, by quartering soldiers on all those in arrear, until the tax was paid!
:— “The Council considering that there is many poynds lying in the hands of the collector of the Anuitie, which are exceedingly troublesome to him,” empowers him “to sell and dispose of the hail poynds in his custody preceding the date hereof, to the best advantage, for the use of the Ministers’ Stipends, and that withall convenient dilligence, as likewise considering that the taking of poynds makes the inhabitants slack in payment of their Anuitie, and is not such an effectual way for inbringing thereof, as was expected; therefore ordains the said John Kinnear to quarter soldiers upon the deficients [defaulters] of the said Anuitie; and that they remove not from their houses, till they pay the said Anuitie.”
.
— There is a long act of Council of this date, setting forth, generally, that the means hitherto employed for the collection of the Annuity, had not been found effective, and requiring the inhabitants instantly to pay up the arrears due by them; and, as usual, ordering the poynds to be sold.
It appears from the concluding part of the minute, that the inhabitants who had soldiers quartered on them as a punishment for refusing to pay the Tax, were obliged to pay for the soldiers as well as for the Ministers, and that when their “poynds” were rouped, the expenses of the soldiers were to be deducted from the proceeds of the sale, and the surplus to be paid over to the parties from whom the goods were taken.
The following part of this Act deserves to be quoted, to show the means employed at this period for the propagation of the gospel: “And what poynds are already in the custody of the said collector or shall be poynded from the said deficients, betwixt and the 1st of May next, the said day being come and bygane, in case the owners do not relieve the said poynds, the same shall then be apprised [sold] and the collector shall only be accountable for the superplus of the value more nor is due to the soldiers who [were] quartered upon the persons poynded [for] the same.”
.
— “The Council appoints a proclamation to pass through this city, intimating to the hail inhabitants that are defective in payment of their Annuitie, from whom John Kinnear, collector, has poynded severall poynds, that they come to the said collector and relieve their poynds by payment of their bygaine Annuitie, betwixt and Martinmas next, certifying these that shall not relieve them, they shall be disposed upon by the collector, and they shall pay their Annuitie notwithstanding thereof.”
.
— “The Council appoints a proclamation to pass by tuck of drum through the citie, intimating to the whole inhabitants from whom the collector of the Anuitie has taken poynds, upon the amount of their deficiency in payment of their bygane Annuity, that they repair to the collector’s office, within eight days after the said intimation, certifying such as shall fail in relieving of their poynds, within the said space, by payment of their bygane Annuity, the collector is to dispose upon the said poynds by rouping the same.”
Resistance to the annuity tax after the establishment of presbytery, at
the revolution of
No sooner had the Presbyterians become the dominant sect, and their Ministers the persons legally entitled to receive stipends from the produce of the Annuity Tax, than the Episcopalians, whose Ministers did not participate, refused to comply with the demands of the Tax-gatherer.
{The following quotation from Maitland, shows that the Episcopalians resisted the interference of the Clergy and Elders of the Established Church, in matters of much less importance than the payment of the Annuity Tax.
The Elders of the Church were in the practice of taking a census of the population every year, and on these occasions, the Episcopalians refused to give them any information, on the ground that they were not subject to the control and examination of the Ministers of the Church.
This fact contrasts in a striking manner, with the modern doctrine advocated by the High Church party, namely, that all the Dissenters are under the pastoral superintendence of the Minister of the parish in which they happen to reside.
“But the greatest defect [in the census] is owing to the Episcopalian inhabitants, who, being of a different communion from the Established Church, are not subject to the control and examination of its Ministers; wherefore many of them refuse to give accounts either of the names or numbers of persons in their families.”
— Maitland’s History of Edinburgh, page 218.}
The goods of the defaulters were immediately taken to the Annuity Office as “poynds,” but it was not until 1693, that they had increased to such an inconvenient extent, as to require from the Council a peremptory order for their immediate redemption, or sale by public roup.
The resistance continued, and the poinding and rouping for the support of the Church, followed as a matter of course, with great regularity for upwards of half a century.
It appears somewhat extraordinary, that when each of the parties who, by turns, ceased to be the dominant, sect objected to pay for the Ministers of the other sect, it did not occur to them that all compulsory assessments for the support of Civil Establishments of religion, were unjust in principle, and injurious to the great cause which both were anxious to promote — the diffusion of the gospel.
It may be proper here to notice the amount of the Ministers’ Stipends during this period.
The Stipends which in had been fixed at £138 for each of the six senior, and £83 for each of the six junior ministers, were afterwards equalized, and fixed at £111. In , they were all advanced to £138, but from the resistance to the Annuity Tax, the whole ecclesiastical revenues of the city did not produce a sufficient sum for this purpose; and, therefore, on , an act of Council was passed, fixing the stipends of all the Ministers to be afterwards appointed at £111, including the allowance for house-rent.
On , the stipends of three of the Ministers who had been appointed since the passing of this act, were advanced to £138, on condition that they were to officiate alternately at a preaching station in the city, where it was proposed to erect a parish Church.
Against this increase, the city-treasurer entered a protest on the records, of which Maitland gives the following quaint and graphic account:
The Common Council having at this time seemingly partially augmented the stipends of three of the town’s Ministers, to two thousand five hundred merks each; which Dundass, the town treasurer, regarding as a grievance, and great injury done the citizens, solemnly protested against the said augmentation for the following reasons: —
That this resolution was contrary to an act of Council, still in force,
which expressly forbids augmenting the Ministers’ Stipends; and this at a time when the town was in much better circumstances than at present.
That when the said three Ministers were chosen, the said act for fixing the Ministers’ stipends at 2,000 merks yearly, being notified to them, it was the condition on which they accepted their respective charges.
The town’s debts being greatly increased since the commencement of the said act; instead of adding to the public burden, it was highly necessary to think of all ways and means to reduce the town’s expenses
&c
His remarks are curious, “The reasons in this protest are so laudable, just, and nervous, that they richly deserve, not only a place in the cabinets of all good and virtuous men, but to be stored up in the hearts and minds of all persons intrusted with the government and direction of public affairs, to remind them of their duty to the people whom they represent.
And in like manner it should be a caution to all those who assume the title of God’s ministers, to prevent their dishonouring their great and good Master, by iniquitously inriching themselves at the expence of their injured flocks.”
Notwithstanding the protest of Treasurer Dundass, on , another act of Council was passed, by which all the stipends were advanced to £138, at which rate they appear to have remained stationary until .
The following extracts show the progress of the resistance to the Annuity during this period.
.
— “Ordains intimation to be made by tuck of drum to all the inhabitants to relieve their poynds lying in the Annuity Office, betwixt and the first day of June next, with certification; if they fail, the same will be set to sale by one public roup.”
It appears from the following act of Council, that persons who were “spoiled of their goods,” for conscience sake, were occasionally relieved from the disagreeable situation in which they found themselves placed: — .
— “The Council, upon supplication given in by Mr. Simon Gyles, French Minister, do appoint the treasurer to cause redeliver his poynds, which was taken from him for his Annuity, and exeems [relieves] him from any payment of his bygone Annuities, and in time coming; and from payment of his proportion of street and poor’s money during the Council’s pleasure, providing his house-rent does not exceed £11, 2s. 2d. sterling.”
[It will be observed that the relief from the Annuity was altogether independent of the rent of his house, and that the condition about house-rent attached merely to the other taxes.]
, “The which day the Council appoints the poynds lying in the hands of the collector of the Annuity and seat-rents, poynded for payment of the same,” — “to be rouped within ten days,” and [“]appoints intimation hereof to be published through this city by tuck of drum, that none may pretend ignorance.”
, “The Council recommends to the former committee, annent the Annuity, to dispose of the poynds which were uplifted from several poor people, conform to a list given in, extending to the sum of £9, 1s. 08⁄12, and to do therein as they shall think just.”
, “Appoints the Annuity poynds,” — “to be rouped this day eight-days, and intimation to be made to the neighbours this day.”
, “Allowed the collector of the Annutie, to cause make intimation to the neighbourhood, to relieve their poinds for Annutie within 14 days after publication, with certification if they fail, their poynds shall be rouped.”
, “Grants warrant to the collector of the Annuity, to roup the poynds in his bands taken from the deficients [defaulters] in payment thereof,” — “unless these poynds be relieved by payment betwixt and this day eight-days.”
, “Grant warrant to roup the poynds for Annuitie.”
— “The Council appointed the following proclamation to be intimated in the usual manner, advertising all the inhabitants of this city, who have poynds in the Annuity Office for their Annuity, &c., due at , that the said poynds are to be exposed to public roup, , in the said office, if not relieved by payment before that day.”
— “Upon a petition by Mark Sprot, Skinner, in respect of his poverty, did ordain John Fergus, collector of the Annuity, to deliver back to the said Mark Sprot the goods poynded from him in payment of sixteen shillings sterling, due by him, .”
The following interesting report appears in the proper revenue accounts of the City for .
It shows that nearly 100 years ago the Town Council conceived that they had such an undoubted right to levy seat-rents, that they were in the practice of summoning parties, who occupied seats without paying for them, before the Bailie Court, in order to recover payment.
“By the Committee’s report, approven of by the Council, the , the desperate arrears were to be discontinued in Mr. Fergus’ next account.
Doubtful, 8 per cent. arrears [the rate allowed for recovery of old arrears] were to be poyned for betwixt and Martinmas, 1740, and the good before ; and the arrears of seat-rents, both good and doubtful, without distinction, were to be pursued for presently before the Bailie Court [The Kirk Sessions who have brought an action of declarator to have it found that the Town Council have no legal right to levy seat-rents, will find some difficulty in getting over facts of this kind, showing that the Council were in the practice of enforcing their right to let seats nearly a century ago.]; and public intimation was to be made of the roup of all poynds in Mr. Fergus’ hands, that they might be either returned, if the owners were unable to relieve them, or disposed of as the Magistrates should see cause, — and in time coming no person obtaining an Act of Council for a seat, is to be allowed possession till one year’s rent thereof is paid per advance, and intimation is to be made annually from the pulpits of the several churches, that such as are in arrear for more than one year, their seats will be disposed of to others.”
— “Bailie Mansfield, from the Committee on the poor, reported that they having perused a list of the poinds for Annuity and poors’ money, in the hands of John Fergus, collector, were of opinion that these poinds ought to be rouped, and sold upon ; and that Mr. Fergus ought previously to advertise the respective persons concerned, so as they may be at liberty to redeem their poinds by paying their arrears.
A few of the poinds, in the foresaid list, the Committee ordered to be redelivered to the persons concerned, in respect of their mean circumstances, as the report under the hands of the Committee bears,” which report was approved of.
This is the last order for rouping the goods of the inhabitants for Ministers’ stipends, which appears in the Records of the Town Council; but the collectors afterwards proceeded to such extremities of their own accord, without considering it necessary to apply to the Council for authority, as appears from the following entry in the proper revenue accounts of the City.
“ — Cash received for Silver Plate, poynded by John Fergus, Collector, [of the Annuity] sold to Messrs.
Ker and Dempster, for £22, 14s. 106⁄12”
This extract is important in several respects;
It proves, beyond the possibility of cavil or dispute, that the resistance to the Tax was not confined to the poorer classes.
It proves that the resistance, like that of the French minister in , was not from inability to pay, but from conscientious objections to the principle of the Tax.
Parties who were in circumstances to be possessed of silver plate, would have had so much repugnance to its being known that their plate was carried off, and sold by public roup for payment of any ordinary Tax, that they would have arranged to borrow the necessary sum on the security of their plate, in order to avoid a public exposure of their real poverty amidst their apparent splendour.
But their objection to the principle of the Tax, affords a satisfactory explanation of the startling fact, that a quantity of silver plate was sold for payment of Ministers’ stipend.
It proves that the number of those whose goods were rouped, bore a considerable proportion to the total number of rate payers, because the sum collected during this year, was only £670, of which £22, 14s. 10⅙, or one-thirtieth part, was produced from the sale of poinded plate.
It is probable that these “poynds” did not all belong to the year on which they were sold, but were the accumulation of the four years which had elapsed since the date of the last general order of sale; but on the other hand, it must be remembered that this sum was produced from the sale of only one description of “poynds,” and that the produce of all the other articles which were rouped, would be included in the amount of the collectors accounts for the year in which the sales took place.
It proves that at this period, the Collector of Annuity had adopted the practice followed in England at the present time, in enforcing payment of Church-rates from the Members of the Society of Friends; it being usual to carry off silver plate from them in preference to any other article, because it can be more easily converted into money.
This may furnish a useful hint to the present collector, whose situation, in consequence of the recent imprisonments, will be no sinecure.
It appears from Maitland, that at this time, the Episcopalians were a numerous body in Edinburgh.
In the Tron Church Parish alone, according to him, “in , there were one English Chapel, and six other Episcopal meeting-houses, with an independent meeting-place;” and in , there were twelve Established Churches in the city and suburbs, and “seventeen meeting-houses, viz., twelve Episcopal, an Independent, a Seceder’s, a Quaker’s, a French, and one Popish.”
The following report on Annuity Tax resistance in Scotland comes from Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine Volume 3, Number 18, published in .
It has some interesting details about the use of social boycott, rallies, and disruption of auctions by the resisters and their supporters.
The Passive Resistance of Edinburgh, to the Clergy-Tax.
A system of Passive Resistance to the iniquitous local impost, disguised under the name of the Annuity Tax, has been brought to a crisis by the imprisonment of Mr. Tait, the proprietor of this Magazine, for his proportion of the tax by which our clergy are maintained.
How he should have had the honour thrust upon him of inflicting the death-blow on this obnoxious tax, it is easier to know than to tell.
Mr. Tait had neither been an active, nor obtrusive resister: though, like thousands of the most respectable citizens of Edinburgh, and particularly the booksellers, he refused to pay annuity.
This tax has ever been hateful to the people, from almost every reason which can render an impost odious.
It is considered a tax on conscience with many.
It is a tax unknown in the Kirk Establishment, and peculiar to Edinburgh; unequal in its pressure; and arbitrary and irritating in the mode of exaction; and it is one which gives, as has been seen, power to the clergy to disgrace themselves and their profession, and wound the cause of Christianity.
Power of imprisonment over their hearers and townsmen, is not a power for ministers of the Gospel.
For four years, measures have been taken to resist this impost; and for the last eighteen months it has been successfully opposed, so far as goods were concerned, by a well-concerted Passive Resistance.
Many of the citizens were (and are) under horning1 and liable to caption, at the time the clergy selected Mr. Tait.
For Passive Resistance, during the last eighteen months, has been, as we shall have occasion to explain, so well organized, and has wrought so well to defeat the collection of the tax, that, unless the ministers had turned the kirks into old-furniture warehouses, it was idle to seize any more feather-beds, teakettles, and chests of drawers; either from those who could not, or those who would not pay this irritating and unjust local impost, marked by every deformity which can render a tax hateful.
The legal right of the ministers of the Kirk in Edinburgh, to imprison for stipend, was questioned.
Mr. Tait is probably the first imprisoned victim of the Kirk; nor will there be many more, or we greatly misunderstand the character of the people and of the times in Scotland.
A few weeks back, it was decided by the Law Courts that the ministers had the right of imprisonment; though an appeal to the Lord Chancellor still lay open to the inhabitants, who have petitioned against the tax, till they are tired of petitioning.
The clergy, to give them their due, lost no time in exercising their new power. Hornings and captions were flying on all sides;2 though no one would believe that Presbyterian Divines, the Fathers of the Scottish Kirk, calling themselves ministers of the gospel of love, and peace, and charity, would ever proceed to the fearful extremity of throwing their townsmen and hearers into jail.
The first experiment was made on a gentleman in very delicate health, about a fortnight before Mr. Tait’s arrest.
This gentleman was attended to the jail door by numbers of the most respectable citizens — resisters — in carriages.
He paid, and the procession returned home.
Two of his escort were Mr. Adam Black, publisher of the Edinburgh Review, and Mr. Francis Howden, a wealthy retired jeweller, of the highest respectability.
These two gentlemen were, some few months before, chairman and deputy-chairman of the Lord Advocate’s election committee.
These are the kind of men who have actively opposed the tax.
There was a lull for ten days. A Quaker was expected to be the next victim;
but the unexpected honour fell on Mr. Tait. The clergy could not have
committed so capital a blunder if they had aimed at it; or so effectually
have laid the axe to the root of the tree. This grand stroke of policy was,
doubtless, intended to finish the thing at once. Once compel him to submit,
and glory and gain were secure. That there might be no more processions, he
was waylaid coming into town in the morning; and, to the consternation of
the clergy themselves, submitted to the alternative of going to prison
rather than pay the tax. His first letter, which is
subjoined,3 explains the nature of our
clergy-tax, which has now been opposed and resisted in every peaceful way.
The scenes in Ireland were faintly brought to our own door; and so great
excitement never certainly prevailed in Edinburgh against a Kirk tax, or
against the Establishment altogther, since “The dinging down o’ the
Cathedrals.” At the request of the Inhabitants’ Committee,
intimated in the newspapers, Mr. Tait consented to be
liberated;4 and having remained four days in the
bonds of the clergy, he was released with every mark of honour and
distinction his fellow-citizens could confer. His conduct, they thought, had
given an example of patriotism and moral courage needed
everywhere,5 and the death-blow to the
clergy-tax. We take the Scotsman’s account of the triumph of
passive resistance, as being shorter than some of the others, and,
containing everything necessary to be told:—
“He stepped into the open carriage, drawn by four horses, which stood on the street, and beside him sat Mr. Howden, Mr. R. Miller, Mr. Robert Chambers, and Mr. Deuchar.
At this moment, one of the gentlemen in the carriage, waving his hat, proposed three cheers for the King, and three cheers for Mr. Tait, — both of which propositions were most enthusiastically carried into effect.
The procession was then about to move off, when, much against the will of Mr. Tait and the Committee, the crowd took the horses from the carriage, and with ropes drew it along the route of procession, which was along Waterloo Place and Prince’s Street, to Walker Street.
As the procession marched along, it was joined by several other trades, who had been late in getting ready; and seldom have we seen such a dense mass of individuals as Prince’s Street presented on this occasion.
In the procession alone, there were not fewer than 8,000 individuals; and we are sure that the spectators were more than thrice as numerous.
Mr. Tait was frequently cheered as he passed along, — and never, but on the occasion of the Reform Bill, was a more unanimous feeling witnessed than on that which brought the people together yesterday afternoon.”
A respectable Tory print in Glasgow — for there are Tory prints that have
decent manners — in denouncing “the revolutionary movement in that
rebellious city,” states, “that Edinburgh requires a Coercion Bill as much
as Kilkenny.” We confess it. So do many of the English towns. The agitation
against tithes and church-rate is as great in England as in Ireland. And if
a Coercion Bill is to be the substitute for justice, the more universally it
is applied the better. The whole people of the United Kingdom are of the
same spirit.
No church-rate can be more oppressive than the Annuity; and the evil does not rest here. “A poor Kirk only will be a pure Kirk,” is exemplified in Edinburgh.
This is a tax levied on members of the Church Establishment; and on every
denomination of Dissenters, Catholic, Quaker, Jew, Turk, or Pagan, to raise
the Edinburgh clergy above their brethren of the Kirk; and to set them above
their proper functions. With a few honourable exceptions, the Edinburgh
clergy are anything but a working clergy. Edinburgh, among its other
felicities, holds all “the great prizes” (as the Duke of Wellington calls
the bishoprics) of the Kirk. It is too much that the inhabitants should also
monopolize the honour of maintaining “the great prizes,” in a style which
has set them above their duties, and given “a high tone” to Presbyterianism,
by making a few of its humble clergy fit associates for our Tory and Whig
Coteries, and the legal aristocracy, at the expense of the pastoral office.
The worst fault that we hitherto know about them, after all, is, that they
know nothing of their parishes; for, till now, they had no power of
imprisonment, a power of which they should be the first to try to denude
themselves. Ministers of the Reformed Presbyterian Church! — a Church
boasting its purity, its poverty, its tolerance, “rob widows’ houses,” and
throw men of all persuasions into prison for fractions of stipend! — and
this, too, with ample funds for their maintenance from other sources, — the
same kind of funds, and to a larger amount than those by which their
brethren are respectably supported in every other Scottish city. Shade of
John Knox! could you
have looked up from that old station in the Netherbow on the scenes
exhibited at the Cross of Edinburgh within the last ten years, by order of
your successors! and their proctors; seen the miserable furniture of poor
widows and destitute persons rouped for stipend! One scorns the
miserable fiction by which the Edinburgh clergy try to skulk behind their
agents: the Parsons in Ireland have given up the hypocritical pretext, “It
was not I, but the proctor.[”] Passive Resistance has put
an end to these revolting scenes, and introduced others, which the sincere
friends of the Kirk can regard as no less dangerous to its stability.
Mr. Tait’s letter explains the nature of the church-tax, but not all its deformities. First, it is peculiar to Edinburgh, and to a limited part of Edinburgh, rigorously visiting the shop-keeper, the physician, the artist, the half-pay officer, the poor and needy, while it totally exempts the class best able to contribute to the support of the Church, — the lawyers of all grades; those who, according to our Glasgow friend, drain the blood, and live on the marrow of Scotland; till, Jeshurun-like, our whole community, by their suckings, have waxen fat and are kicking, requiring to be put in strait waistcoats, and dieted on bread and water. Secondly, It is a shop tax; the people of London know what that means.
The rent of a man’s dwelling-house is a fair measure of his means, and in “our city of palaces,” every man likes a house rather above what he can afford than under it.
A shopkeeper who rents a house at from L.30 to L.50, may pay L.200 a-year, or more, for his place of business; and on this L.200, and on all the other premises he may rent in carrying on his trade, as well as on his dwelling-house, which is almost invariably at some distance from his place of business, he is liable to pay L.6 per cent. to the clergy, or be sent to jail, — be he Jew, Turk, Quaker, or Baptist.
The garret of a widow, the cellar of a porter, must contribute their proportion to the maintenance of “the great prizes” of the Kirk, and of the “tone” which now elevates Established Presbyterianism, in the gentility of its teachers, almost to equality with Episcopalian Dissent.
Of late years, since the Irish settled among us, many Catholics are called on to contribute to the maintenance of what they must think, our heretic clergy; an imposition on conscience, from which we hope to see Scotland soon freed for ever.
But, while the darkest den6 in the lanes, and
poor streets, of that central portion of Edinburgh (which, for the
Established clergy, may look for religious instruction where its inhabitants
please) must pay, every lordly mansion, of the first-born of Egypt, is past
bye. Our Lords of Session, and Clerks of Session, and Deputy-Clerks of
Session; and Clerks of Justiciary, and Deputy-Clerks of Justiciary, and Lord
Advocates, and Deputy-Advocates, and Sheriffs, and Substitute-Sheriffs; and
the whole tribes, kindreds, and languages, of our barristers; and every man
whose profession is symbolized on his door-plate by the mystic letters — W.S., or
S.S.C., the tax-gatherer respectfully passes. The
clergy themselves do not pay poor-rates in this city; for which rate another
6 per cent. on rent is levied from
the unfortunate shopkeeper, and householder. Is it surprising that the
people of Edinburgh have “rebelled,” since rebellion it must be called, and
refuse longer to submit to the hornings and gorings of the watchmen
of the flock?
The exemption of the College of Justice — this is the phrase, College of Justice — among a nation remarkable for the propriety of its names — is, however, the grievance of a past time; and the inclusion of the fifteen hundred, or two thousand, exempted lawyers will not now satisfy the people of Edinburgh; though this is the bait held out to make us bolt the Bill the Lord Advocate has been bungling at, “to enable the Edinburgh parsons to live like gentleman.” The people of Edinburgh will have their clergy live like their brethren in other towns, and like Christian ministers.
They will have no compulsory tax for their support.
They will have no Dissenter, no Catholic, no Quaker, or Jew, liable to a fraction of rate to maintain a Presbyterian minister.
They cannot more admire propagating religion by the tithe-pound, the Cross-rouping, and the Calton jail, than by the sword or the faggot; and will resist to the last every attempt to continue a power in the hands of the Edinburgh clergy, which they have recently used, and are still employing, to the violation of the first principles of the merciful faith they are bound to teach, and to the disgrace of their sacred office.
It is too late for compromise.
The principle which places this power in their hands is more dangerous, and much more to be guarded against, than the mere amount of the tribute levied.
Our ancestors, at some peril, and by despising persecution, won for us freedom of conscience and a Free Kirk: it will go hard but we maintain the right.
As this Magazine circulates through England and Ireland more widely than at
home, we have hitherto forborne afflicting our distant readers with local
grievances. Heaven knows that every town has abundance of them, local and
general; but, in passive resistance, Edinburgh is making common
cause with many other communities; and it may amuse strangers to learn how
it has been managed in the country of
the Porteous mob.
For years the spectators looked on with indignation and shame when furniture was rouped (sold by auction) at the Cross of Edinburgh, for annuity to the clergy.
At first such furniture belonged exclusively to very distressed persons; for though every one grumbled, no one who could scrape up the money durst refuse to pay, and thus incur the additional penalties of prosecution.
Not unfrequently generous individuals redeemed the miserable sticks so cruelly wrested from the more miserable owners.
The first act of passive resistance may have taken place about two years back; and we admit that since then it has been most actively passive, and has given rise to many melancholy and some humorous scenes.
Fortunately for the resisters, the goods must, by law, be exposed for sale at the Cross, which so far concentrated their field of action.
This, by the way, was a capital omission when the Annuity clause was smuggled over.
We hope the Lord Advocate (but the clergy’s agent will see to it) takes care, in the new Bill, that our goods, when confiscated for stipend, may be sent away and sold anywhere.
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale;7 and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
Our Edinburgh clergy could hitherto only operate round the Cross. If any of
our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was
tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross
about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale. Latterly the passive
hubbub rose as if by magic. Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross
passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate;
and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of
Passive Resistance. The tax had grinded the faces of the
poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation. Irish,
Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges;
Irish traders flew from St.
Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable
auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but
what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy. And here were the black
placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude—
ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
These are among the things done and provoked in this reforming city of John Knox, in the name of supporting religious instruction!
Dr. Chalmers is reported to have said, the other day, in one of our Church
Courts, “Too little money is devoted to the religious instruction of the
city.” He is quite right: Too little indeed — almost none is so applied; — a
good deal goes into the pockets of the ministers, nevertheless. The condition
of the poor of Edinburgh — their want of the due means, from the
Establishment, either of religious instruction at home, or church
accommodation, is not the smallest evil in this system of setting Scotch
Presbyterian clergymen above their callings by high salaries. We might
imagine, that after a poor man or woman has paid annuity, or had their goods
sold, they might at least find a church door open to them somewhere in the
town. They will find exactly the door open, but a surly door-keeper to push
them back, and if they do get in, no seat in church. In addition to the
odious Annuity Tax, the rents of the pews in Edinburgh are, on the average,
three times higher than in any other Scottish city. Thus we pay for
our “great prizes”8 trebly; and, in their
diligence and fidelity as ministers; in their meekness, forbearance,
long-suffering, patience, gentleness, as Christains, have our reward.
We dare not inflict upon our English or Irish readers more about our Collegiate Charges; our royal chaplainships; our union of the pastoral office with the professorships in our university; our church jobs of all kinds.
We have not complained till now: Now complaint is redress.
The legal jargon of which the Edinburgh prints are full just now, must
amuse and perplex the English and Irish. What can they think of widows
under caption; and hornings issued by the ministers? By one of the many
beautiful fictions of our law, no man can be imprisoned for debt. His
crime is rebellion. The King having sent “greeting,” ordering the debtor
to pay his creditor, if the debtor refuse to comply, he is presumed to
be denounced rebel at Edinburgh Cross and Leith Pier by the
horn, and is sent to jail for resistance of the King’s command.
The whole thing is admirably described by the Antiquary to his nephew,
Hector Macintyre, who remained about as wise as before; or as wise as
a recusant Irishman in the Cowgate, on whom our clergy lately made a
charge of horning. “Horning! horning! — by the powers! if they
bring a horning against me, I’ll bring a horning against them.”
When the King’s messenger-at-arms, as tipstaves are called in Scotland,
brought his horning to the Cowgate, the Irishman, previously
provided with a tremendous bullock’s horn, blew a blast “so loud and
dread,” that it might have brought down the Castle wall; and a
faction mustered as quickly as if it had sounded in the
suburbs of Kilkenny. The messenger-at-arms took leave as rapidly as
possible, and without making the charge of horning at this
time.
The agent of the clergy, Mr. H. Inglis, son of the Reverend Dr. Inglis,
the leader of the Church, and the grand instrument in smuggling the
clause into the Bill under which the clergy distrain and imprison, — acted in such energetic haste against the citizens, in obtaining these
profitable hornings, that it is said he forgot to take out the
attorney license before be commenced horning; which neglect
infers a penalty of
L.200. Will it be
exacted? — Every tax-payer is against the tax, but every one would
neither have gone to jail nor incurred prosecution. “Mr. Tait should
just have paid,” said one of the cautious disapproves. “No man will
uphold the tax; but where’s the good of putting two-three more guineas
in the pouch of Pope John’s son.” The argument has
force. Surely, for the sake of common decency, another of our
multitudinous W.S.’s might have been found for the lucrative office
devolved on the son of the great leader of the Kirk Assemblies.
To the Editor of the Caledonian Mercury
Sir, — I wish to be allowed, through the medium of your paper, to
explain the reasons which have induced me to submit to imprisonment,
rather than pay the annuity or ministers’ stipend. My reasons are
these:—
The tax was imposed by the act 1661, and preceding acts, to
raise 19,000 merks, which were to be applied to the maintenance of only
six of the twelve Edinburgh clergymen; whereas a sum very much larger
has been collected, under the name of annuity, and applied to the
maintenance of all the Edinburgh clergymen, and to other
purposes.
The collection and application of the annuity was illegal up
to ; and was only then made legal (if
legal it yet is) by a clause surreptitiously and illegally inserted in
an act of Parliament, which had been intimated as one for simply
extending the royalty of the city. Unless an act of Parliament,
fraudulently obtained by the clergy, can make the annuity, as now
collected and applied, legal, the collection and application
are still illegal.
Altogether, by the annuity, impost, seat rents, shore dues
at Leith,
&c.,
about L.21,000 are
collected, in name of the Church Establishment, while only about half
that sum is applied to its legitimate purposes.
The sum levied from the citizens of Edinburgh is not only
too large, but is unequally levied, and absurdly applied; 55,000 souls,
in the extended royalty, having 13 churches and eighteen ministers, to
whom about L.9,000 per
annum is paid, while 70,000 souls, in that part ol Edinburgh which is
called the parish of St.
Cuthbert’s, pay no part of the annuity tax; the two clergymen of this
parish; and those of the Chapels of Ease belonging to it, being paid by
the heritors, or from the seat rents.
The above inequality of the assessment is further aggravated
by the exemption of the Members of the College of Justice; also, by the
tax being laid upon shops,
&c., as
well as dwelling-houses, although the latter are the proper measures of
the incomes of the inhabitants.
For those and other reasons, detailed in a petition to
Parliament, and a report by the Committee of Inhabitants, the collection
of the annuity has been considered unjust and oppressive. Payment has
been refused by the inhabitants; and when the clergy proceeded to
distrain the goods of the recusants, their proceedings were rendered
ineffective by the impossibility of finding purchasers for the
distrained goods. Finding their seizure of the citizens’ goods
inoperative, the clergy are resorting to the extremity of imprisonment.
Mr. Wilson, pocket-book maker, was the first seized on. He, as was
publicly announced, submitted immediately on being imprisoned to the
imposition of the clergy, on account of the state of his health. I have
been selected as the second victim. And, as I have not Mr. Wilson’s
reason for instant submission to what I conceive unjustice and
oppression, I have permitted the clergy to imprison me; and send you
this statement from my place of confinement, the jail, Calton Hill.
In reference to
St. Peter’s name, our
Saviour said — “Upon this rock I have built my Church.” It is now seen
upon what rock the Edinburgh clergy rest their Establishment — the rock
on which stands the Calton Jail.
Let no man tell me that I ought to petition Parliament for an
alteration of the law, instead of opposing this passive resistance to
the law. Petitioning has been tried once and again; and what has been
the result? Why, that the Lord Advocate of Scotland, one of the
representatives of our city, and a Minister of the Crown, has attempted
to sanction the hideous injustice of which we complain, by a new act of
Parliament, fixing down the odious annuity tax upon us more firmly than
ever, with no amelioration of the injustice, except the doing away with
the exemption of the College of Justice!
I believe there is no hope of redress but from refusal of
payment until the extremity of imprisonment is resorted to. In that
belief I have acted, — and
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
William Tait.
The spirit of the people of Edinburgh may be inferred from the following
anecdote:— Mr. Tait spent one Sabbath in jail On that day the debtors
posted a bill on their door of the jail chapel intimating, “No
attendance on Divine Service during Imprisonment for Annuity
Tax.” This was, of course, quite spontaneous, as the Church
prisoner of the clergy was kept apart from all the other prisoners; and
treated by every one of the officials with the greatest indulgence and
consideration, during his brief sojourn in prison.
“We have need of many such men; we ought to find them in places where it
is in vain to look for them. But our consolation is, that to have a
few, nay to have only
one, is to be sure of having thousands hereafter. The moral
force of such examples is slow to subside, even though they be not
instantly acted upon. The recollection of them survives long, and acts
alike as a check to the oppressor, and a sustaining hope to the
unredressed — an assurance that there is a glorious power unemployed,
that can, when it pleases, rise up and baffle the oppressing one that
is ever at work. An odour rises out of such actions, that becomes as
the breath of a new life to others. The language they are related in,
is as the melody so exquisitely described in one of Wordsworth’s
ballads:—
‘The music in my heart I bore
Long after it was heard no more.’ ” — True
Sun.
Many capital hits have been made during the Three Years’
War between the citizens and the clergy of Edinburgh, which
should not be forgotten. The Bible Society of London had, it appears,
at one time resolved, that no subscription in aid of the circulation of
the Scriptures, should be taken from Socinians, Unitarians, Infidels,
and Blasphemers. The Bible Society denounced all such
characters; and our clergy piously agreed. “Now, surely you won’t take
stipend from such wretches?” said some writer in the
North Briton. Tainted money becomes sweet in passing
through the fingers of Mr. Peter Hill. Mr. Manager Murray’s synagogue
of Satan, at the end of the North Bridge, pays about
L.50 per annum to the
clergy of Edinburgh; and many smaller sanctuaries of sin, in the old
town, must contribute their proportion.
The agents of our clergy had a sort of barracks. They made the enclosure
in the Cowgate, called the Meal-market, a depot for confiscated
furniture when the people drove the auctioneers from the Cross.
[“]Every clergyman should have
L.400 in each pocket,”
said the Whig Solicitor-General, the other day at some Kirk meeting,
where the Magistrates themselves were speaking of uncollegiating the
churches, and reducing the stipends. Some twenty or thirty years back,
those stipends were L.300
a-year, with as much more as they could scrape up. Be it remembered,
that the faculty to which Mr. Cockbum belongs, have never yet paid one
farthing of church-tax since the Kirk was established; and as
Presbyterianism is neither the fashionable religion, nor even the
genteel mode of faith in Edinburgh, it is but a proportion of
the learned faculty that even pay for a seat in the Kirk. Speeches like
the above move the multitudes in the Cowgate, and even the wealthiest
shopkeeper in the finest streets, in rather an unpleasant way. Mr.
Cockburn cannot have forgotten the anecdote of King James
Ⅰ. and his Bishops,
Neale and Andrews. “Cannot I take my subject’s money when I want it,
without all this formality in Parliament?” — “God forbid, Sir,” said
Neale, “but you should — you are the breath of our nostrils.” — “Well,
my Lord,” rejoined his Majesty to Andrews, “and what say you?” He
excused himself on the ground of ignorance in Parliamentary matters. “No
put-offs, my Lord,” said James, “answer me presently.” — “Then, Sir,”
said the excellent prelate, “I think it lawful for you to take my
brother Neale’s money, for he offers it.” The clergy are fully entitled
to take Mr. Cockburn’s
L.800 a-year.
This note is appended to the article:
Imprisonment of a Baptist. — As this sheet was going to press, we have seen the spectacle, novel in a Presbyterian country, of a respectable and aged man of the religious persuasion of Fuller, Robert Hall, and John Foster, haled to prison for ministers’ stipend, under circumstances which shame the very name of Presbyterianism.
Mr. Ewart, shoemaker, one among upwards of three hundred citizens put to the horn, (at least a two-guinea process before it is ended,) when presented with the caption by the messenger, said he was quite unable to pay his arrears.
He was indulged with a little time to go and plead his case with the scion of Establishment, Dr. Inglis’s son, who is reaping the fruits of a lawyer’s rich harvest, amid our tears, shame, and sorrow.
He told that young agent of the clergy, that he neither could, nor would, if he could, pay stipend.
Ho belonged to a denomination of Christians who had been tortured and burned by an established priesthood; and the Established Clergy of Edinburgh were welcome to send him to prison if it seemed good to them.
On he was marched off to the Calton Jail, accompanied by the usual hasty muster of people carrying flags and poles, having placards on which were a variety of devices and inscriptions, to which we shall not at present advert.
His daughter, a fine young woman, in a fit of heroic indignation which overmastered her grief and the natural timidity of her sex, seized one of the flags, and would have walked before her father to prison with the crowd, but was prevented by him and the interference of the humane bystanders. this ruined man’s shop, in Hanover Street, was seen shut up, and a bill stuck on the door, “In Prison for Ministers’ Stipend.”
In earnestly recommending Mr. Ewart’s case to the friends of freedom of
conscience everywhere, and particularly to the Baptists of England, we would
humbly ask the casuists among our clergy, is this man imprisoned to recover
a just debt, or to gratify a cruel, despicable revenge? We know what men of
plain understanding, in this city, think and say loudly.
By the laws of Scotland, a creditor who indulges his cruelty by keeping a needy man in jail, is bound to maintain him.
Mr. Ewart has claimed and been allowed a shilling, paid per diem, as aliment-money — a liberal allowance, — as fortunately the fixing the amount of aliment does not rest with the imprisoning clergy.
Great Protest Meeting Against the Imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks.
“No Government Can Stand Ridicule. The Position is Ridiculous!”
The great meeting of indignant protest against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks, held at the Caxton Hall on , under the auspices of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, will be not only memorable but epoch-making.
The fight for woman’s citizenship in “free England” has led to the imprisonment of a man for failing to do what was impossible.
Throughout the meeting the humor of the situation was frequently commented upon, but the serious aspect was most strongly emphasized.
Sir John Cockburn, who presided, struck a serious note at the outset; for anything, he said, that touched the liberty of the citizen was of the gravest importance.
He remarked that it was the first occasion on which he had attended a meeting to protest against the action of law.
The resolution of protest was proposed by Dr. Mansell Moullin, whose many and continued services to their Cause are warmly appreciated by all Suffragists, in a very able speech, and ran as follows:—
That this meeting indignantly protests against the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay the tax on his wife’s earned income, and demands his immediate release.
This meeting also calls for an amendment of the existing Income-tax law, which, contrary to the spirit of the Married Women’s Property Act, regards the wife’s income as one with that of her husband.
A Husband the Property of His Wife.
Dr. Moullin expressed his pleasure in supporting his colleague, Dr. Elizabeth Wilks, in the protest against the outrage on her husband.
The case, he said, was not a chapter out of “Alice in Wonderland,” but a plain proof that, although imprisonment for debt has been abolished in England, a man may be deprived of his liberty for non-payment of money which was not his, and which he could not touch.
The only argument that could be used was that Mr. Wilks was the property of his wife.
Twice distraint had been made on the furniture of Mrs. Wilks, the third time the authorities carried off her husband; it is the first occasion on which it has been proved that a husband is the property of his wife.
The law allows a man to put a halter round the neck of his wife, take her to the market-place and sell her, and this has been done within recent years; but there is no law which allows the Inland Revenue authorities to sell a husband for the benefit of his wife.
Governments, he added, can stand abuse, but cannot stand ridicule, and the position with regard to Dr. Wilks and her husband is both ridiculous and anomalous.
The serious question behind the whole matter was how far anyone is justified in resisting the law of the land.
The resister for conscience’ sake is the martyr of one generation and the saint of the next.
Dr. Moullin doubted whether the Hebrews or Romans of old would recognise what their laws had become; we are ashamed of the outrageous sentences for trivial offences passed by our forefathers; our children will be ashamed of the sentences passed to-day.
Everything in the law connected with women required reconstruction from the very foundation, declared Dr. Moullin.
Constitutional methods, like Royal Commissions, were an admirable device for postponing reform; all reformers were unconstitutional; they had to use unconstitutional methods or leave reform alone.
The self-sacrifice of an individual makes a nation great; that nation is dead when reformers are unwilling to sacrifice themselves.
No Man Safe.
Mr. George Bernard Shaw was the next speaker, and gave a characteristically witty and autobiographical address.
He said that this was the beginning of the revolt of his own unfortunate sex against the intolerable henpecking which had been brought upon them by the refusal of the Government to bring about a reform which everybody knew was going to come, and the delay of which was a mere piece of senseless stupidity.
From the unfortunate Prime Minister downwards no man was safe.
He never saw his wife reflecting in a corner without some fear that she was designing some method of putting him and his sex into a hopeless corner.
He never spoke at suffrage gatherings.
He steadily refused to join the ranks of ignominious and superfluous males who gave assistance which was altogether unnecessary to ladies who could well look after themselves.
“If my wife did that to me, the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
It is indefensible.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Under the Married Women’s Property Act the husband retained the responsibility of the property and the woman had the property to herself.
Mr. Wilks was not the first victim.
The first victim was G.B.S. The Government put on a supertax.
That fell on his wife’s income and on his own.
The authorities said that he must pay his wife’s supertax.
He said, “I do not happen to know the extent of her income.”
When he got married he strongly recommended to his wife to have a separate banking account, and she took him at his word.
He had no knowledge of what his wife’s income was.
All he knew was that she had money at her command, and he frequently took advantage of that by borrowing it from her.
The authorities said that they would have to guess at the income; then the Government passed an Act, he forgot the official title of it, but the popular title was the Bernard Shaw Relief Act.
They passed an Act to allow women to pay their supertax.
In spite of this Act, ordinary taxpayers were still apparently under the old regime, and as Mrs. Wilks would not pay the tax on her own income Mr. Wilks went to gaol.
“If my wife did that to me,” said Mr. Shaw, “the very moment I came out of prison I would get another wife.
It is indefensible.”
Women, he added, had got completely beyond the law at the present time.
Mrs. [Mary] Leigh had been let out, but he presumed that after a brief interval for refreshments she would set fire to another theatre.
He got his living by the theatre, and very probably when she read the report of that speech she would set fire to a theatre where his plays were being performed.
The other day he practically challenged the Government to starve Mrs. Leigh, and in the course of the last fortnight he had received the most abusive letters which had ever reached him in his life.
The Government should put an end to the difficulty at once by giving women the vote.
As he resumed his seat Mr. Shaw said: “I feel glad I have been allowed to say the things I have here to-night without being lynched.”
Bullying Fails.
Mr. Laurence Housman laid stress on the fact that the Government was endeavouring to make Mrs. Wilks, through her affection, do something she did not consider right.
Liberty could only be enjoyed when laws were not an offence to the moral conscience of a people.
Laws were not broken in this country every day because they were not practicable.
Every man, according to law, must go to church on Sunday morning, or sit two hours in the stocks; it was unlawful to wheel perambulators on the pavement.
If the police were compelled to administer all the laws on the Statute Book, England would be a hell.
To imprison Mr. Wilks for something which he had not done and could not do was as sane as if a servant were sent to prison because her employer objected to lick stamps under the Insurance Act.
The Government had tried bullying, but women had shown that it did not pay.
Self-respecting people break down a law by demonstrating that it is too expensive to carry.
Question for the Solicitor to the Treasury.
The legal aspect was the point specially dealt with by Mr. Herbert Jacobs, chairman of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage.
He said that it was stupidity, not chivalry, which deprived the husband under the Married Women’s Property Act of of the right to his wife’s earnings, but did not relieve him of responsibility to pay for her.
Imprisonment for debt has been abolished; but if it could be shown that a man had the means to pay and refused to pay, he could be sent to prison for contempt of court.
Mr. Jacobs suggested that the Solicitor to the Treasury should be asked to reply to the following question: “What has Mr. Wilks done or omitted to do that he should be imprisoned for life?”
The law, he added, does not compel a man to do that which he cannot possibly perform.
The action of the Internal Revenue authorities may be illegal; it certainly is barbarous and ridiculous.
Bad Bungling
Mr. H[enry].G[eorge].
Chancellor pointed out that the Married Women’s Property Act was an endeavour by men to remove injustice to women, but because they did not realise the injustices from which women suffer and avoided the woman’s point of view, they bungled badly.
No one can respect a ridiculous law, and the means to be taken in the future to avoid making ridiculous laws, must be to give women the right to make their opinions effectively heard through the ballot-box.
Mr. Chancellor said that he had investigated 240 Bill[s] laid on the table of the House, and had found that 123 were as interesting to women as much as to men; twenty-one affected women almost exclusively; six had relation to the franchise.
“When we consider these Bills,” he added, “we rule out the whole experience and knowledge of women.
We must abolish sex privilege as it affects legislation.
I appeal to men who are Antis to consider the Wilks case, which is possible just so long as we perpetuate the huge wrong of the continued disenfranchisement of women.”
Refinement of Cruelty
In a moving speech Rev. Fleming Williams declared that the case of Dr. Wilks and her husband ought to appeal to men all over the country.
He spoke of the personal interviews he had had with Mr. Wilks in the presence of the warder, and of the effect of imprisonment upon him.
It was impossible to contemplate without horror the spectacle of the Government’s attempt to overcome the wife’s resistance by the spectacle of her husband’s sufferings.
If she added to his pain by humiliating surrender, it would lower the high ideal he cherishes of her principles.
“She dare not do it; she will not do it!” exclaimed Mr. Williams. He added that he had had an opportunity of waiting upon the Inland Revenue Board and tried to show them how their action appears to outside people.
He had suggested that, in order to bring the law into harmony with justice, representative public men in co-operation with the Board should approach the Treasury to secure an alteration in the law.
“But,” declared Mr. Williams, “if women are made responsible by law it will not bring the Government an inch nearer the solution of the difficulty.
They may imprison women for tax resistance, but married men would not stand it.
The only way is to say to Dr. Wilks, “We will give you the right to control the use we intend to make of your money.”
The resolution was passed unanimously with great enthusiasm, and thus ended a meeting that will be historic.
The Campaign.
A great campaign is being carried on for the release of Mr. Mark Wilks.
On , the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a meeting, followed by a procession in the neighborhood of the prison, and on Sunday there was a large and very sympathetic meeting in Hyde Park.
Mrs. Mustard took the chair.
Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard and Mrs. [Margaret] Parkes were the speakers.
The resolution demanding the release of Mr. Wilks was carried unanimously.
Nightly meetings are held in Brixton by the Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage.
A great demonstration will take place on , in Trafalgar-square.
Members of the Women’s Freedom League and all sympathisers are asked to come and to bring their friends.
There will be a large attendance of London County Council teachers — more than 3,000 of whom have signed a petition against the arrest of Mr. Wilks.
A deputation of Members of Parliament and other influential men is being arranged by Sir John Cockburn to wait upon Mr. Lloyd George and to see him personally about the case.
We hope earnestly that before this issue of our Vote appears, news of the release of Mark Wilks will be brought to us.
It seems to us impossible that the authorities of the country can persist in their foolish and cruel action.
But, in the meantime and in any case, it may be well for us seriously to consider the situation.
We are bound together, men and women, in a certain order.
For the maintenance of that order, it has been found necessary for communities and nations all over the world to impose laws upon themselves.
In countries that call themselves democratic, it is contended that the civil law is peculiarly binding, because the people not only consent, but, where they have sufficient understanding, demand that the laws which bind them shall, in certain contingencies, be made or changed or repealed according to their need, and because by their voice they place in seats of power the men whom they believe to be honest and wise enough to carry out their will.
That, at least, is the ideal of democracy.
For several generations the British nation has claimed the honour of being foremost in the road that leads to its achievement.
We (or rather the men of the country) boast of our free institutions, of our free speech, of the liberty of the individual within the law to which he has consented, of the right to fair trial and judgment by his peers when he is accused of offences against that law; above all — and now we have the difference between a democratically governed country and one under despotic rule — not to be liable to punishment for the omission of that which he is unable to perform.
It seems clear and simple enough — what any intelligent schoolboy knows; and yet our so-called Liberal Government, which flaunts in every direction the flag of democracy, which proclaims, here severely and there with dulcet persuasion, that liberty for all is their aim, and that “the will of the people shall prevail,” does not hesitate, when it is question of a reform movement which it dislikes and despises, to set itself in direct opposition to its own avowed principles.
For what do the arrest and imprisonment of Mark Wilks mean?
We are perfectly certain that it will not last long.
Stupid and inept as it has been, the Government, we are certain, will not risk the odium which would justly fall upon it if this outrage on liberty went on.
A Government which has much at stake and which lives by the breath of popular opinion cannot afford to ignore such strong and healthy protest as is being poured out on all sides.
To us, who are in the midst of it, that which seems most remarkable is the growth of public feeling.
In the streets where processions are nightly held, we were met at first by banter and rowdyism.
“A man in prison for the sake of Suffragettes!”
To the boy-mind of the metropolis, on the outskirts of many an earnest crowd, that seemed irresistibly funny; but thoughtfulness is spreading; into even the boy-mind, the light of truth is creeping.
If it had done nothing else, the imprisonment of Mark Wilks has certainly done this — it has educated the public mind.
It is not we, the Suffragists alone — it is women and men in hosts who are asking, What do these things mean?
On the part of these in our movement they mean courage, determination, skilful generalship — aye, and speedy triumph.
On the part of our opponents, perplexity and failure.
“This is defeat, fierce king, not victory,” said Shelly’s Prometheus, when from his rock of age-long pain he hurled heroic defiance at his tormentor.
The ills with which thou torturest gird my soul To fresh resistance till the day arrive When these shall be no types of things that are.
Woman, in this professedly liberty-loving country, may echo the hero’s words.
Defeat, in very truth, for what can the authorities do?
Their position is an extraordinary one.
In a lucid interval, politicians — not clearly, it may be, understanding the issues involved — passed the Married Women’s Property Act.
We believe there were no Antis then to guide and encourage woman-fearing man.
This may partly account for it.
In any case, the deed was done.
Married, no less than single women and widows, became owners of their own property and lords of their own labour.
It would have saved the country from much unnecessary trouble if, then, politicians had gone a step further, if they had recognised woman’s personal responsibility as mother, wage-earner or property-owner, and had dealt with her directly.
Love of compromise, unfortunately, weighs too deeply on the soul of the modern politician for him to be able to take so wise a course, and it is left for his successor to unravel the tangle.
What are the authorities to do?
While, with threats of violence and dark hints of disciplined, organised resistance, Ulster defies them, Suffragists by almost miraculous endurance are breaking open prison doors.
While brutal men, under the very eyes of a Minister of the Crown, are torturing and insulting women, in token, we presume, of their devotion to him, the story of the wrongs of women — not only these but others — is being noised abroad.
None of our recent publications has been bought so freely as “The White Slave Traffic.”
While well-known women tax-resisters are left at large, a man who has not resisted, but who respects women and will not coerce his wife, is arrested and locked up in prison without trial, and, since he cannot pay, for an indeterminate time.
A pretty mess indeed, which will take more than the subtlety of an Asquith, a Lloyd George or a McKenna to render palatable to the men on whose votes they depend for their continuance in power!
In a few days they will be faced with a further difficult problem.
Women are prepared to resist, not only the Income, but also the Insurance Tax.
Let us see what the alternatives are.
Mark Wilks may be let out as Miss [Clemence] Housman was; but that will not help the Government.
It is a poor satisfaction to a creditor of national importance to know that his debtor is or has been in prison.
He wants his money, and the example of one resister may be followed by many others.
If so, that big thing the Exchequer suffers.
The creditor may, when Parliament comes together, pleading urgency, pass an Act which will make married women responsible for their own liabilities.
That might result in a revolt of married women which would have serious consequences.
Men who live at ease with their children, shepherded by admirable wives, would find it, to say the least, inconvenient to be deprived periodically of their services.
And these men might be in the position of Mark Wilks.
They might not be able to pay, while their wives might have no goods on which distraint could be made.
Truly the position would be pitiable.
Over the Insurance Act the same difficulties will arise.
What is a distraught Government to do?
The answer is clear.
The one and only alternative that lies before our legislators is at once to take steps whereby women — workers, mothers, property-owners — shall become citizens.
That done, we will pay our taxes with alacrity; we will bring our quota of service to the State that needs our aid, and the unmannerly strife between man and woman will cease.
In the meantime, the law and the legislator are defeated ignominiously, and it is becoming more and more evident that, in a very near future, “the will of the people shall prevail.”
It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to devise a situation which would show more clearly than does the Wilks’ case, how absolutely incapable is the average man of grasping a woman’s point of view, or of realising her grievances and legal disabilities.
For seventy years men have been cooly appropriating the Income-tax refunded by the Inland Revenue on their wives incomes.
Did anybody ever hear of a man raising a protest against the state of the law which made it possible and legal for a husband to do this?
My own experience covers a good many years of Income-tax work, and the handling of some hundreds of cases, but the only complaints I have ever heard have come from the defrauded wives.
I have observed that the men always accepted the position with the utmost equanimity.
But now, when by the exercise of considerable ingenuity, women have contrived, for once in a way, to put the boot on the other leg, the Press and the public generally is filled with horror, and the air is rent with shrieks of protest from the male sex.
The Evening News sapiently remarks that women might have been expected to have more sense than to seek to show up a law which is “so obviously in their favour”!
And The Scotsman says: “One would imagine that the last thing the Wilks’ case would be used for is to illustrate the grievance which woman suffers under the law.
Here two laws combine to favour the wife and inflict wrong upon the husband.”
And it goes on to deride women and “their inherent illogicality.”
Here we see clearly manifest the absolute incapacity of man to realise the existence of any injustice until it touches himself or his fellow man.
Nothing could well be more logical than the holding of a man responsible for non-payment of his wife’s Income-tax, since it is the necessary and inevitable corollary of the theory that a wife’s income belongs to her husband, and that all refunds of Income-tax must be made to him, and to him only.
It is in accordance with logic and also with strict business principles that no person can claim the advantages of his legal position while repudiating its disadvantages.
Thus if a man dies leaving money, his son cannot claim to take that money and at the same time repudiate his father’s debts.
He must accept the one with the other.
And in exactly the same way, women are no longer going to allow men to claim their legal right to demand re-payment of their wives’ Income-tax, unless they also accept their legal responsibility for its non-payment.
The game of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose is played out, and the sooner men realise this fact the better it will be for everybody.
The “logic” of The Scotsman and its contemporaries is no longer good enough for women.
The law must be forced to take its course where men are concerned as it does where women are concerned.
As to the provisions of the Income-tax Act favouring the wife and wronging the husband, I can only say that Mr. Wilks’ case is the first in all my experience where these provisions acted adversely to the husband.
And even in this case they only so acted because women had laid their heads together to bring it about, and thus show how little men relish a law of their own making when it begins to act on the boomerang principle, and they find themselves “hoist with their own petard.”
A few actual instances, casually selected out of a large number, will show how wives have hitherto been “favoured.”
A man and his wife have £100 a year each, taxed (at 1s. 2d. in the £) by deduction before they receive it.
There are four children, on each of whom the husband is entitled to claim a rebate of £10 a year.
(The wife, it should be noted, can never claim any rebate whether she has a dozen or a score of children.
And if a widow, having children, re-marries, the rebate on these children goes to their step-father.)
Consequently the husband can, and does, reclaim not only the tax deducted from his own income, i.e. £5 16s. 8d., but also the £5 16s. 8d. deducted from his wife’s income.
So he really pays no tax at all, and gains £5 16s. 8d. while she loses a similar amount.
Thus the actual position is, that the wife is only worth £94 a year, while he is worth £106 a year, though nominally their incomes are the same.
If single, each could claim repayment of £5 16s. 8d., therefore marriage represents a loss to the wife, but a profit to her husband.
A member of the Women’s Freedom League was forced to leave her husband on account of his misconduct, and to bring up and educate her children without any financial aid from him.
But for a number of years he regularly drew the “repayment” of her Income-tax, until a merciful Providence removed him from this mundane sphere, by which time it was calculated that she had lost, and he had gained, about £200. At his death she, of course, ceased to be a legal “idiot,” and was allowed to claim her repayment for herself.
I may remark here that the Income-tax Act has a favourite method of classifying certain sections of the community, namely, as “idiots, married women, lunatics and insane persons.”
I don’t know precisely what the difference is between a “lunatic” and an “insane person,” but doubtless there is a difference, though unintelligent persons might think they were synonymous terms.
As regards the point of resemblance between the “idiot” and the “married woman,” it is rather obscure, but after intense mental application I have succeeded in locating it; and really when somebody illuminates it for you it becomes clear as daylight.
It is quite evident to me that our super-intelligent legislators are convinced that the woman who is capable of going and getting married is an utter “idiot,” and in fact next door to a “lunatic.”
Well, men ought to know their own sex, and if they say that the women who marry them are idiots, it must be true, I suppose.
We may therefore take it that a woman evinces her intelligence by remaining unmarried.
I ought humbly to explain that, being married myself, I am only one of the idiots, and therefore my ideas on any subject must not be taken to have the slightest value.
But to return to our instances of “favouritism,” another man has £230 a year and his wife £170 a year.
She pays Income-tax (deducted before receipt) to the tune of £9 18s. 4d., and he pays 2s. 6d..
It sounds impossible, perhaps; but when you know the rules it is quite simple.
To begin with, he gets an abatement of £160, which leaves him with £70. Then he gets a further abatement of £67 for insurance premiums, a great part of which premiums are paid by his wife on her own life.
This leaves him with a taxable income of slightly over £3, on which he pays 9d. in the £1., amounting to half-a-crown.
This couple have no children.
If they had any he would begin not only to pay no tax himself, but to have some of hers repaid to him.
She, however, under any circumstances, will always be mulcted of the £9 18s. 4d.; unless she becomes a widow, when she will be able to reclaim the whole amount.
(The official forms supplied to those reclaiming Income-tax read: “A woman must state whether spinster or widow.”)
If we reverse the financial position of this couple, and assume that she receives £230 and he only £170, she would then be paying £13 8s. 4d. Income-tax.
Contrast this with his payment of half-a-crown in the same circumstances, and observe how highly she is “favoured.”
He, however, would then pay nothing and would receive a “refund” of nearly £3 10s. a year.
A very enterprising and smart young fellow was able to treat himself to a really nice motor-cycle — not the sort that has a side-car for a lady — out of his wife’s “repaid” tax; repaid to him, I mean.
He can’t support himself, but depends on her, as she has just about enough for them both to rub along on, though she can’t afford luxuries for herself, and wouldn’t have paid for his.
But the Inland Revenue gave him her money quite cooly and without the slightest fuss.
The “Scotsman” will be pleased to hear that this poor husband manages to bear up quite bravely under his “wrongs,” and seems indeed to get a considerable amount of satisfaction out of them.
His wife, I am truly sorry to say, doesn’t properly appreciate the favour shown to her by the law.
But then men are naturally brave, and women are by nature a thoroughly ungrateful lot I expect, if they could only see themselves as The Scotsman and The Evening News see them.
In this connection it is interesting to note that three years ago two members of our Edinburgh Branch, the Misses N[annie]. and J[essie].
Brown, walked from Edinburgh to London, chatting of Woman Suffrage with the villagers all along the line of route southwards, many of whom had then not even heard about this question.
They started from Edinburgh in and reached London before .
A further point of interest is that the father of these ladies was the last political prisoner in Claton Gaol in .
Mr. Brown’s offence was his refusal to pay the Annuity Tax which he considered an iniquitous imposition.
He was imprisoned for one week, but received the treatment of a political prisoner; he had the satisfaction of knowing that his protest led to the repeal of the Annuity Tax.
The next people who committed a political offence in Edinburgh were two Suffragettes, who — fifty-two years later than Mr. Brown’s incarceration — were imprisoned, but were not treated as political prisoners.
Notwithstanding the showers a good crowd gathered on to hear Mrs. Despard, who spoke of the anomalies existing in our laws affecting women and taxation, and referred at length to the imprisonment of Mr. Mark Wilks for his inability to pay his wife’s taxes on her earned income.
A resolution expressing indignation at this and demanding Mr. Mark Wilks’ release was passed with only five dissentients.
The chair was taken by Mrs. Mustard, who told the audience of the indignation felt by the Clapton neighbours and friends of Mr. and Dr. Elizabeth Wilks over his imprisonment.
…On evening we had our usual open-air meeting.
Mr. Hawkins kindly chaired, and Mrs. Tanner spoke with her usual excellency, bringing in the “Wilks” case in her speech, as a specimen of anomaly in law in which the man suffers.
The crowd was sympathetic as regarded “poor old Wilks,” but was swayed otherwise by mistaken ideas of our aims and motives.…
Imprisonment for conscience sake being, in these days, of somewhat rare occurrence, the case of such as become the victims of it, naturally attracts no small share of public attention.
To the Society of Friends, especially, whose members, in less tolerant times, were the chief sufferers on this account, such imprisonment cannot but excite much of their sympathy.
Through the usual channels of publicity, most of our readers, doubtless, are already conversant with the case of Baillie Stott, and another inhabitant of Edinburgh, who were recently incarcerated for refusing, on conscientious grounds, to pay the tax imposed in that city, for the maintenance of the State Church clergy.
Shortly previous to the imprisonment of the individuals alluded to, as our readers are also aware, very serious disturbance had taken place, in opposing the enforcement of the law, by which the furniture and other effects of Dissenters were seized and attempted to be sold, for the behoof of the priesthood.
The effect of these disturbances having been clearly seen to be prejudicial both to the character of the Law-established Church and its ministers, it became advisable not to encounter or excite them again in the same way.
Recourse was therefore had to the imprisonment of the persons of Dissenters themselves, instead of seizing upon their furniture; and thus Baillie Stott and James Georgeson became inmates of a prison.
For a magistrate, whose legitimate province is the execution of the law, to be himself imprisoned for breaking the law, even apart from the consideration of the grounds of non-compliance, is obviously calculated to invest his case with more than ordinary interest.
Whether a Dissenter should have accepted office, knowing its objectionable duties, is a question which we need not here discuss, further than to remark, that the rights of conscience are paramount to all merely human requirements, civil or ecclesiastical.
We are principally induced to advert to this matter, on account of the means by which the liberation of the prisoners was effected — that of a public subscription.
This, we consider to have been most objectionable.
Indeed, it would not greatly surprise us to learn, that the scheme originated and was supported by Churchmen, as they are called, as the most effectual way of extricating their law-established Church and its ministers from that weight of odium, which the operation of the “Annuity tax” had brought upon them.
But if our surmise respecting Churchmen is groundless, we see nothing to commend, but every thing to reprobate, in the conduct of Dissenters in this matter.
The movement may bespeak their sympathy for the sufferer, but we contend that it was both injudiciously expressed, and exceedingly ill-timed.
Had the public subscription been deferred till after the prisoners had been liberated, in what we should consider a legitimate manner, and its object of course been different — to testify at once the sympathy of the subscribers, and to compensate for the injury sustained by the prisoners — there would have been no objection to the manifestation.
But if there has not been altogether a mistaken notion on the part of Dissenters, with regard to the upholding of a consistent testimony, for the truth and against error, it seems very obvious to us that little more can be said in favour of this subscription, than that it originated and was carried out most inconsiderately.
Dissenters in general, indeed we may almost say universally, with the exception of Friends, have always heretofore been so much accustomed to yield a tame and implicit compliance with whatever gets the name of law, forgetful of its infringement of the primary rights of conscience, that there is not perhaps much cause to be surprised at the conduct of Edinburgh Dissenters in the case before us.
What but this tame compliance has perpetuated the burdens still imposed by the dominant Church party?
Whereas, had the course which Friends from their first rise have pursued, been imitated by other and more numerous bodies, the grievances which we have in common to lament and to suffer, had been nearer an end, to say the least, if not indeed long ago abolished.
Did it not occur to the Dissenters of Edinburgh, that it was not from want of pecuniary ability that either of the prisoners allowed himself to be immured in jail?
Or again, what was the difference between these individuals paying the tax themselves, and its being paid for them by public subscription?
If it was wrong in the one case, it must be equally wrong, and a violation of principle, in the other.
It has surprised us, that not one of the Dissenting Journals that we have met with has taken this view of the subject.
In their joyfulness at the liberation of the prisoners, they seem to have lost sight entirely of the sacrifice of principle at which it was obtained.
Would that our Dissenting brethren everywhere might yet more deeply reflect upon what consistency with principle requires; would cease from weakening their own hands by such inconsiderate proceedings; and for the future, by a more dignified and becoming respect for their own rights, command not only greater regard from their oppressors, but insure what is more valuable still, the consciousness of having suffered for the truth: “For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God,” 1 Pet. ⅱ. 20.
The Spectator mentioned Baillie Stott’s annuity tax resistance in an edition:
The Annuity-tax war continues in Edinburgh.
Baillie Stott and another citizen were sent to gaol on Monday for nonpayment of the tax.
A regular agitation of meetings is to commence immediately.
At a special meeting on Tuesday, the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Sheriff of Edinburgh, decided on issuing proclamations to prevent open-air meetings in the city.
A great meeting, said to be one of “Chartists,” assembled on Glasgow Green on Monday, without any notice: it was at once dispersed by the police.
And here’s another article from The British Friend dated :
Edinburgh Annuity-tax — Another Victim.
Abhorrent to every Christian feeling as such instances of clerical rapacity have ever been, they are yet, it must be admitted, but the natural result of the system of church and state connection; and there is little reason to hope for their discontinuance, until public opinion shall bring about the abolition of the unholy alliance itself.
We quote as under from the Edinburgh News:—
Amid all the outrages against Christianity that have been from time to time committed by the Established clergy of Edinburgh, in attempting to enforce their infamous annuity-tax, there is not one so atrocious as the case of Widow Pringle, at present shut up in the Calton Jail, for refusing, or being unable to pay the claim of £1, 8s. 9d., which the ministers of Canongate have legally, but inhumanly and unjustly, preferred against her.
On former occasions, when we had to condemn the clergy for dragging some of our most respectable citizens to jail, the parties were men.
Tait, Russell, Chapman, Stott, and Tod, were known to be conscientious and determined opponents of the tax, and the proceedings, however unrighteous, had the aspect of a bold contest between the injustice of a clerical law on the one side, and the conscientious repugnance of men in some degree able to bear the assault on the other.
In this instance, however, they have selected a victim rather than an opponent, and a weak woman — that woman the widow of a colour-sergeant, who served for twenty-nine years in the gallant 78th Highlanders, and that widow sixty years of age — has been made to bear the brunt of the unholy persecution.
It is, of course, to be regretted that men can be found who, for the sake of position or emolument, submit to be the means of enforcing this unjust, and detested, because unjust law; but the recent history of Edinburgh demonstrates that it is to the clergy alone that we owe its continuance.
Only four years ago 40,000 citizens of Edinburgh petitioned the House of Commons for its abolition.
The town council, the magistrates of Canongate, the Merchant Company, the Anti-state-church and the Anti-annuity-tax Associations, all exerted themselves with the legislature and the government to procure its repeal, but all their influence was thwarted and set at nought, by the preposterous demands and unjust claims of the clergy.
Mrs. Pringle is a Dissenter, a member of Mr. Wright’s congregation, and, like most other Dissenters, she cannot see the justice of paying for the services of clergymen from which she derives no advantage.… But the case of Widow Pringle is not the only case that is forcing itself upon the outraged sympathies of the public.
A crusade has been begun against the poor inhabitants of whole districts in the Canongate.
It has come to our knowledge that nearly all the residents of one of the narrow closes in that locality, called Dunbar’s Close, have been summoned to appear on Monday next in the County Buildings, at the instance of John Gouldie, collector of Canongate annuity-tax, to answer to charges varying from 3s. 7d. upwards, alleged to be due to these earth-born but heaven-directing ministers.
The parties are all in poor circumstances, struggling to maintain their families with small means, and under the pressure of high prices.
Fourteen of these summonses have fallen into this narrow close, and produced the greatest anxiety and consternation.
Unable to pay the money, they are in terror that they will be dragged from their children and lodged in jail, or have their little stock of furniture sold.
In these circumstances some of them have gone to the resident bailies, and promised to pay sixpence a-week to relieve them from the prosecution.
One of the persons is a widow, who earns a scanty subsistence for her four children by washing; another is a decent man, a porter in a warehouse, earning 13s. a-week, and having his wife and six children to support.
He is a member of a Dissenting church, and told us, with much emotion, that he tried to pay his poor-rates, but he could not bear the thought of depriving his children of common necessaries in order to pay clergymen whom he had never seen, and whose services he could not accept.
Can acts like these be acceptable to that great Being who is the Husband of the widow and the Friend of the poor?
Today, some news accounts and testimony of resistance to the annuity and other
church taxes by Scottish and other British nonconformists in the
.
These accounts include such tactics as passively-resisting arrest (going
limp), disrupting auctions of seized goods, boycotts of such auctions by
sympathetic auctioneers and carters, intimidation of auctioneers, public
shaming of businesses that participated in tax auctions, publicizing of
tax auctions so as to draw a crowd of sympathizers, disrupting arrests of
resisters, going into hiding to evade arrest, use of barricades to prevent
property seizure, resignation of government officials, and raising money by
subscription to assist resisters who had property seized.
An Address to the Inhabitants of St. Austell, on the Subject of the Church Rate.
It is painful to our feelings to be engaged in differences with our friends
and neighbours; but when matters of principle are in question, and especially
those connected with civil and religious liberty, we dare not shrink from
avowing our sentiments, and maintaining them to the utmost of our power. The
subject of the church rate, which is now agitating this parish, is, with us,
one of these matters of principle. We consider that the end and object of
every good government is the protection of our dearest rights; that is,
person and property, and the worship of God in the manner which we
conscientiously believe to be most acceptable to Him.
Perhaps many of you are not aware of the forcible seizure of our goods to
support a place of worship from which we conscientiously dissent. We
therefore deem it to be our duty to give you the following information upon
the subject:—
For a church rate of 7s.,
demanded of J.E. Veale, articles were taken value £1
7s.
For a church rate of 5s.
1d., demanded of R. Veale,
articles were taken value £1
12s.
For a church rate of 2s.,
demanded of W. Veale, articles were taken value £1
5s.
For a church rate of 12s.
5½d., demanded of W. & A.H.
Veale, articles were taken value £2.
For a church rate of 7s.
1d., demanded of W. Clemes,
articles were taken value £2
10s.
You see, then, that our property has been forcibly taken from us in direct
opposition to all the precepts of the Gospel. Christianity is to be spread
through the world by persuasive and spiritual means. The people who meet in
an Episcopal place of worship have no more moral right to forcibly take our
property from us to support their worship, than we have to take their goods
to support ours.
Now, if we honestly pay the taxes levied by Government for the support of
civil society, we have a right to its protection. While a man does
this, and fulfils the social and relative duties of life respectably,
conscientiously refraining from doing any injury to any one, the State has
nothing to do with the manner in which he conceives it to be his duty to
worship his Maker. This is a matter entirely between his God and himself,
with which no earthly power has a right to interfere; and therefore, since
mutual protection is the sole object for which we submit to a form of
government, and pay taxes, laws made to compel subjects to support any
particular form of religion are unjust in their principle, and ought not to
be complied with.
Now, overlooking for a moment the circumstance, that these rates can be
legally enforced only by a majority of rate-payers in any given parish, let
us examine this position, on which, the advocates for the compulsory
maintenance of an ecclesiastical establishment take their stand. The whole
force of their argument lies in the very words employed by those who
condemned the Saviour of men, “We have a law, and by our law he ought to
die,” (John ⅹⅸ. 7.) We will, in the first place, tell them, that the
mere circumstance of having a law, is not sufficient to justify them
in the execution of it. Have they never heard of unjust, cruel, and wicked
laws? Can they forget, that Bishops Ridley and Latimer, and a glorious
company of martyrs, were burnt to death according to law, because
they could not conscientiously conform to the State religion? Had these
champions for law lived in Spain and Portugal, when the laws of the land in
those countries subjected conscientious men and women to the horrors of the
Inquisition, would they have considered it their duty to support those
proceedings, because there was a law for it? But we will tell them,
that every law which is contrary to the precepts and doctrines of the Gospel,
is more honoured in the breach than in the observance; and ought not to be
considered binding upon any Christian. And be it ever remembered, that it was
because they could not conform to the State religion, that the early
Christians suffered martyrdom; that the Protestants on
St. Bartholomew’s-day were
butchered; and that a great number of the members of the religious society to
which we belong, laid down their lives in prison, in the time of King Charles
the Second.
Under these circumstances, we appeal to the liberal portion of the Church of
England resident in this parish, whether they think it right to
compel their brethren to support forms of worship to which they
conscientiously object? and whether it is fair, or consistent with common
honesty, to put their hands into the pockets of their Dissenting neighbours,
for the support of their own particular forms and ceremonies of religion?
With best wishes for all our neighbours, we are, their sincere friends,
John Edey Veale.
Riciunn Veale.
William Veale.
Andrew Kingston Veale.
William Clemes. St. Austell, .
We direct attention to the Address, in another column, by some Friends at
St. Austell to their townsmen,
on the subject of church-rate exactions. Their case is calmly, yet pointedly
reasoned; and we feel persuaded, these Friends have the sympathy of their
brethren in religious profession throughout the nation. In connection with
the above, we have given an account from the pages of a cotemporary, of
certain proceedings at Edinburgh for refusal to pay the Annuity Tax; this Tax
being the mode adopted for obtaining the stipends of Clergymen belonging to
the Established Church of Scotland in that city. We quote these proceedings,
not by any means because we approve of the conduct of the parties who
attended the Roup, and obstructed the Auctioneer in disposing of the
articles; but as evidence of the strong feeling which exists in the minds of
the citizens of Edinburgh, against the unjust and oppressive system by which
the State Church is upheld;— a system, the agents of which may, for aught we
know, be one of these days laying their hands, as they have done before, on
the goods or furniture of some of our own members; thus robbing those to whom
the Clergy “perform no services, and on whom, consequently, they can
have no equitable claims.”
At a public meeting of the inhabitants, held subsequently to the attempted
Roup, resolutions approving of the refusal of the poinded parties to pay the
Annuity Tax, and condemnatory of the State Church oppression and in justice,
were passed; and it affords us pleasure to find the Chairman, Professor Dick,
disapproving of the uproarious conduct manifested by the populace on occasion
of exposing the Furniture for Sale:— “He was not at all surprised,” he said,
“at the offering of passive resistance in Edinburgh to tho Annuity Tax, on
the ground, first, that they considered the principles of an Established
Church to be unsound; and on the ground, secondly, that they did not believe
in the doctrines of an Erastian Church. He must take leave to say, that he
did not agree with all the steps which had been adopted at the sales for
Annuity Tax the other day. They did not want anything like physical force to
put down the Annuity Tax. He did not consider that it was proper to defeat
the officers of the law in their purpose. He deeply sympathised with the
feeling which existed against the Annuity Tax, but he did not think that the
exhibition made the other day was the best way of showing that feeling. The
proper way to get quit of this obnoxious impost was by a quiet, determined,
and peaceful agitation. He was persuaded that by a moral force resistance,
they would eventually overcome the iniquity. He was convinced that if they
showed a bold front — if they told the Government that there was an
unparalleled injustice perpetrated on the inhabitants of Edinburgh — with the
exception of the town of Montrose — they would be successful in getting
exempted from it.”
These sentiments are highly creditable to the learned Professor; they were
warmly applauded by the meeting, and encouragingly indicate an advance
towards the views and the practice of our Society; and we do sincerely trust,
that should any Friends in Edinburgh be called upon to suffer after a similar
fashion, they may be enabled to “adhere stedfastly to the original grounds of
our testimony; not allow themselves,” in the words of the
Book of Discipline, page 260, “to be led away by
any feelings of party spirit, or suffer any motives of an inferior character
to take the place of those which are purely Christian. May none amongst us
shrink from the faithful and upright support of our Christian belief, but
through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ seek after that meek disposition,
in which our Society has uniformly thought it light to maintain this
testimony, and which we desire may ever characterize us as a body.”
Next, from the
Portland Guardian and Normanby General Adviser
(Australia):
“The Established Church of Scotland,” says the Spectator, “is in
very hot water at this moment, in consequence of the wrong-headed policy
which has maintained the Annuity-tax, and which now logically compels the
responsible official functionaries to enforce payment. Strange scenes have
occurred in Edinburgh. An order went forth that the tax should be demanded
from certain persons. Three were pounced upon. Two, a Mr. Fairbain and a Mr.
William Brown, went quietly to gaol, rather than pay. A third, Mr. Hunter,
conceived the brilliant idea of refusing to pay the tax and of offering no
resistance, beyond a passive resistance, to the constables. Forthwith ensued
a scandalous scene of lugging and hauling. Hunter, a heavy person, was
carried out of his shop by the head and feet. Thrust into a hack cab, he lay
on his back with his legs dangling outside. Handcuffs were placed upon him
in order apparently that the chief of the arresting party might obtain a
greater purchase on their passive prisoner. A mob intervened. Resistance to
the law is not a Scotch characteristic. If a felon were apprehended in the
streets of Edinburgh, the mob would, if it were needed, assist in the
capture. But in this case, the phrase ‘arrested for refusing to pay
Annuity-tax,’ roused the passions of a people who have always been ready to
take fire at the sight of what looks like religious persecution. When it was
the fashion to seize the goods of those dissenters who refused to pay the
odious tax, a great array of soldiers and police was required to protect the
auctioneer instructed to sell the goods; and when purchasers could not be
found in Edinburgh, they were sought for and found in Glasgow. Opposition to
the payment of this impost, therefore, is an idea familiar to the minds of
the people of Edinburgh. Moreover, there was an air of novelty in the attempt
to imprison the malcontents. It was deemed a harsh measure to distrain, it is
regarded as odious to arrest. To the multitude, the officers, hauling at the
passive and manacled Hunter as he lay helpless beneath their hands, appeared
somewhat in the light of familiars of some Scottish inquisition. The people
acted on the impulse of the moment, obstructed the constables, and put them
to flight; and we have no doubt it would now require a strong armed force to
arrest the man in broad daylight. He therefore goes free; but we hear that
the constables are on the alert each night to catch the marked men; and that,
fearing a visit in the dark, these persons quit their homes and sleep abroad.”
Another annuity tax seizure has been made in Edinburgh on behalf of the city
clergy. The victim in this case was Mr. James Millar, an extensive furnishing
ironmonger in Princess street. From Mr. Millar’s residence, Hope-terrace, the
whole dining-room furniture was carried away, even to the carpet, which was
torn off the floor. The goods taken are in value upwards of £150; the tax
refused to be paid is less than £8. “Such,” says the Caledonian Mercury, “is
a specimen of Christian Edinburgh, with its Synod sitting, and its
assemblies, with her Majesty’s representative, about to sit, to further the
cause of Christ and His kingdom.”
“Abolition” as used here was a misnomer, if not a deliberate attempt at
deception, since the act did not abolish the tax, as many had hoped it would,
but instead tried to disguise it by subsuming it within the police tax and
explicitly refraining from itemizing it, as critics quickly pointed out:
By the 11th section it is enacted that the
“increased assessments under the powers of this Act shall not, in the
imposing, levying, or collecting thereof, or in the notices or receipts
relative thereto, be in any way separated or distinguished from the
assessments to be imposed, levied, and collected under the said Edinburgh
Police Act, , and Edinburgh Municipality
Act, .” It will be observed that the only
object of this clause is to conceal from the inhabitants the amount in which
they are assessed for the support of the established clergy…
David Lewis, a member of the Edinburgh town council, testified about the
effects of the Bill that lumped the annuity tax in with the larger police tax.
People who conscientiously resisted the small annuity tax and only paid the
police tax portion found that their entire tax bill was rejected for being
underpaid, and then the sheriff came after them (and penalized them) for the
whole amount. The sheriff had a good motive to do this, as he could then
collect a percentage of the total and keep it for himself.
Q: Just to illustrate the working of the
arrangement, supposing a shop or a house is rated for the police rate at
60l., and the police rate
1s.
3d., that would be
3l.
15s., would it not?
A: Yes.
Q: Then there would be
5s. added for this penny
[annuity tax] which is in dispute?
A: Quite so.
Q: Then for your house, which is rented at
60l., you tender
3l.
15s. for the police, and
you tender all the small rates for registration and everything else, but you
refuse to pay this
5s., unless you are
compelled, for the penny?
A: Yes.
Q: Then the collector gets 12½ per cent. on the
4l., because you have refused
to pay 5s.?
A: Yes.
Q: You offered the town council
3l.
15s., and they would not
take it, but they have taken
3l.
10s. through the sheriff’s
officer — because they never levy the
10s. from the recusants at
all; they cannot recover it, and it is a loss to the city fund, is it not?
A: Quite so; I have a case which illustrates the
question perfectly. One of my neighbour’s (a clergyman) rates come to
2l.
19s.
7d., he refuses to pay this
penny, which amounts to 3s.
4d.; in consequence of refusing
to pay the 3s.
4d., there are expenses to the
amount of
1l.
1s.
4d. charged against him in the
recovery of the 3s.
4d., and the city are charged
12½ per cent. on the entire amount of
2l.
19s.
7d.
The effect of this was that for tax years
, the government pursued 861 tax
refusers (of some 3,475 warrants they issued) in order to try to get £2,981,
of which only £497 were actually being resisted for conscientious reasons. In
order to get this disputed £497 from the resisters, the town paid the
sheriff’s office 12.5% of the total, which is to say, £372. Some of this
included costs of prosecution, which were charged against the resisters:
“although the warrants cost the council only
3d. or
4d. per head,” Lewis testified,
“those who are prosecuted were charged from
1s.
6d. to
2s.
6d. per head; so that we are
making a large profit out of the prosecutions in addition to the enforcement
of the rate.”
Q: Are you personally sure of that fact; because
it is a serious charge to make against the council that they collect money
under false pretenses?
A: I am personally sure of it.
Q: Besides those expenses, am I correct in
assuming that the sheriff’s officer charges all the legal expenses and the
expenses of cartage, and everything of that kind over and above?
A: He does.
Q: And these expenses amount to a very
considerable sum?
A: I should say they average about
10s. where there are no
sales, and from
15s. to
18s. where there are sales,
in addition. There is one statement I should like very particularly to submit;
and it is with regard to a gentleman, a Quaker, one of the most respectable of
our citizens, and I should say one who upon no condition could be objected to
as not having conscientious scruples. His rates amounted to
2l.
18s., the amount which he
disputed was 3s.
3d.; he offered to pay the whole
of the money less the 3s.
3d.; it was repeatedly refused;
the officer carried away goods to the amount of exactly
9l.; (I have the receipt here);
the goods were sold; in conscience he refused to purchase them; and he got
back out of the 9l. the sum of
9d.; so that refusing to pay
3s.
3d., cost him
8l.
19s.
3d.
Lewis also testified about the solidarity area businesses were exhibiting
with the tax strikers and against the government seizure-and-sale apparatus:
Q: Does it consist with your knowledge that no
auctioneer could be got to sell the goods?
A: It does.
Q: Does it consist with your knowledge that none
of the dealers in old furniture in Edinburgh will buy the goods that are
exposed?
A: None, to my knowledge
Q: Is it pretty generally arranged that somebody
buys them at the Cross?
A: Yes; in many cases there is such an
arrangement.
Q: Does it consist with your knowledge that
there has been great difficulty in getting any carter to hire his cart for
carrying away the property?
A: Yes.
Q: In point of fact, were the council checkmated
in their efforts to get a carter?
A: They were.
Q: You know that personally?
A: I do.
Q: Can you mention an instance?
A: I may mention that, after two carts had been
engaged belonging to two different parties, there was an action of damages
raised on both occasions against the proprietor of a journal for having
notified the circumstance that these parties had so hired their carts.
Q: It was held to have a damaging influence on
the business of the carters, was it?
A: Yes; these were the points argued in court.
Next interviewed was John Greig, who had been a town council member:
Q: Do you remember the introduction of the lorry
or police cart?
A: I read it in the newspapers.
Q: Has that made a considerable difference in
inducing people to pay?
A: Applying the screw, which has been done very
severely, has had very great effect in bringing in arrears.
Thomas Menzies, a dissenter, was questioned next.
Q: Was there a feeling among the Dissenters so
strong against the tax, that it induced some of them to leave the Council,
and prevented others from coming forward as candidates at the municipal
elections?
A: That was very striking indeed, in the case of
such men as Bailie Russell, Bailie Grieve, Ex-Counsellor Burns, and other
distinguished Dissenters, who retired from the Council rather than administer
the Act.
Q: Until the last year, has it prevented others
from coming forward as candidates for the vacant wards?
A: Most decidedly there has been great difficulty
in getting voluntary Dissenters to go into the Council, and in consequence of
voluntary Dissenters not going into the Council, the Free Church dissenters
have found great difficulty in carrying out this measure in the Council, and
many of the most influential of them also retired.
Q: Have great complaints been made in consequence
of expensive prosecutions being brought forward in the Court of Sessions
against parties?
A: An intense feeling of indignation has been
roused at the selection of some of our most distinguished citizens, and
dragging them into the Court of Session. We felt that we were under
persecution, and as to two of the parties in particular, subscriptions were
raised to mark our indignation at such a mode of prosecuting Dissenters. I
refer particularly to the late Thomas Russell, who when the money was
presented to him, said, “We shall give it to the Annuity Tax League, to
enable them to carry out their operations in the abolishment of the tax.”
Q: When was that?
A: That was in . A similar sum was raised for Mr. M‘Laren, of Saint Andrew’s
Hotel, and the expenses in each of those cases were from
27l. to
30l. Mr. M‘Laren was dragged
into Court the year following, and very summarily dealt with, because Mr. Caw
would not take the money, unless it was immediately presented to him,
although a very respectable citizen; Mr. Dixon, of the firm of Knox, Samuel,
and Dixon had offered him the money. The furniture was taken away; his
dining-room was left almost empty; and he spent to the extent of between
30l. and
40l. in pleading for redress
before the sheriff. He employed Mr. Trainer as his advocate.
Q: Do you know the result of the application to
the sheriff?
A: The sheriff decided against Mr. M‘Laren, and
he had, of course, to pay all costs.
Q: What was the amount for which he was sued?
A: I could not get the accounts before I came up,
and I am ignorant of the expense.
Q: Was it a large sum?
A: In the first prosecution, between
20l. and
30l.
Q: In that case was there a distraint?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you know that 52 police officers were
employed to distrain?
A: I have seen police officers in great numbers,
in several detachments, waiting on these sales, in quiet corners.
Q: Has any action been taken against you for the
recovery of your arrears?
A: Yes; I was summoned to the Sheriff’s Court for
three years’ arrears, and a decree was obtained against me, but no action has
been taken, and those three years’ arrears are still in my hands; I tendered
to the sheriff’s clerk, the police tax proper; the sum for the clerical tax
is 4s.
2d. Previously to this, I also
tendered it to Mr. Thomson, the collector, by a draft on the bank, and the
same to Mr. Saunders, who was employed as his agent. I have their respective
letters, showing that I have done so, but it was refused, because I would not
pay the clerical portion of the tax.
Q: Did you ask for a discharge for the whole
amount, or were you willing to acknowledge that a balance remained?
A: In the year that partial payments were agreed
to be paid I had not signed a document that it was due, because I considered
the tax to be unconstitutionally put on, and that we ought to protest against
such measures being thrust upon the community.
Q: Did the sheriff’s officer come to your house
and carry off your things?
A: He did.
Q: When?
A: ; he carried
off a hair-cloth sofa, and a hair-cloth easy chair, which I purchased back.
We were in the habit at these sales for the clerical portion of the tax, of
allowing our furniture to be taken as a protest. The auctioneer and sheriff
officer who are one person (Mr. Caw) put them up slump, and put this out of
my power, so that we could not make our protest so decidedly on that point.
Q: What do you mean by “slump?”
A: Instead of putting them up singly he put them
up in one lot.
Q: You have stated that you have always taken a
deep interest in this class of questions; did that induce you to go and see
several of the sales?
A: Yes, it induced me to go to the sales under
the small debts summons at the house of the parties to sympathise with them.
Q: Were you present at a sale at the house of Mr.
Hope, a wholesale merchant in West Preston-street?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you state briefly what you saw?
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable
citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the
arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very
strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was
entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the
auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were
such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No. The cabman who brought the officers,
seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and
they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a
back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Was there a strong body of police present in
case, of an outbreak?
A: Not so many on this occasion as on succeeding
occasions. They gradually increased.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that
occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
Q: Were you present at a sale of Mr. Stewart’s
furniture, in Rankeillor-street in ?
A: I was.
Q: Did anything of the same kind occur?
A: The house was densely packed; it was
impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third
and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not
force their way up, except with great difficulty. The consequence was, that
nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger
both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the
heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys
down. Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled
and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he
was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so
much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were
considerably subdued.
Q: Was the officer (Mr. Caw) then present?
A: Mr. Caw and his assistants.
Q: Were you present at the sale at Mr. Adair’s
hotel?
A: I was. That produced great sensation in the
city. The whole of the Highstreet between
St. Giles’s Cathedral and Tron
Church was crowded. I am not a great judge of numbers, but I should say there
were from 5,000 to 10,000 people. There was a miller’s cart passing, and some
of the policemen were powdered with flour out of the bags by the public.
Q: Is Mr. Adair a Roman Catholic?
A: Yes. I was present at that sale, and Mr.
Linton, the superintendent of police, ordered me to be pulled out; but Mr.
Adair protected me in his house, and I was allowed to remain. They carried
off a sofa, a piano, and a picture to the police office. In that case Mr.
Adair was able to give his protest.
Q: What were you doing at the time the
superintendent of police ordered you to be taken out?
A: Quietly observing the sale.
Q: Were many complaints made of the rough way in
which the police acted on those occasions?
A: Very many complaints, because the inhabitants
were very severely handled at these sales, and pulled out of the rooms by the
policemen; and even when there was room for them, as at Mr. M‘Laren’s sale,
they would not allow them to enter; and at Mr. Musgrove’s sale only six were
allowed to enter.
Q: You were also present at Mr. Musgrove’s sale?
A: Yes, but I was refused admittance; although it
is a large shop, and will hold 150 persons, Mr. Musgrove had cleared away all
his counters, being afraid of damage to his haberdashery goods, and yet only
six people were allowed to go in, and the policemen stopped the right of the
public to get in.
Q: Is Mr. Musgrove an intimate friend of your own?
A: A very intimate friend.
Q: And the police would not allow you to go into
the house and witness the sale?
A: No.
Q: Practically the police prevented people from
bidding by excluding all but six?
A: Yes; and I saw them refuse another gentleman
besides myself. I tried it again, but was refused again.
Q: Were you present at Mr. Dun’s, iron merchant,
in Blair-street, when his effects were distrained?
A: Yes: I saw sledge hammers and other
instruments there to open the premises and get at the goods, but after
labouring for half an hour or more they could not effect an entrance.
Q: Was that because Mr. Dun used some of the
metal in which he was a dealer to barricade his premises?
A: Yes; tons of metal were put up against the
back door, and it was impossible for them to get in. On the second occasion
they got the goods after removing about ten tons of iron from the top of
them; but they disputed the things, and Mr. Dun threw them out, and I saw
children running away with copper springs, and tossing about sheets of brass.
Q: You were present at the sale at Mr. M‘Laren’s
hotel, in St. Andrew’s-street?
A: Yes.
Q: Will you briefly describe the state of matters
there?
A: That sale reminded me a good deal of the
features of the former annuity tax agitation, when the cavalry and infantry
were turned out in Hanover-street; although there were no such accompaniments
on this occasion, the interest of the public was very great, and so great was
it, that when a sofa (for in this case the protest was to allow the clerical
portion to be sacrificed), when a sofa was thrown out by the crowd it was
burned, and continued to burn half an hour, large crowds occupying each side
of the street, and creating a very great sensation; and this is close to one
of our great public thoroughferes, Prince’s-street, and at 12 o’clock in the
day.
Q: Were there several thousand people there?
A: Altogether there would not be so many as in
Mr. Adair’s case; I should think 1,500 people.
Q: Did the police act very roughly to the crowd
on that occasion?
A: In driving off, the officers used the whip
very freely, because they always came and went off in cabs.
Q: Do you see any prospect of this feeling being
diminished?
A: By no means; it is getting more intense every
day.
Q: Do you think it will continue to be so as long
as any portion of this tax remains?
A: I have not the slightest doubt of it; it is
not the amount, but it is the principle, which the Dissenters feel.
Q: Do you think, although greater progress was
made last year in collecting the tax by means of that new engine, the lorry,
that indicates any change of feeling?
A: By no means; it has just irritated the public
more and more; and the indignation against the lorry is so intense, that it
has become associated with Treasurer Callender’s name, as the party who
invented it and ordered it, and brought crowbars, and everything connected
with it.
Q: Is the lorry one of those large low carts such
as are used in Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool, to take away goods?
A: Four wheel carts, with a large surface.
Q: Is there anything particularly obnoxious in a
cart of that shape?
A: Yes.
Q: It is an English invention, I suppose?
A: It is obnoxious if crowbars and sledge hammers
form part of its fittings.
Q: Is there a contrivance for putting instruments
of war behind it in a chest?
A: Yes.
Q: Crowbars and sledge-hammers?
A: Yes; otherwise the machine is like any other
lorry.
Q: What do you say about the “implements of war”?
A: They are carried in case they are required.
Q: Is there in the lorry a place kept apart for
conveying arms?
A: I do not think there are any arms; but I
think, on one occasion, our citizens were threatened with arms from one of
the officers, but I do not suppose they carried any.
Q: Perhaps they attacked the officer?
A: No; there was some altercation, and the
indignation was so great that they came to high words.
And later, under the more hostile questioning of Major Cumming Bruce:
Q: Do you consider that the proceeding in
resisting this tax, which you have described in your evidence, favourable to
the spread of true religion and morality?
A: I think so.
Q: And in accordance with the spirit of Christian
religion?
A: Yes.
Q: Then you consider that any minority of people,
however small, are entitled to resist a law passed by the Legislature of the
country?
A: Not to resist it with violence, but to take
the spoiling of their goods joyfully.
Q: Do you consider they took the spoiling of
their goods joyfully when the police were called in and the peace of the city
endangered?
A: I assure you that the Voluntaries of Edinburgh
have sacrificed large sums of money, and it has cost them a great deal to
resist this tax.
Q: My question was, whether you considered they
took the spoiling of their goods joyfully when the police were called in, and
the peace of the city endangered?
A: I believe it will bring about a happy
termination of this iniquitous tax system.
Q: Then you consider that the end justifies the
means?
A: Not to use violence, but simply to submit to
the penalty of the law.
Q: According to your own statement, was there not
violence used?
A: Not that I witnessed, although I was told
there was some riot.
Q: Do you believe that report which was told you?
A: Yes; I saw one of them, a Sabbath-school
teacher, taken along the street with his coat off, irritated by the officer,
and he was carried to the police office. I cannot explain how the thing
happened; but the officer was blamed for irritating and first attacking.
Q: There was a certain going on?
A: Yes.
Q: Do you consider that a minority, however
small, were justified in resisting a law which was passed by the Imperial
Legislature of this country?
A: On the same principle that John Hampden
resisted a law, when it was unconstitutionally put on.
Q: By violence?
A: Submit to the penalty, but not by violence.
Q: You cited the case of John Hampden as
analogous. Are you aware what it was John Hampden resisted?
A: He resisted ship-money, because it had been
put on by the king, and not by the Parliament.
Q: In this case there is an Act of Parliament by
the Legislature of the country, and an act having the force of law by the
decision of the Legislature of the country. In John Hampden’s case, was it
the law which he resisted, or was it merely a tax levied by the despotic
authority of the king?
A: Perfectly so, and in this case it has been
despotically put on.
Q: In this case the Act was passed through both
Parliaments?
A: Yes.
Q: Then there is no sort of analogy with the
resistance of ship-money which had been ordered to be levied by the king’s
authority?
A: To my mind things pass through Parliament, and
are put into Acts of Parliament which are not facts; for instance, that Act
states that which is not the fact, because it states that it is an abolition
of the annuity tax.
Q: I ask you whether you consider the case of
John Hampden’s resistance founded upon an illegal act of the king a parallel
case?
A: Not quite parallel, but there is some parallel
between them.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland was examined next. He was one of the
authorities who attended some of the auctions of seized goods. Early in his
testimony he quoted from some of the newspaper announcements of these auctions
as a way of explaining why he expected trouble:
Rouping for Ministers’ Money. Come and see. R.H. Whitten selling off. East
Preston-street. .
Poinding for the Clerico-Police Tax. — Instructions to the Public. — In order
to defeat the illegal attempts made to roup the goods of Dissenters for
payment of ministers’ stipends, without notice of day or hour given, and
without, therefore, the possibility of a real sale being effected, it is
recommended that so soon as the goods are poinded, the individuals to whom
they belong should have a placard printed, in terms like the following, and
posted at their doors: “Poinded for Clerico-Police Tax.” “Goods to be sold
here for city clergy, on [give day when notice expires], or following days,
between 12 and 3.” “Who’ll buy. Shame! Shame! to so outrage Dissenters and
religion!”
In cases where the door may not be suitable, it is recommended that a black
flag, bearing the notice or suitable inscription, be suspended from the
windows, so as to be generally seen. It is also suggested that in the event
of an attempted sale, the proprietors of the goods should bid to the full
amount of the police portion of his tax on the first article put up, whether
that article be worth 10s.
or 10l., leaving the
clerico-police portion to be satisfied in whatever way the officers of the
law find themselves best able to effect it.
Efforts being made in the name of religion and law to sacrifice goods by a
mock sale, or sale without due notice, corresponding efforts must be made in
the same name to secure the utmost publicity, and as large an attendance as
possible.
To this end it may be worthy of consideration whether the doors of the houses
in which the sales are to take place should not be kept locked till they are
unlocked by the sheriff officers. This process of unlocking the doors by the
police officers will excite the attention of the general public, and an
opportunity thus afforded of a fair sale taking place.
Robbery and Religion. — Fellow citizens, the furniture of one of your number
is to be sold by public roup, at 4, Rankeillor-street, on
, for the behoof of the city clergy. As the
effects have been poinded at less than one-sixth of their real value, it is
expected that those who “love justice and hate robbery” will be in time to
ensure a vigorous competition.
Christians are informed that, among other valuable articles, there is a
beautiful engraving of the “Last Supper of Christ and his Apostles” (name of
auctioneer unknown).
Another example was given in an appendix:
“To your Tents, O Israel.” — Anti-Clerico Police Tax.
He also describes some of the tactics of auction disruption used by the
resisters and their supporters:
A: On the first sale that I attended at Mr.
Hope’s in Prestonstreet, I only took two or three police officers with me,
and they were in plain clothes to make as little show as possible; but we
were very much obstructed in carrying out that sale; we were hustled and
rudely used by the crowd, and there was a great deal of noise during the
sale. Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much
inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those
sales. At the second sale, I arranged with Mr. Linton, the superintendent of
police, that he should have a body of police in attendance in case I should
require to send for them, and I considered that necessary in the case of the
sale in Rankeillor-street.
Q: What took place at the sale in
Rankeillor-street?
A: On proceeding there, I found a considerable
crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that
I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who
on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as
I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all
the rooms crowded with people. I said that it was necessary to carry out the
sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare. I said that I should send for
the police to clear the place, if they did not allow me to carry out the
sale. They hooted and jeered again. I sent for Mr. Linton, and he brought the
police. There was a good deal of opposition to the police at the head of the
stairs, and it looked a little serious for a time. The stairs are protected
on the outside by a banister and railing, and that banister and railing gave
way in a dangerous manner. I was afraid if the resistance was maintained
there might be an accident or a breach of the peace, and I sent for the
sheriff. Before he arrived, Mr. Linton and his assistants had ejected the
most troublesome into the street, and the sale was being carried out when the
sheriff arrived.
Q: Did you see on that occasion any of those
persons whose faces had become familiar to you?
A: Some of the parties there had been at the
former sale, and I noticed them again at subsequent sales.
Q: Was that the most serious of the obstructions
that you met with?
A: It was; because after that sale the police
went down beforehand, and kept the door pretty clear, so that we could get in
without obstruction. At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an
orderly way as far as the sale was concerned. We got in, and only a limited
number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had
gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance. Certain goods were knocked
down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old
sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those
were the only things which had to be taken away. There was no vehicle ready
to carry them away. Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them. After the
police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken
possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
Q: What is the last sale that took place?
A: Mr. Dunn’s, in Blair-street; I was not present
on the first occasion at that sale, where the officials were defeated in
gaining entrance; Mr. Dunn had barricaded the door of the room where the
poinded effects were, so that an entrance could not be had. My deputy was
there, and the other officials; they gave the matter up, and reported that
they could not get in. Sometime afterwards the warrant was attempted again; I
went down myself on that occasion; I found that the room where the poinded
goods were was filled up to above the centre of the room with boxes filled
with plates of iron of immense weight. We were told that the poinded goods
were lying beneath those, and that we might get at them as we could. I sent
for labourers, and had the whole of those boxes removed into the front shop
until I got access, after great trouble, to the sheets of brass, which were
the poinded articles. These were then declared by the sheriff officers to be
of a different description, and inferior to what they had previously poinded;
they refused to take them; and the only articles they recognised were some
coils of copper wire; those they took to the police office, and those were
all that were obtained on that occasion. Mr. Dunn afterwards settled the
amount due by him. That was the last sale that was carried out under
proceedings at common law; after that sale the summary form of application
was adopted, and has been found to work well, I should say principally
because the parties who refused to pay on presentment of the summary
application having now no notice of the exact day or hour their goods are to
be taken, have no opportunity of getting up a scene; and the expense is
certainly less to them under the summary form than under the other mode of
proceeding.
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for
declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who
declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
The report then quoted, in one of its appendices, from a paper submitted by a
public meeting in Edinburgh which said in part:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to
procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who
conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and
they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s
officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they
provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police
funds. In , it was found necessary
to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had
to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and
registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this
per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the
police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from
the recusants. But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or
vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a
lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing
payment of the arrears. All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely
to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds,
induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is
felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
One way a tax resistance campaign can get a leg up is through the acts of
sympathizers within the tax collection bureaucracy itself. After all, they’re
taxpayers too, and may feel more loyalty to their fellow-subjects than to the
government they’re subjected to.
To this end, some tax resistance campaigns have made strides by encouraging
resignations, defections, and goldbricking among those responsible for
carrying out the tax laws.
In this, they’re following the lead of Thoreau, who wrote:
Today I’ll give some examples of tax resistance campaigns that tried to
persuade the tax collector to switch teams.
Free Keene
A group of activists in Keene, New Hampshire, ranging from Christian
anarchists to “Free State Project” ballot-box libertarians, has been
experimenting with a number of creative civil disobedience projects.
In , Russell Kanning went to the Keene
branch of the Internal Revenue Service and tried to hand out leaflets to the
employees there. The leaflets quoted from the tribunal that presided over
war crimes trials in Japan after World War Ⅱ to the effect that people are
obligated personally to disengage from the crimes of their governments, and
then provided a sample letter these employees could send to resign from their
jobs.
Kanning was arrested by agents from the Department of Homeland Security and
charged with distributing materials in a federal building and failure to obey
a lawful order. After he was booked and released, he immediately returned to
the IRS
office to try again (without the leaflets, which had been confiscated). He was
arrested again and charged with disorderly conduct.
A few months later, Dave Ridley followed-up on Kanning’s action, at the
Nashua
IRS
office. He silently held up a sign that read “Is it right to work for the
IRS?”
and passed a leaflet through the window that read in part:
I have the right to remain silent.
IRS
agents have the right to quit their jobs. If that is not possible, they have
a responsibility to work as inefficiently as possible when taking our money,
and as quickly as possible when returning it.
The police were summoned and hustled him out of the building. They later cited
him for “distribution of handbills.”
Kat Kanning and Lauren Canario were the next activists in line, going to the
Keene IRS
office with a “Taxes pay for torture” sign and a stack of leaflets. They were
charged with “disorderly conduct and loitering, failure to obey a lawful
order.”
At every stage in the process, they tried to directly but non-aggressively
confront not only the
IRS
employees, but also the Homeland Security officers, court bailiffs, judges,
and other government collaborators: asking them why they were interfering
with American citizens “petitioning their government for redress of
grievances,” and asking them to consider taking up a more honorable line of
work.
The first intifada
At the launching of the first “intifada” resisting Israeli rule over
Palestinians, Palestinians who worked for the tax department under the Israeli
occupation resigned their posts. As a result of this and of organized tax
resistance, only about 20% of Palestinians subject to Israeli taxes in the West
Bank paid their taxes in 1993, the last year before Israel relinquished taxing
authority there to the Palestinian Authority.
Greek tax and customs officials
Complicating the Greek government’s campaign to bring in more tax revenue
during the recent Euro-region financial brouhaha, bureaucrats in the Greek tax
and customs office periodically went on strike
to protest the
accompanying austerity measures that cut funding for state employees.
British nonconformists
British members of nonconforming Christian sects who did not want to see their
tax money going towards schools that taught children the official, government
supported faith, resisted their taxes. The newspapers reported:
In Lincolnshire, the sitting magistrate recently refused to try cases of
resistance, and left the bench. Difficulty is experienced everywhere in
getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
Whiskey Rebellion
As I mentioned earlier this month,
part of the problem the fledgeling United States government had when trying to
enforce its excise tax against the Whiskey Rebels was that it had a devil of a
time convincing anyone to serve as a prosecutor or exciseman.
From the beginning, the Whiskey Rebels counted on being able to convince their
neighbors not to help the federal government enforce the tax. George
Washington’s Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton complained to him:
The opposition first manifested itself in the milder shape of the circulation
of opinions unfavorable to the law, and calculated by the influence of public
disesteem to discourage the accepting or holding of offices under it…
Annuity Tax resisters
During the resistance against the Annuity Tax in Edinburgh, Scotland, a number
of members of the town council who were members of churches other than the
tax-supported establishment church resigned rather than be party to
administering the act that enacted the tax.
Auctioneers whom the government usually could call upon to preside at tax
auctions refused to take the contracts, and carters whom ordinarily could be
contracted to cart the goods refused, and so the town had to hire someone new
at a higher rate, and purchase new vehicles to haul seized property about.
Rallies outside the courthouse or prison are one way of supporting resisters who are looking at doing time for taking their stand (see The Picket Line for ), and supporting their families while they’re being held captive is another (see The Picket Line for ).
Other ways to show support are to accompany resisters as they go to prison, to visit them or correspond with them while they are inside, and to be there to meet them when they are released.
Today I’ll give some examples of these ways of showing support for imprisoned tax resisters.
Sylvia Hardy
Accompanying resisters to prison
When elderly council tax rebel Sylvia Hardy was threatened with jail in , her supporters organized a convoy of cars to accompany her to the jail as a show of support.
In , Annuity Tax resisters in Edinburgh, Scotland, would go to prison in a parade of protesters.
One description of such a procession read:
[H]e was marched off to the Calton Jail, accompanied by the usual hasty muster of people carrying flags and poles, having placards on which were a variety of devices and inscriptions…
His daughter, a fine young woman, in a fit of heroic indignation which overmastered her grief and the natural timidity of her sex, seized one of the flags, and would have walked before her father to prison with the crowd, but was prevented by him and the interference of the humane bystanders.
When Kate Harvey went to prison for her resistance as part of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, fellow-resisters Charlotte Despard and Mary Anderson accompanied her to the prison gates.
When Elizabeth Knight was imprisoned on similar charges, she was accompanied to Holloway by resisters Florence Underwood and Isabel Tippett.
Visiting resisters in prison
Thomas Story, an English Quaker who was visiting the American colonies, was able to help two Quakers from Rhode Island who were in prison for not paying a militia exemption tax after having been drafted and refusing to fight.
Story helped them hold a Quaker meeting in the prison itself, and also (having some legal experience) tried to assist them in court.
When Zerah Colburn Whipple was imprisoned for failing to pay a war tax in , it was a comfort to him to have friends on the outside trying to get in.
He wrote: “Our friend John J. Copp, proved himself a true friend indeed.
Knowing that I would be lonely in the jail, he visited me every day after he learned that I was there, and when the keeper refused him admission, he demanded it as his right to visit his client, and claimed the right to see me alone too, which was granted.”
The Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign helped to organize prison visits to people who had been imprisoned in the Poll Tax rebellion.
Corresponding with imprisoned resisters
I’ve done a lot of volunteer work with the Prison Literature Project in Berkeley, California.
Most of the letters we get are from prisoners requesting books — which makes sense, because that’s the sort of letter we explicitly ask for.
But a pretty hefty percentage of the letters we get are just expressing gratitude for the books and letters we previously sent — heartfelt, often heartbreaking gratitude, especially since many of the prisoners are of limited means and can barely afford to put a stamp on a letter.
This impresses on me how meaningful it is for people behind bars to get letters from friends outside.
The Anarchist Black Cross of New York City held a letter-writing evening for imprisoned war tax resister Carlos Steward in .
Brian Wright was the first person thrown in prison for Poll Tax resistance, during the rebellion in the United Kingdom, in .
While there he received over 800 cards and letters from supporters.
The Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign made it a policy to ensure that at least one personal letter per prisoner per week came from someone in the campaign.
When Kate Harvey had barricaded herself in her own home to try to defeat government attempts to seize her property for taxes, a supporter sent her a poem to keep her mood up:
Good luck, my friend, I wish to thee,
In thy brave fight ’gainst tyranny.
Bracken Hill Siege will bring good cheer
To those who hold our Freedom dear,
And fight the good fight far and near.
And when oppression is out-done,
And Liberty, at last, is won,
When women civic rights possess,
They’ll think, I hope, with thankfulness,
Of those who bore the battle’s stress.
When a Colorado doctor was jailed for refusing to pay federal income taxes that fund weapons of mass destruction, it was reported that “[l]etters of approval have been pouring in to Dr. Evans, and since he is only allowed to write very few, his mother in Philadelphia has taken up the task of acknowledging them, sending at the same time a typewritten sheet explaining the affair in detail.”
Welcoming resisters back from prison
The campaign to resist Thatcher’s Poll Tax organized a march to Brixton Prison, which held most of the resisters then in custody.
Police attacked the march and arrested 135 people.
“That evening,” says campaign volunteer Danny Burns, “volunteers were sent to every police station to welcome those who were released on bail.”
This served not only to show solidarity, but also to make the arrested people aware of the legal support available to them and to encourage them to cooperate in their defense.
When Constance Andrews of the Women’s Tax Resistance League was released after having been jailed for a week for failure to pay a dog license tax, “a very large crowd — described in the local press as ‘an immense gathering’ — collected outside the prison to cheer Miss Andrews on her release.”
A procession with suffrage banners walked along with Andrews as she walked from the prison to a reception held in her honor.
When Mark Wilks was released from prison for failure to pay his wife’s income tax in , the Women’s Tax Resistance League held a reception for the Wilkses, saying that “not only do they wish to do honour to those who have made such a brave stand for tax resistance, but to use the occasion, as one of many others, to keep before the public mind the necessity for the alteration of the laws.”
Katsuki James Otsuka served a 120-day sentence for refusing to pay war taxes to the U.S. government (and then refusing to pay the fine he was given for his initial refusal) in .
A group of supporters demonstrated outside the prison at the time of his anticipated release, though “four carloads of state police” broke up the demonstration at one point, smashing a picket sign that read “You did right in refusing to pay taxes for A-bombs.”
During the white supremacist rebellion against the Reconstruction state government in Louisiana a man named Edward Booth was imprisoned for 24 hours for refusing to pay a license tax.
[I]t was agreed among his immediate personal friends, the members of the tax resisting association and their sympathizers, to make a grand demonstration, at the hour of his release, and escort him to his place of business, to show their sympathies, and in what approbation he was held for having become the object of an oppression, in the defence of his personal rights.
Before the hour of his release, a large concourse of people assembled before the doors of the prison, to hail the deliverance of the prisoner, and the anteroom was thronged with friends anxious to proffer the hand of sympathy and condolence. …
Mr. Booth filed out of the room and stepped into a carriage in waiting, amid rousing cheers and a stirring air from the band.
The carriage led off, followed by the band and the large concourse of people, who gradually fell into an orderly line of twos, to the number of about 400.
The marchers hung an effigy of the Reconstruction governor from a lamp post while loudly cheering.
When the procession reached Booth’s place of business, he gave a speech thanking the crowd for their support and urging them to renew their resistance.
William Tait, editor of Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, was imprisoned for refusing to pay the Annuity Tax in that city, which went to support the official church, of which Tait was not a member.
After four days, he was released.
The Scotsman covered the story:
[Tait] stepped into the open carriage, drawn by four horses, which stood on the street…
At this moment, one of the gentlemen in the carriage, waving his hat, proposed three cheers for the King, and three cheers for Mr. Tait, — both of which propositions were most enthusiastically carried into effect.
The procession was then about to move off, when, much against the will of Mr. Tait and the Committee, the crowd took the horses from the carriage, and with ropes drew it along the route of procession…
As the procession marched along, it was joined by several other trades, who had been late in getting ready; and seldom have we seen such a dense mass of individuals as Prince’s Street presented on this occasion.
In the procession alone, there were not fewer than 8,000 individuals; and we are sure that the spectators were more than thrice as numerous.
Mr. Tait was frequently cheered as he passed along, — and never, but on the occasion of the Reform Bill, was a more unanimous feeling witnessed than on that which brought the people together yesterday afternoon.
There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the police or courts, including:
Another way to help resisters who are tangling with the legal system is to pay their legal fees or their fines.
I covered “mutual insurance” plans, with which tax resistance campaigns spread the cost of fines and other such costs over more resisters than just those explicitly targeted.
Today I’ll cover some examples of more ad hoc, after-the-fact generosity in a similar vein.
Sylvia Hardy
Sylvia Hardy, retired and living in Exeter, was upset that the cost of living increase in her pension was less than 3%, while her council tax was rising at a double-digit percentage each year.
So she decided to stop paying.
A sympathizer paid her bill one year, and in response Hardy wrote to the city council to ask them not to accept any further donations in her name.
Later, she was told that someone had called in by telephone offering to pay her whole bill, and she again refused, saying continued refusal was “the only way to get our voices heard.”
Nonetheless, when she was jailed in , an anonymous sympathizer paid her outstanding taxes, and she was released after spending two days behind bars.
Old Holborn
Nick Hogan, a Bolton pub-owner, defied a new anti-smoking ordinance and openly permitted his patrons to light up.
For this he was fined £3,000, and another £7,000+ in court costs.
He refused to pay and was thrown in jail.
Hogan was set free the following month when a blogger going by the handle of “Old Holborn” dressed up in a Guy Fawkes mask and cape in order to remain anonymous and delivered a suitcase full of cash to prison to pay Hogan’s fine.
The funds had been donated by thousands of people around the world who were sympathetic to Hogan’s fight.
“Carter”
A man named Carter (his other name has, as far as I know, been lost to history) refused to pay a $1 militia tax for conscientious reasons in .
For this, his town put him in jail and vowed to keep him there (at a cost to the town of $2.50 per week) until he paid up.
He was stubborn, and stayed there at least 21 months.
A newspaper article about his case says, “[f]riends offered to advance the money to Carter, but he stubbornly refused to accept the money and pay the tax.”
Zerah C. Whipple
When Zerah C. Whipple was imprisoned for refusing to pay a militia tax, an anonymous donor eventually paid the tax and costs to have him released.
At an unexpected moment an entire stranger called at the prison and desired to know the amount of the tax and costs, which he paid, saying he knew the worth of Z.C. Whipple, and that his family for generations back had never paid the military tax, and he wished to save the State from the disgrace of imprisoning a person guilty of no crime.
The money was paid and the door opened, and his friend took the receipt to his children and said, “Keep this as a reminiscence that in your father paid this bill to release a young man from prison, that he might enjoy the rights of conscience.”
Mary McLeod Cleeves
When women’s suffrage activist Mary McLeod Cleeves was threatened with imprisonment for refusing to pay a carriage license tax, the suffragist newspaper The Vote noted that “Mrs. Cleeves has been beseiged by friends asking to be allowed to pay her fine; but like a true Suffragette, she refused.”
Annuity Tax resisters
Quakers, also a nonconformist sect, were largely in sympathy with the Annuity Tax resisters of Edinburgh, Scotland, but an editorial in one Quaker periodical chided those resisters for being eager to pay up to get their colleagues out of jail, rather than to embrace martyrdom like a good Quaker would:
We are principally induced to advert to this matter, on account of the means by which the liberation of the prisoners was effected — that of a public subscription.
This, we consider to have been most objectionable.
… we see nothing to commend, but every thing to reprobate, in the conduct of Dissenters in this matter.
The movement may bespeak their sympathy for the sufferer, but we contend that it was both injudiciously expressed, and exceedingly ill-timed.
Had the public subscription been deferred till after the prisoners had been liberated, in what we should consider a legitimate manner, and its object of course been different — to testify at once the sympathy of the subscribers, and to compensate for the injury sustained by the prisoners — there would have been no objection to the manifestation.
Did it not occur to the Dissenters of Edinburgh, that it was not from want of pecuniary ability that either of the prisoners allowed himself to be immured in jail?
Or again, what was the difference between these individuals paying the tax themselves, and its being paid for them by public subscription?
If it was wrong in the one case, it must be equally wrong, and a violation of principle, in the other.
It has surprised us, that not one of the Dissenting Journals that we have met with has taken this view of the subject.
In their joyfulness at the liberation of the prisoners, they seem to have lost sight entirely of the sacrifice of principle at which it was obtained.
Lessons from Thoreau, Maurice McCrackin, and Juanita Nelson
You’ll note that in many of the cases I mentioned, the offered money was an unwelcome gift — the resisters were not going to jail for lack of funds, but for principle.
The trick to supporting imprisoned tax resisters is to respect their real needs and desires.
When “someone interfered,” as Thoreau put it, and paid his taxes in order to spring him from his night in jail, they thought wrongly that they were doing Thoreau a favor, “for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall.”
When the lawyers the court assigned to defend war tax resister Maurice McCrackin — who was refusing to cooperate with the court entirely, and who wanted no legal defense whatsoever — vowed to pursue an appeal of a verdict they thought was unjust, McCracken emphatically said that he was not interested in pursuing an appeal: “I said I wanted to file no appeal, nor did I want steps taken to keep the door open, so an appeal could be perfected later.
I do not recognize any appeal on my behalf… My position is not changed.
This is a moral, not a legal, struggle.”
Juanita Nelson tells a happier story: of the support she received in jail, where she had been taken in her bathrobe from her home.
Her supporters took the time to learn how to support her in a way that was appropriate to her resistance:
Two fellow pacifists, one of them also a tax refuser, had been permitted to come to me, since I would not go to them.
I asked them what was uppermost in my mind, what they’d do about getting properly dressed?
They said that this was something I would have to settle for myself.
I sensed that they thought it the better part of wisdom and modesty for me to be dressed for my appearance in court.
They were more concerned about the public relations aspect of getting across the witness than I was.
They were also genuinely concerned, I knew, about making their actions truly nonviolent, cognizant of the other person’s feelings, attitudes and readiness.
I was shaken enough to concede that I would like to have my clothes at hand, in case I decided I would feel more at ease in them.
The older visitor, a dignified man with white hair, agreed to go for the clothes in a taxicab.
They left, and on their heels came another visitor.
She had been told that in permitting her to come up, the officials were treating me with more courtesy than I was according them.
It was her assessment that the chief deputy was hopeful that someone would be able to hammer some sense into me and was willing to make concessions in that hope.
But he had misjudged the reliance he might place in her — she was not as critical as the men.
She did not know what she would do, but she thought she might wish to have the strength and the audacity to carry through in the vein in which I had started.
And she said.
“You know, you look like a female Gandhi in that robe.
You look, well, dignified.”
That was my first encouragement.
Everyone else had tended to make me feel like a fool of the first water, had confirmed fears I already had on that score.
My respect and admiration for Gandhi, though not uncritical, was deep.
And if I in any way resembled him in appearance I was prepared to try to emulate a more becoming state of mind.
I reminded myself, too, that I had on considerably more than the loincloth in which Gandhi was able to greet kings and statesmen with ease.
I need not be unduly perturbed about wearing a robe into the presence of his honor.
There are many ways to support tax resisters when they are targeted by the
police or courts, including:
Today I’ll finish off this series by mentioning some other examples of ways
sympathizers, supporters, and organized campaigns have responded to the arrest,
trial, or imprisonment of tax resisters.
Mass action in response to arrests
When elderly pensioner Sylvia Hardy was imprisoned for refusing to
continue to pay her ever-rising council tax, supporters started a daily
vigil outside Exeter Cathedral to bring attention to her plight. “Judging
from the passers-by,” one said, “most people are fully aware of what’s
happened to her and we’ve had a lot of sympathy and interest.”
When Australian miners refused to pay a license tax in
, they resolved that if any one of them
were arrested: “it should be reported to the [tax resistance] committee by
the nearest observer; they would immediately call a monster meeting, and
the whole of the people would deliver themselves into custody.”
In , Australian miners were at it again,
this time resisting the income tax. They voted on a resolution that said,
in part, that upon “any member being sent to prison for refusing to pay,
that all unionists be called on immediately to stop work, and refuse to
recommence until such member is released, or the garnished money is
refunded.”
In Beidenfleth, Germany, between the World Wars, farmers were unable to
keep up with their tax payments, and decided to strike rather than see
themselves further impoverished. When fifty-seven were indicted for
interfering with a tax seizure, hundreds of others who either had been
involved with that action (or who wished they could have been), demanded
to be tried alongside them:
[A] fever seemed to grip the countryside. From far and wide the peasants
poured into Itzehoe, where the case was to be tried, with wild cries of
self-accusation. The public prosecutor could not walk down the streets
without being at once mobbed by powerful, earnest men begging him to
lift the heavy weight of guilt from their shoulders and to restore their
inner peace of mind by issuing a writ against them.
Honor prisoners
While people were desperately trying to get themselves indicted for tax
resistance in Beidenfleth, those who succeeded were honored:
The Beidenfleth Heifer Case developed into a regular popular festival.
Maidenly hands strung garlands about the necks of those enviable
peasants who had achieved the honour of receiving a writ.
I’ve mentioned before the badges awarded by the Women’s Tax Resistance
League to those who had gone to prison in the course of the campaign, and
how those so awarded were given the place of honor at campaign events
(see The Picket
Line for ).
It was also common for the League to throw luncheons or other such events
to honor imprisoned resisters upon their release.
The annuity tax resisters in Edinburgh, Scotland, honored one imprisoned
resister with “a piece of plate for his conduct on this occasion.” Another
time, they passed the hat for contributions, which, when the money was
given to resister Thomas Russell, he said: “We shall give it to the
Annuity Tax League, to enable them to carry out their operations in the
abolishment of the tax.”
A plaque on the Cass County, Missouri courthouse building honors the five
county judges who were imprisoned for contempt for refusing to order the
county to collect taxes to pay off fraudulent railroad bonds
.
Formal shows of support
When John Brown Smith, a lone Christian anarchist tax resister who was
imprisoned for tax resistance for about a year
, a convention of
“Liberalists” in Boston passed a resolution in support of Smith’s stand,
saying: “That in suffering eight months’ imprisonment in the orthodox
Republican hell of Northampton, rather than pay his taxes, John Brown Smith
has shown discerning wisdom and invincible courage, which place him high
among the world’s benefactors, and disclose a practical way to vanquish
sanguinary forces without shedding innocent or vicious blood.”
One of the Cass County judges who went to jail for refusing to obey a
higher court order to impose taxes on the county to pay for fraudulent
railroad bonds, was elected to the state legislature by the citizens of
the county while he was in prison.
When war tax resister Zerah C. Whipple was in jail for his stand, the
Connecticut State Peace Society passed a series of resolutions in support.
For example: “Resolved: That it is a great, previous, and sanctifying
privilege of us all, to feel that in his bonds we are bound with him, and
to pour our heart’s holiest sympathies into his cup of trial.”
The Women’s Tax Resistance League and allied organizations would pass
resolutions in support of imprisoned resisters, send telegrams of
congratulation to resisters who were being jailed for the cause, and hold
meetings to especially commemorate and support their stand.
Petition the government for leniency
When a number of young Quaker men were imprisoned for failure to pay a
militia exemption tax in , David Cooper
followed them to jail, and met with the officers who were holding them
captive. He wrote:
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.
The Women’s Tax Resistance League would write letters of inquiry to
government officials whenever one of them was imprisoned. For instance,
when Kate Harvey was jailed, Charlotte Despard wrote to her representative
in Parliament to point out the discrepancy between her cruel sentence and
the wrist-slaps given to men for similar offenses. “I cannot believe,
sir,” she wrote, “that you will permit this injustice to be done. … Mrs.
Harvey is one whose time, service and money are given to the rescue of
little destitute children, and to the help of those not so fortunately
placed as herself. While such injustices as these are permitted by the
authorities, can you wonder that women are in revolt?” League member Marie
Lawson started what she called a “snowball” protest — a sort of chain
letter that sympathizers were supposed to send to their friends that
included a postcard-sized petition they could send to various government
figures.
When American war tax resister Maurice McCracken was imprisoned, supporters
sent a telegram to President Eisenbower, asking him to release the
prisoner (they got a vague, noncommittal reply).
Somewhat related to this is that when the American Revolution broke out,
one item on the agenda of the revolutionaries from North Carolina was the
legal rehabilitation of the tax rebels who had been convicted at the end
of the Regulator movement of
.
Today I’ll continue our look at the violent side of tax resistance campaigns by giving some examples of assaults and intimidation directed at collaborators with the tax system:
In Paris during the French Revolution, legal proceedings against people who destroyed the tax offices were abandoned when neither the officers in charge of the investigation or the National Assembly itself had the courage to stand up to popular indignation and threats.
Witnesses who were called to testify against the Fries Rebels “were generally very reluctant to give information, being afraid the insurgents would do them some injury.”
In the Whiskey Rebellion, “William Richmond, who had given information against some of the rioters… had his barn burnt, with all the grain and hay which it contained…”
During the Rebecca Riots, two or three hundred Rebeccaites met at an inn in Pontyberem and, during the course of the meeting, forced the innkeeper to swear not to admit the toll collector at the inn.
In another example: “the dead body of Thomas Thomas… was found in a river near Brechfa!
This man had been very much opposed to the Rebecca movement, and… had been to Carmarthen to make a complaint to the authorities against some Rebeccaites; on his return home that night he found his house, etc., on fire.
Bearing this in mind, together with other circumstantial evidence, it is plain that he had some bitter enemies in the neighbourhood, and it was generally believed that he had been waylaid and murdered.”
Thomas had on another occasion testified against his servant and had him jailed, and for this the Rebeccaites ransacked his house, destroying what they could.
During the Tithe War in Ireland, resisters did what they could to prevent people from cooperating with attempt to seize and auction off resisters’ goods:
[I]t almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
One clergyman had to import some sixty workers to help him take his tithes “in kind” from the farmers in his parish, “from distant counties, and at high wages, who yet were incapable of obtaining more than a small portion of tithes, being interrupted by a rabble — chiefly women — though men were lurking in the background to support them.”
In colonial North Carolina during the Stamp Act agitation, “The stamp masters were seized and forced to swear they would have nothing to do with the stamps, and it being known when the vessel bringing the stamps would come up to Wilmington, Colonels Ashe and Waddell, having called out the militia from Brunswick and the adjoining counties to the number of some 700 men, seized the vessel and held her until her commander promised not to permit the stamps to be taken from her.”
During the Reform Bill uprising in the , “Threats had been employed to prevent auctioneers from selling distrained goods; and an auctioneer in Bath had been obliged, in consequence of intimidation, to issue a handbill, in which he gave public notice, that he would not receive for sale any goods distrained for the non-payment of King’s Taxes.”
Irish Household Tax resisters recently mobbed Ireland’s Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, surrounding his car and chanting “fucking scumbag” Another politician who witnessed the event said: “In my view, there was an element of thuggery to it.
Some of the protestors prevented him from getting out of the car park.”
When Ondárroa tried to hire an outside debt collection company to go after resisters; “Upon learning of the assignment of this work to the Bilbaoan firm Gesmunpal, the nationalist left spread slogans via Internet in favor of ‘civil disobedience,’ as well as calls and letters against the company.
Gesmunpal resigned.”
During the Annuity Tax resistance movement in Edinburgh, a newspaper was sued for publicizing the names of the people who rented carts to the government for hauling away distrained goods — the grounds of the suit being that such publicity would be damaging to the business of the carters.
The Poll Tax resistance movement in Thatcher’s Britain included attacks and threats directed at collaborators with the tax, for example:
“Attacks and threats have been made against Bristol newsagents and shops where people can pay the Poll Tax.
Windows have been smashed and graffiti daubed over businesses which have become agents for the Bristol-based company ‘Penalty Points.’
The firm installs special tills with its agents to collect the community charge on behalf of local authorities for a fee.
Mr. Ross Hendry, a spokesman for the company… said ‘because of the attacks, one newsagent in Patchway has now declined taking an agency after a brick was thrown through his window.
He said another newsagent in Bishoport Avenue, Hartclife had the words ‘Poll Tax scab’ and ‘you’re the first’ scrawled in white paint across his window.
A Circle K store in Cardiff where the revolutionary scheme was launched on with 48 agents, had its door locks jammed with superglue.”
some of the posters with threatening messages aimed at bailiffs and other poll tax collaborators
Intimidation of bailiffs (people authorized to seize and sell property for tax arrears) was widespread: “Housing schemes and estates were plastered with posters.
One showing a vicious dog, read ‘Bailiffs?
Make my day!’
Another showing a picture of Malcolm X holding a machine gun looking out from behind the curtains, read: ‘Bailiffs we’re ready.’
A third showed a picture of a bailiff swinging in a noose.
It read ‘Dead bailiffs don’t knock on doors.’
In some areas bailiffs and registration officers were photographed and their portraits were reproduced on posters which read ‘wanted’ and listed their ‘crimes.’
These images were extremely popular… People were used to seeing images of themselves in the role of victim.
Now wherever they looked there were images of their adversaries in this role.”
“Wherever the council registration officers went they were harassed.
In Glasgow violent threats drove canvasser Robert Stevenson to quit his job.
He was physically threatened twice in four weeks and continually harassed:
I’d just put the form through the door when this guy across in the garden opposite started shouting.
He was sitting in the garden with about four others and they were all giving me dirty looks.
He said that if I came back to collect the form I would need a tank for protection.
I was in no doubt that they were serious.
I didn’t finish my last street.
I just chucked it.
“…another canvasser… was ‘harassed by a gang.’
In this case, it was reported that:
Four or five youths cornered him in a close in Gairbraid Avenue and subjected him to abuse.
A Strathclyde police spokesman revealed: “They said it was a ‘No Poll Tax Area’ and told the worker to get out, which he did.”
“Following these reports, the Poll Tax registration officer admitted that ‘there had been at least four other incidents involving canvassers’ and… canvassers had been threatened (leaflets were grabbed from their hands).
Already over two members of his staff had resigned because of fears about their personal safety.”
Mayors and municipal councils resigned en masse to support the French wine-growers’ tax strike of , and, according to one account, “there have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to resign.”
“Mr. Trueman, a Poll Tax snooper whose job was to call on people and badger them into filling the registration forms, [was] unable to cope with the abuse…
Mrs. Trueman found the corpse of her husband as she came back from shopping.
Fred Trueman, 52, an employee of Bristol City, had hanged himself.
“No-one can imagine what terrible pressure he had to work under,” she claimed.
“He was sworn at and threatened; he couldn’t stand it any more.”
One way tax resisters can foil the plans of the tax collectors is to send up the alarm when they’re on the way.
Here are some examples:
In rural Germany between the wars, a tax strike broke out, and when tax collectors came to distrain cattle from the resisters:
they blew the fire horn, and on the road they lit a fire of straw, the age-old sign that help is needed.
Peasants ran from all sides towards the smoke.
“Horning” was a legal term of art describing the process under which tax debtors could be imprisoned for defying the King (because it was normally prohibited at the time to imprison someone merely for being a debtor in default).
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, one victim of this process declared “Horning! horning!
— by the powers! if they bring a horning against me, I’ll bring a horning against them.”:
When the King’s messenger-at-arms, as tipstaves are called in Scotland, brought his horning to the Cowgate, the Irishman, previously provided with a tremendous bullock’s horn, blew a blast “so loud and dread,” that it might have brought down the Castle wall; and a faction mustered as quickly as if it had sounded in the suburbs of Kilkenny.
The messenger-at-arms took leave as rapidly as possible, and without making the charge of horning at this time.
Poujadist tax rebels in France in
used this tactic: “Some priests ring church bells to warn of the arrival of the revenuers,” according to a Life magazine article on the movement.
A Montreal Gazette reporter said of Poujade’s Union for the Defence of Shopkeepers and Craftsmen:
The loudspeaker is its symbol and it all started in earnest one bright morning 18 months ago when a loudspeaker mounted on a truck brought awful tidings to the pleasant little town of St. Cere near Toulouse in south-west France.
“Attention,” it blared.
“Attention.
The tax inspector is in town.”
There was a rumbling sound as the steel curtains with which French shops are shuttered at night were rolled down all over St. Cere.
…
The tax inspector rapped on steel curtain after steel curtain, demanding to be let in to see the books.
Nowhere did he get an answer.
When they found that even the bistros were locked, the hapless inspector and his guards gave up their mission and beat a humble retreat from St. Cere.
The triumph of St. Cere lit the fires of rebellion in the hearts of tax-ridden shopkeepers all over France.
Poujade was suddenly a national figure and he lost no time in organizing his Union to spread the message of the loudspeakers and the steel curtains.
More recently, in Greece, when tax official Nikos Maitos took a team of inspectors to the island of Naxos to hunt for tax evaders, “a local radio station broadcast his license plate number to warn residents.”
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and other government enforcers were tracked by the resisters, who warned villagers when they were on the way.
Resister Govardhandas Chokhavala said, “We have provided our volunteers with drums and conches, and the moment they sight a Government servant, the drum or the conch gives the alarm.
That is work which is after the heart of these youngsters.”
Some other notes from The Story of Bardoli read:
[E]very village had its volunteers ready with their bugles or drums which Were pressed into aid as soon as they caught sight of the Talati and Patel out on their japti [attachment] depredations
The youngsters on duty announced [the Collector’s] arrival by a hearty beating of their drums. and all the doors were closed.
[T]he other [new legal] notification which was over the signature of the District Superintendent of Police prohibited the beating of drums, playing music, or blowing conches or horns on or near public roads or public places or Government buildings.
Some of them had to post themselves at and keep a strict watch over the various approaches to the village, and no sooner was a japti party sighted or the whank of a car heard, than they were to be on their alert, and the warning of the fact to be given to the village people.
Some of them had always like sleuth hounds to be on the trail of the Government officials.
Their business was to scent their plans and warn the village people against their machinations.
Some boys were arrested, tried, and imprisoned for nothing more than keeping a watchful eye on a government building from across the street.
Tax resisters in Alwar, India in used this system: “The paths are blocked by huge boulders and at intervals along the hills remote from the towns are watchers with giant tom-toms which are heard for five miles, giving warning of the approach of troops or the revenue collectors.”
The horn became the symbol of the Rebeccaite uprising in Wales, because of incidents like this one:
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.
A sign declares a neighborhood a “poll tax free zone” and warns bailiffs away from entering.
During the poll tax rebellion in Thatcher’s Britain, resisters tracked and shadowed bailiffs, and declared certain areas to be bailiff “no-go” zones, with watchouts established to raise the alarm if any approached.
They first modeled this approach on tactics used in South African townships during the anti-apartheid resistance there, and then improvised from there:
Throughout Britain, city-wide bailiff busting groups were formed.
Activists in Edinburgh formed a group called “Scum-busters” which was equipped with CB radios, and squadrons of cars.
Telephone trees were organised; bailiff companies were monitored; their car registration numbers were taken and distributed to activists in all the local areas.
Camden, in London, followed their example in :
We have organised a rota so that we know who and when people are available to do whatever shift.
We have organised a “knock up system” giving people different responsibilities for knocking up each part of the estate when the bailiffs are spotted.
Telephone trees have also been established.
We have approached a couple of mini-cab firms who have agreed to be bailiff spotters.…
A related tactic is for tax resisters to flee or hide to evade arrest.
Here are a couple of examples:
Residents of St. Claire county, Missouri, in , used a number of methods to avoid being taxed to pay back railroad bonds that the county had issued as part of a swindle (the railroad was never built).
Among these was the election of local judges who were willing to refuse to enforce higher court rulings meant to force the county to raise the tax funds.
“[T]he judges were elected with the understanding that they would stay in the timber or in jail, as conditions might require, during their term of office.
Deputy United States marshals searched for them in the forests and the people of the county helped hide their fugitive officers.
Occasionally the courts would meet at nights and transact their business…” According to one account:
Since local taxpayers believed that the judges were, finally, obeying public opinion, they helped the judges evade the marshals and the law.
Homeowners welcomed and hid any judge trying to escape the marshals.
In Dallas County the court met in the woods, under culverts, in barns, and other places where marshals were not likely to look.
At the county seat of Buffalo, residents developed an elaborate network to warn the judges whenever a stranger appeared who might be a marshal.
These new forms of representative government, featuring imprisoned local officials and court meetings in the woods, restored to taxpayers the traditional control that citizens had exercised over elected officials.
The plain truth was that those officials had abdicated their governing function, leaving the field of battle to local taxpayers and remote investors.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh in , a group of resisters liberated an arrested resister.
A newspaper report at the time said, “we hear that the constables are on the alert each night to catch the marked men; and that, fearing a visit in the dark, these persons quit their homes and sleep abroad.”
Another way people can assist and show solidarity with tax resisters is by coming to their assistance if their property is seized.
Here are some examples:
Practical support
The War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund was established in .
It helps war tax resisters who have had penalties and interest added to their tax bills and seized by the IRS by reimbursing them for a large portion of these additional charges.
The more people we could recruit to shoulder the penalties and interest of resisters, the lighter the burden for everyone.
With the modest help we could provide, conscientious resisters were able to keep on keeping on.
The penalty fund had the added benefit of making us all tax resisters, not just those who withheld all or a portion of their income taxes.
The base list of supporters has been as high as 800 people sharing the weight.
In nearly every appeal, at least 200 people respond, usually more.
In all we’ve paid out about $250,000 to help resisters stay in the struggle.
The story of the seizure of the Kehler/Corner home was the subject of the documentary An Act of Conscience.
When the home of war tax resisters Randy Kehler and Betsy Corner was seized for back taxes, supporters came from near and far to maintain a 24-hour occupation of the home:
[David] Dellinger and others have come from as far away as California to the Colrain [Massachusetts] house…
Mr. Kehler and Ms. Corner continued to live in the house until they were arrested by Federal marshals last December.
Since then, friends and supporters of the couple have arrived to occupy the almost empty house in week-long shifts marked by the Thursday “changing of the guard” ceremony.
Because the house was sold in a Government auction in , all who go inside risk arrest for trespassing.…
For Bonney Simons of St. Johnsbury, Vt., sleeping on a bedroll in the house is her first official act of civil disobedience.
At 72 years of age, she said, it is time to “put your body where your mouth is.”
Suffragist tax resister Dora Montefiore barricaded her home and kept the tax collector from seizing her property for several weeks in , in what came to be known as the “Siege of Montefiore.”
She noted:
The tradespeople of the neighbourhood were absolutely loyal to us besieged women, delivering their milk and bread, etc., over the rather high garden wall which divided the small front gardens of Upper Mall from the terraced roadway fronting the river.
The weekly wash arrived in the same way and the postman day by day delivered very encouraging budgets of correspondence, so that practically we suffered very little inconvenience…
A woman sympathiser in the neighbourhood brought during the course of the [first] morning, a pot of home-made marmalade, as the story had got abroad that we had no provisions and had difficulty in obtaining food.
This was never the case as I am a good housekeeper and have always kept a store cupboard, but we accepted with thanks the pot of marmalade because the intentions of the giver were so excellent.
Examples like this also proved to be vivid anecdotes that the press could use when describing the siege and the support from sympathizers.
When the U.S. government seized Amish tax resister Valentine Byler’s horses and their harnesses while he was in the field preparing for spring planting, sympathetic neighbors allowed him to borrow their horses so he could continue his work.
Other sympathizers throughout the country who heard about the case sent Byler money — more than enough to buy a new team.
An auctioneer who was dragooned into helping the government sell some of the livestock of a man who had been resisting taxes meant to pay for sectarian education in , donated the fee he had earned for conducting the auction to the resister.
During the water charge strike in Dublin, “local campaign groups successfully resisted attempts to disconnect water and in the couple of instances where water was cut off, campaigners re-connected it within hours.
The first round was won hands down by the campaign and it was back to the drawing board for the councils.”
Similar monkeywrenching is being practiced today in Greece, where activists promptly reconnect utilities of people who have been disconnected for failure to pay the increased taxes attached to their utility bills.
During the Annuity Tax resistance in Edinburgh, people sympathetic to the resisters would bid on and return furniture and other items that had been seized and sold by the tax collectors.
The Rebecca Rioters, on the other hand, were characteristically more direct in their resistance:
Warrants of distress were issued… and the constables proceeded to execute them…
The constables then went towards Talog; but when on their way there they heard the sound of a horn, and immediately between two and three hundred persons assembled together, with their faces blackened, some dressed in women’s caps, and others with their coats turned so as to be completely disguised — armed with scythes, crowbars and all manner of destructive weapons which they could lay their hands on.
After cheering the constables, they defied them to do their duty.
The latter had no alternative but to return to town without executing their warrants.
The women were seen running in all directions to alarm their neighbours; and some hundreds were concealed behind the hedges, intending to appear if their services were required.
The entire district seemed to be aroused, and awaiting the arrival of the constables, who were going to levy on the goods of John Harris of Talog Mill for the amount of the fine and costs imposed upon him by the magistrates.
There could not have been less than two hundred persons assembled to resist the execution of process, and vast numbers were flocking from all quarters, in response to the blowing of a horn, the signal of the Rebeccaites to repair thither.
Various mounted messengers were scouring the country and sounding the trumpet of alarm.…
At Maesgwenllian near Kidwelly, several bailiffs were put in possession for arrears of rent to the amount of £150, but about , Rebecca and a great number of her followers made their appearance on the premises, and after driving the bailiffs off, took away the whole of the goods distrained on.
As soon as daylight appeared, the bailiffs returned, but found no traces of Rebecca, nor of the goods which had been taken away.
A group in Olive Hill, Kentucky in followed the Rebecca model, to an extent, “in a raid… by a band of between 800 and 900 men, who forced Levi White, Collector of Taxes, to give up a stock of goods which had been seized.
The goods were then taken back to the store of Levi Oppenheimer, where the official had seized them.”
Last year in Oaxaca, the PRI said that the would “defend up to the point of injunctions those citizens who suffer from liens imposed as well as judgments in order to prevent the impounding of vehicles, considering it unconstitutional that the police will impound them to stop the driver and remove the unit if the striker does not pay the corresponding [vehicle] tax.”
The IRS auctioned off a portion of Ralph Shinaberry’s property in after he refused to pay a fine for growing more wheat on his farm than his government-assigned quota.
“I don’t believe the Government can tell me how much I can grow,” he said, explaining his resistance.
The winning bidder, Herbert Jessup, told a reporter:
“I have no intention of taking possession of the property.”
When war tax resister Cosmas Raimondi’s car was seized by the IRS in , a handful of families in his parish offered to permanently loan him their car so he could still get around, and many others loaned him their cars temporarily.
“I’ve not had to ask one person,” he said.
In Beit Sahour, when the Israeli occupation authorities seized furniture and appliances from resisters, relatives and others would loan them spares, or camping furniture to use as replacements.
“In Bedfordshire in community pressure persuaded a minister to return goods seized from a Quaker for non-payment of tithes.”
Moral support
When Dora Montefiore was first formulating her “siege” strategy with fellow-activists Theresa Billington and Annie Kenney, they agreed to organize daily demonstrations outside of her home while she was defending it.
Montefiore remembered:
The feeling in the neighbourhood towards my act of passive resistance was so excellent and the publicity being given by the Press in the evening papers was so valuable that we decided to make the Hammersmith “Fort” for the time being the centre of the W.S.P.U. activities, and daily demonstrations were arranged for and eventually carried out. …
The roadway was… ideal for the holding of a meeting, as no blocking of traffic could take place, and day in, day out the principles for which suffragists were standing we expounded to many who before had never even heard of the words Woman Suffrage.
At the evening demonstrations rows of lamps were hung along the top of the wall and against the house, the members of the W.S.P.U. speaking from the steps of the house, while I spoke from one of the upstairs windows.
…shoals of letters came to me, a few sadly vulgar and revolting, but the majority helpful and encouraging.
Some Lancashire lads who had heard me speaking in the Midlands wrote and said that if I wanted help they would come with their clogs but that was never the sort of support I needed, and though I thanked them, I declined the help as nicely as I could. …
The working women from the East End came, time and again, to demonstrate in front of my barricaded house…
When the IRS seized and auctioned off the home and farm of Art Harvey and Elizabeth Gravalos in , other war tax resisters and supporters were by their sides:
“I might have cried if I were alone,” Gravalos admitted.
But she was far from alone.
About 75 supporters gathered outside the building and spoke of their solidarity with Elizabeth and Arthur.
About 35 supporters turned up for the second auction, this time held at the IRS office in Lewiston, Maine.
Demonstrators read excerpts from letters to IRS officials and to President Clinton urging them to call off the auction.
In , the IRS levied 78-year-old war tax resister Ruth McKay’s social security checks to recoup the taxes she had been refusing to pay over the previous 20 years.
To show their support of her stand, 40 activists from New Hampshire Peace Action joined her for a vigil at the federal courthouse in Concord, New Hampshire.
When war tax resister Maria Smith’s wages were garnisheed by the IRS in , fifty supporters held a special church service in her honor.
“One of the Valod Vanias,” whose land was seized by the government during the Bardoli satyagraha, “who thus lost all his valuable property, celebrated the event by inviting friends and soldiers of Satyagraha to a party.”
On the other hand, some campaigns have taken the position that sacrifices for the cause are their own reward — that martyrdom is a blessing and that it would be foolish for such resisters to seek or accept recompense.
Nathaniel Morgan was speaking with someone curious about the Quaker stand on war and war taxes, and had this to say:
I told him then that I and my father had refused to pay the income tax on account of war, and had refused it on its first coming out, and withstood it 16 years, except when peace was declared, and that our goods were sold by auction to pay it.
This seemed to excite his curiosity, and made a stand to hear further, on the steps above the engine, going down to the river; asking me if we got anything by that, meaning, was anything refunded by the Society for such suffering.
I immediately replied: “Yes, peace of mind, which was worth all.”
Social boycott can also be a potent tactic to use against tax collectors or collaborators with the tax collection process.
Here are some examples:
Adolf Hausrath writes about how social boycott was used to discourage tax collectors in Roman-occupied Judaea:
The people knew how to torment these officials of the Roman customs with the petty cruelty which ordinary people develop with irreconcilable persistency, whenever they believe this persistency to be due to their moral indignation.
In consequence of the theocratic scruples about the duty of paying taxes, the tax-gatherers were declared to be unclean and half Gentile.… among the Jews the words “tax-gatherersand sinners,”“tax-gatherers and Gentiles,”“tax-gatherers and harlots,” “tax-gatherers, murderers and robbers,” and similar insulting combinations, were not only ready on the tongue and familiar, but were accepted as theocratically identical in meaning.
Thrust out from all social intercourse, the tax-gatherers became more and more the pariahs of the Jewish world.
With holy horror did the Pharisee sweep past the lost son of Israel who had sold himself to the Gentile for the vilest purpose, and avoid the places which his sinful breath contaminated.
Their testimony was not accepted by Jewish tribunals.
It was forbidden to sit at table with them or eat of their bread.
But their money-chests especially were the summary of all uncleanness and the chief object of pious horror, since their contents consisted of none but unlawful receipts, and every single coin betokened a breach of some theocratic regulation.
To exchange their money or receive alms from them might easily put a whole house in the condition of being unclean, and necessitate many purifications.
From these relations of the tax-officials to the rest of the population, it can be readily understood that only the refuse of Judaism undertook the office.
The current Greek “won’t pay” movement included a joint statement from several outraged groups that called for a social boycott of legislators who went along with the tax-and-austerity plans: “do not talk to them, do not listen, do not socialize, do not invite, do not serve them, do not put gasoline in their cars…”
A social boycott of tax collectors was practiced in the years before the American revolution.
John Adams wrote:
At Philadelphia, the Heart-and-Hand Fire Company has expelled Mr. Hughes, the stamp man for that colony.
The freemen of Talbot county, in Maryland, have erected a gibbet before the door of the court-house, twenty feet high, and have hanged on it the effigies of a stamp informer in chains, in terrorem till the Stamp Act shall be repealed; and have resolved, unanimously, to hold in utter contempt and abhorrence every stamp officer, and every favorer of the Stamp Act, and to “have no communication with any such person, not even to speak to him, unless to upbraid him with his baseness.”
So triumphant is the spirit of liberty everywhere.
Sam Adams led those opposed to the tea tax to declare “That whoever shall directly or indirectly countenance this attempt [to send and collect duties on East India Company tea to America], or in any wise aid or abet in unloading, receiving, or vending the tea sent or to be sent out by the East India Company while it remains subject to the payment of a duty here is an enemy to America.” and to decide “that a committee be immediately chosen to wait on those gentlemen, who it is reported are appointed by the East India Company to receive and sell said tea, and to request them from a regard to their own characters and the peace and good order of this town and province immediately to resign their appointment.”
During the Whiskey Rebellion, the rebels passed a social boycott resolution that said in part:
…[W]hereas some men may be found amongst us, so far lost to every sense of virtue and feeling for the distresses of this country, as to accept offices for the collection of the duty:
Resolved, therefore, That in future we will consider such persons as unworthy of our friendship; have no intercourse or dealings with them; withdraw from them every assistance, and withhold all the comforts of life which depend upon those duties that as men and fellow citizens we owe to each other; and upon all occasions treat them with that contempt they deserve; and that it be, and it is hereby most earnestly recommended to the people at large to follow the same line of conduct towards them.
Islanders living off the coast of Galway County in Ireland refused to appoint tax collectors from among their number, and “where collectors are available on the mainland owners of boats have refused to facilitate their passage to the islands,” according to a newspaper account.
“On a few occasions the Civic Guards have persuaded the owners to lend their service and their boats, or their boats alone, for the guards to cross.
In such cases the guards have met with anything but a cordial reception.”
During the Dublin water charge strike:
Through contacts in the trade union movement we were able to discover the names of all the water inspectors and imagine their surprise the night before disconnections were due to begin when each of them received a hand-delivered letter appealing to them as trade union members not to cut people’s water off.
They decided not to respond positively to our polite request so the next morning when they left home under the cover of darkness, they each discovered a car-load of activists sitting outside their homes ready to follow them wherever they might go to try to do their dirty work.
One of them didn’t like it so much that after driving around and being followed for an hour he went to the local copshop to complain about being intimidated.
During the Bardoli satyagraha, tax collectors and collaborators were vigorously shunned.
Here are some excerpts from Mahadev Desai’s The Story of Bardoli:
There were meetings in talukas contiguous to Bardoli… calling upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by helping in the attachment of property by engaging as labourers or sending carts on hire…
…the police proceeded to hire a taxi.
The driver, whose car had been engaged by the Satyagrahis, refused to break his engagement and place his bus at the disposal of the Collector.
His licence was demanded, it was not with him, but he showed his brass badge, which he was asked to surrender.
Another taxidriver whose car had been engaged by [campaign commander] Sjt. Vallabhbhai was deprived of his licence too.
Kadod… was trying to go one better than other villages by resolving to cut off supplies of provision, etc. to the attachment officer posted in the village.
Sjt. Vallabhbhai in a long and moving speech expounded the principles of Satyagraha, and told them that their resolution was not in keeping with principles and must be canceled: “In a struggle based essentially on truth and nonviolence we must not do anything in resentment or anger.
It is a sign of weakness.
…do not refuse them the ordinary amenities of life.
They must get whatever they want at market rates.”
It would appear, that three carts were commandeered. for removing the kit and luggage belonging to the Deputy Collector from the Bardoli thana [district] to Valod.
The man to whom the carts belonged came to realise his mistake and went to the thana in company with Sjt. Ravishankar to call back his men.
One of the cartmen, as soon as he saw his master, said, they were not at all willing to go but they were helpless.
Sjt. Ravishankar pleaded with the Mamlatdar that if the men were not willing they should not be forced.
He was ordered to leave the thana which he did; and the cartman leaving the cart followed him.
The other cartmen also ultimately left leaving the carts in the thana compound.
Moderate reformist K.M. Munshi wrote to the government after visiting Bardoli:
Your japti officer has to travel miles before he can get a shave.
Your officer’s car which got stuck would have remained in the mud but for Mr. Vallabhbhai, officially styled “agitator living on Bardoli.”
Garda to whom lands worth thousands have been sold for a nominal amount does not get even a scavenger for his house.
The Collector gets no conveyance on the railway station unless one is given by Mr. Vallabhbhai’s sanction.
The threat of social boycott also played out at other points in the Indian independence struggle, with one account noting for instance that “the native police, fearing social boycott if they pressed their own kinsmen too hard, in some cases sat idly by and watched proceedings,” during the Dharasana salt raid.
When the salt march reached the sea near Danmi, where Gandhi planned to harvest sea salt in violation of the taxed monopoly:
The police and labourers [who had been hired by the government to try to destroy all the natural salt deposits in the area] are boycotted by the villagers in the neighbourhood and have to journey to a village ten miles away to procure food.
During the Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance, social boycott was practiced against tax enforcers:
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another…
During the government investigation of the Annuity Tax resistance campaign the following exchange took place:
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any customer who was of that party.
During the Fries Rebellion, social pressure made it difficult for the government to recruit collaborators:
[I]n every tavern [Jacob Eyerley] stopped at, the law was the subject of general conversation and denunciation, and great pains were taken to find the friends of government, in order to persuade them not to accept the office of assessor.
In consequence of this feeling there was great difficulty in finding suitable persons for these appointments.
When Thatcher’s poll tax was being introduced, the government tried to recruit convenience stores and newsstands to be tax collection points.
When the resistance got wind of this, they contacted the stores, letting them know they would be boycotted if they allowed themselves to be used in this way.
Several then refused to participate.
A threat of social boycott was used to deter potential buyers of property seized from Steuben County resisters of taxes meant to pay back purchasers of crooked railroad bonds:
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.”
The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
During a tax resistance campaign in the German countryside between the world wars:
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
A tactic that I’ve encountered on many occasions in my research into tax resistance campaigns is that of disrupting government auctions of goods, particularly those of seized from tax resisters.
Here are several examples that show the variety of ways campaigns have accomplished this:
Religious nonconformists in the United Kingdom
Education Act-related resistance
Some disruption of auctions took place during the tax resistance in protest of the provisions of the Education Act that provided taxpayer money for sectarian education .
The Westminster Gazette reported:
There was some feeling displayed at a sale of the goods of Passive Resisters at Colchester yesterday, the Rev. T. Batty, a Baptist minister, and the Rev. Pierrepont Edwards, locally, known as “the fighting parson,” entering into discussion in the auction room, but being stopped by the auctioneer, who said he did his work during the week and he hoped they did theirs on Sundays.
At Long Eaton the goods of twenty-three Passive Resisters were sold amid demonstrations of hostility to the auctioneer.
A boy was arrested for throwing a bag of flour.
The New York Times reported that “Auctioneers frequently decline to sell goods upon which distraints have been levied.” And the San Francisco Chronicle noted:
Difficulty is experienced everywhere in getting auctioneers to sell the property confiscated.
In Leominster, a ram and some ewe lambs, the property of a resistant named Charles Grundy, were seized and put up at auction, as follows: Ram, Joe Chamberlain; ewes, Lady Balfour, Mrs. Bishop, Lady Cecil, Mrs. Canterbury and so on through the list of those who made themselves conspicuous in forcing the bill through Parliament.
The auctioneer was entitled to a fee under the law of 10 shillings and 6 pence, which he promptly turned over to Mr. Grundy, having during the sale expressed the strongest sympathy for the tax-resisters.
Most of the auction sales are converted into political meetings in which the tax and those responsible for it are roundly denounced.
Edinburgh Annuity Tax resistance
Auction disruptions were commonplace in the Annuity Tax resistance campaign in Edinburgh.
By law the distraint auctions (“roupings”) had to be held at the Mercat Cross — the town square, essentially — which made it easy to gather a crowd; or sometimes in the homes of the resisters. Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine reported of one of the Mercat Cross roupings:
If any of our readers know that scene, let them imagine, after the resistance was tolerably well organized, an unfortunate auctioneer arriving at the Cross about noon, with a cart loaded with furniture for sale.
Latterly the passive hubbub rose as if by magic.
Bells sounded, bagpipes brayed, the Fiery Cross passed down the closses, and through the High Street and Cowgate; and men, women, and children, rushed from all points towards the scene of Passive Resistance.
The tax had grinded the faces of the poor, and the poor were, no doubt, the bitterest in indignation.
Irish, Highlanders, Lowlanders, were united by the bond of a common suffering.
Respectable shopkeepers might be seen coming in haste from the Bridges; Irish traders flew from St. Mary’s Wynd; brokers from the Cowgate; all pressing round the miserable auctioneer; yelling, hooting, perhaps cursing, certainly saying anything but what was affectionate or respectful of the clergy.
And here were the black placards tossing above the heads of the angry multitude — ROUPING FOR STIPEND!
This notice was of itself enough to deter any one from purchasing; though we will say it for the good spirit of the people, that both the Scotch and Irish brokers disdained to take bargains of their suffering neighbours’ goods.
Of late months, no auctioneer would venture to the Cross to roup for stipend.
What human being has nerve enough to bear up against the scorn, hatred, and execration of his fellow-creatures, expressed in a cause he himself must feel just?
The people lodged the placards and flags in shops about the Cross, so that not a moment was lost in having their machinery in full operation, and scouts were ever ready to spread the intelligence if any symptoms of a sale were discovered.
Sheriff Clerk Kenmure Maitland appeared before a committee that was investigating the resistance campaign.
He mentioned that “Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer for sheriff’s sales, was so much inconvenienced and intimidated that he refused to take any more of those sales.”
Q: What was Mr. Whitten’s express reason for declining to act as auctioneer?
A: He was very much inconvenienced on that
occasion, and he believed that his general business connection would suffer
by undertaking these sales, and that he would lose the support of any
customer who was of that party.
Q: It was not from any fear of personal violence?
A: That might have had a good deal to do with it.
Q: Was Mr. Whitten the only auctioneer who declined?
A: No. After Mr. Whitten’s refusal I applied to
Mr. Hogg, whose services I should have been glad to have obtained, and he
said he would let me know the next day if he would undertake to act as
auctioneer; he wrote to me the next day saying, that, after consideration
with his friends, he declined to act.
Q: Any other?
A: I do not remember asking any others. The rates
of remuneration for acting as auctioneer at sheriffs’ sales are so low that
men having a better class of business will not act. I had to look about among
not first-class auctioneers, and I found that I would have some difficulty in
getting a man whom I could depend upon, for I had reason to believe that
influence would be used to induce the auctioneer to fail me at the last
moment.
It was difficult for the authorities to get any help at all, either from auctioneers, furniture dealers, or carters.
The government had to purchase (and fortify) their own cart because they were unable to rent one for such use.
Here is an example of an auction of a resister’s goods held at the resister’s
home, as described in the testimony of Thomas Menzies:
A: I saw a large number of the most respectable citizens assembled in the house, and a large number outside awaiting the arrival of the officers who came in a cab, and the indignation was very strong when they got into the house, so much so that a feeling was entertained by some that there was danger to the life of Mr. Whitten, the auctioneer, and that he might be thrown out of the window, because there were such threats, but others soothed down the feeling.
Q: There was no overt act or breach of the peace?
A: No.
The cabman who brought the officers, seeing they were engaged in such a disagreeable duty, took his cab away, and they had some difficulty in procuring another, and they went away round by a back street, rather than go by the direct way.
Q: Did Mr. Whitten, from his experience on that occasion, refuse ever to come to another sale as auctioneer?
A: He refused to act again, he gave up his
position.
He then described a second such auction:
A: The house was densely packed; it was impossible for me to get entrance; the stair was densely packed to the third and second flats; when the policemen came with the officers, they could not force their way up, except with great difficulty.
The consequence was, that nearly the whole of the rail of the upper storey gave way to the great danger both of the officers and the public, and one young man I saw thrown over the heads of the crowd to the great danger of being precipitated three storeys down.
Then the parties came out of the house, with their clothes dishevelled and severely handled; and the officer on that occasion will tell you that he was very severely dealt with indeed, and Mr. Sheriff Gordon was sent for, so much alarm being felt; but by the time the Sheriff arrived things were considerably subdued.
Sheriff Clerk Maitland also described this auction:
I found a considerable crowd outside; and on going up to the premises on the top flat, I found that I could not get entrance to the house; the house was packed with people, who on our approach kept hooting and shouting out, and jeering us; and, as far as I could see, the shutters were shut and the windows draped in black, and all the rooms crowded with people.
I said that it was necessary to carry out the sale, and they told me to come in, if I dare.
On another occasion, as he tells it, the auction seemed to go smoothly at first, but the buyers didn’t get what they hoped for:
At Mr. McLaren’s sale everything was conducted in an orderly way as far as the sale was concerned.
We got in, and only a limited number were allowed to go in; but after the officials and the police had gone, there was a certain amount of disturbance.
Certain goods were knocked down to the poinding creditors, consisting of an old sofa and an old sideboard, and Mr. McLaren said, “Let those things go to the clergy.” Those were the only things which had to be taken away.
There was no vehicle ready to carry them away.
Mr. McLaren said that he would not keep them.
After the police departed, he turned them out in the street, when they were taken possession of by the crowd of idlers, and made a bonfire of.
A summary of the effect of all of this disruption reads:
So strong was the feeling of hostility, that the town council were unable to procure the services of any auctioneer to sell the effects of those who conscientiously objected to pay the clerical portion of the police taxes, and they were consequently forced to make a special arrangement with a sheriff’s officer, by which, to induce him to undertake the disagreeable task, they provided him for two years with an auctioneer’s license from the police funds.
In , it was found necessary to enter into another arrangement with the officer, by which the council had to pay him 12½ percent, on all arrears, including the police, prison, and registration rates, as well as the clerical tax; and he receives this per-centage whether the sums are recovered by himself or paid direct to the police collector, and that over and above all the expenses he recovers from the recusants.
But this is not all; the council were unable to hire a cart or vehicle from any of the citizens, and it was found necessary to purchase a lorry, and to provide all the necessary apparatus and assistance for enforcing payment of the arrears.
All this machinery, which owes its existence entirely to the Clerico-Police Act, involves a wasteful expenditure of city funds, induces a chronic state of irritation in the minds of the citizens, and is felt to be a gross violation of the principles of civil and religious liberty.
The Tithe War
William John Fitzpatrick wrote of the auctions during the Tithe War:
[T]he parson’s first step was to put the cattle up to auction in the presence of a regiment of English soldiery; but it almost invariably happened that either the assembled spectators were afraid to bid, lest they should incur the vengeance of the peasantry, or else they stammered out such a low offer, that, when knocked down, the expenses of the sale would be found to exceed it.
The same observation applies to the crops.
Not one man in a hundred had the hardihood to declare himself the purchaser.
Sometimes the parson, disgusted at the backwardness of bidders, and trying to remove it, would order the cattle twelve or twenty miles away in order to their being a second time put up for auction.
But the locomotive progress of the beasts was always closely tracked, and means were taken to prevent either driver or beast receiving shelter or sustenance throughout the march.
The Sentinel wrote of one auction:
Yesterday being the day on which the sheriff announced that, if no bidders could be obtained for the cattle, he would have the property returned to Mr. Germain, immense crowds were collected from the neighbouring counties — upwards of 20,000 men.
The County Kildare men, amounting to about 7000, entered, led by Jonas Duckett, Esq., in the most regular and orderly manner.
This body was preceded by a band of music, and had several banners on which were “Kilkea and Moone, Independence for ever,” “No Church Tax,” “No Tithe,” “Liberty,” &c. The whole body followed six carts, which were prepared in the English style — each drawn by two horses.
The rear was brought up by several respectable landholders of Kildare.
The barrack-gates were thrown open, and different detachments of infantry took their stations right and left, while the cavalry, after performing sundry evolutions, occupied the passes leading to the place of sale.
The cattle were ordered out, when the sheriff, as on the former day, put them up for sale; but no one could be found to bid for the cattle, upon which he announced his intention of returning them to Mr. Germain.
The news was instantly conveyed, like electricity, throughout the entire meeting, when the huzzas of the people surpassed anything we ever witnessed.
The cattle were instantly liberated and given up to Mr. Germain.
At this period a company of grenadiers arrived, in double-quick time, after travelling from Castlecomer, both officers and men fatigued and covered with dust.
Thus terminated this extraordinary contest between the Church and the people, the latter having obtained, by their steadiness, a complete victory.
The cattle will be given to the poor of the sundry districts.
Similar examples were reported in the foreign press:
Cork. — A most extraordinary scene has been exhibited in this city.
Some cows seized for tithes were brought to a public place for sale, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and followed by thousands of infuriated people.
All the garrison, cavalry and infantry, under the command of Sir George Bingham, were called out.
The cattle were set up at three pounds for each, no bidder; two pounds, no bidder; one pound, no bidder; in short, the auctioneer descended to three shillings for each cow, but no purchaser appeared.
This scene lasted for above an hour, when there being no chance of making sale of the cattle, it was proposed to adjourn the auction; but, as we are informed, the General in command of the military expressed an unwillingness to have the troops subjected to a repetition of the harassing duty thus imposed on them.
After a short delay, it was, at the interference and remonstrance of several gentlemen, both of town and country, agreed upon that the cattle should be given up to the people, subject to certain private arrangements.
We never witnessed such a scene; thousands of country people jumping with exulted feelings at the result, wielding their shillelaghs, and exhibiting all the other symptoms of exuberant joy characteristic of the buoyancy of Irish feeling.
At Carlow a triumphant resistance to the laws, similar to that which occurred
at Cork, has been exhibited in the presence of the authorities and the
military. Some cattle had been seized for tithe, and a public sale announced,
when a large body of men, stated at 50,000, marched to the place appointed,
and, of course, under the influence of such terror, none were found to bid
for the cattle. The sale was adjourned from day to day, for seven days, and
upon each day the same organised bands entered the town, and rendered the
attempt to sell the cattle, in pursuance of the law, abortive. At last the
cattle are given up to the mob, crowned with laurels, and driven home with an
escort of 10,000 men.
In a somewhat later case, a Catholic priest in Blarney by the name of Peyton refused to pay his income tax on the grounds that the law treated him in an inferior way to his Protestant counterparts.
His horse was seized and sold at auction, where “the multitude assembled hissed, hooted, hustled, and otherwise impeded the proceedings.”
There was precedent for this. During the Tithe War period and thereafter, the
authorities had to go to extraordinary lengths to auction off seized goods. As
one account put it:
In Ireland we pay — the whole people of the empire pay — troops who march up from the country to Dublin, fifty or sixty miles, as escorts of the parson-pounded pigs and cattle, which passive resistance prevents from being sold or bought at home; and we also maintain barracks in that country which not only lodge the parsons’ military guards, but afford, of late, convenient resting-places in their journey to the poor people’s cattle, whom the soldiers are driving to sale; and which would otherwise be rescued on the road.
The women’s suffrage movement in the United Kingdom
The tax resisters in the women’s suffrage movement in Britain were particularly adept in disrupting tax auctions and in making them opportunities for propaganda and protest.
Here are several examples, largely as reported in the movement newsletter called The Vote:
“On a sale was held… of
jewellery seized in distraint for income-tax… Members of the
W.F.L.
and Mrs. [Edith] How Martyn
(Hon.
Sec.) assembled to
protest against the proceedings, and the usual policeman kept a dreary
vigil at the open door. The day had been specially chosen by the
authorities, who wished to prevent a demonstration…”
“The sale of Mrs. Cleeves’ dog-cart took place at the Bush Hotel, Sketty,
on afternoon. The
W.F.L.
held their protest meeting outside — much to the discomfort of the
auctioneer, who declared the impossibility of ‘drowning the voice
outside.’ ”
“Notwithstanding the mud and odoriferous atmosphere of the back streets
off Drury-lane, quite a large number of members of the Tax Resisters’
League, the Women’s Freedom League, and the Women’s Social and Political
Union, met outside Bulloch’s Sale Rooms shortly after
to protest against the sale of Miss Bertha Brewster’s goods, which had
been seized because of her refusal to pay her Imperial taxes. Before the
sale took place, Mrs. Gatty, as chairman, explained to at least a hundred
people the reasons of Miss Brewster’s refusal to pay her taxes and the
importance of the constitutional principle that taxation without
representation is tyranny, which this refusal stood for. Miss Leonora
Tyson proposed the resolution protesting against the injustice of this
sale, and it was seconded by Miss F[lorence]. A. Underwood, and supported
by Miss Brackenbury. The resolution was carried with only two
dissentients, and these dissentients were women!”
“The goods seized were sold at the public auction room. Before selling
them the auctioneer allowed Mrs. How Martyn to make a short explanatory
speech, and he himself added that it was an unpleasant duty he had to
perform.”
“A scene which was probably never equalled in the whole of its history
took place at the Oxenham Auction Rooms, Oxford-street, on
. About a fortnight before
the bailiffs had entered Mrs. Despard’s residence in Nine Elms and seized
goods which they valued at £15. Our President, for some years past, as is
well known, has refused to pay her income-tax and inhabited house duty on
the grounds that taxation and representation should go together; and this
is the third time her goods have been seized for distraint. It was not
until the day before — — that Mrs. Despard was informed of the time and place where
her furniture was to be sold. In spite of this short notice — which we
learn on good authority to be illegal — a large crowd composed not only of
our own members but also of women and men from various Suffrage societies
gathered together at the place specified in the notice. ¶ When ‘Lot
325’ was called Mrs. Despard mounted a chair, and said, ‘I rise to
protest, in the strongest, in the most emphatic way of which I am capable,
against these iniquities, which are perpetually being perpetrated in the
name of the law. I should like to say I have served my country in various
capacities, but I am shut out altogether from citizenship. I think special
obloquy has been put upon me in this matter. It was well known that I
should not run away and that I should not take my goods away, but the
authorities sent a man in possession. He remained in the house — a
household of women — at night. I only heard
of this sale, and from a man
who knows that of which he is speaking, I know that this sale is illegal.
I now claim the law — the law that is supposed to be for women as well as
men.’ ”
“[A] most successful protest against taxation without representation was
made by Mrs. Muir, of Broadstairs, whose goods were sold at the Auction
Rooms, 120, High-street, Margate. The protest was conducted by Mrs.
[Emily] Juson Kerr; and Miss Ethel Fennings, of the W.F.L.,
went down to speak. The auctioneer, Mr. Holness, was most courteous, and
not only allowed Mrs. Muir to explain in a few words why she resisted
taxation, but also gave permission to hold meeting in his rooms after the
sale was over.”
“One of the most successful and effective Suffrage demonstrations ever
held in St. Leonards was that arranged jointly by the Women’s Tax
Resistance League and the Hastings and St. Leonards Women’s Suffrage
Propaganda League, on ,
on the occasion of the sale of some family silver which had been seized at
the residence of Mrs. [Isabella] Darent Harrison for non-payment of
Inhabited House Duty. Certainly the most striking feature of this protest
was the fact that members of all societies in Hastings,
St. Leonards, Bexhill and
Winchelsea united in their effort to render the protest representative of
all shades of Suffrage opinion. Flags, banners, pennons and regalia of
many societies were seen in the procession.… The hearty response from the
men to Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes’s call for ‘three cheers for Mrs.
Darent Harrison’ at the close of the proceedings in the auction room, came
as a surprise to the Suffragists themselves.”
“On , the last item on
the catalogue of Messrs. Whiteley’s weekly sale in Westbourne-grove was
household silver seized in distraint for King’s taxes from Miss Gertrude
Eaton, of Kensington. Miss Eaton is a lady very well known in the musical
world and interested in social reforms, and
hon. secretary of the
Prison Reform Committee. Miss Eaton said a few dignified words of protest
in the auction room, and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Saunderson explained to the
large crowd of bidders the reason why tax-paying women, believing as they
do that taxation without representation is tyranny, feel that they cannot,
by remaining inactive, any longer subscribe to it. A procession then
formed up and a protest meeting was held…”
“At the offices of the collector of Government taxes, Westborough, on
a silver cream jug and sugar
basin were sold. These were the property of
Dr. Marion McKenzie, who
had refused payment of taxes to support her claim on behalf of women’s
suffrage. A party of suffragettes marched to the collector’s office, which
proved far too small to accommodate them all. Mr. Parnell said he regretted
personally having the duty to perform. He believed that ultimately the
women would get the vote. They had the municipal vote and he maintained
that women who paid rates and taxes should be allowed to vote. (Applause.)
But that was his own personal view. He would have been delighted not to
have had that process, but he had endeavoured to keep the costs down.
Dr. Marion McKenzie thanked
Mr. Parnell for the courtesy shown them. A protest meeting was afterwards
held on St. Nicholas
Cliff.”
“Mrs. [Anne] Cobden-Sanderson, representing the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, was, by courtesy of the auctioneer, allowed to explain the reason
of the protest. Judging by the applause with which her remarks were
received, most of those present were in sympathy.”
“The auctioneer was entirely in sympathy with the protest, and explained
the circumstances under which the sale took place. He courteously allowed
Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson and Mrs. [Emily] Juson Kerr to put clearly
the women’s point of view; Miss Raleigh made a warm appeal for true
freedom. A procession was formed and an open-air meeting subsequently
held.”
“The auctioneer, who is in sympathy with the suffragists, refused to take
commission.”
“[A] crowd of Suffragists of all shades of opinion assembled at Hawking’s
Sale Rooms, Lisson-grove, Marylebone, to support Dr. Frances Ede and Dr.
Amy Sheppard, whose goods were to be sold by public auction for tax
resistance. By the courtesy of the auctioneer, Mr. Hawking, speeches were
allowed, and Dr. Ede
emphasized her conscientious objection to supporting taxation without
representation; she said that women like herself and her partner felt that
they must make this logical and dignified protest, but as it caused very
considerable inconvenience and sacrifice to professional women, she
trusted that the grave injustice would speedily be remedied. Three cheers
were given for the doctors, and a procession with banners marched to
Marble Arch, where a brief meeting was held in Hyde Park, at which the
usual resolution was passed unanimously.”
“An interesting sequel to the seizure of Mrs. Tollemache’s goods last
week, and the ejection of the bailiff from her residence, Batheaston
Villa, Bath, was the sale held , at the White Hart Hotel. To cover a tax of only £15 and
costs, goods were seized to the value of about £80, and it was at once
decided by the Women’s Tax Resistance League and Mrs. Tollemache’s friends
that such conduct on the part of the authorities must be circumvented and
exposed. The goods were on view the morning of the sale, and as there was
much valuable old china, silver, and furniture, the dealers were early on
the spot, and buzzing like flies around the articles they greatly desired
to possess. The first two pieces put up were, fortunately, quite
inviting; £19 being bid for a chest of drawers worth about
50s. and £3 for an
ordinary leather-top table, the requisite amount was realised, and the
auctioneer was obliged to withdraw the remaining lots much to the disgust
of the assembled dealers. Mrs. [Margaret] Kineton Parkes, in her speech at
the protest meeting, which followed the sale, explained to these irate
gentlemen that women never took such steps unless compelled to do so, and
that if the tax collector had seized a legitimate amount of goods to
satisfy his claim, Mrs. Tollemache would willingly have allowed them to
go.”
“Under the auspices of the Tax Resistance League and the Women’s Freedom
League a protest meeting was held at Great Marlow on
, on the occasion of the sale
of plate and jewellery belonging to Mrs. [Mary] Sargent Florence, the
well-known artist, and to Miss Hayes, daughter of Admiral Hayes. Their
property had been seized for the non-payment of Imperial taxes, and
through the courtesy of the tax-collector every facility was afforded to
the protesters to explain their action.”
“At the sale of a silver salver belonging to
Dr. Winifred Patch, of
Highbury, Steen’s Auction Rooms, Drayton Park, were crowded on
by members of the Women’s Freedom
League, the Women’s Tax Resistance League, and other Suffrage societies.
The auctioneer refused to allow the usual five minutes for explanation
before the sale, but Miss Alison Neilans, of the Women’s Freedom League,
was well supported and cheered when she insisted on making clear the
reasons why Dr. Patch for
several years has refused to pay taxes while deprived of a vote. A
procession was then formed, and marched to Highbury Corner, where a large
open-air meeting was presided over by Mrs. [Marianne] Clarendon Hyde, of
the Women’s Freedom League, and addressed by Mrs. Merrivale Mayer.”
“Practically every day sees a sale and protest somewhere, and the banners
of the Women’s Tax Resistance League, frequently supported by Suffrage
Societies, are becoming familiar in town and country. At the protest
meetings which follow all sales the reason why is explained to large
numbers of people who would not attend a suffrage meeting. Auctioneers are
becoming sympathetic even so far as to speak in support of the women’s
protest against a law which demands their money, but gives them no voice
in the way in which it is spent.”
“The sale was conducted, laughably enough, under the auspices of the
Women’s Freedom League and the Women’s Tax Resistance League; for, on
obtaining entrance to the hall, Miss Anderson and Mrs. Fisher bedecked it
with all the insignia of suffrage protest. The rostrum was spread with our
flag proclaiming the inauguration of Tax Resistance by the W.F.L.;
above the auctioneer’s head hung Mrs. [Charlotte] Despard’s embroidered
silk banner, with its challenge “Dare to be Free”; on every side the
green, white and gold of the
W.F.L.
was accompanied by the brown and black of the Women’s Tax Resistance
League, with its cheery ‘No Vote, no Tax’ injunctions and its John Hampden
maxims; while in the front rows, besides Miss Anderson, the heroine of the
day, Mrs. Snow and Mrs. Fisher, were seen the inspiring figures of our
President and Mrs. [Anne] Cobden Sanderson, vice-president of the
W.T.R.L.”
“…all Women’s Freedom League members who know anything of the way in which
the sister society organises these matters should attend the sale in the
certainty of enjoying a really telling demonstration…”
“From early in the day Mrs. Huntsman and a noble band of sandwich-women
had paraded the town announcing the sale and distributing leaflets. In the
afternoon a contingent of the Tax Resistance League arrived with the John
Hampden banner and the brown and black pennons and flags. These marched
through the town and market square before entering the hall in which the
sale and meeting were to be held, and which was decorated with the flags
and colours of the Women’s Freedom League. Mr. Croome, the King’s officer,
conducted the sale in person, the goods sold being a quantity of table
silver, a silver toilette set, and one or two other articles. The prices
fetched were trifling, Mrs. Harvey desiring that no one should buy the
goods in for her.”
“Miss Andrews asked the auctioneer if she might explain the reason for the
sale of the waggon, and, having received the necessary permission was able
to give an address on tax resistance, and to show how it is one of the
weapons employed by the Freedom League to secure the enfranchisement of
women. Then came the sale — but beforehand the auctioneer said he had not
been aware he was to sell ‘distressed’ goods, and he very much objected to
doing so.… The meeting and the auctioneer together made the assembly chary
of bidding, and the waggon was not sold, which was a great triumph for the
tax-resisters.… Miss Trott and Miss Bobby helped to advertise the meeting
by carrying placards round the crowded market.”
“There was a crowded audience, and the auctioneer opened the proceedings
by declaring himself a convinced Suffragist, which attitude of mind he
attributed largely to a constant contact with women householders in his
capacity as tax collector. After the sale a public meeting was held… At
the close of the meeting many questions were asked, new members joined the
League…”
The authorities tried to auction off Kate Harvey’s goods on-site, at her
home, rather than in a public hall, so that they might avoid
demonstrations of that sort. “On
morning a band of Suffragist
men carried placards through the streets of Bromley, on which was the
device, ‘I personally protest against the sale of a woman’s goods to pay
taxes over which she has no control,’ and long before
, the time fixed for the
sale, from North, South, East and West, people came streaming into the
little town of Bromley, and made their way towards ‘Brackenhill.’
Punctually at the
tax-collector and his deputy mounted the table in the dining-room, and the
former, more in sorrow than in anger, began to explain to the crowd
assembled that this was a genuine sale! Mrs. Harvey at once protested
against the sale taking place. Simply and solely because she was a woman,
although she was a mother, a business woman, and a tax-payer, she had no
voice in saying how the taxes collected from her should be spent. The tax
collector suffered this speech in silence, but he could judge by the
cheers it received that there were many ardent sympathisers with Mrs.
Harvey in her protest. He tried to proceed, but one after another the men
present loudly urged that no one there should bid for the goods. The
tax-collector feebly said this wasn’t a political meeting, but a genuine
sale! ‘One penny for your goods then!’ was the derisive answer. ‘One
penny — one penny!’ was the continued cry from both inside and outside
‘Brackenhill.’ Then men protested that the tax-collector was not a genuine
auctioneer; he had no hammer, no list of goods to be sold was hung up in
the room. There was no catalogue, nothing to show bidders what was to be
sold and what wasn’t. The men also objected to the presence of the
tax-collector’s deputy. ‘Tell him to get down!’ they shouted. ‘The sale
shan’t proceed till he does,’ they yelled. ‘Get down! Get down:’ they
sang. But the tax-collector felt safer by the support of this deputy.
‘He’s afraid of his own clerk,’ they jeered. Again the tax-collector asked
for bids. ‘One penny! One penny!’ was the deafening response. The din
increased every moment and pandemonium reigned supreme. During a temporary
lull the tax-collector said a sideboard had been sold for nine guineas.
Angry cries from angry men greeted this announcement. ‘Illegal sale!’ ‘He
shan’t take it home!’ ‘The whole thing’s illegal!’ ‘You shan’t sell
anything else!’ and The Daily Herald Leaguers,
members of the Men’s Political Union, and of other men’s societies,
proceeded to make more noise than twenty brass bands. Darkness was quickly
settling in; the tax-collector looked helpless, and his deputy smiled
wearily. ‘Talk about a comic opera — it’s better than Gilbert and Sullivan
could manage,’ roared an enthusiast. ‘My word, you look sick, guv’nor!
Give it up, man!’ Then everyone shouted against the other until the
tax-collector said he closed the sale, remarking plaintively that he had
lost £7 over the job! Ironical cheers greeted this news, with ‘Serve you
right for stealing a woman’s goods!’ He turned his back on his tormentors,
and sat down in a chair on the table to think things over. The protesters
sat on the sideboard informing all and sundry that if anyone wanted to
take away the sideboard he should take them with it! With the exit of the
tax-collector, his deputy and the bailiff, things gradually grew quieter,
and later on Mrs. Harvey entertained her supporters to tea at the Bell
Hotel. But the curious thing is, a man paid nine guineas for the sideboard
to the tax-collector. Mrs. Harvey owed him more than £17, and Mrs. Harvey
is still in possession of the sideboard!”
“The assistant auctioneer, to whom it fell to conduct the sale, was most
unfriendly, and refused to allow any speaking during the sale; but Miss
Boyle was able to shout through a window at his back, just over his
shoulder, an announcement that the goods were seized because Miss Cummins
refused to submit to taxation without representation, after which quite a
number of people who were attending the sale came out to listen to the
speeches.”
“The auctioneer was very sympathetic, and allowed Miss [Anna] Munro to
make a short speech before the waggon was sold. He then spoke a few
friendly words for the Woman’s Movement. After the sale a meeting was
held, and Mrs. Tippett and Miss Munro were listened to with evident
interest by a large number of men. The Vote and
other Suffrage literature was sold.”
“A joint demonstration of the Tax Resisters’ League and militant
suffragettes, held here [Hastings]
as a protest against the sale of
the belongings of those who refused to pay taxes, was broken up by a mob.
The women were roughly handled and half smothered with soot. Their banners
were smashed. The police finally succeeded in getting the women into a
blacksmith’s shop, where they held the mob at bay until the arrival of
reinforcements. The women were then escorted to a railway station.”
“The auction sale of the Duchess of Bedford’s silver cup proved, perhaps,
the best advertisement the Women’s Tax Resistance League ever had. It was
made the occasion for widespread propaganda. The newspapers gave columns
of space to the event, while at the big mass meeting, held outside the
auction room…”
“When a member is to be sold up a number of her comrades accompany her to
the auction-room. The auctioneer is usually friendly and stays the
proceedings until some one of the league has mounted the table and
explained to the crowd what it all means. Here are the banners, and the
room full of women carrying them, and it does not take long to impress
upon the mind of the people who have come to attend the sale that here is
a body of women willing to sacrifice their property for the principle for
which John Hampden went to prison — that taxation without representation
is tyranny. … The women remain at these auctions until the property of the
offender is disposed of. The kindly auctioneer puts the property seized
from the suffragists early on his list, or lets them know when it will be
called.”
American war tax resisters
There have been a few celebrated auction sales in the American war tax resistance movement.
Some of them have been met with protests or used as occasions for outreach and propaganda, but others have been more actively interfered with.
When Ernest and Marion Bromley’s home was seized, for example, there were
“months of continuous picketing and leafletting” before the sale. Then:
The day began with a silent vigil initiated by the local Quaker group.
While the bids were being read inside the building, guerrilla theatre took place out on the sidewalk.
At one point the Federal building was auctioned (offers ranging from 25¢ to 2 bottle caps).
Several supporters present at the proceedings inside made brief statements about the unjust nature of the whole ordeal.
Waldo the Clown was also there, face painted sadly, opening envelopes along with the IRS person.
As the official read the bids and the names of the bidders, Waldo searched his envelopes and revealed their contents: a flower, a unicorn, some toilet paper, which he handed to different office people.
Marion Bromley also spoke as the bids were opened, reiterating that the seizure was based on fraudulent assumptions, and that therefore the property could not be rightfully sold.
The protests, odd as they were, eventually paid off, as the IRS had in the interim been caught improperly pursuing political dissidents, and as a result it decided to reverse the sale of the Bromley home and give up on that particular fight.
When Paul and Addie Snyder’s home was auctioned off for back taxes, it was
reported that “many bids of $1 or less were made.”
Making a bid of pennies for farm property being foreclosed for failure to meet mortgages was a common tactic among angry farmers during the Depression.
If their bids succeeded, the property was returned to its owner and the mortgage torn up.
In some such cases, entire farms plus their livestock, equipment and home furnishings sold for as little as $2.
When George Willoughby’s car was seized and sold by the IRS,
Friends, brandishing balloons, party horns, cookies and lemonade, invaded the IRS office in Chester and bought the car back for $900.
The Rebecca rioters
On a couple of occasions the Rebeccaites prevented auctions, though not of goods seized for tax debts but for ordinary debts.
Here are two examples from Henry Tobit Evans’s book on the Rebecca phenomenon:
A distress for rent was levied on the goods of a man named Lloyd… and a bailiff of the name of Rees kept possession of the goods.
Previous to the day of sale, Rebecca and a great number of her daughters paid him a visit, horsewhipped him well, and kept him in safe custody until the furniture was entirely cleared from the house.
When Rees was freed, he found nothing but an empty house, Rebecca and her followers having departed.
Two bailiffs were there in possession of the goods and chattels under execution… Having entered the house by bursting open the door, Rebecca ran upstairs, followed by some of her daughters.
She ordered the bailiffs, who were in bed at the time, to be up and going in five minutes, or to prepare for a good drubbing.
The bailiffs promptly obeyed, but were driven forth by a bodyguard of the rioters, who escorted them some distance, pushing and driving the poor men in front of them.
At last they were allowed to depart to their homes on a sincere promise of not returning.
Reform Act agitation
During the tax resistance that accompanied the drive to pass the Reform Act in the in the United Kingdom, hundreds of people signed pledges in which they declared that “they will not purchase the goods of their townsmen not represented in Parliament which may be seized for the non-payment of taxes, imposed by any House of Commons as at present constituted.”
The True Sun asserted that
The tax-gatherer… might seize for them, but the brokers assured the inhabitants that they would neither seize any goods for such taxes, nor would they purchase goods so seized.
Yesterday afternoon, Mr Philips, a broker, in the Broadway, Westminster, exhibited the following placard at the door of his shop:— “Take notice, that the proprietor of this shop will not distrain for the house and window duties, nor will he purchase any goods that are seized for the said taxes; neither will any of those oppressive taxes be paid for this house in future.” A similar notice was also exhibited at a broker’s shop in York Street, Westminster.
Another newspaper account said:
A sale by auction of goods taken in distress for assessed taxes was announced to take place at Ashton Tavern on , at Birmingham.
From forty to fifty persons attended, including some brokers, but no one could be found except the poor woman from whose husband the goods had been seized, and the auctioneer himself.
A man came when the sale was nearly over, who was perfectly ignorant of the circumstances under which it took place, and bid for one of the last lots; he soon received an intimation, however, from the company that he had better desist, which be accordingly did.
After the sale was over nearly the whole of the persons present surrounded this man, and lectured him severely upon his conduct, and it was only by his solemnly declaring to them that he had bid in perfect ignorance of the nature of the sale that he was suffered to escape without some more substantial proof of their displeasure.
Railroad bond shenanigans
There was an epidemic of fraud in the United States in in which citizens of local jurisdictions were convinced to vote to sell bonds to pay for the Railroad to come to town.
The railroad never arrived, but the citizens then were on the hook to tax themselves to pay off the bonds.
Many said “hell no,” but by then the bonds had been sold to people who were not necessarily involved in the original swindle but had just bought them as investments.
In the course of the tax resistance campaigns associated with these railroad
bond boondoggles, auction disruption was resorted to on some occasions. Here
are some examples:
St. Clair [Missouri]’s taxpayers joined the movement in to repudiate the debts, but the county’s new leaders wanted to repay the investors.
Afraid to try taxing the residents, they decided to raise the interest by staging a huge livestock auction in , the proceeds to pay off the railroad bond interest.
On auction day, however, “no one seemed to want to buy” any animals.
To bondholders the “great shock” of the auction’s failure proved the depth of local resistance to railroad taxes.
Another attempt was made the other day to sell farm property in the town of Greenwood, Steuben county [New York], on account of a tax levied for the town bonding in aid of railroads, and another failure has followed.
The scene was upon the farm of William Atkins, where 200 of the solid yeomanry of the town had assembled to resist the sale… A Mr. Updyke, with broader hint, made these remarks: “I want to tell you folks that Mr. Atkins has paid all of his tax except this railroad tax; and we consider any man who will buy our property to help John Davis and Sam Alley as contemptible sharks.
We shall remember him for years, and will know where he lives.” The tax collector finally rose and remarked that in view of the situation he would not attempt to proceed with the sale.
The White League in Louisiana
In Reconstruction-era Louisiana, white supremacist tax resisters disrupted a tax auction.
There was a mob of fifty or sixty armed men came to prevent the deputy tax-collector effecting a sale, armed with revolvers nearly all.
Mr. Fournet came and threatened the deputy and tax-collector.
The deputy and tax-collector ran into their offices.
I came down and called upon the citizens to clear the court-house, but could not succeed.
I then called upon the military, but they had no orders at that time to give me assistance to carry out the law.
Mr. [Valsin A.?] Fournet came with eight or ten.
When the deputy tax-collector attempted to make a sale Mr. Fournet raised his hand and struck him.
The deputy then shoved him down.
As soon as this was done forty, fifty, or sixty men came with their revolvers in hand.
…very few people attended tax-sales [typically], because the white people were organized to prevent tax-collection, and pledged themselves not to buy any property at tax-sales, and the property was generally bought by the State.
Miscellaneous
The First Boer War broke out in the aftermath of the successfully resisted
auction of a tax resister’s waggon. Paul Kruger wrote of the incident:
The first sign of the approaching storm was the incident that happened at the forced sale of Field Cornet Bezuidenhout’s waggon, on which a distress had been levied.
The British Government had begun to collect taxes and to take proceedings against those who refused to pay them.
Among these was Piet Bezuidenhout, who lived in the Potchefstroom District.
This refusal to pay taxes was one of the methods of passive resistance which were now employed towards the British Government.
Hitherto, many of the burghers had paid their taxes, declaring that they were only yielding to force.
But, when this was explained by the English politicians as though the population were contented and peacefully paying their taxes, some asked for a receipt showing that they were only paying under protest and others refused to pay at all.
The Government then levied a distress on Bezuidenhout’s waggon and sent it to public action at Potchefstroom.
Piet Cronjé, who became so well known in the last war, appeared at the auction with a number of armed Boers, who flung the bailiff from the waggon and drew the waggon itself back in triumph to Bezuidenhout’s farm.
When the U.S.
government seized Valentine Byler’s horse because of the Amish man’s
conscientious objection to paying into the social security system, no
other Amish would bid at the auction.
Between the Wars in Germany, the government had a hard time conducting
auctions of the goods of tax resisters. Ernst von Salomon writes:
Everywhere bailiff’s orders were being disobeyed.… Compulsory sales could not be held: when the young peasants of the riding club appeared at the scene of the auction on their horses and with music, nobody seemed willing to make a bid.
The carters refused, even with police protection, to carry off the distrained cattle, for they knew that if they did they would never again be able to do business with the peasants.
One day three peasants even appeared in the slaughter yards at Hamburg and announced that unless the distrained cattle disappeared at once from the yard’s stalls the gentlemen in charge of the slaughterhouse could find somewhere else to buy their beasts in the future — they wouldn’t be getting any more from Schleswig-Holstein.
Environmental activist Tim DeChristopher disrupted a Bureau of Land
Management auction by making winning bids on everything that he
had no intention of honoring.
During the Poujadist disruptions in France, “They also took to spiking
forced tax sales by refusing to bid until the auctioneer had lowered the
price of whatever was up for sale to a laughably small figure. Thus a tax
delinquent might buy back his own shop for, say 10 cents. At an auction
the other day, a brand-new car went for one franc, or less than one-third
of a cent.”
in roughly the same region
of France:
It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government.
A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction.
The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.
In York, Pennsylvania in , a group
“surrounded the crier and forbid any person purchasing when the property
which had been seized was offered for sale. A cow which had been in the
hands of the collector was driven away by the rioters.”
In the Dutch West Indies in “The
household effects of a physician who refused to pay the tax were offered
for sale at auction today by the Government. Although the building in
which the sale was held was crowded, there were no bids and the articles
were not sold.”
In Tasmania, in , “Large quantities of
goods were seized, and lodged in the Commissariat Store [but] Lawless mobs
paraded the streets, tore down fences, and, arming themselves with rails
and batons, smashed windows and doors.… The fence round the Commissariat
Store was torn down…”
During the Bardoli tax strike, “There were meetings in talukas contiguous
to Bardoli, not only in British territory, but also in the Baroda
territory, for expression of sympathy with the Satyagrahis and calling
upon people in their respective parts not to cooperate with the
authorities engaged in putting down the Satyagraha… by bidding for any
forfeited property that may be put to auction by the authorities.”
Some tax resistance campaigns have accompanied their resistance with petitions to the government asking it to change its policies or to rescind the tax.
Here are some examples:
Some 14,000 American Amish petitioned Congress, putting aside that sect’s usual reluctance to participate in political affairs and asking the government to exempt them from the Social Security program, participation in which they felt was anti-Christian.
At the same time, some Amish were actively resisting the tax and suffering from government reprisals.
Congress eventually did carve out an exemption for the Amish and certain other sects.
American Quaker meetings frequently petitioned state legislatures when those bodies were considering laws that would force conscientious objectors to pay a fine or to hire a substitute — neither of which Quakers felt they could conscientiously do.
Here are two examples: from and .
On one occasion, American Quakers successfully petitioned the government to call off unscrupulous tax collectors who were seizing their property to pay such fines, in amounts that far exceeded the amount of the fine, and keeping the surplus (or sometimes the whole amount) for themselves.
In several Quakers wrote to the Pennsylvania Assembly to tell them they would be unwilling to pay a tax that body was contemplating for “purposes inconsistent with the peaceable testimony we profess.”
African-American entrepreneur Paul Cuffee petitioned the Massachusetts legislature in and to complain that he was not permitted to vote, although he was a taxpayer — and he backed this up by refusing to pay.
His petition arrived at a time when the state Constitution was in flux, and may have helped influence its drafters to omit a clause restricting voting to white citizens.
The Benares Hartal in , began with “the people deserting the city in a body, and taking up their station halfway between Benares and Secrole, the residence of the European functionaries, about three miles distant.
A petition was presented to the magistrate, praying him to withdraw the odious impost, and declaring that the petitioners would never return to their homes until their application was complied with.”
Before launching the Bardoli tax strike, representatives from the Indian civil disobedience movement petitioned the government, asking patiently for the concessions they would later demand via satyagraha.
The Rebecca Rioters, with their pseudonymous campaign of midnight toll-gate destruction, had the government nearly begging them to present a list of grievances they could at least pretend to address.
Many groups of Welsh farmers did meet and draft lists of grievances.
A London Times reporter gained the confidence of one Rebeccaite assembly, and set out their grievances in the form of a Times article describing the meeting.
Another group of farmers met to draft a petition of their grievances which they sent to a government representative via a trusted intermediary.
On at least one occasion a group of parishes had petitioned the Turnpike Trust that ran one of the offending toll gates to remove it, before it was destroyed by Rebecca and her daughters.
During the 17th century Croquant tax rebellions in France, the rebels carefully worded petitions to the king that assumed his benevolence and that the tax hikes must have been snuck past his royal highness by deceitful advisors.
In , nonconformists in Massachusetts successfully petitioned the King to free imprisoned resisters to a tax meant for the establishment church there, and to affirm that Quakers should not have to pay taxes to maintain the ministers of another church.
Abby Smith addressed the Glastonbury town council in to explain why she would not be paying her property tax to politicians who took advantage of her voteless state.
A newspaper obtained and publisher her speech, saying that “Abby Smith and her sister as truly stand for the American principle as did the citizens who ripped open the tea chests in Boston Harbor, or the farmers who leveled their muskets at Concord.”
Soon the Smith case became a cause célèbre nationwide.
During the Annuity Tax struggle in Edinburgh, Scotland, “40,000 citizens of Edinburgh petitioned the House of Commons for [the Tax’s] abolition.
The town council, the magistrates of Canongate, the Merchant Company, the Anti-state-church and the Anti-annuity-tax Associations, all exerted themselves with the legislature and the government to procure its repeal…”
The hut tax war in Sierra Leone was preceded by petitions from a variety of groups there asking the government to rescind the tax, and explaining why the tax was felt to be particularly offensive.
In this case, the petitioning may have backfired, as the government stubbornly pushed forward with the tax, but, forewarned of opposition by the petitions, it “came to the conclusion that the exercise of force, peremptory, rapid, and inflexible, was the element to be relied on in making the scheme of taxation a success.”
One way a tax resistance campaign can claim victory is by convincing the government to either formally rescind the tax, or to recognize the legal validity of tax resistance.
Charles Ⅰ went around Parliament to create a new property tax, and John Hampden famously said “no” in .
He lost his court case, but the next Parliament legalized his resistance by voiding the “ship-writs” tax and declaring the court judgment against him invalid.
American Amish, after a long campaign of lobbying, lawsuits, civil disobedience, and public relations, successfully won an exemption to the U.S. social security system, including its tax, and also canceled the outstanding social security tax bills of 15,000 Amish resisters.
A number of pacifist groups, frequently including war tax resisters, have been trying to get their governments to recognize or legally formalize a right to conscientious objection to military spending that would permit conscientious objectors to pay their taxes in a way that would not pay for the military portion of the government’s budget: a “Peace Tax” as it were.
So far, none of these long-standing efforts — which have included legal challenges using a variety of arguments, lobbying, and appeals to international legal bodies — have borne much fruit.
Governments seem universally hostile to the idea, and those international legal bodies with any clout have been unwilling to push the point.
Besides this, it is difficult to separate a government’s military budget from the rest of its budget in a way that would make a separate “Peace Tax” plausible.
The American version of the “Peace Tax” legislation, for instance, would ironically result in more taxpayer money going to military projects.
Italy has an otto per mille tax, which people can designate either for their church or for “humanitarian and cultural projects” of the government’s choosing — this resembles the sort of plan the “Peace Tax” promoters have in mind, but Italy’s government cunningly declared its participation in the Iraq War a “humanitarian and cultural” project and siphoned the funds off that way.
A tax resister who was opposed to the death penalty came to an agreement with the state of Delaware in which the state permitted him to pay his state taxes into a fund designated for paying state tax refunds of other taxpayers, rather than into the general fund that funded the prison system and executions.
American Quaker war tax resister Joshua Evans was so persistent that eventually the tax collector gave up.
“I was told it was concluded that as I gave myself up very much to the service of Truth, it was not proper I should be troubled on account of military demands; and I understood my name was erased, or taken from their list.”
Occasionally something similar happens today, when because a war tax resister has so few assets, or those assets would take too much trouble to discover, the IRS formally lists the resister’s file as “uncollectible” and gives up the attempt to force payment.
After ten years, a delinquent income tax payment hits a statute of limitations and the U.S. government is generally forbidden to pursue the matter further.
American suffragist activist Sarah E. Wall resisted her taxes for 25 years, when finally, according to Susan B. Anthony, “I do not know exactly how it is now, but the assessor has left her name off the tax-list, and passed her by rather than have a lawsuit with her.”
Something similar happened to English suffragist tax resister Charlotte Despard and some others: “[T]he Government rather than go to the trouble of selling up the recalcitrant ‘debtor,’ and attracting attention to the principle involved, had quietly dropped the matter in several instances.
Mrs. Despard had had no application for taxes since she had been sold up last year.”
Ellen C. Sargent patiently pursued legal challenges in California to try to promote women’s suffrage with a “no taxation without representation” argument.
She began by petitioning the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for a refund of her property taxes, and then filed a lawsuit when this petition was denied (the lawsuit also failed).
When farmers in drought-ravaged regions of Argentina threatened a tax strike in , the government responded with a clever bit of ju-jitsu — it declared an agricultural emergency in the area which exempted those farmers from paying taxes.
Utah governor J. Bracken Lee stopped paying his federal income taxes in the hopes of prompting a Supreme Court test case that would invalidate what he considered to be extraconstitutional federal spending.
(The court declined to take his case.)
A group referred to as “the Texas housewives” resisted paying the social security tax on the salaries of their household help, and pursued a two-year parallel legal challenge to have the tax invalidated, before finally being turned down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Property tax resisters in Depression-era Chicago won a court case that found property assessments in the city to have been performed incorrectly — with $15 billion in property held by wealthy, well-connected Chicagoans somehow left off the rolls — thus effectively legalizing the resistance.
“As the matter stands,” a newspaper account put it, “citizens howled about their taxes, refused to pay them and a court upheld them.
They are in revolt with legal sanction.”
During the Land League’s rent strike in Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell reported that “a large majority of landlords” reduced the rents on their properties, “[which] shows that they did finally recognize the situation, and that they determined to make the best of it.”
When the Prussian quasi-autocracy tried to ignore the legislature and govern on its own, the legislature formally declared tax resistance to be legal, and said that the autocrats had no authority to raise or spend money.
Something similar happened in Russia half a century later, when the Czar dissolved the legislature, which then reconvened in Vyborg and called on the citizens to refuse to pay any more taxes to the Czar.
According to a book on war tax resistance: “In Russia became the first country to establish legislation exempting pacifists from paying war taxes.
Thirty British citizens were invited by Czar Alexander Ⅰ to establish a cotton mill.
Because some of the employees were Quakers, a petition was submitted to the Czar from the employees asking for freedom of conscience and an exemption from military service, church taxes for war, etc. The Czar issued a certificate which read ‘His Imperial Majesty has given his gracious assent to this petition … all … shall be exempted from all civil and military taxes … the sect of Quakers may now and in future be freed from war taxes for the support of the Military…’ Two English Quakers visiting Russia in found these provisions still in effect.”
The Great Confederated Anti-Dray and Land Tax League of South Australia began as a tax resistance and mutual insurance group, but was soon successful in convincing the government to rescind the offensive tax.
But history is also full of lessons about the foolishness of trusting the government when it responds to your tax resistance campaign by insisting that it’s on your side and wants to help.
For example:
When tax resistance leader Wat Tyler was assassinated while negotiating with the King in , the king boldly went out to the enraged crowd and told it that he would be their leader and would press for their demands.
Instead, he waited for the fuss to die down, then executed some of the other leaders of the rebellion.
When the Whigs were whisked into power in the wake of the Reform Act agitation around , the tax resistance movement celebrated its victory… only to find that the Whigs could be just as tyrannical about prosecuting those who promoted tax resistance as their Tory cousins.
The recent American TEA Party was quickly coöpted by the Republican Party, which learned how to lead it by the nose with witless rhetoric, but conceded nothing on the tax-and-spend big government front.
During the Annuity Tax strike in Edinburgh, the government passed something called the “Edinburgh Annuity Tax Abolition Act.”
Despite its name, that act did not abolish the annuity tax, but merely concealed it with an aim to making it more difficult to resist.
The Spectator covered the annuity tax resistance in Scotland in .
Here are some excerpts of note:
It appears that a considerable sum of money has been annually raised, by a tax called the Annuity Tax, , for the support of the Edinburgh Clergy.
This tax, though said to have been illegal , when it received legislative sanction by means of a clause fraudulently introduced into a local act of Parliament, has generally been submitted to.
But of late considerable opposition has been made to the payment of it; and last week, Mr. William Tait, the bookseller, and proprietor of the spirited monthly periodical which bears his name, actually suffered himself to be sent to gaol rather than submit to it.
His reasons for this conduct are given in a letter published in the Caledonian Mercury.
In the first place, he doubts the legality of the impost; next, he affirms that it is too large, un-equally levied, and absurdly and illegally applied.
He goes on to say–
For these and other reasons, detailed in a petition to Parliament, and a report by the Committee of Inhabitants, the collection of the annuity has been considered unjust and oppressive.
Payment has been refused by the inhabitants; and when the clergy proceeded to distrain the goods of the recusants, their proceedings were rendered ineffective by the impossibility of finding purchasers for the distrained goods.
Finding their seizure of the citizens’ goods inoperative, the Clergy are resorting to the extremity of imprisonment.
Mr. Wilson, pocketbook-maker, was the first seized on.
He, as was publicly announced, submitted immediately on being imprisoned to the imposition of the Clergy, on account of the state of his health.
I have been selected as the second victim and as I have not Mr. Wilson’s reason for instant submission to what I conceive injustice and oppression, I have permitted the Clergy to imprison me; and send you this statement from my place of confinement, the Gaol, Calton Hill.
The Standard of Wednesday sneers at the whole of this proceeding; and, after intimating that Mr. Tait has seized upon this opportunity of advertising his Magazine, concludes its remarks upon the subject in these words.
We trust no more of the trade will be permitted to invade in this way the advertising profits of the newspapers.
Indeed, if we may so far anticipate the Weeklies as to make the observation, the Annuity Tax will be collected least distressingly by distraint, and the peine piano will be found a more powerful instrument of coercion than the peine forte.
If the Standard will turn to those words in Mr. Tait’s letter, which we have printed in Italics, it will find that the peine forte was only had recourse to after the “more powerful instrument of coercion,” the peine piano, had failed.
The Edinburgh papers received since our last Number, are full of the exciting subject of the Annuity Tax and Mr. Tait’s resistance to the payment of it.
Upon his arrival at home, Mr. Tait addressed the assembled multitude who had accompanied him from the prison, and seems to have played the orator with admirable effect.
The following are extracts from his speech.
A compulsory provision simply means, a provision supported by distraint and imprisonment.
Are distraining and imprisoning fit employments for spiritual teachers?
No; assuredly not.
Conceive, my friends, a meek man of God seizing the goods of a parishioner who happens to be of another sect, and carrying them off to the Cross to be rouped for his stipend!
Or conceive him seizing a Seceder, or a Baptist, or a Catholic, by the collar, and dragging him to the gaol?
To bring this more completely home to our minds, conceive the Reverend Dr. Brunton loading his back with a poor widow’s half rotten chest of drawers, tucking her meal-girnel under his right arm, and her creepy under his left, with the porridge-pot upon his head; conceive him thus accoutred, wending his way to the Cross, and there knocking them down to the highest bidder, pocketing the miserable sum which they bring for his stipend and expenses of seizure and sale.
(Immense cheering and laughter.) Conceive the Reverend Dr. Inglis, or Dr. Horning as he is now called, going a step beyond his nickname, flourishing, not a horning (the fees of which “go all to my son,” as a recent ballad says), but a caption, in his left hand, while his terrible right seizes some obdurate recusant, like myself, by the collar, and the process of dragging to gaol follows the process raised by the Reverend Dr. Horning’s son.
Conceive that the gentle and Reverend Doctor, who preaches Toryism occasionally to “Why rage the Heathen?” and other texts, should mildly take out of his waistcoat-pocket, not a snuff-box, but a messenger’s three-inch ebony baton, tipt with silver like his own voice, saying with a half-bow, and a loving paternal air, I request you to consider yourself my prisoner.
And are not all these conceptions of things monstrous, odious, and abominable?
(Tremendous cheers.) But is there any real difference between the Clergy doing these things themselves, and employing other and ruder hands to do them?
(Cries of “No, no”) I know that the Edinburgh Clergy give out that not they, but the Magistrates, poind and imprison for annuity.
The Magistrates might as well say that not they, but Peter Hill; and Peter might as well say, that not he, but my captor, Mr. Thomson the messenger, thrust me into the Calton Gaol, without allowing me to go two divisions of Prince’s Street, to see my morning letters.
My friends, this is an old trick of Established Clergy.
But he only looked to the prime actors in the business–
I thank Messrs.
Baird, Brown, and Lee, &c., for my imprisonment.
How different all this from the example of the meek founder of Christianity!
How different from the noble conduct of the Apostle Paul!
“These hands,” said he, with the warrantable pride of independence, “these hands have ministered to my necessities, that I might not be chargeable to any of you.”
(Applause.)
There was no danger of the Clergy being distressed for the want of this tax.—
Does any one ask are the Clergy of Edinburgh to starve?
Starving is not the alternative.
There is not, there never was, the least chance of their starving.
The proper fund for their payment is the seat-rents, as at Glasgow.
(Cheers.) But if the Magistrates refuse them the seat-rents, cannot they prosecute the Magistrates as well as the citizens, and enforce their rights?
Or cannot they apply to Parliament?
Or cannot they appeal to the generosity or justice or their congregations?
Have they so small an opinion of their own value to their congregations, as to think they would be left to starve, and be considered a good riddance?
Or could they not work with their hands, or borrow, or beg, — any thing but disgrace themselves by resorting to distraint and the gaol?
Why, gentlemen, rather than they should starve, we, who are here gathered together to show our abhorrence of their proceedings, would minister to their necessities, until they could find congregations willing to support them.
Do they confess that they, of all the different denominations of Christians, would alone be left to perish.
Mr. Tait concluded, by exhorting the multitude carefully to avoid every thing like violence or a breach of the law; and added — “One word more — Good night to the Annuity Tax!" After this, the crowd returned to their homes in perfect order.
Mr. Simpson, a wealthy poulterer in the market, was last week escorted to the gaol by a number of persons bearing flags, banners, &c., with a band of music, for refusing to pay the Annuity Tax.
The parade seemed to attract much notice.
At one o’clock, the procession returned from gaol, and we were surprised to see Mr. Simpson in front.
We have just heard that Mr. Simpson alleges he was imprisoned for a sum, part of which he had previously paid; that his law agent paid the full sum claimed, under protest, and stated that an action of damages for wrongous imprisonment would immediately follow.
— Edinburgh Paper.
The issuing of diligences against the inhabitants of Edinburgh, for non-payment of the annuity tax has been going briskly on this week, and another gaolful of recusants are ready for the Calton march.
On , five men went to 57, George Street, 59, George Street, and 9, Lauriston Lane, and poinded goods for ministers’ stipend from Alexander Cruickshank and Son, to the amount of about 3000l.
— which the poinders have very modestly valued under 50l.
— Scotsman.
The Edinburgh clergy are taking harsh measures to compel payment of the odious Annuity-tax.
Mr. Russell, a Councillor, and a Mr. Chapman, have been imprisoned in the Calton gaol for refusing, on account of conscientious scruples, to pay the clergy’s demand.
A petition on the subject has been intrusted to Mr. Wallace for presentation to the House of Commons.
The Annuity-tax is in progress of being collected in Edinburgh, by distreining and selling at the Market Cross the household and shop furniture and other goods and chattels of the Dissenters.
The Reverend Dr. John Brown, one of the most popular of the Dissenting clergymen here, has had his house invaded and his effects carried off; Mr. William Tait, bookseller, has had his shop-furniture seized; and every hour one sees the forms of a sale attempted to be gone through at the Market Cross.
I say “attempted to be gone through,” because the public have refused to buy the articles exposed; nay, the brokers and dealers in old furniture have published resolutions deprecatory of “the Law-Church,” and pledging themselves not to purchase the property of persons distrained for Ministers’ stipend.
I witnessed lately one of these exhibitions.
A pianoforte was produced by the officers at the Market Cross; a dozen of porters and a squad of boys, who had followed the piano in its progress through the streets, formed the company to whom it was offered for sale.
Each oration of the auctioneer was followed by a shout of laughter, — not at his humour, for he was as grave as a parson wanting a dinner, but of derision at the helplessness of the men of the law, and of wonder at what the clergy would do with the piano when they got it for their stipends.
— Correspondent of the Courier.
The Annuity-tax war continues in Edinburgh.
Baillie Stott and another citizen were sent to gaol on for nonpayment of the tax.
A regular agitation of meetings is to commence immediately.
At a special meeting on , the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Sheriff of Edinburgh, decided on issuing proclamations to prevent open-air meetings in the city.
Edinburgh has been the scene of a series of arrests for arrears of annuity tax.
The clergy of the established church sent the sheriff’s officer to seize three persons.
Two went to gaol rather than pay the tax.
The third, a Mr. Hunter, said he would offer no resistance, but would not willingly move a step.
He was seized by the head and feet, carried out of his shop, and flung into a cab.
Here he lay on his back, his feet projecting into the street.
The sheriff’s men vainly endeavoured to raise him, and they placed handcuffs at least on one wrist of the unresisting man.
They pulled at his arms, lugged at his head, doubled up his legs, but in vain.
A mob having collected, on hearing the cause of the arrest, they fell upon the officers, one of whom drew a knife in defence.
At length the officers sheered off, and Mr. Hunter reëntered his shop, the handcuffs hanging from one wrist.
The mob pursued the constables until they ran.
Two ministers of the established church were present during this extraordinary scene.
The Established Church of Scotland is in very hot water at this moment, in consequence of the wrong-headed policy which has maintained the Annuity-tax, and which now logically compels the responsible official functionaries to enforce payment.
Our readers have been already informed of the scenes that have occurred in the streets of Edinburgh.
An order went forth, that the tax should be demanded from certain persons.
Three were pounced upon.
Two, a Mr. Fairbairn and a Mr. William Brown, went quietly to gaol, rather than pay.
A third, Mr. Hunter, conceived the brilliant idea of refusing to pay the tax and of offering no resistance, beyond a passive resistance, to the constables.
Forthwith ensued a scandalous scene of lugging and hauling.
Hunter, a heavy person, was carried out of his shop by the head and feet.
Thrust into a hack cab, he lay on his back with his legs dangling outside.
Handcuffs were placed upon him in order apparently that the chief of the arresting party might obtain a greater purchase on their passive prisoner.
A mob intervened.
Resistance to the law is not a Scotch characteristic.
If a felon were apprehended in the streets of Edinburgh, the mob would, if it were needed, assist in the capture.
But in this ease, the phrase “arrested for refusing to pay Annuity-tax,” roused the passions of a people who have always been ready to take fire at the sight of what looks like religious persecution.
When it was the fashion to seize the goods of those Dissenters who refused to pay the odious tax, a great array of soldiers and police was required to protect the auctioneer instructed to sell the goods; and when purchasers could not be found in Edinburgh, they were sought for and found in Glasgow.
Opposition to the payment of this impost, therefore, is an idea familiar to the minds of the people of Edinburgh.
Moreover, there was an air of novelty in the attempt to imprison the malcontents.
It was deemed a harsh measure to distrain, it is regarded as odious to arrest.
To the multitude, the officers, hauling at the passive and manacled Hunter as he lay helpless beneath their hands, appeared somewhat in the light of familiars of some Scottish inquisition.
The people acted on the impulse of the moment, obstructed the constables, and put them to flight; and we have no doubt it would now require a strong armed force to arrest the man in broad daylight.
He therefore goes free; but we hear that the constables are on the alert each night to catch the marked men; and that fearing a visit in the dark, these persons quit their homes and sleep abroad.
Now this is not a creditable state of things.
“When a tax has to be collected by means of handcuffs and claspknives,” as the Scotsman pointedly observes, “it is in a bad way,” and probably is about to meet “with a fate worthy of its deserts.”
The Annuity-tax can be defended by no one unless he be a minister or a member of the Church which benefits by it.
It is not a property, it is a personal tax, — a fine upon those who live in certain houses.
Yet no tax is more capricious.
It skips over the rich man and alights upon the poor.
“The members of the principal and most lucrative profession in the city, the great majority of whom are either members or supporters of the Establishment, are exempted — shopkeepers and tradesmen, most of whom are Dissenters, have the choice of a receipt or the handcuffs.”
This is the kind of tax which the Ministers of the Established Church — a fragment only of the Presbyterian community — think it compatible with their sacred mission to enforce by the strong arm of the law.
We suppose this unwise proceeding is one of the consequences of the strength acquired by the Tory opposition at the last general election.
It is not to be supposed that the Edinburgh clergy are particularly proud of the opening of their campaign.
If they have overcome Fairbairn, they have failed to catch Mr. Hunter, and their detention of Mr. William Brown is more likely to promote the repeal of the tax than anything else.
Mr. Brown shows a decided penchant for the honours of martyrdom, and the wisest thing the ministers could do would be to disappoint him.
As it is, he is sure to be the local hero of a local agitation, and his fame will spread to Glasgow and the other towns where individuals are called upon to support a church because they live in certain houses.
Mr. Brown already has shown that he can use his pen,* and that he is determined to make the most of his situation.
The tax may not die a violent death at the hands of one Brown, but it is clear that the ill-advised course adopted by the ministers, if extended to many Browns, would be fatal to the impost.
No taxes, in these days, can be collected by force of arms; least of all taxes that fall on special persons and involve anything like a violation of conscience.
The common sense of the community would revolt at any attempt to extort a personal tax from the members of the Society of Friends for the direct support of the army.
All London would rise were the tenants of particular houses called upon to pay a house-duty to provide an income for the clergy of St. Barnabas and St. George’s-in-the-East.
Yet these taxes would not be more inequitable than the Annuity-tax.
The Scotch establishment had far better be wise in time, cease their legal proceedings, and consent to a reasonable compromise.
How can they collect the impost, if all the malcontents follow the example of Mr. Hunter, and offer passive resistance to the constable?
If it should so happen that the tax is unconditionally abolished, the clergy will have none to blame but themselves.
What they have foolishly done, and what they may foolishly do, makes no difference in the actual merits of their claim to equitable treatment; but it will make a great deal of difference in the feeling with which the question is regarded, — and debated in the House of Commons; for questions of this kind are precisely those which are apt to be settled less by reason than by feeling whenever resistance is unduly prolonged, and proposals of compromise are treated with disdain.
* See an amusing pamphlet, entitled “Dead Brown and Living Brown, a dialogue between a past and present victim of the Annuity tax.”
Published at Edinburgh for William Brown.
A public meeting at Edinburgh has adopted the following resolutions on the subject of the Annuity-tax.
That the imposition of taxes for ecclesiastical purposes is beyond the rightful province of the civil magistrate, and all such imposts are a grievous encroachment on the rights of conscience and civil freedom; and that the Annuity-tax, besides being unjustifiable on these general grounds, is peculiarly obnoxious and oppressive in its operation, and should be immediately and completely abolished.
That the conduct of the Established clergy of the city of Edinburgh, in opposing all the plans which have ever been proposed for the abolition or mitigation of the tax, and in permitting their agents and officers to enforce payment by the cruel and inhuman use of handcuffs and knives, and by imprisonments, has brought discredit on religion and frequently disturbed the peace of the community.
That this meeting desires to express its earnest sympathy with Mr. Brown, now imprisoned in gaol for non-payment of the tax, and with other victims who have recently suffered injury at their hands.
Mr. William Brown, one of the persons arrested for refusing to pay the annuity tax, is still in prison.
Mr. Fairbain has been liberated; his wife having paid the money.
Mr. Hunter is at large.
Orders have been issued by the Edinburgh Crown Office for the apprehension of several of the parties who assaulted and deforced the sheriff’s officers in the collection of the Annuity-tax on .
On the city officers, aided by the police, proceeded to the premises of Mr. Hunter, confectioner, St. Andrew’s Street, where the deforcement took place, having warrants for the apprehension of Mr. Hunter and Thomas Peacock, his foreman.
Mr. Hunter was absent at the time, but Peacock taken into custody and conveyed to the office of the Procurator-Fiscal for the city, where he was afterwards liberated on finding bail for 30l.
Mr. Hunter was the person the officers were sent to apprehend, and in place of submission he is said to have made the utmost resistance in his power [namely, passive resistance], in which resistance he was aided by several of his employes and other persons, the result being that he escaped from the officers hands.
The Lord Advocate’s bill for the settlement of the vexed question of the Edinburgh Annuity-tax meets with strong opposition from the dominant party in the Town-Council.
A meeting on the subject was held on , the Lord Provost in the chair.
The principal speakers were the chairman, Mr. David and Mr. Duncan M‘Laren, Mr. Grorrie, Professor Dick, and Mr. Henry Darlington.
The language used was very strong, and the resolutions equally emphatic.
The bill was denounced in the most comprehensive terms. It was declared that it does not provide for an equitable settlement of the Annuity-tax; that, in consequence of the low valuation of the seat-rents, it imposes a taxation on the community greatly in excess of what is required; that there is reason to fear, should the bill pass, the opposition to the payment of the police-rates may endanger the municipal revenue, and increase feeling of hostility to the Church, which may materially interfere with the peace and well-being of the city; that the provisions of the bill fall so far short of that which was proposed as a basis of settlement in the resolutions adopted by the public meeting held in , are otherwise so objectionable, and give so little prospect of improvement on the present state of matters, that the Lord Advocate should be urged to withdraw his bill.
It was suggested that the Town-Council should petition against it; and the meeting “strongly disapproved” of the conduct of the Lord Advocate in bringing so “disagreeable” a bill into Parliament.
But the most curious resolution was the following:—
That this meeting, considering the unconstitutional nature of the bill, and the many serious practical difficulties which would arise in the working of such a measure if it were passed into a law, earnestly entreat the Magistrates and Council to consider whether it would not be the duty, in that event, of a majority of their number, or of the whole municipal body, rather to resign their seats — (Loud cheers) — than consent to sign the bonds of annuity — (Renewed cheers) — or to lay on the tax for Ministers’ stipends under the deceptive form of its being a tax for police purposes; and this meeting further entreat that the Council will take no steps whatever respecting the Act till after the general election of councillors shall take place in .
The reason for deferring action on the subject was that the municipal elections take place in , and the Opposition hopes to increase its strength.
Professor Dick valiantly declared he would adopt the course recommended in the resolution; and Mr. Duncan M‘Laren cordially approved of this determination.
Edinburgh was somewhat agitated this week in its municipal elections, which turned upon the Annuity-tax.
Under the Act, the city council signs bonds for 600l. each to the clergy, reimbursing themselves out of the police-rate.
The legal profession, exempt for two centuries past, is now liable to payment of the tax, and it is to the honour of the profession, that the demand is not resisted.
The suburbs of Edinburgh are also liable.
But the impossibility of evading the police-collector raised an outcry, against the “clerico-police rate,” and in some three or four of the city wards contests were arranged, the result of which we shall know in a few days.
Edinburgh is still agitated by the vexed question of the Annuity Tax.
The voters elected a candidate in one ward, of whom it was known that he would not act, in the hope that the Council not being full, would be disqualified from signing the bonds to the clergy.
Mr. George Young, advocate, advised that the Council could proceed to business, at the meeting on ; the Act of Parliament requiring the bonds to be signed before !
A stormy discussion ensued, in which it was first determined that the Council should proceed, and afterwards, not before much warmth and erroneous statement of law, misquotation and misapplication of history, the Council resolved, by 20 to 10, to sign the bonds, and by 15 to 12 to sign, simpliciter, and against a motion to sign under protest.
The Lord-Provost, Treasure, and Town Clerk, signed the bonds before leaving the Council chamber.
That old grievance the annuity tax has not been settled by the Act of the Lord Advocate.
The malcontents are still fighting for unconditional repeal.
They have petitioned against it, declaring that it disturbs the peace of the city.
The tax is now collected with the police rate, and, acting on a favourable “opinion” obtained from two eminent English barristers, several citizens have tendered the police rate less the amount imposed by the Lord Advocate’s Act in place of the annuity tax.
In the the resistance campaign against the Edinburgh Annuity Tax escalated.
This campaign was notable for its variety of tactics and for the rhetoric and apologetics deployed to defend it.
Today I’ll reproduce some excerpts from newspaper articles from this period.
The first comes from the Leterborough, Longsutton, Downham Market, Swaffham, Mildenhall, Saffrom Walden, Baldock, Hitchin, Huntingford, and Bishop Stortford Advertiser of (though the events described took place in the House of Commons on ):
The Clergy and the Inhabitants of Edinburgh.
Mr. Abercrombie presented a Petition from Edinburgh, signed by 9,000 persons, praying for an entire abolition of the annuity and impost taxes.
Those taxes were the source of great discontent and bickerings between the clergy of Edinburgh and the inhabitants, and occasioned nearly as much ill feeling as existed in Ireland.
Mr. A. Johnstone said that in Edinburgh, at present, there was nearly the same deliberate system acted on as in Ireland.
It was a system of passive resistance, and not less than 11,000l. was now due to the clergy of Edinburgh, not a shilling of which could be collected.
The good citizens of Edinburgh were standing out against the clergy, merely because certain parties were exempted from the tax, and they thought themselves entitled to be exempted also.
The consequence was, that the clergy were unprovided for.
Next, from the Dublin Morning Register of :
“Passive Resistance” in Scotland!!
The exactions of the clergy are producing opposition in all quarters of the empire.
In Ireland, where those exactions have been most grievous and exorbitant, the system of passive resistance commenced.
England soon followed the example; and now we find that Scotland, which is exempted from the affliction of tithes, is about to become the arena of a contention between the people and the clergy, regarding the payment of a church-rate called an “Annuity Tax.”
The name given to the evil may be different in various countries, but in all the effects of a compulsory provision for the clergy of any particular sect must be found the same.
“Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught.”
The Scotsman of
, received at our office
, informs us that Mr. Tait, the
bookseller, who is proprietor of the able magazine which bears his name, was
arrested by order of the Edinburgh magistrates, and incarcerated in the Calton
prison, for refusing to pay this obnoxious Annuity Tax. From the tone of the
Scotch papers, it is manifest that this impost, although not large in amount,
is exceedingly unpopular, so that it is probable many weeks will not elapse
when we shall hear of a vigorous anti-annuity agitation amongst the
Presbyterians of Scotland.
Next, from the Caledonian Mercury of
:
Anti-Annuity Tax Procession.
A most extraordinary scene was exhibited in our streets on
. It would be seen by our
last paper, that Mr Wm. Tait,
bookseller, had allowed himself to be put in prison on
, rather than submit to pay the
Annuity Tax (or Ministers’ Stipend Tax), but that, at the earnest solicitation
of his friends of the “Inhabitants’ Committee,” he had consented to be
liberated from jail on . As a public
meeting was called by the Committee, for the purpose of conveying Mr Tait in
triumph to his home, the idea was immediately caught by the Trades; and in
consequence of printed placards, a number of them mustered on the Earthen
Mound, half an hour before the “hour of cause,” and joined the Inhabitants’
Committee in Waterloo Place about , some of them accompanied by bands of music, some by flags and
banners painted for the occasion, and most of them by the flags and banners
which they had displayed during the Reform Jubilee Procession in
.
Attracted by the previous notes of preparation, a vast concourse of the inhabitants, of almost all ranks, assembled on the Calton Hill, fronting the jail, and on the adjoining streets, which, so far as we recollect, have never been so densely crowded since the advent of George the Fourth in Auld Reekie.
Among the new flags and banners displayed on this extraordinary occasion, there was a large black one bearing the inscription — “Witness the tyranny of the Clergy.”
A black banner, inscribed “No compromise;” another, exhibiting on one side “No tax on conscience,” and on the other “Religious liberty;” another, “Edinburgh shall be free;” and another, “We shall knock off the iron fetters by the hammer of liberty.”
On one flag was painted a tree of eighteen branches, exhibiting portraits of the City clergymen, and a picture of a strong fellow, who appeared to be applying a huge axe to the root of the tree, which was nearly cut through.
A few minutes before ,
Mr Tait issued from the little wicket in the great jail door, where a carriage
and four, containing the leading members of the “Inhabitants’ Committee” were
in waiting to receive him. His appearance drew forth a cheer from the
assembled multitude, which, despite the damping influence of a heavy shower,
made the very welkin ring again. He was then conveyed to the carriage, from
which the brute animals were immediately abstracted, and a number of the crowd
rushed in to supply the necessary horse power; and in this manner the hero of
the night with his friends, who included Mr F. Howden, Mr R. Millar, Mr R.
Deuchar, Mr Chambers,
&c.
&c., were
drawn in procession, through a dense mass of the inhabitants, along Waterloo
Place, Prince’s Street, Maitland Street, Coates Crescent, and into Walker
Street, the crowd frequently cheering as they went along.
In a few minutes, Mr Tait appeared on a balcony, along with a number of his
friends, and addressed the assembled multitude, in a speech of some length,
in which he thanked them for the demonstration of approval of his conduct
which they had just given him, and stated his reasons for resisting the tax in
nearly similar terms to those used in his letter published in the
Mercury of
. He assured them that his captivity
had sat lightly upon him, and his sufferings were more than recompensed by the
thought that his conduct had been approved of by his fellow citizens. In
conclusion, he entreated them to avoid all appearance of disorder, or of
irritation against the clergy.
The Chairman of the Committee then stood forward and congratulated the
multitude upon their peaceable and orderly conduct, and recommended them to
retire to their various places of abode with the same order and regularity
which they had already manifested. This advice, we are happy to say, was
scrupulously acted upon. The multitude quietly dispersed; and so far as we
have learned, not the slightest accident occurred, nor was a single breach of
the peace committed.
Another Imprisonment for the Annuity-Tax.
, another recusant, Mr Thomas Johnston, Hanover Street, was
apprehended on a caption for non-payment of annuity-tax, and taken to jail,
accompanied by some brother recusants, and also by a crowd having flags,
&c. hearing
sundry inscriptions, expressive of the popular feeling against the tax. A
considerable number of persons had collected in front of Mr Johnston’s
premises before he was brought out in custody of the messenger, who, we
understand, was in no small state of trepidation; but, in point of fact,
there was no cause whatever for his alarm, if he really felt any, as not the
slightest opposition or obstruction was offered by the crowd, who contented
themselves with merely hooting at a pale-faced person whom they probably took
for an emissary of the collector, as he was heard giving instructions of some
kind. At the same time, we cannot help expressing our astonishment at the time
and place selected for putting the caption in execution. Mr Johnston, we
believe, resides at or near Abbey-hill, and surely an opportunity might have
been found for apprehending him, without choosing the precise time and place
most likely to collect a crowd and lead to disturbance.
The Leeds Times of also covered the Tait arrest:
Imprisonment of Mr. Tait — Non-payment of Taxes.
Mr. Tait, the director of that most excellent Edinburgh Magazine which bears
his name, has been thrown into prison for his refusal to pay the Annuity Tax,
or the Stipend of the Clergy, in Edinburgh. This tax was originally imposed
for the support of a certain number of the Edinburgh clergy, but it has
latterly been applied to the benefit of all of them, and to other
purposes which are not specified. The collection of the tax we are further
informed “was illegal up to , and then only
‘legalized’ by a clause ‘fraudulently and surreptitiously obtained by the
clergy’ in an Act of Parliament. The sum levied is not only too large, but it
is unequally levied and absurdly applied; the inequality being further
aggravated by the exemption of the College of Justice, and by the tax being
laid upon shops as well as dwelling-houses. For these and other reasons many
of the inhabitants have refused payment; the clergy then seized, but could
find no purchasers for the distrained goods,” and because no individuals could
be found sufficiently infamous to buy these confiscated articles, the clergy
have determined to resort to the extremity of imprisonment. First of all a Mr.
Wilson was arrested; since, however, the state of his health precluded the
possibility of his enduring the confinement of incarceration — he paid the
obnoxious impost. But when Mr. Tait was seized by the myrmidons of Scotch
ecclesiastical tyranny, he determined to abide by the consequences, and is now
in “durance vile” in the gaol upon the Calton Hill. And here we beg our
readers to perceive, how uniformly all established churches are imbued with
the spirit of persecution, and how certainly they curse both the religious and
civil welfare of the countries in which they are permitted to exist. The
Church of Scotland, as well as the Church of England, is identified with the
state, and on this very account it exemplifies, to a certain extent, the usual
corruption, arrogance, and violence, which never fail to characterize all
legalized ecclesiastical incorporations. Mr. Tait has avowed his resolution
never to pay this tax — this church rate. He says, “Let no man tell
me that I ought to petition parliament for an alteration of the law, instead
of opposing this passive resistance to the law. Petitioning has been tried,
once and again; and what has been the result? Why, that the Lord Advocate of
Scotland, one of the representatives of our city, and a minister of the crown,
has attempted to sanction the hideous injustice of which we complained, by a
new act of parliament, fixing down the odious annuity tax upon us more firmly
than ever, with no amelioration of the injustice except the doing away with
the exemption of the College of Justice!”
The Northern Whig of
quotes from a
Scotsman article about the Tait case as follows:
On , at the hour
fixed for Mr. Tait’s quitting prison, the Calton Hill was thronged with a
crowd greater, the Scotsman states, than any that
had been assembled there, since the visit of George the Fourth, in
. “In every group,” says the same paper, “the
Annuity Tax and the Clergy formed the subject of conversation; and, while some
pitied the Ministers as being the involuntary instruments of a bad system,
others denounced both the system, and those that tacitly submitted to be its
instruments; and expressed their determination to oppose, to the uttermost,
the continuance of the impost.” Mr. Tait was placed in an open carriage, and
was conducted to his house. “In the procession, alone,” says the same paper,
“there were not fewer than 8,000 individuals; and we are sure, that the
spectators were more than thrice as numerous. Mr. Tait was frequently cheered,
as he passed along; and never, but on the occasion of the Reform Bill, was a
more unanimous feeling witnessed, than on that which brought the people
together.” … [T]hey subsequently proceeded to pass resolutions, to the effect,
“that the meeting conceive the connexion of the Established Church with the
State, to be injurious to the cause of religion, opposed to the true
principles of Christianity, and to the best interests of the community;
that they, feeling deeply impressed with the impolicy of this connexion, would
earnestly recommend to the Legislature their immediate separation;
and that a petition, founded on these resolutions, should be transmitted to
Mr. Abercromby, to be presented by him to Parliament, at his earliest
convenience.”
On , a public meeting was held in Edinburgh to discuss how to organize to get rid of the hated Annuity Tax, the proceeds of which went to the local clergy of the official state church.
The Caledonian Mercury was there to report on the proceedings.
Tax resistance was touched on at points, and I’ll reproduce those parts of the report here:
About [the speaker, W.D. Gillon, Member of Parliament] had presided at a public meeting, which had been held in this town, to petition Parliament for the abolition of the annuity tax.
At that time two most respectable citizens — one of them a member of the Municipal Council — and the other an aged and worthy individual, were inhabitants of the common jail in this city; and this circumstance no doubt created a considerable sensation.… The grievance still remained unredressed; and when an evil had grown to such a height as this, none but vigorous means would suffice for its removal.
It was not for them to employ force or violence, but they would gain their object by acting with determination, and by bringing to bear against the annuity tax the indomitable force of passive resistance.
If they wished to get rid of the grievance let them follow the example of Messrs Russell and Chapman; and the tax would soon be abolished for ever.… [W]hen two citizens were languishing in jail, all these efforts were made to divert him from his purpose of bringing the facts of the case before Parliament.… When entrusted with that petition on behalf of two suffering men who, from their dungeons, stretched forth their arms demanding the privilege of viewing the light and inhaling the air of heaven, he could not hesitate.
Gillon also stated that “1,961 warrants had been issued for the recovery of annuity tax” in which “[t]he goods of the citizen would be taken and sold in the market place.”
William Tait, who had been imprisoned for a few days in for refusing to pay that tax, also addressed the crowd, saying that “if he were backed by 99 persons who would go the same length as himself in refusing to pay the tax, the impost would soon by abolished.”
John Ritchie put it this way:
They must not say that he inculcated rebellion when he declared, that there was one principle — they might call it passive or active resistance — though passive resistance was not in his dictionary — for many was an active creature — passivity was against human nature; there was one principle which he would urge on the attention of the meeting.
He spoke no rebellion when he said that every member of this society ought actively to resist the tax — to speak, and agitate, and call on others to join him in opposing it by every warrantable means.
A very excellent friend of his — they called him Dr Harry Cooke of Belfaast, said, “John Knox did not rebel, but he did not obey.”
He (Dr R.) only asked the meeting not to rebel, but not to obey.
They could not obey the law relative to the annuity tax without rebelling against God’s law.
Then…
The Rev. Dr John Brown of Broughton said, that being one of the 1961 individuals against whom warrants had gone forth, the time was now come for him to make a statement of the grounds on which he resisted the tax, and which, with the view of publication, he had embodied in a few sentences, which he would read to the meeting.
It stated that he was the only minister of the Secession Church liable to be assessed for the annuity tax; he had not paid it; and while he maintained his present conviction he never would pay it — not from any hostility to the Established Church or its ministers, some of whom he rated so highly, both for their talents and their worth, that were there any risk of the public being deprived of their valuable services, he should reckon it an honour to take part in averting the evil; but he resisted the tax from the fear of contracting guilt before God.
He had formerly paid the tax, contenting himself with publicly protesting against it; but finding that had not been attended with the expected result, he had now come to the determination never to pay it again, as he could not do so without offering violence to his conscientious conviction, not rashly or hastily formed.
Brown was in the process of writing a book about the controversy — The Law of Christ Respecting Civil Obedience, Especially in the Payment of Tribute — which I summarized in two Picket Line posts here and here.
