Samuel Johnson
Taxation No Tyranny (1775)
Main Points:
- Americans are able to bear taxation.
- Every adult pays taxes:
§ “Of every empire all the subordinate communities are liable to taxation, because they all share the benefits of government, and, therefore, ought to all furnish their proportion of the expense.”
§ “As all are born the subjects of some state or other, we may be said to have been all born contenting to some system of government.”
§ “Humanity is very uniform. The Americans have this resemblance to Europeans, that they do not always know when they are well.”
- Americans have no proof that parliament every ceded to them exemption from obedience.
§ Now there are only two choices: “to allow their claim to independence or to reduce them, by force, to submission and allegiance….”
§ “If the subject refuses to obey, it is the duty of authority to use compulsion. Society cannot subsist but by the power, first of making laws, and then of enforcing them….”
- The American rebels are hypocrites.
§ “If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”