Unjust Taxation Quotes

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude.

For every amount the state collected [in taxes], the mandarin collectors took twice as much for themselves.

For most people reform meant relief from ecclesiastical extortions.

I fail to understand how you can justify a poll tax on the entire population, yet exclude a significant proportion of that population from programmes that this tax is paying for.

I call the war with our Brethren, in America an unjust and felonious war, because the primary cause and confessed origin of it is, to attempt to take their money from them without their consent …

Now many such things may be done without intitling the people to rise in arms. A gross, flagrant, and palpable abuse no doubt will do it, as if they should be required to pay a tax equal to half or third of their substance.

There was a general notion in the English people that their cause was just. The sovereignty was supposed to be in the parent state; in the rights of sovereignty were included the rights of taxation: England, too, was considered as having protected the Americans from the French in the war that had been lately concluded. The Americans, therefore, when they resisted the mother country in her attempt to tax them, were considered on the first account as rebellious, and on the second as ungrateful

He will place a tax on the air you breathe and on the bread you eat; he will give you a legislation which is as legitimate as it is unjust and instead of reasons, he’ll give you laws. These will grow in the course of time, until you no longer exist for yourselves but for others.

The most pernicious of all taxes are the arbitrary.

[I]t is contrary to the principles of reason and justice that any should be compelled to contribute to the maintenance of a church with which their consciences will not permit them to join, and from which they can derive no benefit

Considering the utter impracticability of their ever being fully and equally represented in Parliament, and the great expense that must unavoidably attend even a partial representation there [in England], this House think that a taxation of their constituents, even without their consent, grievous as it is, would be preferable to any representation that could be admitted for them there.