Understanding the Tyrant

Tyranny and liberty are significant words in the American experience. The desire for a “free people” to rule themselves contrasts directly with the threat of “Despotism” in the Declaration of Independence. Virginia’s state motto, Sic semper tyrannis, recalls the centrality of opposing tyranny. The term “tyrant” was synonymous with “king” in ancient Greece. The tyrants of ancient Athens were not necessarily bad rulers; they were single rulers who restored order. In The Politics, Aristotle added a negative shade to the term, arguing that a ruler ought to be a blessing to his people. A tyrant was a single ruler (like a king) who used his power only for self-serving ends. In Revolutionary era America, the contrast between tyranny and liberty exists in unexpected places: discussions of just and unjust taxation.

Arthur Lee, an “old member of Parliament,” wrote An Appeal to the Interests of Great Britain in the Present Disputes with America in 1774, and in 1776 an anonymous author published A Dialogue on the Principles of the Constitution and Legal Liberty, Compared with Despotism, Applied to the American Question. Both Englishmen are sympathetic to the American cause. They engage in discussions of liberty and tyranny, with a specific eye towards tax policy. Arthur Lee and the anonymous author present the taxations King George III executed on the American colonies from 1764-1776 as a tyrannical act all Englishmen should abhor. Reading these pamphlets operates on the modern reader in the way C.S. Lewis describes in “On the Reading of Old Books”: they are a “sea breeze” blowing away the present concerns. Neither author voices objections in terms used in contemporary tax policy discussions. Instead, they take tax policy into the realm of justice. If George III’s taxes were unjust, then the king acted tyrannically. Such a king threatened the liberties of all Englishmen, not just the American colonists.

The anonymous Dialogue follows a Platonic form. Aristocraticus plays the Sophist interlocutor, while Philodemus (loosely, “lover of the people”) plays the Socratic figure persuading the reader of the argument. Aristocraticus and Philodemus discuss many topics: the constitution, virtual representation, tax policy, the extent of royal authority, the Glorious Revolution. The Dialogue is difficult to summarize, filled with pithy statements, zingers, and profound observations. Below are two representative passages.

In a discussion of Parliamentary representation, Philodemus notes that “Mr. Gravedigger of Hindon, if you will, may have a larger power in the disposal of his property, and a freer enjoyment of it, than two millions five hundred thousand of fellow Englishmen on the other side of the Atlantic.” Even if “Mr. Gravedigger,” a man without enough property to vote in England,

has only the ability to talk with others in his district who can vote, he still has more influence over a parliamentary tax than all Englishmen in the American colonies, and thus more security in his property.

Parliament’s willingness to tolerate royal extension of power, Philodemus argues, threatens to undo the English constitution itself. “…the Parliament, when it shall have served as a scaffolding for absolute power to build on, for any prince who may choose to build, will soon be knocked down and thrown away, and left to mingle with the other rubbish of an enslaved nation.” While the American concerns expressed in the Declaration focus on American interest, Philodemus suggests that the greater concern from England’s perspective is tolerating tyranny within her own monarchy, and moving from a liberty-filled state to an enslaved one.

Sympathy for unjustly taxed colonists existed in 1776, and also in 1774. Arthur Lee’s Appeal opens by observing similarities between England and her American colonies: “The same laws, the same religion, the constitution, the same feelings, sentiments and habits, are a common blessing and a common cause.” Lee asks, “Whether we have a right to tax the colonies? and, Whether it be expedient to exercise that right?” His quest to answer the question considers the right of taxation located in the consent of the governed: “the right of imposing taxes resides originally in the people, and then in the representative body; and that it arises from the delegation of the people.” Representation is how “the people were enabled to make the law superior to the will of the crown.” At stake in the question of taxation is not merely answering practical demands like paying Hessian mercenaries during the French and Indian War, but the constitutional monarchy itself. The pamphlet has Charles I’s beheading, the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution in the backdrop of this question.

After surveying both English and Irish Parliamentary decisions, the author concludes that “it appears to be one uniform and inviolable rule that property could not be given but by consent.” Here the distinction between liberty and tyranny in taxation emerges. A tyrant could seize property, revenue, and goods, but in such a seizure he forfeits justice. A king under law could receive the revenue granted through the gift of representatives who choose to give their voters property to serve the common good through taxation. Such a king would be acting within liberty to receive and use those funds, because he remains under law. A tyrant steals what can only be rightly given. The king acts within justice, while a tyrant has no concern for rule of law.

The remaining question to resolve, Lee proposes, is whether or not American colonists are in fact under the same constitution and have the same rights as their fellow Englishmen in England. Does an Englishman who emigrates from Bristol to Boston lose his rights? “Now it is not only impossible, I conceive, to give any plausible reason for this distinction, but it is clear that no such idea was ever seriously entertained till the year 1764.” The same philosophy of taxation ought to apply to all English holdings: “to impose taxes where the right of doing it is not delegated, was unusual and unconstitutional.” To support his views, the author cites Sir Edward Coke and John Locke.

Lee then elevates the significance of his question: “either the Americans are not freemen, or to impose taxes on them in parliament, in which not one of them is represented and therefore cannot give his consent, is to divest him of all property, and dissolve the original compact upon which, according to Mr. Locke, they entered into society.” The legitimacy and justice of the English constitution stands “upon these principles” and “upon these principles the American claim is founded. If they are fallacious, then were our own claims usurpations upon the crown, and the glorious revolution itself was nothing more than a successful revolution.” Therefore, the Appeal concludes, “this right of giving their money by their own consent alone, has been always claimed, asserted, and exercised by the Americans; and that the crown and parliament consistently recognized the exercise of it, till the year 1764.” Without granting Parliamentary representation, England cannot tax the Americans justly. “…unless the gift be previously made by the representatives of the people, there is nothing on which the act can work: the gift must be made first and distinct…The representatives are the sole source of the gift…” Taxation without representation becomes an act of tyrannical overreach violating the rights of Englishmen.

In his conclusion, the author moves into a discussion about the practicalities of collecting revenue, making an early form of Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics argument. Essentially, England receives hundreds of thousands of pounds of economic value in trade; by taxing the colonies and having to militarily enforce those taxes, England harms the American breadbasket. Rather than taxation, the author contends, trade should increase to generate additional revenue to the crown through existing tariffs. “If the minister seizes the money with which the American should pay his debts and come to market, the merchant and the trader cannot expect him as a customer; nor can the debts already contracted be paid. This is cutting up commerce by the roots: it is like the folly of a young man who takes from the principal of his estate to supply his wants; we know in his case that such a practice will prove his ruin. The commerce of this kingdom is to the state what the principal of his fortune is to a private man.” Adam Smith did not write the Appeal, but Lee’s ideas are fully consonant with The Wealth of Nations.

Rather than encouraging trade (and tariff collections) or practicing just representation based taxation, England “subjected all their property to the judgment of a single judge of admiralty, without the intervention of a jury; a judge appointed by the King, subsisting at his pleasure, yet determining between the King and his subject, and payable out of the forfeitures which his judgment against his subject should produce. It is not in human wickedness and injustice to devise more infallible means of perverting justice and rendering property insecure.” The author of the Appeal finds that England’s actions towards her colonies represented monarchical tyranny, hampering the ability of colonial subjects to create their own financial sustainability and raising questions about the legitimacy of the Glorious Revolution.

America perceives herself to be, as Lincoln noted, “conceived in liberty” and “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” The Sesquicentennial is an appropriate time to reflect on the meaning of liberty and tyranny, and consider the ideas of taxes as gifts given for the common good. Through duly appointed figures, such taxes exist within a framework of liberty. Without rule of law, governmental seizure of funds moves from the action of a just government to the actions of a tyrant. Sic semper tyrannis was in the American blood in 1776, and it just may remain in the national character 250 years later.