John Taylor On Taxes – Once They Start, They Never Stop

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – The citizens of this country are just as stupid as we can be, and that includes our forefathers who are just as lazy and apathetic as we could be.  All the powers that we have granted that we refuse to reclaim are just mindboggling.  The tyranny that could be inveighed on our heads is just staggering.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I’m going to try to give you an even more concise explanation of the difference between a direct and an indirect tax, and why it’s dangerous.  We’ve already granted direct taxing power.  The citizens of this country are just as stupid as we can be, and that includes our forefathers who are just as lazy and apathetic as we could be.  All the powers that we have granted that we refuse to reclaim are just mindboggling.  The tyranny that could be inveighed on our heads is just staggering.  That’s in your state and with the national legislature.

The only power that may have been reserved — this was the subject of the filibuster last week — is the power to directly kill.  You can indirectly kill.  You can deprive people of all manner of life, property, pursuits of happiness and what have you by making their lives miserable, holy hells with legislative and legal and governmental harassment and what have you.  We’ve also granted the power basically to directly tax.  We haven’t caved into a national sales tax yet.  This is why I was amazed and shocked at some of you that call yourselves conservatives, that you would ever even consider the idea of a direct tax being constitutional.  It is not.  You shouldn’t want it to be.  [mocking] “But Mike, it’s better.  You need to read up on it.”  No, I don’t.  Revenue is not the problem.  Spending, abuse, tyranny, corruption is the problem.

I’m going to read something to you from a publication that I’m probably one of eight human beings on Earth that have a copy of.  “An argument respecting the constitutionality of the carriage tax; which subject was discussed at Richmond, in Virginia, in May, 1795” by John Taylor.  This is when Alexander Hamilton seizes his opportunity to try to begin to nationalize the results of the Philadelphia Convention, which was the Constitution.  The first effort to do this was to pass this god-awful thing called the carriage tax.  There was a Virginian who went by the name of Cabell.  Cabell decided he didn’t like the tax.  He thought it was unconstitutional.  He went and bought some carriages and refused to pay it.  He loudly proclaimed that he was not going to pay.  A federal magistrate came along and said: No, you will pay.  He said: No, I will not.  They tried to get a judgment against him and the court case began.  It was first heard in a court in Richmond, Virginia.  This is, by the way, portrayed partially in What Lincoln Killed: Episode I.

In the defense of Cabell, John Taylor lays out the power to indirectly or directly tax.  While he’s doing it, it’s quite humorous, he also explains just how dangerous the taxing power is.  We know this because we can see — he was talking to a 1795 audience — what the taxing power has produced in merry old England.  In his argument, he wrote this:

[reading]

The excise is a precedent, enabling Congress to intercept such a portion of a man’s victuals, drink, and cloathing, the fruits of his own manual labour, as they may think proper—and under that of the carriage tax, every other species of property, is exposed.

Of what avail is the principle of proportion, or in what manner is Congress controuled, if a majority can select states and tax them exclusively, even up to famine or nakedness? If the burdens of government may, without apportionment, be imposed even upon the rice and Indian corn of the south, or the cyder and fish of the north, which is internally consumed? If the tooth of government may bite unequally, by the rule of its favor and partiality?

A reference to the progress of the excise tax in England will illustrate this insatiable construction. It commenced about a century past, and has since glided along until it has mingled its poison with almost every human enjoyment.

Its ravages have already been extended to beer, ale, cyder, perry, metheglin, mead, strong water, aqua vitae, coffee, chocolate, tea sherbet, hearths, stoves, soldiers, sailors, annuities, pensions, stipends, serjeants at law, counselors, advocates, physicians, servants, duke, marquis, earl, viscount, baron, baronet, knight, esquire, gentlemen of £.300 a year, ecclesiasticks, and on polls, coals, bankers, (a) lenders of money to government, officers and their deputies, agents, clerks, secondaries, substitutes, ministers, (b) lands, houses, parks, chaces, warrens, woods, underwoods, coppices, fishings, tithes, tolls, (c) personal estate, law proceedings, mum, vinegar, salt, vellum, parchment, paper, burials, births, marriages, batchellors, widowers, bottles, glass, culm, cinders, low-wines, spirits, sweets, distillers, molasses, brewers, verjuce, wash, tilts, yeast, sugar, (e) wheat, rye, barley, beans, pease, bread, biscuit, meal, starch, oatmeal, (f) Flesh, cocoanuts, cocoapaste, pictures, muslins, haukers, pedlars, candles, money given with apprentices, leather, hops, hackney coaches, chairs, bills of lading, almanacks, wine and ale licenses, cards…linens, stuffs, new writings, pamphlets, newspapers, advertisements, gold and silver wire, policies of insurance, marriage licenses, plate, herrings…retailers of ale and beer, windows, lights, carriages, wine, tobacco, brandies, distilled spirits of every kind, hair powder, all artificial wines, sweets of every kind, malt, hops, advertistements, horses, attornies, gloves, hats, shopkeepers, medicines, bills, receipts, partridges, etc. etc.

And this catalogue is probably far short of the real number of articles excised in England, as I have had no opportunity of referring to the acts of parliament passed during the greater part of the reigns of Geo. 2d. & Geo. 3d an era prolific in taxes.

[end reading]

Mike:  That’s why the taxing authority is so dangerous and always abused.

End Mike Church Show Transcript

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