Taxation no tyranny,
The title of a pamphlet written by
Dr. Samuel Johnson in favor of the taxation schemes of the
British government.
It appeared early in 1775, and is one of the most heartless, intensely bitter, and savagely insolent of all the essays of the day. It was only the echo of the angry threats and grotesque arguments of the stubborn
King and venal minister, and the mad passions of the aristocracy, which were then poisoning the minds of the people of
Great Britain with unreasoning hatred of the
Americans.
Johnson was employed by the ministry in this work of inflaming the passions of the
British people to divert their attention from the monstrous injustice they were inflicting upon their fellow-subjects in
America by oppressing
Boston and robbing
Massachusetts of its charter, and endeavoring to make its free people absolute slaves to a tyrant's will.
The one great blot upon the names of
Johnson and
Gibbon, the historian, is the barter of their consciences for money; for both had expressed sympathy for the
Americans up to that time.
Gibbon had even written against the ministerial measures.
He became suddenly silent at the time when
Johnson's pen was inditing his coarse and ribald paragraphs.
To them a writer of a stinging epigram alluded in the line, “What made
Johnson write made
Gibbon dumb.”
With unpardonable malignity he uttered ponderous sarcasms and conscious sophistries as arguments.
Pointing at
Franklin (then in
England) with a sneer, he spoke of him as “a master of mischief, teaching Congress to put in motion the engine of political electricity, and to give the great stroke the name of
Boston.”
To the declaration of the people of
Boston that to preserve their liberties they were willing to leave their rich town and wander into the country as exiles, he heartlessly said: “Alas!
the heroes of
Boston will only leave good houses to wiser men.”
To the claim of the
Americans to the right of resistance to oppression, he exclaimed: “Audacious defiance!
The indignation of the
English is like that of the Scythians, who, returning from war, found themselves excluded from their own houses by their slaves.”
To the words of “A Pennsylvania farmer” insisting that the
Americans complained only of innovations, he retorted: “We do not put a calf into the plough; we wait till he is an ox.”
The ministry bade him erase these lines because they were unwilling to concede that the calf had been spared, and not for its coarse ribaldry.
Johnson shamelessly avowed his bargain by comparing himself, when he obeyed the commands of the ministers, to a mechanic for whom “his employer is to decide.”
To the assertion that the
Americans were increasing in numbers, wealth, and love of freedom, he retorted: “This talk that they multiply with the fecundity of their own rattlesnakes disposes men accustomed to think themselves masters to hasten the experiment of binding obstinacy before it becomes yet more obdurate.”
He sneered at the teachings of the rule of progression which showed that
America must in the end exceed
Europe in population, and said in derision, with no suspicion that he was uttering a sure prophecy: “Then, in a century and a quarter, let the princes of the earth tremble in their palaces!”
That was a sad spectacle of an old man prostituting the powers of a great intellect, and weakening the prop of his morality, by aiming such a malignant but utterly feeble shaft at his kindred in nationality struggling for freedom.
