Samuel Johnson

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• Samuel Johnson
• Taxation No Tyranny (1775)
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• Main Points
• 1. Americans are able to bear taxation.
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• 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.

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Samuel Johnson Taxation No Tyranny (1775)

• 3. Americans have no proof that parliament ever
  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.
•  4. 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?