From the 12 March 1948 Canadian Jewish Chronicle (excerpt):

Jerusalem Jewish Council says Jews will not Pay Taxes Unless Money will be Used For Jewish Projects

Jerusalem, (JTA). — The Jewish community council here declared this week that Jews would not pay taxes to the municipal government until they were satisfied that the money would be used for Jewish projects while Daniel Auster, former Jewish mayor of the city, said that the Jews would take care of their section of separate municipal councils were formed and each body was permitted to spend its funds on improvements for its own people.…

That was shortly before Israeli independence, but tax resistance in British-occupied Palestine went on for decades before then. Here’s an example from the 20 May 1939 Montreal Gazette:

Jews in Palestine Decree Tax Strike

Decision Is Taken in Protest Against New U.K. White Paper

By Joseph M. Levy.

(Wireless to The New York TImes and The Gazette.)

Jerusalem, May 19.— Lieut. Gen. Robert H. Haining, commander of the British forces in Palestine, invited the heads of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the National Council of Palestine Jewry and the Jewish Communal Council to his headquarters here this morning and warned them that he intended to enforce order and would make no exceptions. General Haining added that, while he appreciated the three years of restraint on the part of Jews, he would suppress violence unflinchingly.

The first move in the Jewish non-co-operation movement against the Government in protest at the new British policy was a decision of the Landlords Association, composed of rural and urban property owners, to refuse to pay taxes, beginning today, until the White Paper had been repealed.

Despite all stringent measures taken to prevent illegal immigration into Palestine, 300 Jews succeded in landing clandestinely near Ashkalon, Southern Palestine, but were apprehended by British troops and taken to Tel Aviv for detention.

In contrast with yesterday’s turbulence in this Holy City, there was quiet today, although considerable tension still exists. As a result of the violence yesterday, when a mob of Jews attempted to raid the district commissioner’s office, smashed windows of an English shop and a German restaurant and engaged in fighting in which a British constable was killed and more than 100 Jews were wounded, the military today took far greater precautions to prevent further bloodshed.

All Government offices were heavily guarded, various parts of the city were barricaded, and soldiers manned machine guns for action. Only incident today was when several Jewish youths penetrated a branch post office in the Jewish quarter of Mahne Yehuda here and broke window panes and furniture.

Three British police sergeants and two constables, who yesterday annoyed the Tel Aviv public, it is charged, by wearing helmets marked with swastikas and by shouting “Heil Hitler,” were relieved of duty today pending disciplinary proceedings.

The “White Paper” policy, which, among other things, prevented Jewish evacuation into Palestine during the Holocaust, was not repealed until Israel won its independence in 1948.

Tax resistance was practiced both by Jews and by others in Palestine against the British occupation. In at least one case, in 1930, there was a sympathy tax strike in England itself:

…a London Jew declined to pay his income tax as a form of protest.

In 1939, Josiah Wedgewood counseled Jews to maintain a civil disobedience campaign in order to win Palestine: “Jews must find it respectable to go to prison; men and women must be prepared to die; to refuse to pay the property tax, see their goods sold; to occupy land and resist eviction…”

A 1946 report says that some Jews in Palestine were looking for inspiration to Gandhi’s campaign against British rule:

In the all-Jewish coastal city of Tel Aviv a high Jewish source who declined to be quoted by name said meetings were called throughout Palestine Sunday to consider a “passive resistance movement” similar to those undertaken by nationalists in India.

A decision would be taken “as to the best method by which Palestine’s Jewish community can demonstrate to the British they will have to arrest tens of thousands of us if the government thinks we are accepting quietly everything it wants to put on us,” he said.

Passive resistance would include nonpayment of taxes, a strike by Jews in government service and “in all ways complete non-cooperation with the British,” this source said.

From the 21 November 1946 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Holy Land Bomb Damage — A patrol moves around ruins of the income tax office, Jerusalem, Palestine, after a bomb detonated by police wrecked the building.

Palestine Tax Office Bombed

Building Leveled By Terrific Blast

Jerusalem, Nov. 20 — (AP) — The Palestine Income Tax Building was leveled this afternoon by a terrific explosion from a bomb-laden cart which Palestine police said was placed by Jews.

One person, a Jewish constable, was killed. Five persons — a British Army captain and lance corporal, a British police sergeant and an Arab policeman — were injured. Windows were shattered within a radius of three blocks.

All employes had been evacuated from the building following a telephone warning 10 minutes before the blast.

Police said three Jews, one dressed as an Arab, pushed a bomb-laden, Arab-type delivery cart into the building and fled, after clubbing a Jewish policeman and snatching a rifle from an Arab guard.

Police tried to drag the cart from the building, but the rope parted. They said they then detonated the bomb with rifle fire, but “miscalculated the charge.”

Only the best and brightest in the Palestine police force, I see. Another tax office was bombed in Mount Carmel in 1947.

Another 1947 dispatch includes this report:

Tel Aviv police reported… that a young Jew and Jewish girl claiming to represent the Stern Gang, a small Jewish underground unit, had delivered an ultimatum personally to 18 Jewish officials of the Palestine Income Tax Department to resign within 96 hours or face drastic consequences. Special guards were assigned immediately to the 18 officials.

The attempt to bring about the large-scale resignations was viewed by authorities as another step in the Stern Gang’s announced policy of sponsoring non-payment of taxes by Palestine’s Jews.

Another report on the same incident clarifies that the two Jews, “described as Yemenites, visited the homes of the tax officials Thursday night to deliver the warnings.”

Another 1947 dispatch:

Jews Ask Boycott Against British

Underground Group Protests Refugee Order

Jerusalem, Aug. 25 — (AP) — Irgun Zvai Leumi, militant Jewish underground group, exhorted Jews throughout the world today to “hit Britain economically without mercy” in protest against the trans-shipment of 4,400 Jewish refugees to Germany.

In a broadcast denouncing British treatment of the refugees, who were intercepted in mid-July while trying to enter Palestine illegally aboard the Exodus of 1947, a former Chesapeake Bay steamer, Irgun declared:

“You can stop the cruel British machine forever. Do not pay your tax money, do not obey their orders. Do not obey their laws. Boycott, boycott, boycott until the end.

“Jews of the whole world can bring great harm to our enemy. Britain is in economic trouble. They can be hit economically without mercy.”

The Irgun broadcaster also urged Jews to ignore appeals for a hunger strike today to protest treatment accorded the refugees.

“This is no time for fasting,” the broadcast said. “It is now time for war.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. From the 15 August 1989 New York Times:

West Bank Firebomb Hurts 4 Tax Collectors

Jerusalem, Aug. 14 — Four Israeli tax collectors were wounded today when a gasoline bomb smashed through the windshield of their car as they drove through the West Bank city of Ramallah, the army said.

Two firebombs were thrown at the Israelis, who collect taxes from Palestinians for the military government in the occupied territories, as they drove to work early this morning, income tax officials said.

Palestinians have resisted paying taxes to Israel because the taxes are a potent symbol of occupation. The undergound leadership of the Arab uprising has repeatedly called on Palestinians to boycott the Israeli military government by refusing to pay taxes.

The new military commander of the West Bank, Maj. Gen. Yitzhak Mordechai, ordered a curfew placed on the street where the attack occurred and the nearby Kadura refugee camp. Soldiers later arrested 40 people, the army said.

In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians are required to prove they have paid their taxes before they can obtain a new military pass to go to Israel. The army has said Friday is the deadline after which only pass holders will be allowed to travel from Gaza to Israel.

The army announced today that Gaza Arabs who still do not have a pass by Friday will be able to apply for one, though Israel had said previously that no new passes would be issued after that day.

And another Times piece from November of the same year:

West Bank Town Elated but Poorer As Israel Ends Six-Week Tax Siege

By Joel Brinkley, Special to The New York Times

Beit Sahur, Israeli-Occupied West Bank, Oct. 31 — Israeli soldiers cleared roadblocks today, ending a six-week state of siege here, and the residents of this Palestinian town cheered.

“We won — we beat them,” said Khalil Hana Rishmawi, even though Israeli officials had seized the machinery in his sewing factory in lieu of the taxes he and most residents in this small, moderately affluent town had refused to pay.

“The campaign failed,” he said. “No one paid the taxes.”

$1.5 Million in Goods Seized

But the Israeli authorities were declaring victory too. Tax collectors have seized cars, refrigerators, clothing, washing machines and other belongings valued at $1.5 million. And this afternoon, Brig. Gen. Sheikhe Erez said, “We decided to end the operation today since we did what we wanted to do.”

In truth, the Beit Sahur tax revolt was fought to a draw, and it came to be a symbol for the Palestinian uprising as a whole. Almost to a person, Beit Sahur’s residents refused to pay their taxes. But many of them had to stand by and watch as their belongings were seized instead.

And when Israel auctions off the goods next week, it will finally collect some of the back taxes that Beit Sahur owes, but at a price. The Beit Sahur seige brought a new array of international criticism. And the town’s tax debtors, most of them middle-aged businessmen who had no involvement in the uprising, are anything but chastened.

Earlier this month Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin vowed, “We will teach them a lesson.” But tonight Tawfik Abu Aita, a 51-year-old clothing manufacturer, said: “They used a cannon against a bird and blew away the whole tree. That’s why they failed.”

And several liberal Israeli legislators said this afternoon that if the army was willing to deal with a nonviolent civil protest so harshly, it would only encourage Palestinians to use violence instead. The army and the residents of Beit Sahur are likely to find themselves in a similar position a year from now, both sides stubbornly refusing to move, but neither side is saying what it will do.

In mid-September, the army singled out Beit Sahur, a largely Christian town of 10,000 near Bethlehem. Military officials found that 320 businessmen had not paid taxes, even though most of them were regular taxpayers before the uprising began 23 months ago.

“I paid the taxes before, but now all of us go by the rules of our leadership,” Mr. Rishmawi said, referring to the underground leaders of the uprising. In leaflets for many months, they have urged Palestinians not to pay taxes. “The taxes should be spent on services, health, roads and other things we need here,” said his son-in-law, Majed Rishmawi. “But do you see any services being offered here? No.”

After sending tax collectors door to door and getting unanimous refusal, the army sealed off Beit Sahur. No visitors or journalists were allowed in, and only people who paid taxes were let out. Still, hardly anyone paid. Then 40 debtors were arrested and 35 were indicted. Some have been given stiff fines or sentenced to time in jail.

Still almost no one paid. So tax collectors escorted by troops showed up with trucks and started confiscating belongings left and right. “They took 1,500 blouses, 700 kilograms of wool and a 1986 Opel Cadet,” Mr. Abu Aita said. They didn’t get the 1989 Audi 80 parked in front of his house. “I had that registered under a different name,” he said. And when the soldiers tried to seize the knitting machines in his factory, “they found it very difficult to dismantle them and put them in the car,” he added with a chuckle. The soldiers gave up and left the machines behind.

Mr. Rishmawi said each man was given a Hebrew-language inventory of items seized — “9 umbrellas, 20 small cartons of socks, 4 baby suits” — and told that the goods would be sold at auction if the back taxes were not paid.

Auctions a Few Days Away

Now that the tax siege is over and the auctions are only five days away, Mr. Rishmawi and Mr. Abu Aita, like most everyone in town, say they will stand by and watch as their belongings are sold. They still have no intention of paying their taxes, even though without the sewing machines Mr. Rishmawi’s factory has had to close down.

“We will just have to help each other now,” he said. “This is not tax collection. It’s Mafia work. And I think the Israeli learned. We will not pay.”

But in a statement released today, the army said, “Some of the taxpayers paid their debts willingly.” And as a result of the Beit Sahur siege, the army added, dozens of reluctant taxpayers in other parts of the West Bank came forward to pay their taxes, too.

The military government “places great importance on this,” the statement said, “because the taxes collected finance government services for Arab inhabitants in the territories, such as health, education and welfare.”

But Mr. Abu Aita said that what “they’ve really done with this kind of collective punishment of an entire city is draw people into the intifada who have never been in it before.”

Last Spring I shared some charts that showed how IRS enforcement activity was changing over time and also some charts showing how “delinquent” taxpayer activity was changing over time.

The new IRS Data Book is out, so I can update the numbers. The number of levies and seizures are down from their peaks, but the use of liens continue to rise:

On the “delinquent” side, the number of people who didn’t pay their taxes when they were due and the number of people who didn’t file on time (or at all) are both off from their peaks, but the IRS continued to to be overwhelmed by the backlog of delinquent cases and so the total unresolved delinquent accounts continued to rise:

That emerging left/right/libertarian anti-militarist coalition now has a homepage. There’s not much there yet (some more write-ups of the inaugural meeting from some of the participants), but there’s an RSS feed if you want to be notified when things get moving.

Paul Buhle, whose anti-militarist activism goes back to his time with Students for a Democratic Society in the Vietnam years, writes of the group’s first meeting: “There never was such a boundary-crossing event before, at least not in my 50 year political lifetime or any historical incident that I can recall.”

Some bits and pieces from here and there:

• Mencius Moldbug, who has established himself as the voice of the contemporary anti-Whig movement, turned me on to Vaclav Havel’s essay on The Power of the Powerless. It eloquently describes one of the forms that coerced consent took in communist Eastern Europe. “Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
• National Treasury Employees Union president Colleen Kelley says that the Joe Stack kamakaze attack seems to have proven an inspiration: “There were calls where taxpayers said they were thinking of ‘taking flying lessons’ in the context of an audit or a collection. There are 70 that have been reported. I have to tell you that the first time I heard the one about ‘taking flying lessons,’ I cannot imagine in any scenario, following the Austin attack, where that's an appropriate comment to make.”
• The IRS is so fearful of taxpayer retaliation that it has started to develop a sort of paranoid autoimmune disorder, in which it shuts down and heads for the bunkers at the sign of anything in the least bit unusual — this time, “a suspicious package found near the IRS building — the contents of which were soon found to be harmless.”
• Here’s another example of inmates raking in bogus tax refunds while still behind bars. Prisoner Shawn Clark was caught on tape discussing his scheme: “I’m through with the street crime. I’m strictly white collar from now on. I love the IRS.” The scheme netted over $100,000 before they got caught.

Thanks to Queer Equality Revolution for plugging The Picket Line.

I’ve got an article in this month’s Simple Living News on your favorite topic and mine.

The article aims to pitch tax resistance through the low-income, simple-living lifestyle to people who already see the merits of that lifestyle and who might want another arrow in their salespitch quiver when trying to talk it up to others, or who might think “well, I’m almost a tax resister already, might as well go the extra yard and pick up that merit badge too.”

I deliberately tried to cast a wide net, including lots of information on war tax resistance (since there’s lots more information to be had there), but also trying to be welcoming to potential resisters of other stripes. The impression I have is that the Simple Living News has a pretty ideologically diverse readership.

Military Spending: Not With My Money

The March 2010 issue of Rojo y Negro, a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist monthly, has a couple of articles about war tax resistance. (Translations mine, and I’m not very good at it.)

We Continue Our Disobedience to Military Spending

At least 875 people have resisted taxes in 2009, redirecting up to €80,600, which has been allocated to alternative projects

One year more we publicly present the data that we have compiled on objectors to military spending in different regions of the Spanish state in the 2009 tax season. Although we are aware that there are several more, there are 875 people who have reported their objection in this campaign by directly informing Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement or other groups that promote war tax resistance and are responsible for collecting these data. In particular we are aware that at least €80,600 has been deducted from Spanish military spending and has been redirected to other citizens’ organizations that certainly will apply it to a superior end.

We Are at War

We are at war. Although the bombs do not drop on our territory, or spray us with shrapnel, the Spanish state participates in military conflicts all over the world (Afghanistan, Lebanon, Haiti, Somalia, Bosnia, the Congo…), subsidizes the war industry with sweet public contracts and does business in the arms trade. Armies in the world are sustained by three fundamental pillars: human resources (reserve and active military, professional or conscript), ideological justification (these days they legitimize their existence with the excuse of global security; rich countries, that is), and, of course, the important economic pillar. All three are necessary for the functioning of the military machinery of modern armies, with their hypocritical humanitarian façade that has the function of defending the interests of the most rich and powerful to sustain a situation of injustice that condemns three-quarters of the world population to poverty.

Military Spending: Data That Is Obscured

All of this is done, whether we like it or not, with our money. The Spanish army is a real consumer of economic resources. The state has budgeted for 2010 military spending that amounts to a whopping €18,161 million. Rather than covering the real social necessities (sustinance, shelter, education, health…), an average of €394 per person will be spent every day in preparation for war.

It is not an accident that the money budgeted for the Defense Ministry will not be more than 42% of actual military spending. In order to get the complete figure, one must add the money corresponding to military R&D (nice self-contradiction!) since most of the military industry is financed with this money, those parts of the Foreign Affairs Ministry budget destined for spending on NATO and the EU, military pensions, and more spending besides, with which they hide the final scandalous figure. The fact that the state will not be transparent in its public accounting is an indication that they have something harmful to hide. And our objective is to undo this harm.

War Tax Resistance

War Tax Resistance, as we know, is a a form of civil disobedience that consists of refusing to pay the taxes for military spending, and aims to stop it. Anyone can be a tax resister by nothing more than deducting, on one’s tax return, a quantity of money for military spending (a symbolic amount, or a percentage that corresponds), which is then destined to some project of solidarity that actually contributes to constructing a more just world. In this way we demonstrate that the redirection of money to non-military purposes can be effective. Together with the tax return, is included a declaration of the redirected money and a letter explaining to the Treasury the reasons for our disobedience: we commit tax resistance because we refuse to collaborate in the sustaining of the military machine and because we want to make a public denunciation of this injustice.

War Tax Resistance is now in its third decade in the Spanish state. It has involved many thousands of people over the years and has also managed to redirect substantial amounts of military spending that have enabled the realization of numerous social projects of solidarity both in the Spanish state and in various countries. In recent years it has supported antimilitarism, nonviolence, feminism, and different struggles and basic skills in places like Colombia, Zimbabwe, Chile, Russia/Chechnia, Palestine/Israel, Iraq… or the Spanish state itself.

Appeal to Common Sense: Invitation to Disobedience

Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement wants to make an appeal for sanity and common sense in order to fight against the army and military insanity. In a world where capitalist imperalism has gone so far that the destruction of the planet is, in this day, a work in progress, and where the domination of the powerful over the impoverished majority forms part of the “inevitable” scenario, disobedience is necessary. It is necessary that we say no, it is necessary that, like years ago in the disobedience campaign, we set forth and refuse to collaborate with the army. Not a single woman, not a single man, not a single euro for war!

Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes

Two tax resisters stand up to the Treasury

Valencians Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have been practicing war tax resistance for several years. For example, Hugo deducted from his tax returns between 2003 and 2008 about €1,500 which he donated to various pacifist, nonviolent resistance, and social media organizations in protest against war and militarism, as he stated in an explanatory letter along with his returns which included an accounting. In each of these tax returns he deducted a percentage equal to that which in the Federal General Budget represents spending on military and armaments, and he recorded this on the form itself, creating his own handwritten line-item deduction “For War Tax Resistance.”

A few months ago the Treasury demanded the amounts deducted along with penalties and interest. Both Hugo and Jorge maintain the legitimacy of their action, and each one, on his own, decided to resist the administrative decision, appealing it. With this they are not seeking for preferential tax treatment for themselves, of course, nor the recognition of an individual right not to pay the part of the taxes related to the military establishment, but rather the active demand of a collective right to live in a world at peace, which involves the progressive dismantling of the machinery of war. So far, with the support and advice of Antimilitarist Alternative/Conscientious Objectors Movement, Hugo Alcalde and Jorge Güemes have appealed their tax claims before the Regional Administrative Economic Court and plan to gather public support and to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice in Valencia, Hugo in the coming months, and Jorge in the coming weeks. Hugo and Jorge are only two of nearly a thousand people each year who redirect a percentage of their income taxes as an active, conscientious, open, and committed signal for demanding the progressive elimination of the military budget and the abolition of the military.

All this forms an even more outrageous picture today, seeing all the generous aid to banks, carmakers, and the housing industry, and in the midst of significant cuts in social rights in connection with a crisis of capitalism that fiercely struck the most vulnerable sectors. In view of this, it appears necessary to update the classic antimilitarist pacifist proposal: We end war (and the economic crisis) by dismantling the army. Let the army pay for the crisis.

David R. Henderson gives a more complete summary, with a more complete guest list, of the recent gathering of people from across the political spectrum who want to create a broad antiwar movement that I mentioned last month.

It sounds like it was a fascinating meeting of the minds and that it went well. Henderson says, “I emerged with more hope for the antiwar movement than I’ve had in a while.”

Henderson has been working hard to establish and maintain a left/right/libertarian anti-war coalition in Monterey, California. It requires some delicate stitch-work, but is showing promise. I included some observations by Henderson about individual responsibility for state actions in a Picket Line entry back in 2006, and also in We Won’t Pay.

In other news…

• The U.S. Treasury Department is required to publish a list of people who have renounced their United States citizenship. “[D]uring the quarter ending December 31, 2009[, a] total of 502 individuals expatriated. This is the highest quarterly number of individuals expatriating for many years. In fact, during that one quarter, there were more expatriations [than] in the combined previous seven quarters.” International Tax Blog speculates that this is because of a recent change in the law concerning tax treatment of expatriates. Until recently, even if you renounced your citizenship and moved to another country, the U.S. still wanted you to file tax returns for 10 more years, and would tax you on all of your income if you spent more than 30 days a year in-country. Now “moderately wealthy individuals can expatriate without any U.S. taxation… the 10 year tax filings are no longer necessary, making the expatriation a clean break from the U.S.”
• Karl, at Embracing Mystery, reports on the “Possibility Alliance” community in Northern Missouri, founded by Ethan & Sarah Hughes:

  Inspired by Gandhi’s whole-system approach to nonviolence, they are guided by five principles: simplicity, service, activism, inner work, and celebration.

  In terms of simplicity: they grow their own food (including everything from peaches and nuts to goat cheese) in permaculture food forests and they can food for the winter; they travel by foot, horse, bicycle, or public transportation (Ethan has been in a car less than 10 times in the last 10 years); they live electricity-free and computer-free, eating dinner by candle-light every night; they make their own music with guitars, a piano, and their own voices; and they tell stories by the wood stove at night. Some of their many forms of service and activism include: they live by the “gift economy,” sharing free food, free lodging, free permaculture courses and more; they helped start a bicycle cooperative in a local town; they advise people on natural building techniques; they are war-tax resisters; and one month a year Ethan leads a group of costumed “superheroes” on bicycle-powered spontaneous service adventures in various parts of the world. For inner work they regularly share readings from various spiritual traditions, study Nonviolent Communication, and support one another to live with open hearts and minds.

From the 4 March 1978 Spokane Daily Chronicle:

Irwin Hogenauer (1912–1984)

Tax Protest Techniques Told

Military expenditures take up 53 percent of the national budget, “a disproportionate amount,” but there are ways to protest it, Irwin Hogenauer, a war tax resistance counselor, said here today.

“Resistance can take two directions: Personal, by not paying taxes to carry out your convictions, disengaging yourself from the production of war material; and public, making it a political effort to raise the social consciousness of others,” Hogenauer said in an interview.

Some methods of tax resistance are legal and others are not, he added. One that is legal is to file a return with a letter of protest, saying the money is being paid under duress, he said.

“Let your employer and your friends know how you feel,” Hogenauer said. “But the government still gets the money. That’s one of the difficulties.”

Hogenauer, 66, has been a volunteer war tax resistance counselor in Seattle for 30 years. Before he retired four years ago he said he showed his resistance to use of tax money for war materials by refusing to file a yearly tax return.

He was never prosecuted, Hogenauer said, although from time to time an Internal Revenue Service employee would appear at his door.

“But that’s not unusual,” he said. “Thousands of people across the nation don’t file a tax return and there are no efforts at prosecution of most of them. It is selective and hit-and-miss.”

Hogenauer is in Spokane today to lead a “Personal Responses to War Taxes Workshop” sponsored by the Spokane Fellowship of Reconciliation.

He said he was one of about a half dozen conscientious objectors during World War II who formed a tax refusal committee.

He said there is no way of knowing how many people refuse to pay income tax, but said the number is increasing.

Hogenauer cautioned that there is always the potential for prosecution and incarceration of war tax resisters. The IRS can get the tax payments and penalties from bank accounts, wages and seizure of property.

“But even for refusal to pay the telephone tax, the amount is so small, say $12 a year, that it would cost the government a minimum of $50 or more to begin to collect it.”

He said he advocates total disarmament of the United States, and unilateral disarmament of the rest of the world [sic].

Asked if he would approve of disarmament if the United States were the only country to go through with it, Hogenauer said:

“That’s fine. It’s about time some country take the lead. The strongest need to do it because the weakest won’t.”

Hogenauer was among that group of World War II conscientious objectors who qualified for civilian work camps but then soured on the idea and decided that they could not accept being conscripted even into civilian work tangentially-related to the war effort. He went AWOL from his civilian work camp and ended up doing 10 months of a two year sentence in prison.

Here’s a second article on Hogenauer’s resistance, from 1983:

No tax woes — he just doesn’t file

Seattle (AP) — Irwin Hogenauer doesn’t fret or fume as tax deadline nears. The 70-year-old Quaker and war protester just keeps doing what he’s done since 1948 — refuse to pay.

To protest spending taxes on the military, Hogenauer hasn’t filed a tax return for 35 years.

“I’ve lived a life of principle and I’ll continue to stand by it,” he says.

Occasionally, the Internal Revenue Service checks up on him.

“Once they came to my door and asked me to sit down with them and fill out a form,” he says. “I tol them I wasn’t interested.”

Another time, he had a chat with an IRS official in Tacoma, who said “he would be sure my papers would come across his desk and I’d be hearing from him. I never heard a single thing from him,” says Hogenauer.

He is one of a small but committed group of people who resist paying income tax because of moral objection to war.

Few, however, are so extreme. Most file proper 1040 forms and, like Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen of Seattle, withhold a port of their tax equivalent to the budget’s percentage of military spending. Others wind up paying when the IRS closes in.

But Hogenauer feels that even filing a return cooperates “with the sytem of war.”

Why hasn’t the IRS grabbed him?

One reason is that his income usually hasn’t been taxable. Hogenauer, who is retired, has held a variety of jobs, including milk truck driver, bowling alley attendant, school janitor, children’s program director, carpenter, and YMCA executive secretary.

“People who are conscientious objectors often mold their lifestyles so they don’t have any taxes to pay,” said Helen Provost-Kees, IRS spokeswoman.

There’s a movement afoot — pushed by groups like “Move Your Money” — that’s encouraging people to take their money out of the big banks that have been plundering the Treasury and put it instead into other institutions like local credit unions.

Another good reason to move your money into credit unions is that, unlike banks, credit unions do not generate taxable profits, and have been tax-exempt since the credit union structure was codified by the 1934 Federal Credit Union Act.

Last month’s kamakaze attack on the IRS building in Austin was a good excuse for reporters to go back through the archives and write up something about the recent history of attacks and threats against the IRS and its employees.

One of the better of the bunch was Andrea Ball’s, for the Austin American Statesman. Excerpts:

Threats, contempt come with job for IRS workers

Some Americans heckle or mail tea bags; others, such as Stack, act in more dangerous ways.

Michelle Lowry knows first-hand how much people hate the Internal Revenue Service.

The 37-year-old Leander woman, who processes forms for the IRS in Austin, confronts that venom regularly. People slip razor blades and pushpins into the same envelopes as their W-2 forms. They send nasty notes with their crumpled documents. Last year during the height of the Tea Party movement, hundreds of taxpayers included — what else? — tea bags with their returns.

And then there’s the weird stuff.

“Sometimes you’ll see stuff that looks like blood on them,” said Lowry, who has worked as a seasonal employee for five years. “We wear gloves.”

Lowry is used to the presence of security guards at the IRS office in which she works. She’s been through evacuations caused by suspicious items in the mail, such as white powder. (It turned out to be packing material.) And while she has always known the risks of her job, she wasn’t concerned about her safety until now.

“I’m a little worried, honestly,” she said. “Every time I walk into the building, I’m going to think about it.”

Austinite Jesse Pangelinan, 41, never felt threatened during his 13 years at the IRS. He said it wasn’t until after he left the agency in 2000 to become a stand-up comedian that he came face to face with true IRS rage. After he joked about his former job at a comedy club in Ardmore, Okla., one audience member heckled Pangelinan so badly that the heckler had to be removed from the building.

“I was escorted back to my car in case he followed me,” said Pangelinan, who also works at an insurance company in Austin. “The security guard followed me back to my hotel.”

And… right on cue: another “suspicious substance” sent to an IRS building led to an evacuation and the deployment of a hazmat team. The cause of the panic was “an envelope that appeared to have seeds inside” — showing that the level of paranoia has risen to the point where things that are out-of-the-ordinary, even if they appear completely benign, are considered threatening.

The IRS has released a new Statistics of Income Bulletin with the first numbers on the 2008 tax season.

Last year, I noted that the percentage of people who filed returns that indicated that they paid no federal income tax had dropped slightly, to 32.4%. A revised figure brings that back up to 32.6% which is typical for recent years. But for tax year 2008, the percentage has jumped to 36.3%:

(These numbers only represent tax filers who owed no federal income tax for the years in question; it does not include other taxes. In tax year 2007, some people who ordinarly would not have filed a tax return — for instance because they didn’t have any income to report — filed anyway in order to claim their stimulus payment. Those people aren’t included in the totals above.)

Between 1980 and 2000 this percentage hovered in the 18–25% range. Then it climbed to this 32–33% plateau during the Dubya years. This new 36.3% figure represents a jump, but there is an even bigger jump expected from people filing this year.

From the 3 March 1913 New York Times:

Won’t Pay Tax On Babies.

Socialist Town Council Thwarted by Indignant French Mothers.

By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times

Paris, March 2.— The Socialist Municipal Council of Brest has imposed a tax of 6 cents daily on market vendors for the right to wheel handcarts through the streets. The ordinance applies to baby carriages, and mothers and nurses are up in arms at the demand that they pay 6 cents every time they take a baby out for an airing.

The first attempt to collect the tax was made yesterday, and all the women refused to pay.

The Miami News 1 March 1951

I didn’t find much else about the Riggses in on-line newspaper archives, but one other article, from 15 March 1950, reads:

Tax Collector Wins, But Refusal Registers War Tax Protest

Boston — AP — The tax collectors always catch up with Mrs. Francis R. Riggs — by her own admissions — but she feels she scores a point.

The Cambridge woman was one of nearly a score of persons who participated in a public protest yesterday against use of tax funds for military purposes.

She told reporters that for seven years she had deducted from her federal income tax that proportion she believes is being spent to prepare for war.

This year, she said, she and her husband are withholding 39.3 per cent of their tax.

“They catch up with me in the end and charge me six per cent,” Mrs. Riggs said, “but I am convinced that public protest is morally right and necessary.”

The group, led by the Rev. Wolcott Cutler of St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Charlestown, carried posters reading “I refuse war taxes” and “H-bombs return to burn.”

The posters said members of the group represented the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the War Resisters’ League and the Peacemakers.

The walked for an hour on Tremont Street between Park and Boylston Streets. The protest was timed to interest workers hurrying home at 5 P.M.

The MIT Tech ran this editorial in their 11 April 1950 edition:

The Saga of Valerie: The Tech receives all sorts of mail — bills, checks, Clipsheets from the Board of Temperance. But in garnering material for this article, I was handed a letter with the scribbled commentary, “required reading.” It is from one Valerie Riggs, who says that she has refused to pay income taxes since 1944 and is refusing again this year because, to put it simply, she doesn’t like the way the government is spending it. She says that “…those in our government who are deciding our fate for us … are consulting the cleverest minds in science to concoct the most diabolical schemes for killing innocent men, women, and children…” This is probably accurate enough to make the boys in Ballistics run their fingers around the insides of their collars, but Valerie has found the solution, fellows! Just refuse to pay your taxes, and the world situation is solved! Let’s all Laissez-faire with a big bang!

We appreciate the thought, but someone, whose initials are V.R., is being awfully idealistic. There is even an organization known as the Peacemakers whose members are doing the same as Valerie. So if any of you want to do away with your taxes, we can give you the address of these people and you too can refuse to pay. There’s only one catch — it’s illegal.

And this is from the 14 March 1952 Rome News-Tribune:

Pacifist Couple Refuses To Pay War Tax Funds

Whittier, Calif. March 14 — (AP) — A Quaker pacifist couple have mailed their income tax returns to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, minus 72.6 per cent of the tax due, which they figure is the amount the government would spend on war.

Francis Behn Riggs, 70, retired boys’ school headmaster, and his wife, Valerie, 67, said they expect the bureau to seize the missing funds from their savings accounts. “as it has been doing since 1944.”

But, Mrs. Riggs added, “There is a difference between handing the government our income tax for the military and the government taking it from us.”

Along with the returns, Mrs. Riggs sent a note saying: “My conscience tells me that the killing of human beings is a criminal act, and that paying for that killing is likewise criminal. This conviction is based on religious belief.”

War tax resisters Frank Donnelly, Larry Dansinger, and Dan Jenkins were on WERU’s “Voices” show early last month. Here’s a podcast:

Residents of Villa Nueva, Argentina have been urged to refuse to pay for road work on the grounds that the work is being paid for with federal grants that have come out of their taxes once already. Translation (mine, caveat emptor):

Villa Nueva — The town set the blame on radicalism but later, on [Mayor] Vivas.

They cover the whole city with anti-government pamphlets

The town awoke with leaflets that call on citizens not to pay for street work. The government summoned the press and condemned the deed.

It isn’t the first time. This has happened on numerous occasions, but in this case, the pamphlets appear to be signed by a Grassroots Group of Citizens, such that the Government was prompted to contest them publicly. Nevertheless, this group disassociated itself from the act and emphasized that they don’t have partisan goals and don’t seek confrontation.

Villa Nueva awoke yesterday with leaflets that called on the citizens not to pay for road work, because it came to be by means of a nonrefundable subsidy from the national government. “Seek advice,” the pamphlet said to the residents.

As is known, in the last year the city moved forward as never before in paving work with funds that mayor Guillermo Cavagnero negotiated before the government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. In November, the Executive sent to the Council a scheme under which residents would be charged a percentage of the work, as with that money to carry out others of vital importance.

The publication, which flooded the streets of the town, stresses that sewers, pavement, and lighting are brought about with money from the federal government, and that these things should not be charged.

The article goes on to relate a string of denials and finger-pointing, as everyone tries to pin the pamphlets on somebody else and to deny that they had anything to do with it.

IRS “customer” service has been getting worse, particularly their phone service. It used to be that your big problem when calling the agency at tax-time was in getting a reliable, correct answer to your tax questions. Nowadays, the problem is getting any answer at all. In 2009, only 64% of callers got through, and each of them had to wait on hold for an average of 519 seconds first.

This year the agency has gone begging to Congress for more money just so it can meet the pathetic goals of raising those numbers to 71% and 698 seconds (wait a minute… shouldn’t that second number be getting lower, not higher?).

698 seconds will get you through the classic “Help on the Way” → “Slipknot” → “Franklin’s Tower” studio version on Blues for Allah, so… tax filers, I recommend lighting up a doobie, dropping the needle on side one, and writing down your tax question ahead of time in case you forget it by the time someone picks up the phone.

For years now, a class action suit has been trudging through the court system filed on behalf of prisoners of the State of California asking for relief from conditions of imprisonment that fall below Constitutional standards.

They have good evidence for this, and so the highest court to yet hear their case agreed with them — saying, for instance, that California provides such an inadequate level of health care for those it imprisons that this is killing a prisoner every month and causing others to suffer needlessly from preventable and curable diseases.

The court ordered California to fix things, California agreed, but then dragged its heels instead. So four years (and you do the math on how many preventable deaths) later, over California’s strenuous objections, the court appointed a receiver with substantial power to oversee the prison health system and enforce the court’s orders. The receiver quickly reported that things were even worse than the court knew — “Almost every necessary element of a working medical care system either does not exist or functions in a state of abject disrepair” — and that it would take years to make things right.

California continued to drag its heels, and so finally the court ordered the state to reduce its prison population by 55,000 people within three years in order to reduce prison overcrowding to the extent that prisoner health issues might in theory be managable by the existing infrastructure. California continued to delay, appealing this ruling multiple times in multiple ways to the same court, losing each time, and finally vowing to ask the Supreme Court to rule that the Federal Court of Appeals doesn’t have the power to micromanage how a state corrects a constitutional violation (which might be more credible if the state were taking any independent steps on its own).

Why is the state so reluctant? Two reasons: 1) no politician wants to run against Willie Horton ads in the next election, and 2) the California prison guards union is very, very politically powerful, and has an interest in shaping state policy so as to increase the number of prisoners, thus the number of prisons and prison guards, thus the power of the union.

As you may be aware, the state of California is in dire financial straits, for a number of reasons. The court pointed out, hopefully, that reducing the prison population as demanded in the court order might also trim nearly a billion dollars from the state’s prison budget. But the state had a better idea: the latest California state budget cuts $811 million — 40% — from the prison health care system!

But I told you that story so I could tell you this one:

Cocktails are mixed with great sincerity at Bourbon and Branch in San Francisco. Take the Clermont Affair, a marriage of pear-infused Old Overholt whiskey, a liqueur called Amaro Nonino, barrel-aged bitters and a house-made tincture of cloves.

But for state liquor license regulators, the concoction itself is flawed. On a recent Friday night, they entered the speakeasy-themed Tenderloin tavern and warned bartenders they were breaking California law by altering alcohol — infusing it with the flavors of fruits, vegetables and spices.

Mixing elaborate drinks — say, muddling mint leaves in mojitos — and serving them immediately is OK. But, the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control agents said, Bourbon and Branch was changing the character of the booze by allowing it to mature on the shelf — “rectification” that is illegal without a special license.

The next national meeting of the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee will be held in Tucson, Arizona from May 7^th through May 9^th. And you’re invited.

The program Friday and Saturday will include a showing of the new film, Death and Taxes, produced by NWTRCC with Tucson filmmaker Steev Hise and the Pan Left Collective. Workshops and panels will cover topics about the role of war tax resistance in seeking the abolition of nuclear weapons, ending the militarization of the border, and stopping the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. There will be a beginner’s workshop on war tax resistance, stories of long time war tax resisters from around the U.S., and organizing strategies for peace and justice.

What ever happened to the tollbooth-destroying family of Rebecca and Her Daughters? Seems they’ve recently been spotted in Arizona. Excerpts:

Arizona speed cameras incite a mini revolt

A masked man, a citizens group, a judge and other motorists are behind the fight against photo enforcement.

Arizonans drive long distances on their highways, and they like to do it fast.

But since the Grand Canyon State began enforcing speed limits with roadside cameras, motorists are raging against the machines: They have blocked out the lenses with Post-it notes or Silly String. During the Christmas holidays, they covered the cameras with boxes, complete with wrapping paper.

One dissenting citizen went after a camera with a pick ax.

Arizona is the only state to implement “photo enforcement,” as it’s known, on major highways and is one of 12 states and 52 communities, plus the District of Columbia, with speed cameras, according to the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The cameras, paired with radar devices, photograph vehicles exceeding the speed limit by 11 mph or more. A notice of violation — carrying a fine of $181.50 — is then sent to the address of the vehicle’s registered owner.

Initially, the cameras were thought of as a revenue generator, expected to bring in more than $90 million in the first fiscal year of operation.

But from October 2008, when the program began, to October 2009, the cameras generated about $19 million for the state’s cash-strapped general fund, according to a report on photo radar released by the Arizona Office of the Auditor General last month.

As of September, only 38% of issued violations were paid, the report said.

Dave VonTesmar, or perhaps not — who’s to say?

The program was designed to encourage people to pay the fine and not fight their violations: No points are added to an offender’s license, and it doesn’t affect insurance.

But, critics note, that hasn’t stopped people from wanting their day in court. About half of the total violations issued are still pending because people have ignored the tickets or have requested hearings to challenge them, according to the state Department of Public Safety.

The violations put an “inordinate” load on the courts, said Terry Stewart, a court administrator with Maricopa County. People have flocked to request hearings at Phoenix courts, and at one point last year, one court branch had cases set up through 2011.

“You just have irate litigants and irate defendants coming in, just mad at the entire photo enforcement system in general,” said Steven Sarkis, a Maricopa County justice of the peace.

The most high-profile protester has been Dave VonTesmar, who has achieved statewide fame through his efforts to fight the tickets with a monkey mask. The 47-year-old flight attendant has allegedly sped past the cameras at least 40 times.

His defense?

There’s no way to prove that he was the driver wearing the mask, he says. Lots of people, he adds, drive his car.

VonTesmar, who signed up for the military on his 17th birthday, says he doesn’t fancy himself a criminal.

Amid empty soda cans on the floor of his white station wagon are various rubber disguises, including the famous monkey mask, a Frankenstein, koala, panda bear and a ghost mask that glows in the dark.

So far, four of VonTesmar’s cases have been dismissed, and he’s been found responsible for seven. The remaining 29 are pending, said VonTesmar’s attorney, Michael Kielsky.

Another dissenter is John Keegan, a judge for the Arrowhead Justice Court, who has called the cameras a constitutional violation. He rejects every photo radar ticket that comes before him.

So far, Keegan says, he’s dismissed more than 7,000 violations, potentially worth more than $1 million.

And here is some news about a small-scale tax revolt happening now in Argentina, from the pages of El Diario (translation mine):

Neighbors of CWC who met about neighborhood problems. The comrades have put floodgates in front of their homes to stop the water from the floods.

Neighborhood Service: Tax resistance in the Commercial Workers Center neighborhood

Because of lack of service, they won’t pay any more municipal taxes

The critical situation in the streets in which we live in the Commercial Workers Center of Villa Nueva, after intense stroms, has generated tax resistance of a sort among the inhabitants of the area.

Following a meeting, arranged by Civic Front councilwoman Olga Vivas, and attended by a large number from the neighborhood, the attendees decided that if the neighborhood is “no man’s land” it will not agree to pay for the services that are not being provided.

In addition to not paying taxes, the comrades warned that they will take their case to Justice, starting legal actions over the damages and losses caused by the negligence of the Department of Public Works in charge of Natalio Graglia.…

Stories like this always bring a smile to my face:

Inmates at S. Fla. jail accused of scamming IRS

Key West, Fla. — Detainees at a South Florida county jail are being accused of scamming the Internal Revenue Service by filing for fraudulent refunds and taking in as much as $100,000.

About 50 inmates from the Stock Island Detention Center in Key West were allegedly involved in the scheme.

The detainees allegedly used a standard IRS form to claim bogus refunds, filing for about $1 million in all. Most of the requested refunds were for about $5,000. Many checks were sent directly to the jail.

The scheme was discovered after a how-to note was found in an inmate’s cell.

A chief local investigator on the case who recently retired tells The Miami Herald that evidence was brought before a Miami grand jury this month. Indictments could come this week.

While I wasn’t paying attention the Conservative Political Action Conference met, nominated anti-war Republican Ron Paul as their preferred president in their straw poll, and held a panel on “Why Real Conservatives Are Against The War on Terror” that attracted 300 conferees.

But though the conservative tent has apparently grown big enough to cover the long-neglected anti-war, isolationist tendency, anti-war conservatives (like anti-war liberals) don’t really have a party to call their own, so if they want to make things happen, they have to step outside the tent.

Which they have: and who did they find outside that tent but some anti-war liberals and anti-war libertarians extending their hands in greeting.

Three dozen anti-war activists were there, ranging from progressives like Ralph Nader, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Sam Smith, Kevin Zeese, Bill Greider, Paul Buhle, Robert Dreyfuss, and Glen Ford; to libertarians like Dennis Lane and Jesse Walker; to conservatives like Doug Bandow, David R. Henderson, Kara Hopkins, William S. Lind, and George D. O'Neill. (I don’t have a complete list, so I’m just piecing this together from the bits and pieces of news about the conference I’ve been able to find on-line.)

Their goal was to build an anti-war coalition based on what they had in common: to put ideological differences aside and to talk about tactical coordination towards the common goal of a post-militarist America.

Here’s a take on the conference from Sam Smith of the Progressive Review, here’s a shorter note from Jesse Walker of Reason, and here is Kevin Zeese’s contribution to the discussion.

In 1922, the residents of Guntur jumped the gun, and, disregarding Gandhi’s pleas to wait, launched a tax resistance campaign on their own.

Gandhi Urged Calm Should He Be Seized

Ghose Asserts Civil Mass Disobedience Has Begun — Natives Not Paying Taxes.

Bombay, March 10 (Associated Prss).— While at Ahmedabad, Mohandas K. Gandhi, writing in the newspaper New India, said that if he were arrested the people should remain unmoved. He asked that they fulfill the whole constructive program framed at Bardoli “with clockwork regularity and speed like the Punjab express.”

An appeal to the public to remain calm, “as we shall show no regard for Gandhi either by observing a hartal or going mad,” was issued today by the Congress committee. The committee requests that the natives refrain from invoking a hartal and maintain “a peaceful, cordial attitude toward all.”

Special to The New York Times

Washington, March 11.— Sailendra N. Ghose, director of the American Commission to Promote Self-Government in India, said today that reports he had received from India showed that although Gandhi, the non-co-operation leader, who had just been arrested, had deferred civil mass disobedience, the Nationalists in several districts had refused to pay taxes, and in others individual land owners had taken the same course.

Mr. Ghose gave to the press, as typical of the prevailing conditions, the following report from the Secretary of the All-India Congress Committee for the District of Guntur:

“The nonpayment of taxes is very encouraging. The revenue collected from Bapatla Taluk (taluk means a district somewhat similar to a township in this country) is 1,400 supees against 200,000 (normal) in the first remittance; in Narsaravupet Taluk, 1,100 against 150,000; in Sattenapalli Taluk, 1,500 against 150,000; in Rapallo Taluk, 2,000 against 200,000; in Tenali Taluk, 6,000 against 200,000.

“Other taluks are not lagging behind.

“Village officers’ resignations are briskly proceeding. Meetings are prohibited through Tenali Taluk. Workers are disobeying in batches. Developments are expected.”

In the rural sections of India, Mr. Ghose explained, taxes are imposed by the Government, not on individuals, but on communities, the annual levy averaging between 30 and 45 per cent. of the average gross production of the district over thirty-year periods. The head man of the village is held accountable for the tax by the Government, and he is supposed to recover from the villagers.

“The figures for Guntur district are cited as typical of what is going on in many parts of India,” Mr. Ghose said.

“Although Gandhi has deferred orders for mass civil disobedience, he has encouraged individual action. In many of the communities, however, mass action has been taken and in none of those districts has the tax collected this year exceeded 10 per cent. of normal, and in some cases, as is shown by the figures for Guntur, the ratio has been less than 2 per cent.

“To counteract this, the Government in some provinces has refused to allow village officers to resign, dismissing those who refuse to carry out their duties and thus depriving their heirs of their hereditary rights as village chiefs. The Madras Government has moved to amend the law to shorten the time necessary to carry out the provisions of the Revenue Recovery Act so that land or movable property may be brought to sale immediately on failure of tax payments. Trouble is certain where the police attempt to carry out the provisions for wholesale seizures of property.

A disclaimer paragraph follows that notes that Ghose “has been an active propagandist in Washington” who “announced early in January, basing his statements on cable advices which he said he had received, that on Jan. 1 the Nationalist leaders in India had proclaimed a republic which had a mobilized force of 1,400,000 men. This information proved to be incorrect. Subsequently Mr. Ghose announced that the Indian congress had declared against the Gandhi method of ‘civil disturbance’ and was about to begin active revolution. This also proved to be an error.”

Thanks to Deuce of Clubs for plugging The Picket Line.

Today, some dispatches concerning a mass tax strike in the south of France in 1907:

Marcellin Albert

French Wine Growers’ Plan

General Refusal to Pay Taxes If Relief Is Not Soon Granted

Copyright, 1907, by The New York Times Co.

Paris, June 1.— Marcélin Albert, the leader of the winegrowers’ agitation in Southern France, does not place much reliance in the Governmental promises of relief.

He continues to organize his forces with a view to a general refusal to pay taxes after June 10, if the promises are not put in action by that date.

Strike of a French City

All Governments to be Dissolved in Wine Districts

Montpellier, France, June 9.— A monster demonstration by wine growers to-day marked the climax of the situation which has arisen becuase of a demand by the growers that the Government stop the wholesale adulteration of wine.

At the gigantic meeting held at Perpignan May 19 a resolution was passed that if the Government did not give full satisfaction to the demands of the growers a civil strike would be started June 10. At a meeting held after the parade to-day Marceline Albert referred to this resolution and announced that the time had come for action. He invited the multitude to swear solidarity of action, and immediately every hand was raised and cries of “We will stand or fall together” and “We will not pay taxes” were everywhere heard.

The Mayor of Narbonne will open the strike. He and the entire Municipal Council will resign to-morrow, after having previously dismissed all municipal employes. Officers of other cities will follow suit in the course of a few days.

The “ragged army” has been arriving in the city the last two days and nights. It slept in the public buildings, in churches placed at its disposal by the Bishop, in the parks and squares. The railroad provided more than 400 special trains to bring the people here, a feat unprecedented in the history of French railroads.

At the time fixed for the parade the people lined up at appointed places without the slightest disorder. All observers were struck by the extraordinary perfection of the organization. It was not necessary once for the troops or police to interfere with the multitude which was variously estimated was made up of from 400,000 to 600,000 persons.

A feature of the parade was the large proportion of women participating. Groups from various cities bore banners with various inscriptions and carried coffins, guillotines, &c.

After the meeting the people dispersed and began their return homeward in the same perfect order.

650,000 in a Procession

French Wine-Growers’ Revolt.

Crowds Sleep in the Open.

Paris, June 9. The population of Montpellier rose from 80,000 to-day to 730,000, when 650,000 demonstrators had arrived in more than 400 special trains from all parts of the south of France to warn the Government that, unless it yields by to-morrow to the wine-growers’ demands to raise the price of wine and stop adulteration, they will revolt — or at least adopt passive resistance.

The street scenes were of an astonishing character. By 9 o’clock last evening 150,000 had arrived, and all night long trains entered the station every quarter of an hour with crowds, many of whom had been travelling fifteen and twenty hours. Looking worn and dishevelled, they formed in serried battalions, and, headed by bands and trumpets and drums, young and old, men, women, and children, marched to their quarters in some warehouse, still, stabel, or cartshed. But there was not sufficient room for the countless thousands; pavements, public squares, and roadways were strewn with prostrate sleepers.

How they slept was a marvel, for all night long brass bands blared and drums boomed. It was pandemonium. About 2 in the morning there was a sudden wave of cold, which caused thousands to rise and stamp about for warmth. Then came the welcome news that the Bishop had ordered the cathedral and all the churches to be thrown open as night shelters. Soon every church was crammed with people eating or sleeping.

This morning five huge columns, approaching from various quarters, welded at the Arch Peyrou into one procession nine miles long, and the march through the streets began at 11. Placards threatened, “The day of reckoning is at hand,” “We will take up arms,” “Down with the deputies.” Here were 200 handsome Norbannese women in mourning, there 500 young girls robed in white muslin, with tricolor robes.

“Pay No More Taxes.”

As M. Marcelin Albert, who has been christened the “Messiah” of the movement, appeared, there was a roar of welcome. He was hailed as the “Savior of the South,” and scores of thousands wore postcards in their hats representing him as their “Napoleon.” He made a speech as follows:

“Our patience is exhausted. We have shown that we are orderly and law-abiding people. No riots or disorders have disgraced these splendid demonstrations. But now the time for action has come. From to-morrow we pay no more taxes.

“To-night the town councils of 12,000 cities, towns, boroughs, and villages in the south of France will have resigned office. Parliament has deceived us. When it was proposed to increase the deputies’ salary, six hundred members attended and unanimously and immediately voted an increase of from £300 to £600 per annum. The other day to discuss the wine crisis only twenty-seven of them attended; yet two million people are starving.

“To-morrow,” said the Mayor of Narbonne, “at 8 o’clock at night let the tocsin be sounded throughout the south of France, and from that moment let no man pay any taxes.” Roars of applause greeted these words.

Hundreds predicted that within a month France would be on the verge of a great civil war in the south — a civil war caused by purely economic reasons with which politics has nothing to do, for Republicans, Monarchists, Socialists, and Catholics will stand shoulder to shoulder in the cause of the vineyard. There is, however, no probability of such a war. It was noticed that there was a widespread demand on the part of the demonstrators that the Government should put an extra heavy duty on sugar, the assumption being that if the price of sugar was increased, it would put a stop to fraud in the manufacture of wine.

At Perpignan on Saturday night youths attempted to force their way into the railway station, which was guarded by troops. The crowd were repulsed, but stoned the soldiers. A general then stepped forward, and addressing the crowd, said, “You can stone me if you like, but do not injure my men, who are only doing as they are ordered.” The result was further to infuriate the crowd, and a bayonet charge was necessary to restore order.

…The first stage of the threatened strike, the refusal to pay taxes, has already matured, and the demonstrators have made it clear that they meant what they said. Thus far they have “made good.”…

Ernest Ferroul

The French Winegrowers

M. Marcelin Albert is at present the Government of France throughout the whole winegrowing district of the South. A month ago he was conferring with M. Clemenceau quite on equal terms. Rather later he admitted to a reporter of The Matin that his ultimatim was, so to speak, placed with too short a fuse; that it was not reasonable to expect that the French Legislature could prepare and pass the body of laws demanded by the wine-growers in a fortnight; that the date of the first stage of the strike, the refusal of the winegrowers to pay their taxes, fixed for June 9, in the evening, had been fixed too soon and without due consideration. “I regret it,” manfully avowed M. Albert.

The viticulturist leader evidently meant that his hand had been forced. The normal population of Montpellier is about 75,000. There were half a million angry viticulturalists there last Sunday, insisting on immediate action. The leader can no longer guarantee absence of disorder, as he did to the Prime Minister a month ago, when he expostulated upon the sending of troops against a law-abiding population.

“Do not give the Government a day more” than June 10, exclaimed the fiery M. Ferroul on May 26. He has been “brusquing things” ever since. For, after the first stage of the strike, the refusal to pay taxes, it was resolved, in the original programme, that a week’s delay should be accorded to the Government before the second stage, that of paralyzing the Government by the cessation of all official life and the vacating of all the offices, was to take place.

The fiery Ferroul has hauled down the flag from his “mairie,” and replaced it with a streamer of crêpe within forty-eight hours after the first stage arrived. He has been followed by the whole municipal “outfits” of Perpignan, Montpellier, and Florensac. In truth, the whole wine growing district is given over to anarchy.

One cannot acquit the French Government of responsibility. The voters of the South take their Socialism seriously, and call, after election, for the fulfillment of electioneering pledges.

French Mayors Must Stay.

Premier Warns Them They Are Still Responsible for Local Affairs.

[excerpts]

Paris, June 12.— The Government is determined to refuse to accept the resignations of the municipal officers, so long as their resignations are not accepted by the Prefects. As no representatives of the central Government can be appointed to carry on the duties of the officials who have resigned, a deadlock in municipal affairs has been created.

In a letter to the Mayors, Premier Clemenceau to-day warns them of the serious results to the people they represent if the officials carry out their determination not to perform their functions. He points out that the law of 1884 gives him a month in which to decide whether he will accept their resignations.

Until the expiration of that time under the law the municipalities are responsible for properly carrying on the duties of their offices. Should they refuse to, the public services will be completely suspended, marriages cannot be celebrated, nor can permits for burials be issued.

M. Clemenceau further reminds the Mayors that the local treasuries will be bankrupted by their refusal to pay taxes, the Communes will lose their share of the taxes, and in the event of the taxes not being collected the Government will refuse to make the advances necessary to meet local expenses.

The leaders of the winegrowers’ movement do not appear the least daunted by Premier Clemenceau’s action. The Central Committee met to-night at Argeliers and adopted resolutions of serious import. Circulars will be sent to all communes where the municipality has resigned, giving instructions to refuse to permit any persons sent to replace the Mayor or to enter the Mayor’s office, to close all municipal offices and to discharge all officials. All Government correspondence is to be returned unopened.

Out of 1,000 odd communes in the four departments involved, more than 120 already are in a state of municipal anarchy, and fresh resignations poured into the prefectures all day long. The quitting of municipal officers is unsually attended with much ceremony. Generally a crape streamer is hoisted at the flagstaff, and the Mayor burns his official sash in public.

The Mayor of Capestang, a Socialist, harangued to-night a crowd of 10,000 persons who, with uplifted hands, swore blind obedience to the Argeliers committee and pledged themselves to go in a body and coerce the communes where the municipalities show a lack of inclination to join the movement.

Meanwhile the municipalities continue to join the anti-tax strike, and altogether some fifty local bodies in the four deparements most concerned have handed in their restignations.

In some of the towns the outgoing Mayors and town councils are taking the precaution to wall up the doors of the town halls, in order to keep out any temporary Administrative Commissioners whom the Prefects might appoint, and committees have been nominated to see individuals who have not undertaken not to pay taxes.

Except in isolated instances the strike is merely a form of passive resistance. No disturbances of any moment have been reported among the civilian population, though the attitude of some of the regiments recruited in the south occasions anxiety.

The annual garrison manoeuvres at Narbonne, Department of Aude, which ought to commence to-morrow, have been abandoned. General Bailloud, in issuing the order, added significantly:

“Regiments must not even be permitted to enter the town. All drills and exercises must be carried out in the barracks.”

The object of the order is to keep the troops from fraternizing with the discontented wine growers.

To Peal of Dread Tocsin, Millions of Ruined French Wine Growers Rise in Rebellion

Paris, June 18.— The whole south of France, from the Atlantic and the Spanish frontier to the River Rhone, is in a state of half anarchy and rebellion, through the strike of all civic officials, department, city, town and commune, as a paralyzing emphasis of the demand for government aid.

The tocsin, the dread French signal for civil war, has sounded from steeple to steeple in one long peal from city to town to village. The revolt in all this wide territory is unanimous.

Thousands of French regulars — an army — are beginning to penetrate the beautiful country of the Rhone to prevent or put down the formidable uprising that is momentarily expected.

Narbonne is the center of the disturbance. A half million grapegrowers fathered there in one day and with uplifted hands swore to refuse to pay taxes until parliament furnished relief. Scores of mayors have resigned and closed up municipal buildings.…

A telegram from the Paris correspondent of the London “Daily Telegraph” states:— “The proportions assumed by the agitation among the wine growers in the south are attracting general attention. The small peasant proprietors are desperate, and their committee has decided that if nothing is done for them by the Government and Parliament during the next few weeks they will refuse to pay their taxes. A collector in the department of the Aude met with a very sorry adventure. Visiting a town in his district, he proceeded to the mairie, and was setting to work when the alarm was given by a peal of bells, and in a few minutes quite 1000 persons had assembled in front of the building, crying, ‘Down with taxation! Down with the collector! Throw him into the water!’ Some of the bolder men broke into the town hall, possessed themselves of the books, and flung them into the street. But for the timely interference of two members of the wine-growers’ committee, who put the poor man into a carriage, which left at full speed amid the jeers of the crowd, he would have been roughly handled. Now there is talk of a wholesale strike of the municipal councils in the Aude and the Herault if Parliament does not give the wine-growers satisfaction by June 10. ‘Le Journal’s’ special correspondent gives an account of a conversation with the Mayor of Narbonne, who told him that he would himself set the example. It would be followed by all the other municipalities in the two departments.”

The French Wine BIll

The Disturbed Provinces.

Incitements to Revolt.

Statement by the Premier.

Agitation Against Adulteration.

Extraordinary Scenes.

Rioters Dispersed by the Troops.

Exciting Scenes.

Women Armed with Pitchforks.

The Origin of the Trouble.

Hasty Legislation.

Wine Adulteration Prohibited.

An Amazing Interview.

Paris, June 18. M. Sarrant (Under-secretary of the Interior), who is deputy for Narbonne and the wine-growing district, has resigned owing to the refusal of the Government to meet the wishes of the peasants on the question of wine adulteration. His withdrawal is likely to weaken the Ministry.

Owing to the number of untrustworthy regiments in the four provinces disturbed by the agitation of the peasants over the Wine Bill the Government is replacing them with better-disciplined troops.

June 19. In connection with the trouble in the wine districts many atempts have been made to incite to revolt, and there have been threats to burn the property of those mayors failing to resign and of those taxpayers who satisfy the taxgatherers’ demand.

The Chamber of Deputies recognises the gravity of the situation, and heartily supported M. Clemenceau’s declaration that orders had been given for legal action to pursue its course. The Premier added that the State must be supreme, and the normal and regular working of the administrative and judicial machinery must be restored. He had put the national force at the disposal of the law. He would avoid bloodshed as far as possible, but when there was an insurrection against the law in three departments, when local Separatist committees professed to take the Government’s place and set up a sort of provincial government, when resignations were enforced by intimidation, the law must be applied.

M. Sarrant remarked: “When conciliation failed, as M. Clemenceau said, the law must prevail. As a Frenchman I acknowledge that he is right, but my resignation will promote pacification. The offenders are old comrades of mine, brothers in arms, whom I advised to trust the Republic and revert to legal methods.” — (Cheers.)

Extraordinary scenes are reported from Narbonne in connection with the agitation in the disturbed provinces against wine adulteration. Late last night the tocsin sounded at the Town Hall, and the people poured into the street and began to erect barricades.

M. Ferroul, an ex-mayor, whose arrest had been ordered, stopped them, saying: “We want no barricades; I will surrended myself to justice. I want no bloodshed.” He then summoned the townspeople to destroy the barricades, and himself set the example. The people obeyed, and the barricades were removed.

The troops subsequently occupied Narbonne, and M. Ferroul was arrested without disturbance.

The detectives, with a military escort, went to Angellicas to arrest M. Albert and five others. They arrested three, but failed to find M. Albert.

There are indications that committees in the disaffected departments sought to establish a confederation with M. Albert as president, hoping to obtain an auto-constitution.

Trains full of troops were moved about changing garrisons yesterday and removing to a distance troops recruited from among the southern population.

June 20. Serious rioting has occurred at Narbonne. At night the crowd, which consisted of a party of peasants, emptied a can of paraffin over the door of a wine manufacturer’s establishment and attempted to ignite it, but were repulsed by the soldiers stationed in the courtyard.

The demonstrators then tried to enter through the gardens. The troops charged repeatedly, but it was an hour and a half before they succeeded in dispersing the rioters. Some of the gendarmes were wounded.

The troops at Montpellier scattered a crowd which collected outside the prison, cheering M. Ferroul.

M. Clemenceau’s latest despatches show that tranquility has been restored in the south.

The crowd at Narbonne, surrounding M. Ferroul’s carriage, hissed the troops escorting him to the station. Thereupon the infantry fixed bayonets, and the cavalry dispersed the demonstrators, who later on threw stones at the troops, injuring the colonel.

M. ALbert, the organizer of the peasants’ protest against wine adulteration, escaped, disguised as a women.

A fresh wine-growers’ committee will take the place of the arrested men.

When M. Ferroul was arrested at Narbonne the military were obstructed by a large body of women armed with pitchforks, their leader wearing a red cap and carrying a big pistol.

M. Ferroul appeared at his window in a nightcap and pyjamas. He urged his bodyguard to remain calm, declaring: “I will surrended. This is the proudest day of my life. It needed 10,000 soliders to arrest me.”

June 21. A message from Narbonne, dated June 19, delayed in transmission, reports that a patrol of cuirassiers, being hissed, charged the mob in the Boulevard Gambetta with drawn swords. The rioters hurled chains at the soliders’ horses, and one horse was killed. The cuirassiers then fired a carbine volley, the rioters replying with revolvers.

Fifteen of the demonstrators were women, and one was killed. Barricades were erected, which the infantry demolished.

Two of the wounded have since died. Many soldiers were wounded.

Martial law was proclaimed on Thursday.

In reply to an interpolation in the Chamber of Deputies, M. Clemenceau declared that the troops had defended, and would continue to defend, the public buildings when attacked. His orders to the troops were not to load their rifles until the last minute, and only to fire in the event of extreme danger. Though his heart bled, his duty was clear, for the unity of the country was at stake. The troops defending the sub-prefecture of Narbonne were assailed with revolver shots.

M. Mulas (interrupting): “They did not reply. They are heroes.” — (Prolonged and unanimous cheers.)

M. Clemenceau went on to say that the firing was continued and the men were seen to fall. The mob was twice summoned to disperse, and the what might be expected happened. One of the rioters was killed and 15 wounded, but it was feared that the number of troops wounded was still greater. The officials at Narbonne were unable to do their work. Similar events had occurred at Montpellier, ex-convicts being included among the rioters, several of whom had been arrested. Nearly all of those arrested at Montpellier were youths, belonging to the Anti-Republican party.

This statement led to uproad amongst the members of the Right and cheers from the Left, with cries: “They are hooligans, not wine-growers, who attacked the public buildings at night.”

The Premier (M. Clemenceau) stated this evening that since 1 o’clock in the afternoon he had been unable to communicate with the Narbonne authorities.

According to the newspaper Intransigeant, in the first conflict at Narbonne, when the crowd attacked the door of the sub-prefecture, the gendarmes in the courtyard drove them off with a volley, using only blank cartridge. The mob, discovering this, renewed the struggle, and were subjected to another volley, this time with ball cartridge. Shortly afterwards the Boulevard Gambetta incident occurred.

There was further rioting at Narbonne yesterday. The populace, using revolvers, attacked the police at the station. A party of soldiers emerging were compelled to fire, killing four and wounding 11.

A large body of rioters at Perpignan set fire to the prefecture in four places. The fires were extinguished.

The Wine-growers’ Committee urges the populace to remain quiet and appeal to the authorities.

Unless there are further disturbances the cavalry will be withdrawn and the infantry left to maintain order.

The mob at Perpignan attacked the prefecture with paving stones, set fire to the coachhouse, and flung the furniture into the flames. The gendarmes finally dispersed them.

June 22. M. Albert, one of the leaders of the agitation, has been arrested.

A hundred thousand peasants attended the funeral of one of the leaders shot at Narbonne.

Further details of the mutinous outbreak at Agde show that the mutineers numbered 607. They first plundered the magazine, and afterwards asked to be allowed to return free from disciplinary measures. M. Clemenceau, however, refused to negotiate with the rebellious soldiers, who thereupon declined to surrended. These men had at the commencement of the wine trouble been withdrawn from Beziers because of their sympathy with the wine-growers.

Upon learning of the outbreak General Lancroissade, the officer commanding at Beziers, tried to turn the mutineers back peaceably, but declined to take the responsibility of ordering his own men to attack them.

Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies M. Clemenceau heartily endorsed General Lancroissarde’s decision, and announced that General Baillard went unaccompanied and induced the mutineers to return to the barracks.

Great uproar prevailed among the deputies for some hours, and the Chamber was a regular pandemonioum.

A vote of confidence in the Government was finally carried by 326 to 223.

The arrest of M. Albert, one of the leaders in the wine revolt, is unconfirmed.

The Wine-growers’ Defence Committee has issued a placard to cease all demonstrations.

Owing to the disturbances, the Republican Committee of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture has posponed the banquet that was to be given on Monday in honour of Sir W. Laurier.

All public engagements of the French Ministers, either in Paris or in the provinces, have been cancelled.

It is officially announced that the disaffected areas are calmer.

The Chamber of Deputies hurriedly passed a bill preventing the adulteration of wines, which is at the root of the trouble.

The Agde mutineers have resumed work, and appear heartily sorry for their escapade.

June 24. Several thousand peasants met and urged the municipalities of Var, which M. Clemenceau represents in the Senate, to resign.

Amazement is expressed in Paris at M. Albert’s action in calling at the Ministry of the Interior and obtaining a short interview with M. Clemenceau, who spoke very severely and harshly, whereupon M. Albert expressed contrition, and urged the release of M. Ferroul and others and the withdrawal of troops, adding that quiet would then be restored. M. Clemenceau replied: “There’s only one thing to do, and that is to submit to the law.”. He added: “Go away and surrender yourself as a prisoner.” M. Albert has started for the south.

London, June 20. M. Yves Guyot, in a letter to The Times, states that four departments are concerned in the wine crisis. They represent three and three-fifths per cent. of the population of France; their vinyards are only one-fifth of the surface of the four departments; and their output is 30 per cent. of France’s total quantity and 15 per cent. of the total value. The cause of the crisis was manifest after the phylloxera scare. Italian wines were prohibited and the Spanish heavily taxed. The wine-growers in the four departments, imagining they commanded the home market, planted a vine called the Aramon, which yielded much fruit juice but very little alcohol, the result being that the wine will not keep and cannot be transported. Then the wine-growers, wishing to strengthen their wine, added sugar to the vintage, as it changes into alcohol. They next added water. They previously had too much wine that was too feeble in quality, and then they made more wine of worse quality. The wine trade refused to purchase it, and the wine-growers tried to conduct the trade themselves, but were compelled to seek isolated customers, and incurred losses.

June 21. Reuter states that 300 infantry left the barracks at Agde with arms and ammunition, marched to Beziers, and there joined the rioters.

The colonel of the 139^th Regiment at Narbonne, disgusted with the slaughter, tore up his cap before his men, and then resigned.

June 24. According to a Reuter message, M. Clemenceau accepted M. Albert’s pledge to persuade the peasants to revert to legal methods, and justified his clemency by remarking at an interview with journalists, “If disasters occur I wish at least to have done all possible to avert them.”

Marcellin Albert as Don Quixote

Man Who Has Aroused Southern France

Marcelin Albert Has a Million of Peasants Under His Command but Promises to Preserve Order.

[excerpt]

“It has not been easy,” said the agitator. “There is an abyss between conceiving an idea and putting it into practice. I have seen the misery, and patiently I waited for comrades to join me. The authorities all laughed and said I was a fool, but I said nothing and worked, going from village to village talking only to the peasants. I am an enemy of all societies, for a society is able to exist only by dependence upon those who compose it. I have been insulted, villified, and every one gave me a kick. This went on for years. But I remained tranquil, knowing that the time had not come. The newspapers refused to print my communications and I said, ‘Bon, Bon! Ca va-bien!’ But as the misery and hunger grew the peasants began to listen.”

Disorders in French Wine Districts.

Legislature Supports the Premier.

Demand for Reduction of Taxes.

Paris, 29^th June. The Chamber of Deputies, by 324 votes to 233, has approved M. Clemenceau’s measures to enforce the law in the southern districts, where there is serious disaffection in consequence of evils in connection with the wine industry. The majority are confident that the Premier will be able to effect a settlement by conciliation.

In the meantime the Winegrowers’ Conference at Argeliers has demanded a reduction of taxes, and has resolved to continue the municipal strike (non-payment of present taxes) even if the Government should send bayonets.…

In negotiating for a French translation of Ellis Parker Butler’s classic masterpiece, “Pigs is Pigs” (The McClure company), the author learned that the following amusing parallel to his famous guinea pig controversy had actually taken place in France. It was in the south where the wine growers refuse to pay taxes to the government. A farmer had had half a dozen rabbits sent him by a friend; he refused to pay duty on them, whereupon they control or local customs tried to sell the six “original” rabbits and their offspring at auction. The inhabitants have now boycotted the auction sales so that the local officials must feed the rabbits till the case is settled by the courts.

So, do you want to hear what I think of Joe Stack flying his plane into the IRS building?

Every year, the IRS Oversight Board conducts what it calls a “Taxpayer Attitude Survey” in which it hires a polling company to ask a set of questions to a randomly-phoned set of 1,000 households. The latest survey results were released several days back.

There are a few questions that use loaded phrases to elicit answers that are in favor of compliance with tax laws, a few questions that ask people to rank their favorite enforcement priorities, some questions about what sort of IRS services they think are most important and what they think of current IRS services, some questions to gauge public opinion about possible IRS funding increases (which seem mostly designed to help the agency craft its pleas to Congress at budget-time), and a couple of miscellaneous ones.

The loaded questions are things like (emphasis mine):

• How much, if any, do you think is an acceptable amount to cheat on your income taxes?
• [Do you agree that] it is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes?
• [Do you agree that] everyone who cheats on their taxes should be held accountable?

Predictably, people overwhelmingly report that cheating is bad and fair shares are good. Which tells us little, but makes for good press releases touting the culture of compliance that the government relies on.

(The one non-loaded question in this category is “taxpayers should just have to pay what they feel is a fair amount.” Last year, 11% of those polled “completely” agreed with that statement, another 15% merely agreed with it, 31% “mostly” disagreed, and 41% “completely” disagreed.)

Conversations with the Tax Collector about Poetry (detail), Aleksandr Mikhailovich Rodchenko, 1926

A more telling “taxpayer attitude survey” may be the one informally conducted by TIGTA when it counts the number of violent threats against IRS employees it investigates.

In the past four years, there appears to have been a “steady, upward trend” in the number of threats against IRS employees, said an official with the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration.

I don’t recommend violent defense against or reprisals against IRS employees.

That said, if you are going to burn your house down and fly your plane into a building, the IRS building is an excellent choice of targets. As much as I don’t think Joe Stack’s recent suicide attack was anything like a good idea, an IRS building in flames strikes me as much less of a public nuisance than the same building prekindled. But really: don’t. Play the video game instead.

My feelings about righteous violence are complicated. I haven’t been able to reduce them to a philosophical system the way that confident pacifists of various flavors, Christian non-resistants, or libertarian non-aggressors have. It has been many years since I last felt justified in being physically violent toward someone, and I don’t think it did much but provide a cathartic outlet for my rage, which doesn’t much improve the incident in my memory of it with the passing of time. I don’t own a firearm, and don’t much go in for revolutionary fantasies of people rising up and storming the castle or of a small vanguard setting things to rights one bomb at a time. On the other hand, I think there’s probably a time and a place for well-applied violence, both when it is the best, most effective, and most just path toward a good end, and because some smug, criminal sons of bitches need to get their faces stomped in the dirt for the satisfaction of their betters.

There’s where we are now, in this dark age in which mendacity, thievery, murder, torture, and the like are enshrined into respected institutions and their practitioners are laureled and praised. And then there’s where we want to be: in some barely-imaginable future in which people have too much self-respect to put up with such barbaric nonsense.

Some folks think the key to getting from point A to point B is fear. If the thieves and murderers and what-not know that an armed populace of good and honest people is watching them and won’t let them get away with their shenanigans, pretty soon nobody will stick their necks out and try to get away with something they shouldn’t. To this end, it makes good sense to make sure IRS agents, for instance, know that pursuing their line of work isn’t safe.

I don’t buy it. Fear only serves the good when the good are more frightening than the evil, and how likely is that, really, in the world we currently live in? The day that good people are numerous enough and powerful enough to out-frighten the government will probably be several days after they no longer have any need to. The next thing that comes on the scene that’s more frightening and imposing than the government will probably be worse than it, too.

But while I don’t consider Stack’s actions to have been wise, neither were those of Vernon Hunter. I find it hard to shed any tears over the death of the 30-year IRS employee, a “proud” Vietnam veteran with 20 years of Army service under his belt, whom Stack killed when he flew his plane into the IRS building. Saying “he didn’t write the tax laws” is no more excuse than saying of Stack “he didn’t build the plane.” And yet, I feel for his family and I wish he hadn’t been killed.

It would be easier for me to explain my position were I a pacifist, a non-resistant, or someone who had signed on to the non-aggression principle as my North Star. I could then argue forward from one of these principles, and you could take it or leave it based on whether my logic was sound and whether my principles were also yours.

Even if I were short-term pragmatic, it would be easier. I could say, “the time is not yet right for a violent uprising; such individual acts of retribution against government agents are counter-productive,” and many folks would nod their heads and agree or at least understand where I was coming from.

But actually I’m tempted to agree that someone who is victimized by the IRS is in fact fully justified in defending himself or herself with violence against the actual IRS agents who are the agents of this victimization (justified, mind you, not necessarily wise). And I think that short-term pragmatism of the sort I described is sometimes wise but often just a mask for a sort of endless inertia where fantasies of an eventual “right time” are substitutes for the sort of forthright action that takes the lead.

But my instincts lead me to an even weirder position that I have a hard time justifying: that from a long term pragmatic perspective, even if violence were effective in helping us right the scales of justice and reach our short-term goals, that the same violence would end up salting the earth underneath us, and we’d find that even in the wake of a bloody revolution that succeeded beyond our wildest hopes, all the pain of it put us more or less back where we started from, or worse. Not only is violence not the only answer, it’s not even an answer. There’s no answer, I suspect, but the difficult, frustratingly slow, nigh impossible task of trying to foment a revolution of values that will make a revolution of blood and fire unnecessary or, anyway, merely ancillary.

Such a thing is not just a pipe dream. There have been revolutions of this sort in history (consider, for instance, the emergence and triumph of abolitionism in the span of a single generation in the British empire).

It does require a patience and faith and a weird love for the human project, since, unlike bloody vengeance, which you can imagine completing in your lifetime with the decapitation of the King or what-have-you, this sort of project will inevitably be unfinished at your death. It requires hard work. It requires the same fierce determination, kamakaze fury, righteous anger, and eagerness to sacrifice that might lead someone to fly a plane into a building, but without the boom at the end, without the satisfaction of being able to think “well, this time I’ll have the last word,” without the catharsis of blood. I think it may be the best hope we’ve got.

Back on the fourth I showed you how you can brew your own beer at home. Today I’ll show you how to make hard cider, which is even easier.

All you really need to start with is a fermentation chamber of some sort (I’m using a glass carboy), some wine yeast, and a bunch of apple juice. This should be real juice, not “apple flavored corn syrup beverage” — and pasteurized, not preserved with any chemical preservatives that might prevent the yeast from thriving. The ingredients should be simply “apple juice” or “apple juice concentrate and water” or something like that. Some manufacturers add citric acid as a preservative, and in my experience that doesn’t cause any problems.

If you’re lucky enough to live near an orchard, you can get the juice fresh and unpasteurized from there. My local brewing guru swears that the natural yeast that you’ll find in unpasteurized orchard juice is just exactly the yeast you need to make cider with, so if you do this you don’t need to add yeast — but I haven’t tried this myself enough to vouch for it.

I usually use the cheap stuff, but one time I used some premium apple juice from Martinelli’s and I could sure tell the difference: crisp, dry, delicious cider, with tiny, champagne-like bubbles. Yum!

My carboy, six gallons of apple juice (it was for some reason cheapest to buy in the 2-quart bottles: $18 for six gallons), an airlock, a bag of priming dextrose, a package of wine yeast, and, (optional) some spices: star anise, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

First, clean your fermentation chamber and funnel (I use a mild bleach solution and then rinse with regular tap water until there’s no bleach smell). Then, if you’re going to be fancy, you can optionally boil a handful of spices (I use star anise, nutmeg, and cinnamon) in just enough water to cover for a minute. Add this and the apple juice to your fermentation chamber, pour in the yeast, and pop the airlock on top.

My work is done… it’s up to the yeast now.

Within a couple of days, the apple juice will become cloudy and effervescent and you may notice a sort of “off” smell of rotting fruit bubbling from the airlock. There probably won’t be as much “froth” on top as there is with beer, nor will there be as much sediment falling to the bottom.

The cider becomes more cloudy at the height of fermentation.

Some folks insist you should let this process go on for weeks or months, but in my experience, a week is usually plenty. In any case, you should wait until things have settled down, the cider is back to looking uncloudy, and the airlock has mostly stopped bubbling. Then from here things proceed to the bottling stage just as with beer.

First I sterlize enough bottles to hold the cider, using the heated-dry cycle in our dishwasher.

Sterilizing bottles in the dishwasher

I use a special, bottle-filling hose attachment (an inexpensive plastic necessity) to fill the bottles — fifty or more per batch — and then cap them using a hand-me-down stand capper (cappers are less-inexpensive, but also necessary unless you go for self-capping Grolsch-style bottles or the cork-and-cage champagne style caps).

Before bottling, I boil a cup of priming sugar (ordinary dextrose) in a cup of water, cool this, and mix it gently into the cider (trying to distribute it throughout without stirring up the sediment too much). This extra sugar gives the yeast a little something more to work on while the cider is in the bottles, causing enough additional fermentation to carbonate the cider.

I use a hand-me-down stand capper to bottle my cider.

Then it’s about a two or three week wait before it’s ready to drink. That’s it.

I’ve put up a hand-crafted, semantic XHTML version of Henry Tobit Evans’s 1910 book Rebecca and Her Daughters: Being a History of the Agrarian Disturbances in Wales Known as “The Rebecca Riots” on The Picket Line. Enjoy.

The book was left unfinished at the author’s death and was then completed by his daughter. The editing and editorial voice are both uneven, but the book is a valuable collection of source material and a good chronology of the Rebeccaite uprising.

I found the story fascinating. This was a widespread, well-organized, sophisticated peasant uprising that enjoyed enormous success in the face of strong government efforts at suppression and subversion and various attempts by establishment liberals to reroute the discontent into ineffectual legal channels. For a time, “Rebecca” was Queen of Wales, the sovereign of her nation.

Thanks to John Kindley at People v. State for plugging The Picket Line.

Yesterday I noted one author’s comparison of the Rebecca Rioters to another set of tollbooth-destroyers a century earlier called “Jack a Lents.” Hunting up information on the Jack a Lents has been tougher, but there are some notes in Thomas Wright’s England Under the House of Hanover:

The following particulars relating to these insurgents are taken from the Daily Gazetteer of Oct. 8 and Dec. 9, 1735:—

Hereford, October 4— There are now committed to the county gaol two, and more are daily expected, of the Ledbury rioters, who rather deserve the name of rebels, for they appeared a hundred in a gang, armed with guns and swords, as well as axes to hew down the turnpikes, and were dressed in women’s apparel, with high-crown’d hats, and their faces blacken’d. I suppose you have heard of the attack they made at Ledbury on the 21^st of September, about nine o’clock at night, when in two hours’ time they cut down five or six turnpikes to the ground; but, before they had gone through all their work, they were disturbed by a worthy magistrate in the neighbourhood, John Skipp, Esq.; who, being in the commission of the peace, caused the proclamation to be read against riots, and then the act of Parliament; but to no purpose; for this gentleman, with his servants and neighbours, going to defend the last turnpike, a skirmish ensued, in which he took two of those miscreants prisoners, whom he secured for that night in his own house; but the whole gang appeared soon after, who demanded the said prisoners, threatening, in case of refusal, to pull his house down, and burn his barns and stables, and immediately discharged several loaded pieces into the house, which happily did no damage. The justice finding himself and family beset in such a manner, discharged several blunderbusses and fowling-pieces at them, whereby one was shot dead on the spot, and several so wounded, that ’tis not believed they will recover. At this the rioters fled with precipitation, leaving their two companions behind them. But ’tis fear’d that more blood will yet be spilt, the country being in the greatest confusion, and I am informed that an attempt is designed upon the county gaol; but the quarter sessions being to be held next week, a petition will no doubt be presented to the justices for relief.

Hereford, Dec. 6.— You have already heard that two men were committed to the keeper of the gaol of this county, for the riot at Ledbury. I am now to acquaint you, that on Sunday last above twenty of those turnpike cutters or levellers, as they call themselves, though that is a character by much too good for them, met with the said keeper at the King’s Head Inn at Ross fair, and demanding his reasons for detaining those two men in custody, without giving him time to return an answer, dragged him out of the inn into the street, knocked him down several times, and almost murdered him, notwithstanding all that the innkeeper and his servants could do to prevent it, who were used in a very cruel manner for assisting him. The villains immediately carried the keeper to Wilton’s Bridge, where at first they concluded to throw him into the river Wye; but at length they agreed to carry him to a place where they would secure him till they themselves had fetched the prisoners out of custody. The better to complete that design, they dragged him four miles in his boots and spurs, to a place called Horewithey, a public-house, where he was kept prisoner, beat in a shameful manner by those merciless wretches, and obliged to write a discharge to the turnkey, being threatened, in case of refusal, to be hanged upon the spot. Four gentlemen from Hereford, who followed them, and endeavoured to dissuade them from such wickedness and cruelty, were inhumanly beat, and obliged to ride off for their lives. After they had detained the keeper near six hours at the house aforesaid, they ferried him over the Wye, walked him about the country till near four o’clock in the morning, and then robbed him of his money. Those that robbed him made off, but left others to guard him, who, quarrelling and fighting about dividing the booty, it gave the keeper an opportunity to make his escape out of the villains’ hands with his life, but not without bruises in abundance.

This illustration, commonly found on-line as a contemporary representation of the Rebeccaites, is actually a political cartoon from Punch that compares the agitators for Irish independence with the Rebecca Rioters. In the cartoon, Irish independence fighter Daniel O’Connell, dressed as a woman, joins in hacking away at the gate of Union, Tithes, Church Rates, and Poor Laws, while Prime Minister Robert Peel hides in the gatehouse.

Here are a few more data points regarding the “Rebecca Riots.” A letter from Colonel George Rice Trevor includes this detail:

I have just heard that on Thursday last there was a meeting held in the village of Pontyberem, attended by 2 or 300 persons, most of whom, it is said, were armed and disguised, and that there were several hundred more who appeared to be lookers on. These men, it is said, made the inn-keeper swear not to entertain Lewis, the Toll Collector, and als made some special constables promise not to serve, and took away their staves.

A later letter from the same author shows how difficult it was for the government to get local juries to act against the rioters, and the extent to which the government was going to try to find cooperative witnesses:

About 2 o’clock, on 9 September, a party of men disguised in white dresses, went to Hendy Gate, about half a mile from Pontarddulais. They carried out the furniture from the toll-house, and told the old woman, whose name was Sarah Williams, to go away and not return. She went to the house of John Thomas, a labourer, and called him to assist in extinguishing the fire at the toll-house, which had been ignited by the Rebeccaites. The old woman then re-entered the toll-house. The report of a gun or pistol was soon afterwards heard. The old woman ran back to John Thomas’s house, fell down at the threshold, and expired within two minutes. She had received several cautions to collect no more tolls. On 11 September an inquest was held before William Bonville, Coroner. Two surgeons, Ben Thomas, Llanelli, and John Kirkhouse Cooke, Llanelli, gave evidence that on the body were marks of shot, some penetrating the nipple of left breast, on in the armpit of the same side, and several shot marks on both arms. Two shots were found in the left lung. In spite of all this evidence the jury found “that the deceased died from effution of blood into the chest occasioned, suffocation, but from what cause is to this jury unknown.”

[T]he Secretary of State will authorise the offer by you of Her Majesty’s most gracious pardon to any person concerened in the murder of the woman at Ponthendy gate, who shall give information and evidence so as to convict the offenders, excepting such persons as actually fired the shot which deprived her of life. And also that he will recommend of the payment of a further reward of £200 in addition to that sum offered by Mr. Chambers for the detection of the persons who set her property on fire, excepting always anyone who actually set fire to the premises and stacks, and so that no principal offender shall receive any part of the award in question. He will advise in this case the grant of Her Majesty’s most gracious pardon to an accomplice under the same restriction, namely, that it is not to be extended to any one who actually set fire to any of the property consumed.

A page devoted to Trevor, the government’s main man on the ground in Carmarthen includes these details:

George Rice Trevor rushed back from his London residence to take over the responsibility of law and order in Carmarthenshire from his elderly father, a task he undertook with evident relish. And when Rebecca burned down corn stacks on his own Dinefwr estate in Llandeilo he quickly discovered he had a personal interest in the drama that was rapidly developing in his own backyard. And there was more to come, as his biographer in the 2004 Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) reveals:

Trevor assured a meeting of magistrates at Newcastle Emlyn in June 1843 that he would order troops to fire on the rioters if necessary. The response of the protesters was predictably fearsome: in September 1843, they audaciously dug a grave within sight of Dinefwr Castle, the family seat, and announced that Trevor would occupy it by 10 October. Trevor, however, surrounded by soldiers, survived unscathed.

A note in the book The Statutes of Wales gives more evidence as to the antiquity of the peculiar form of the insurrection:

Although the Rebecca riots are chiefly remembered in connection with Wales, it is extremely interesting to note that nearly one hundred years earlier similar disturbances took place in England, where turnpikes had been first established. In August, 1749, a great number of people in Somersetshire and Gloucesterschire, some disguised in womens’ clothes, headed by leaders on horseback with blackened faces, had attacked the turnpike gates in those counties. They were called “Jack a Lents.” The course of these disturbances was much like that of the later Rebecca riots of the nineteenth century in Wales.

Following is a report on a paper that George Thomas read before the Cardiff Naturalists Society on “The Riots of Rebecca and Her Daughers”:

In the early part of his paper Mr. Thomas pointed out that the phrase “Rebecca and her Daughters,” by which the turnpike rioters of South Wales were known, had probably a Biblical origin, being assumed in irreverent allusion to the blessing pronounced on Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, — “Be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.” (Genesis xxiv. 60.) The name “Becca” was not confined to one individual, but was given to the leader for the occasion. Similar disturbances had occurred in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire as far back as 1730, accounts of which appear in the public prints of the time.

The “Becca” riots in South Wales took place in 1843. They originated in the circumstances of the turnpike roads being held under separate trusts, the trustees of which found it necessary, in order to protect the interest of the tally-holders, to place their gates near the confines of their districts, so as to prevent persons from other districts travelling over their roads free of charge. It thus happened that, while persons living and travelling within any given district were usually charged with only one toll for the use of a considerable length of road, those living on the borders and having occasion to travel out of the district had frequently to pay at two gates within a comparatively short distance. This was not unnaturally felt to be a grievance, and Becca’s action was at first directed to its removal, though not by legitimate means. “She” was at first disguised in woman’s clothes, and when attacking a gate called on her “children” to pull it down. Persons more ill-disposed than the original malcontents were soon mixed up in the disturbances, which speedily assumed a serious aspect, and culminated in threatening letters, theft, arson, and murder. Several country gentlemen in the County of Carmarthen appealed through the Press to the better feelings of the people. Amongst others were Mr. Johnes, of Dolau Cothi, who issued an address to the inhabitants of Conwil Gaio: Col. Trevor (afterwards Lord Dynevor), who issued a proclamation as Deputy Lord-Lieutenant; Mr. Fitzwilliams and Mr. William Chambers, junior. The bard “Tegid” (once Hebrew Professor at Oxford) made a fervent appeal to the people of Nevern parish; and “Brutus,” the talented editor of the Haul, firmly supported the unpopular side of law and order. The chief incidents in connection with Becca’s proceedings began in the neighbourhood of St. Clears and Whitland on January 16^th, 1843. Trefechan Gate was destroyed, Pentre and “Maeswholan”soon followed. February 5^th, Mynydd-y-Garreg Gate destroyed; 13^th, Tavernspite and Lampeter Gates destroyed; 21^st, Bwlch-y-Clawdd Tollhouse demolished; April 7^th, Bwlchtrap Gate destroyed; 22^nd Trefechan Toll-house demolished; May 3^rd, Pont Twelly and Troed-y-Rhiw Gribyn Toll-gates destroyed; 26^th, Water Street Gate, Carmarthen, destroyed. After Water Street Gate was destroyed, some persons from Talog passed through before it was replaced, and refused to pay toll. For this they were fined by the Magistrates at Carmarthen Petty Sessions, and constables were sent from Carmarthen to levy the fines. The constables were, however, forced to return without executing the distress warrants. About 30 pensioners were then sworn in to assist in executing the warrants, and having seized the goods of one Harries, of Talog, they were on their way to Carmarthen, surrounded by about 400 of the Beccas (about one hundred of whom carried guns) and obliged to fire their pistols in the air and to give them up. They were then forced to march to Trawsmawr, the residence of Captain D. Davies, who had signed the warrants, and to return emptyhanded to Carmarthen. The walls round Trawsmawr were demolished, and it was reported that the pensioners were compelled to assist in their destruction. Further damage was done to the walls and plantations at Trawsmawr by the rioters on the night of Saturday, the 10^th of June. Two days later, Penllwynau Gate and House destroyed. On the 13^th, riots took place at Talog, and on the following day meetings were held in the evening at Trelech, Talog, Blaen-y-Coed, and Conwil, at which it was resolved that ’Becca and her children should visit Carmarthen on the ensuing Monday. Rich and poor were required to be present at the Plough and Harrow Public-house, Bwlch Newydd, at eleven o’clock, on pain of having their houses and barns burnt. On the 15^th, Melindre Siencyn Toll house was demolished, and next day Bwlch-y-Clawdd Toll-house shared the same fate. On the 19^th, ’Becca was discomfitted at Carmarthen Workhouse by the 4^th Dragoons (Queen’s Own) under Major Parlby. On this occasion, the late John Lloyd Davies, of Blaen-dyffryn, with his friend, John Lloyd, of Allt-yr-Odyn, met a large body of men on their march to Carmarthen, with the view of “showing their strength,” and tried to dissuade them from their unwise purpose, promising to exert himself to get their grievances inquired into. His patriotic counsel was given in vain. The procession reached from the gaol through Spilman Street, Church Street, St. Peter Street, to the King Street end of Conduit Lane, and numbered from 2,000 to 2,500 persons. A man disguised with long hair rode in front on rather a low horse. It is believed that at first there was no intention to commit excesses, and that the country people were led to the workhouse by some town roughs. Others maintain that the attack on the workhouse was deliberately resolved on at the meetings held the previous Wednesday at Talog and other places. Be that as it may, to the workhouse they went. The dragoons were expected earlier than they arrived, having, it is said, been misdirected by a countryman whom they met between Pont-ar-Ddulais and Carmarthen. They came just in time to save the workhouse, and possibly the neighbouring brewery, the contents of which might have given further impulse to the fury of the rioters. They were met by Mr. T. C. Morris, Mayor, who rode on with their officer. Sweeping through Red Street and Barn Row, they charged, at gallop, up the hill, their armour glistening in the sun. Just at this instant, the work of destruction had begun, the beds being thrown out through the windows. It was amusing to witness the consternation the arrival of the soldiers occasioned. The country people fled in every direction, like ants when an ant-hill is disturbed, fleeing they knew not whither, none seeming to look back. A goodly number were taken within the workhouse walls, many of them being merely curious spectators of what was going on. June 27^th, Penygarn Toll-house destroyed. July 7^th, Llandilo-rhwnws Toll-house destroyed. July 15^th, riot at Talog. August 1^st, Pont-ar-Lechau Toll-house destroyed; August 7^th, Porth-y-Rhyd Toll-house demolished; August 22^nd, the house of D. Harries, Pant-y-Fen, invaded; murderous attack on Mr. Edwards, Gelli Gwernen, near Llanon. August 25^th, Glangwili Tollhouse demolished. Riot at Pont-y-Berem 29^th, £500 offered for discovery of the ringleader. September 5^th, Llanddarog Toll-house attacked. September 9^th, Sarah Williams, aged 75, toll-collector of Hendy Gate, Llanedy, was shot at the gate-house; hitherto the riots had been free from bloodshed. The first life taken was that of the old woman; she had ignored repeated summonses served upon her by Rebeccaites to quit the place, and in the small hours of a Sabbath morn woke to find her thatched cottage in flames. Rushing out, she raised piercing cries, and hurrying to the house of a neighbour piteously appealed for assistance — er mwyn Duw — to put out the fire. He, grasping the situation, and fearful of the consequences, refused to move. She returned, and was making frenzied efforts to save her “household goods” from the flames, when the report of a rifle was heard, and staggering forward, the woman fell dead, the bullet having pierced her breast. Some consolation for this cowardly deed may be obtained from the fact supplied by a subsequent confession that it was the thoughtless act of a youth, and that there had been no intention whatever to injure the poor, offenceless creature. This tragic incident filled the party with consternation, and they quickly returned from whence they came. Actions such as these caused a revulsion in public feeling, and as disintegrating influences were actively at work within the ranks of the rioters, the task of the authorities, especially as their arrangements gained completeness, became easier. After this about a dozen toll-houses and gales were destroyed, and the house of Mr. Rees, Llandebie, demolished.

Much was expected by the reverse suffered by the rioters at Carmarthen, but subsequent events showed that those had been oversanguine who, in the first flush of victory, had been tempted to believe the campaign over. Far from being the end, it was merely the beginning. Carmarthen was the scene of the first open defiance of the law.

In July the police and the ’Beccas came into collision at Pontardulais. Acting upon the statement of an “informer,” Captain Napier, the superintendent, and eight armed police, lay in ambush near a threatened gate. “Mid-night gave the signal sound of strife.”A body of mounted men galloped down the road, dismounted and wrecked a smithy, and then the adjacent gate. They had well nigh completed their self-imposed task when the police “broke cover.” Volleys were exchanged with disastrous results, for the rioters, in the lurid glare of the torches they carried, afforded excellent targets for practice for the police. A battle ensued, and the rioters, demoralised by the surprise, fled, leaving six prisoners in the hands of the law. Once clear of the melee, they rallied and attempted a rescue, but the police, having meanwhile being reinforced by some soldiers, easily beat off their assailants. One of the prisoners, who had been severely wounded, was a young farmer of Llannon, John Hughes by name, subsequently transported for twenty years. He was a few years back a wealthy landowner in Tasmania. The increased vigilance of the authorities; the reaction in public sentiment; and the growing heinousness of the acts committed in the name of Rebecca were factors in promoting the rapid decline of the movement. On the 25^th of October, the Royal Commissioners formally entered upon their duties; I knew two of them personally, — the Hon. Robert Henry Give, Lord Windsor’s grandfather, and Major Bowen, father of the late Mr. Bowen, Q.C. They made full and diligent enquiry into the state of the laws administered in South Wales regulating the maintenance of turnpike roads, highways, and bridges; and also into the circumstances which led to acts of violence in certain districts. The suppression of the riots was followed by this inquiry into their cause, and the result was the passing of the South Wales Turnpike Act, which remedied the evils that led to them. The disturbances may be said to have terminated with the capture of “Shoni ’Scybor Fawr,” whose violence and daring made him the terror not less of the police than the country folk with whom he professed to be in sympathy. A noted pugilist of magnificent physique, Shoni had used his giant’s strength like a giant. I knew Shoni, and recollect him fighting at a Llandaff fair, and I can recall when he engaged to fight Harry Jones, of Cardiff, on the Great Heath. In this they were disturbed by county magistrates acting in the Hundred of Kibbor, when two justices, the late T. W. Booker Blakemore, of Velindre, and the late Rev. R. Prichard, came on the scene. Shoni and Harry, with hundreds ot their backers, fled, and having crossed the river Rhymney by a wooden bridge near Coedygoras, they fought on the other side of the river in the county of Monmouth, and out of the jurisdiction of the Glamorgan Justices. Shoni was a native of Yscubor Fawr, Penderyn, near Merthyr Tydfil, and a brassfitter by trade. He was taken by a band of constables of A Division of the London Police, at the Five Roads Tavern, Pontyberem, who pounced upon him unawares, and before he could grasp his gun had his wrists in the embrace of the “darbies.” It was with a sense of relief the people received the intelligence of his capture. About twenty of those captured at Carmarthen on the fateful day of the demonstration, were tried before Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Cresswell, were found guilty, and ten of them sentenced to be transported. Amongst the prisoners found guilty before Judge Cresswell, were two of more notoriety than the rest: “Shoni ’Scybor Fawr,” and “Dai y Cantwr.” Shoni, an ignorant ruffianly fellow, convicted of the more heinious offences committed during the period, was sent to transportation for life. “Dai,” whose sentence was for twenty years, was a man of a different stamp, and deserved the pity generally extended to him. He was a native of Treguff, in the parish of Llancarfan. While imprisoned, awaiting his removal, “Dai y Cantwr,” who was a poet of considerable merit, composed a lament, which, if your good patience will allow, I will read to you.

Lament of DAVID DAVIES (Dai’r Cantwr) when in Carmarthen Gaol for the Becca Riot.

(Translation by Evan Watkin, Jun., Pentyrch, from the Welsh).

Alas! what a sight to the world I shall be,
I have lost all the fame I could win were I free,
Unworthy is the brand and heavy the blow,
And sad is the way I was brought to my woe.
While yet but a youth I’ve misfortune and pain,
My freedom I lose and my bondage I gain;
Commencing life’s journey, an exile am I,
Sent forth from my country, it may be to die.
My father I’m leaving — his kindness and care,
In a land among; negroes my home they’ll prepare.
O’er seas I’ll be carried far from this loved shore,
How sad the misfortune — I’ll see no more.
I am going as an exile, I am going in my tears,
I am borne into bondage for twenty long years,
Ah! long will it be ere I’ll see you again,
For sore are the means and the sorrow’ll remain.

The song that I sing is a farewell song
To the dear native land I have loved so long,
For the good I have got, in the days that are past,
On the banks of her rivers so famed and so fast.
Farewell unto Cambria — to leave thee I am bound,
Farewell every meadow and bush-covered mound;
If in the whole world there’s a garden to see,
Oh! beautiful Britain ’tis thee, it is thee.
Farewell, sons of Gomer, for soon I shall be
Sent forth to a land that’s a Babel to me;
My journey is long, o’er the ocean’s wild wave,
May God be my guardian — He’s mighty to save.
Farewell, lovely maidens, so fresh and so fair,
The beauty of none with your own will compare;
As nature has power by pain to atone,
This David must leave you to suffer alone.

Treguff with its palace will soon be forgot,
For anguish and sorrow is David’s sad lot,
The thought of journey is melting my heart,
As far over the billows I soon must depart.
Saint Athan rich parish must read in my rhyme,
And Cadoxton, too, where I dwelt for a time,
And often and long I’ll remember Bridgend,
May God be with all to protect and defend.
Oh! noble Glamorgan, I bid thee good cheer,
Thy bells will be tolled never more on my ear,
To tell of thy meadows and dales I will dare,
The Garden of Eden was never more fair.
Farewell unto Monmouth so dear to my heart,
And Troed-y-Rhiw’r Clawdd which is strong on my part;
And as for the people who dwell at Tredegar,
To do me a kindness they ever were eager.

It may be that someone will ask with delight,
The name of the bard who has striven to write;
And seeing that now he is going away,
I’m certain you’ll grant him permission to say.
In the land of Glamorgan this gladsome youth dwelt,
And now in his fetters his heart would fain melt,
In a Carmarthenshire prison he’s safe in his cell,
By anguish more torn than he ever can tell.
Llancarfan’s the parish that had my life’s morn,
Treguir, in that parish, is where I was bom.
And now, as I am going to quit your bright shore,
I’ll give you my name, for I’ll see you no more;
My name’s David Davies, I bid adieu;
May God give long life and protection to you.

In conclusion, I may say I am greatly indebted to Mr. Spurrell’s “Caermarthen and its neighbourhood,”and to Mr. David Davies, for his account of “Rebecca and her daughters” in the Red Dragon, vol. XI.

The Bro Beca Project is collecting information about the Rebecca Riots. They’ve also hosted toll-house burning reenactments, and a ballad competition to reward poets who memorialize the Rebeccaites.

An article by James Mason from an 1891 edition of Littell’s Living Age shows how the sharp edges of the story’s details were starting to wear away as it got preserved for history:

Rebecca and Her Daughters

What were known as the “Rebecca riots” took place in South Wales about fifty years ago, and form a curious and exciting chapter in the history of that portion of the principality.

Far beyond the memory of the oldest inhabitant the people there had been going on in a quiet way, attracting little notice and giving no trouble. All of a sadden, however, they developed into moonlighters, running wild between supper and breakfast time, taking the law into their own hands, and demolishing public property in a wholesale fashion.

There was a good deal that was comic about their proceedings, and the impression made on the rest of Great Britain was much what would be produced in ourselves if some of our decorous friends were, without any preliminary intimation, to take to playing the part of clowns and mountebanks. The rioters at first were almost frolicsome, and if peaceful districts were turned upside down it was done with such good-humor that outsiders felt more inclined to laugh than regard it seriously.

Those who took an active part were invariably headed by a man dressed in woman’s clothes, who went by the name of Miss Rebecca. The costume might have been assumed because it made a good disguise, but ill-natured people were not wanting who held it to be a concession to the popular notion that there is a woman at the bottom of every mischief. Many of those who accompanied Rebecca were disguised in the same fashion, so that they looked iike a family party, and came, naturally enough, to be known as “Rebecca and her daughters.”

The first cause of all the disturbance was toll-gates. These were objects of Rebecca’s hatred, and to pull them down and smash them in pieces was the end of her midnight expeditions. She got her name, indeed, through this destructive occupation. They called her Rebecca in allusion to Genesis xxiv. 60: “And they blessed Rebekah, and said unto her, Thou art our sister, … and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.”

It was no imaginary grievance. The tolls then levied in South Wales constituted an unfair and intolerable burden. Every town and almost every village was approached by a gate, the road trusts of South Wales being eager to lay hands on money, for through bad management they were, without exception, deep in debt.

The people lived in a perfect network of toll-gates and bars, and going even a few miles meant sometimes a heavy expense. Farmers and dealers making their way to fair or market, not unfrequently found by the end of their journey that they had paid away in tolls more than the value of their load. One man trading in the neighborhood of Merthyr Tydvil told that he had four turnpike gates to pass through within six miles.

There were five different trusts leading into the town of Carmarthen, and it was stated by the clerk of one of these, that any person passing through the town in a particular direction would have to pay at three turnpike gates in a distance of three miles. This might not seem objectionable to a man driving to see his sweetheart, but no one can wonder at hard-working people in pursuit of business finding it a hardship. It was all the worse because times were bad and the greater number of those using the roads had little capital to boast of except their own industry.

Who first suggested making war on these gates is unknown. The first act in the campaign occurred in the summer of 1839. Four gates had been erected in a trust called the Whitland Trust, on the borders of Pembroke and Carmarthen, and it was generally held that the erection was llegal. It might have been so, but the trustees had large powers, and in Carmarthenshire at least they would have been within their rights had they established a gate and demanded toll at intervals of a hundred yards each throughout the county. The gates had not been up a week when the country people assembled one fine evening about six o’clock and pulled them down “amidst all sorts of noise and disturbance and great jollity.” The fun of the thing seems to have been considerable, and the rioters made no attempt at concealment. No one interfered with them, and when the gates were demolished they dispersed quietly to their homes.

The trustees resolved to re-erect the gates, but a number of noblemen and gentlemen of the county who sympathized with the people qualified as trustees, and by their votes overturned this decision. Peace was now secured for a time, but the enemies of toll-gates felt they had scored a victory, and laid their heads together to plan destruction on a grand scale.

The plot took some time in hatching, and nothing happened till the early part of 1843. Rebecca then began operations with a large following, well mounted and sometimes armed.

The demolition of gates began in Carmarthenshire, and the infection quickly spread, extending first to the neighboring counties of Pembroke and Cardigan, and then to Radnorshire and Glamorganshire. The only one of the south Welsh counties that escaped the influence of Rebecca was Brecknock.

Gate after gate disappeared before the axe and hatchet. In what was known as the Three Commons Trust in Carmarthenshire there were twenty-one gates and bars, and all were made an end of but two. In many other trusts the damage done was on the same scale; some had not even a single gate left standing. When the outbreak began there were in the county of Carmarthen alone between a hundred and a hundred and fifty gates. Of these between seventy and eighty were soon swept away.

The method adopted was a rough-and-ready one, and as cheerful as Rebecca and her lively family could make it. The toll-collector and his family, all snug in bed, are wakened about midnight by a clattering of horses’ hoofs outside. Then half-a-dozen horns blow a blast, and a thundering knock comes to the door.

The collector, knowing too well that it announces the end of his occupation, looks out, and by the light of the moon sees a considerable troop of horsemen. There are a few men on foot, but the greater number are mounted. One dressed as a woman seems to be taking the lead — that is Rebecca. About her is a bodyguard, with shirts over their clothes and faces blackened, and wearing bonnets or the tall hats of their Welsh wives.

The door being opened, they assure the inmates that they mean no personal harm, Rebecca making war not against people, but against toll-bars. “Get out your furniture,” says that mysterious commander, “and then be off with you!”

They set to work to remove the furniture, Rebecca’s troop meanwhile devoting attention to the gates. The strong oak posts are sawn off close to the ground, and then with hatchets and handbills the gates themselves are broken in fragments.

Tables, chairs, beds, and bedding are soon piled up by the wayside, after which the word of command is given, and willing hands begin the destruction of the house, and never leave off till nothing remains but a dusty heap of bricks, laths, and plaster.

Their work ended, they make the gatekeeper kneel down and swear never again to earn a living by collecting tolls on the queen’s highway. They mount their horses, there is a triumphal performance on the horns and off they gallop, leaving the débris of the toll-gates and toll-house littering the road, and the collector, with his wife and children, watching over their “bits o’ sticks” and wondering whether the whole affair is not a dream.

Who the destroyers of gates were and whence they came no one knew, and whither they went when their work was done no one knew either. They left no trace any more than if they had been spirits of the air and their leader the queen of ghosts and shadows. The country day by day, after their midnight pranks, was as quiet as one could wish it to be. It was evident that they were well organized and disciplined, and fully aware of the importance of keeping their own counsel.

Many guesses were hazarded on the subject of Rebecca. Some said she was a “disappointed provincial barrister” — an improbable solution of the mystery. Others would have it that she was a political agitator, bent on making the abolition of tolls the seventh point in the Chartist programme, and “dark hints were dropped and mysterious stories told of strangers seen here and there, and men in gigs, of suspicious appearance and without ostensible business, who were, beyond all doubt, connected with the movement.”

“But,” says a contemporary writer, “the supposed sole chief and director of the campaign must have been gifted with ubiquity, for Rebecca was in three or four counties at the same moment,—

Methinks there be two Richmonds in the field!

With one hand she smote an obnoxious toll-gate in Radnorshire, and with the other she cleared a free passage for the traveller to the wild coast of Pembroke.”

The probability is that each district had its own Rebecca, who planned the various enterprises, and was recognized as chief by the rest of the band. Whether the districts worked independently, or had a common centre of action, is uncertain.

The forces of Rebecca for a while had pretty much their own way; indeed, the contest with the authorities was a very uuequal one. Of all the counties affected, only Glamorganshire at that time possessed any paid constabulary, or any force that could be of service.

When a gate had been pulled down it was labor thrown away to re-erect it, for Rebecca was sure to pay another visit and level it to the ground again. One gate was destroyed five times in succession.

Finding that restoring gates, rebuilding houses, and offering large rewards for the apprehension of the rioters failed to produce any satisfactory result, the trustees lost heart. Roads were left free of toll, and people went to and fro without having any longer to put their hands in their pockets every two or three miles.

This was a popular triumph, and brought to a close the first act in the comedy of Rebecca.

The appetite for agitation grew by what it fed on. One subject for discontent suggested another, and so on, till many of the imaginative natives of South Wales began to consider themselves the most ill-used people under the sun.

The cry of down with toll-bars had added to it down with a dozen other grievances. For the discussion of these, meetings were held on hillsides, by mountain streams, and in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. They were attended chiefly by small farmers, an industrious and thrifty class but almost entirely without education, and incapable of estimating at their true value any assertions that might be made to them.

Amongst the subjects of complaint were the operation of the Poor Law Amendment Act, the cost and difficulty of recovering small debts, and the payment of tithes. Then Englishmen in office in South Wales were objected to, so were high rents, so were increased county rates, so were fees paid to magistrates’ clerks in the administration of justice — in short, Rebecca was called upon to deal with everything inconvenient and unpopular.

Their growing confidence and excellent spirits now induced Rebecca and her daughters to vary their midnight exploits by showing what they could do by the light of day. A demonstration was planned for the 10^th of June, and the scene of it was to be the ancient town of Carmarthen.

About noon on that day a large body of rioters was seen approaching Water Street gate from the country beyond. Fear multiplied their numbers, and the news ran like wildfire through Carmarthen that there were thousands of them. A band of music came first, thundering forth the warlike strains of “The Men of Harlech.” Next came Rebecca’s regiment of infantry, an irregular host, in which some bore inflammatory placards, and others cudgels, saws, axes, and hatchets, whilst a few carried brooms to let people know how they intended to sweep away every sort of grievance. After these rode Miss Rebecca, and the rear was brought up by about three hundred farmers on horseback.

At Water Street Gate they met with no obstacle; the gate, in fact, had been cleared out of the way by them some time before. They swarmed up the narrow, steep streets, gathering in numbers as they went. All the loafers joined them, so did all the mischievous and all the discontented of the town. Scores of women, too, fell into the ranks.

When they reached the Guildhall the magistrates were there consulting as to what steps should be taken for the public safety. The mob hooted at them and then turned away to execute the main business that had brought them together. That was the destruction of the Union Workhouse.

They found the lodge-gate and porter’s door of the unpopular edifice securely fastened, and there was a high wall running right round the building. A few of the more nimble climbed the wall, got possession of the keys, and let in the rest. As they did so the clangor of the alarm bell, tugged at by the governor of the workhouse, was added to the martial music of their own band. The horsemen rode into the yard, whilst the rioters on foot entered the building and began pulling down doors and partitions and throwing beds out of the windows.

But they were not going to get it all their own way for long. Information of the intended rising had been obtained by the authorities some days before, and in consequence a troop of the 4^th Light Dragoons had been ordered to march to Carmarthen from Cardiff.

The morning of the tenth saw them on the road. Just after passing through Neath, thirty-six miles from their destination, an express met them with an entreaty to make haste, for the demonstration had been fixed for that very day. They pushed on, riding the last fifteen miles in an hour and a half. Two horses fell dead from fatigue just as they entered Carmarthen.

The rioters were warming to their work when the dragoons arrived. With the dragoons came a magistrate, who pulled out the Riot Act, and charged all present “immediately to disperse themselves and peaceably to depart to their habitations or to their lawful business.”

Rebecca’s children made answer by a rush on the soldiers. But they got the worst of it. The dragoons charged, using the flat of their swords, and the rioters soon took to their heels, many who were in the courtyard finding it wise to escape over the wall. About a hundred were taken prisoners, and amongst the spoils were several horses abandoned by their riders. Some of the prisoners were afterwards tried and convicted.

Ill-disposed and designing people now got the upper hand in the councils of Rebecca, and the movement, as every lawless movement is sure to do, went from bad to worse. Under pretence of exposing public wrongs, those who had any private grievances contrived to gratify their spite. Every man who had fallen out with his neighbor and wished to do him an ill turn had now an opportunity.

Letters signed “Rebecca,” or “Becca,” or “Rebecca and her Daughters,” began flying about, conveying hints of vengeance to those who refused to comply with the demands of the writers. They were directed to tithe-owners, turnpike commissioners, toll collectors, magistrates, landlords, and all who for any reason had incurred popular displeasure.

The vice-lieutenant of Carmarthenshire, for example, was informed that a grave had been dug for him in the park of his father, Lord Dynevor, and that he would be laid in it before a day named. To the vicar of two small rural parishes on the coast of Cardiganshire, Rebecca sent word that if he did not make restitution of a sum he had unjustly received he would soon find the balance on the wrong side.

“Unless you give back the money,” she wrote, “I, with five hundred or six hundred of my daughters, will come and visit you and destroy your property five times to the value of it, and make you a scorn and reproach throughout the whole neighborhood.”

This clergyman states that his existence was rendered miserable by the letters he received, and that it had nearly killed his wife. “We never,” he says, “go to bed without having a wardrobe moved to the window as a protection against firearms.”

Besides firing shots in at windows, the discontented followers of Rebecca embarked in incendiarism and set many a haystack in a blaze. One farmer in Carmarthenshire had five fires in one week, in addition to having a horse shot and agricultural machinery broken and thrown into a pit.

They took to dictating to landlords the terms on which they were to let ground to tenants, and to tenants the terms on which they were to rent ground from landlords. The leaders, too, began to levy blackmail on farmers who took part in the riots. A note would come: “You must send such and such a contribution to Rebecca on such a night,” and the farmer who declined knew what to expect.

The humor of Rebecca was at an end. From being a humorist she had become a tyrant. Even the destruction of toll-gates lost its grotesque side and grew to be little else than a matter of ruffianism. Previously, the gate-keepers had been very leniently dealt with, no attempt, except in rare instances, being made either to injure them or to destroy or plunder their property. Now, however, they had a bad time of it, for when a gate was demolished a beating for the man who had kept it came to be the customary termination of the proceedings.

An encounter marked by some ugly features took place at a gate on the borders of Glamorganshire and Carmarthenshire. Something was suspected, and eight policemen had been told off to hide in a neighboring field.

About midnight the forces of Rebecca, including a hundred horsemen, made an attack on the gate. It was soon in pieces, but before the work of destruction was finished the eight constables jumped over the hedge and rushed forward, hoping to secure the ringleaders.

The rioters at once discharged a volley. The police in turn drew their pistols and fired, wounding several and killing the horse of the captain of the gang.

A tough fight followed, ending in Rebecca’s men running off. Six prisoners were left in the clutches of the police, two of them severely wounded. One of these prisoners was a young farmer, who on being tried was sentenced to transportation for life.

A still more unfortunate incident happened at a gate between Llanelly, in Carmarthenshire, and Pontardulais. It was kept by an old woman — she was over seventy years of age. Numerous letters had been received by her to the effect that if she did not leave the gate her house would be burned over her head; but she took no notice of them, and stuck to her post.

About three o’clock one Sunday morning she awoke to find that the threat was being put in execution — the thatch of her dwelling was in a blaze. She jumped out of bed and ran to a cottage close by, calling on the inmates for help to put out the fire. They, however, would do nothing — for fear, they said, of Rebecca’s vengeance.

The old woman hastened home to save what little she could of her humble furniture, but had hardly reached the door when a shot struck her, fired apparently by one of the band who had set a light to the thatch. She died within a few minutes.

It was asserted afterwards — but the evidence is not conclusive — that the fatal shot was “the random act of a lad who accompanied the party, and was fired without any previous or deliberate intention to take her life.” What is certain is, that this was the first life sacrificed in Rebecca’s raids.

Quiet people began to feel uncomfortable, for there was no saying what might happen next. Government was appealed to and urged to do something by way of restoring order. As a first step in that direction troops were sent down to South Wales, and the command of the disturbed districts was entrusted to an officer of experience.

Soldiers were now quartered in the neighborhood of every remaining tollgate; they gave protection to those who bad excited popular ill-will, and kept an eye on all suspected persons. Select companies of London police also appeared on the scene, and were dotted about in villages and hamlets.

This brought to a close some of the more objectionable doings of Rebecca, but did not end her crusade against tollbars. She and her daughters knew the country a great deal better than those who bad been sent to circumvent them, and under cover of night could swoop down on a gate and demolish both it and the collector’s dwelling, without a single soldier or policeman in the vicinity being aware of their goings on.

The military and police were not even wise after the event, for the sympathies of the country people, not to speak of their interests, being with Rebecca, one and all when questioned assumed an impenetrable air of ignorance and reserve. The incomers too were sadly hampered in their inquiries by not knowing a word of Welsh. Occasionally, Rebecca, by way of a joke, would circulate false reports, and troopers would be sent in hot haste over hill and dale to protect gates that were in no danger, finding on their return that the real point of attack had been at the other end of the district.

The restoration of order was greatly helped by the appointment of a government commission of inquiry, whose business it was to investigate on the spot the various grievances of the natives of South Wales.

This commission began its sittings in Carmarthen on the 25^th of October, and in the beginning of the following year issued a report, which, by its temperate statement of the hardship of the toll-gate, secured the passing of an act known as the South Wales Turnpike Act, its chief provision being that no gate should be erected within seven miles of another unless they freed each other. This satisfied most people. Rebecca and her daughters retired into private life, and the lively chapter they had contributed to the history of the principality came to a close.

Today, a look at the wacky, cross-dressing, Welsh tax resisters of the 1840s who called themselves “Rebecca and her daughters.”

The earliest mention I found in the Google News archives was a piece from the Carmarthen Journal that was picked up by The Public Ledger of 12 May 1843:

Rebecca and Her Daughters

We regret to state that Rebecca and her daughters are still at their old work in the lower part of the country, notwithstanding the utmost exertions of the authorities to discover the parties implicated in these outrageous proceedings. About twelve o’clock on the night of Friday last, Rebecca and a numerous party of her daughters proceeded to Pwlltrap, near St. Clears; and after arriving at the gate, the following colloquy took place between the old lady and her youthful progeny. Rebecca, leaning on her staff, hobbled up to the gate, and seemed greatly surprised that her progress along the road should be interrupted. “Children, (said she, feeling the gates with her staff,) there is something put up here, I can’t go on.”

Daughter.—“What is it, mother? nothing should stop your way.”

Rebecca.—“I do not know, children; I am old, and cannot see well.”

Daughters.—“Shall we come on, mother, nothing shall hinder you on your way?”

Rebecca.—“I do not know, children; I am old, and cannot see well?”

Daughters.—“Shall we come on, mother, and remove it out of your way?”

Rebecca.—“No, let me see, (feeling the gate with her staff;) it seems like a great gate put across the road to stop your old mother.”

Daughters.—“We will break it, mother, nothing shall hinder you on your journey.”

Rebecca.—“No, let us see, perhaps it will open, (feeling the lock.) No, children, it is bolted and locked, and I cannot go on. What is to be done?”

Daughters.—“It must be taken down, mother, because you and your children must pass.”

Rebecca.—“Off with it then, my dear children, it has no business here.”

With that the whole of the children set to, and in less than ten minutes there was not a vestige of the gate nor post remaining. Rebecca and her children then passed by, and immediately disappeared, having completed the work of destruction. The London police were at the Blue Boar at the time, but we were not aware that they had the least intimation of what was going forward, until their services could be of no avail.

A brief note in the 4 July 1843 edition of the same paper reads:

The nocturnal outrages of “Rebecca and her Daughters,” at Carmarthen have reached to such a height as to excite just grounds of apprehension that the magistracy of that and the adjoining counties of Pembroke and Cardigan will be obliged to place the whole district under military surveillance. From attacking and destroying turnpike gates situated in remote and unfrequented parts of the country, these violent men proceeded to exploits of greater daring; and at length, early on Saturday morning last, attacked and completely destroyed one of the gates of the county town—Carmarthen.

Later that month, the paper had news about 15–20,000 rioters who had taken over Carmarthen, and this::

Pembroke, June 26.—“Rebecca and her Daughters” have hitherto kept at some distance from this place, but last night, or early this morning, a notice was posted on the Holyland turnpike gate, within a mile of this town, as follows:—

“Take notice, I and my Daughters intend paying a visit to the union workhouse, Pembroke, on Wednesday next, the 28^th inst.

“Rebecca.”

Another notice was thrown over the workhouse wall, addressed to the manager, the purport of which was similar to the one in Holyland gate. We are under no apprehension of the ladies appearing here, but the Mayor has considered it necessary to be on the alert, and has sworn in several special constables.…

In early August, the Liverpool Courier carried this report:

It is curious to mark with what steadiness of purpose and with what success the rioters of South Wales continue to knock down gates, break up toll houses, threaten toll-collectors, and baffle all the pursuits of the regiments. It is almost laughable to read of the dragoons scampering about from place to place, deluded by false intelligence, deceived by false signals, and baffled by the caution, the combination and the cunning of those whom they are directed to keep in check.

The soldiers receive certain information that the rioters are destroying a gate and alarming a whole neighborhood near some village with an unpronounceable name; the clank of sabres and the tread of war-horses sweeping along at speed are heard on the road; the soldiers approach the scene at a hand gallop; already on the other side of the mountain they hear the dropping shots, the sound of horns, and the voices of the rioters. Suddenly a solitary peasant is seen on the highest turret of the hill; he raises his hat as if to salute some one at a distance; the soldiers press forward; they dash towards the toll house, and find all desolate. The fragments of the gate are strewn across the road, the gate-house is in ruins, the keeper is found imprisoned in an adjacent barn, and the villagers are cowering in their cottages, alarmed even at the voices of the soldiery, and fearing every moment that the dreaded Rebecca will be upon them. The dragoons scour the adjacent passes, but not a soul is to be discovered far or near. Baffled and weary and dispirited, men and horses return towards their quarters. They have not proceeded far when they are met by a breathless messenger, who informs them that on their very footsteps “Rebecca and her daughters” have followed, and that between them and the place which they quitted but a few half-hours since another gate has been splintered, another toll-house dismantled. Again the soldiers prick forward in hope of falling in with some of the lawless band; but a similar scene of quiet desolation again awaits them, and they again dash into lanes, by-paths, and thickets, in the hope of discovering some wearing such disguises as those exhibited by the rioters. The mountain paths are deserted, the green slopes are without occupants, and

All seems as peaceful and as still
As the grey mist upon the hill.

The truth is, that though dragoons may do very well to quell violent acts by masses of evil-disposed individuals, they are not competent to act against such slippery people as Rebecca and her daughters. It would be as wise to take a chain cable to fish for eels, or to set an elephant to hunt rats, as to manœuvre bodies of soldiery against scattered companies of active mountain peasants united for the perpetration of mischief. It was folly in Lord John Russell on Friday night, blaming the government for not putting down these extraordinary malcontents, who seem so very mad, yet exhibit so much method in their madness. It is only very recently that Sir Robert Peel or Sir James Graham have learned with any degree of accuracy either the causes of discontent or the true nature of the disturbances. A tolerably strong body of police would in the first instance have been more effectual in detecting the rioters than all the military in existence. The magistrates of Carmarthen, however, asked for soldiers and soldiers were given to them. They did not, as they ought to have done, inform the government of the reason why the people were discontented. No; they asked for soldiers to keep the peasantry in order. The energetic reporter for the Times has shown the causes of the people’s uneasiness and the reason why they have been roused to take such very improper measures to get rid of their grievances. There is now every prospect of the speedy restoration of peace in these beautiful and once happy district. Mr. Hall, the intelligent magistrate of Bow-street, has been sent from London to take such measures as may appear most proper for the restoration of order. He will, without doubt, be charged to lay before government the cause of discontent. The very fact that the complaints of the people are likely to reach the ears of government will do more to allay discontent than any force of dragoons could effect in twelve months. However, other necessary precautions have not been neglected. A body of police has been also despatched to the disturbed districts; and while due efforts will be made to obtain such information as may enable the government to remove any real grievances or oppressions under which the poor Welsh farmers may labour, the capture and punishment of the guilty, who may persevere in acts of lawlessness and disorder, will be by no means neglected.

A report later that month in The Public Ledger read as follows:

The Riots in Wales.— The latest accounts from South Wales bring no intelligence of any collision between “Rebecca’s daughters” and the military since the attack on the workhouse at Carmarthen; but the midnight war against tollbars appears to be still carried on with much vigour and perseverance as ever. Meanwhile the magistrates are beginning to take steps for asserting the supremacy of the law, and for putting a stop to those violent outrages which have lately created so much alarm in the counties of Pembroke, Carmarthen, and Cardigan. In the last-named county, a proclamation has been issued by the lord-lieutenant, in which the rioters are warned that certain ruin will speedily overtake them, should they persist in the course which they have lately been pursuing. If they have any real grievances, they are told to come peaceably and quietly to the magistrates at each petty sessions, and lay their complaints before them; in which case they are assured, that those complaints “will be heard and redressed in a legal and constitutional manner.” A letter from Carmarthen dated Friday night, says:— The attack upon and destruction of the gates not only is continued with increased daring, but is spreading into a wider locality. Not only have they levelled the principle gates in Carmarthenshire, but the work of destruction is going on in Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire, and yet not a single individual has been apprehended. A night or two since they marched in very large numbers to the Sceleddy gates, near Fishguard (where the French landed in 1798), and in a very short time demolished the gates, posts, and houses, and broke the toll-roads, &c., into pieces so small, that in the morning not a piece was discovered larger than would be fit for match-wood. After the work of destruction had been completed, the whole party left in the direction of the Haverford west-road, On the same night they attacked the Fishguard Hill-gate, which they also broke in pieces: they then proceeded to the toll-bar at the other end of Fishguard, where they attacked the toll-keeper’s house, the windows of which they demolished. Things have now reached such a pass, that it is thought by respectable persons of the neighborhood, that unless stopped, both private property and persons travelling on the roads will shortly be rendered very insecure. They appear now to have adopted plans to harass the soldiery. Dragoons were ordered to mount at eleven o’clock, to march to some gate in the neighborhood; just, however as the men were about to start at a gallop, subsequent information was received which prevented their proceeding. The troop of dragoons at St. Clear’s was also out upon the road all night, lights having been shown at various spots which induced them to believe that an attack was being made on gates in different stations.

In September, the paper’s “private correspondent” from London wrote:

The Rebecca riots in the south-western portion of Wales have not been checked — that is, the nightly campaign against the bars has been carried on as boldly an with as much success as ever. One or two meetings have been held, in which, amongst other demands, a reduction of rents and a repeal of the poor-laws have been insisted on. Although I believe that as regards toll bars in particular the Welsh yeomanry have often just and great cause of complaint, yet it is necessary to caution those who derive their information from the Rebecca sympathizer, the Times, that the statements of its reporters are one-sided, very inflated, and based on mere report.

Yet another report, this one from October:

State of South Wales

The Pontardulais-gate, which the military went to on Saturday night, was on Sunday night again destroyed, and the toll-keeper given notice that, if any more tolls were attempted to be taken, they would pull the house down. In Llanelly all was quiet.

Further Rebecca outrages have occurred in the neighborhood of Haverford-west. The very night after the Wolfscastle meeting a large party of Rebeccaites destroyed the Fishguard and Parkymorfa turnpike gates, and cautioned the toll-collectors not to levy more toll; but they, not heeding Rebecca’s warnings, collected the toll as usual on the Saturday. This exasperated the Rebeccaites, and notices were sent to them to remove their furniture, or the toll-houses would be destroyed on Monday night. True to their threat, about 400 persons visited the Fishguard toll-house, and completely destroyed it. They then proceeded to Parkymorfa toll-house, and instantly demolished it. After firing guns and frightening a great number of the inhabitants, they levelled a piece of a wall belonging to the road surveyor, and dispersed about three o’clock. About 2,000 persons were assembled in the town, looking on whilst this was going on, but no one interfered.…

The Hobart Town Advertiser of 17 October gave us a tax resistance trifecta:

The resistance to the collection of poor rates in Ireland, not only continues, but is successful. On the 23^d of June a number of cattle were rescued from fifty police. At Kildorrery, near Cork, a large body of constabulary have been several days engaged in collecting; they have succeeded in seizing one goat. There must, however, be some reason for this, as the parish is assessed in £450 per annum for the support of three paupers.

The increased duty on Irish spirits is to be removed — the only effect was to increase illicit distillation. The decrease in the duty was £7,361 4s. The number of persons in confinement, for breach of the revenue laws, had increased from 84 to 368.

The disturbances in Wales are increasing in intensity, number, and boldness. A body of 800 to 1,000, half, at least, mounted, and very many of them respectable farmers, came into Carmarthen, on the 19^th of June, paraded through the streets, insulted and threatened the magistrates, and, finally, broke open the workhouse and commenced throwing the furniture into the yard. A troop of the 4^th Light Dragoons, who had been sent for in anticipation, arrived, and the Riot Act being read, charged the rioters, who fled in all directions, except 80, who were taken after considerable resistance in the workhouse and committed to gaol. Rebecca has, in Wales, assumed the province of Captain Rock in Ireland, and threatens similar penalties.

A November report, and some further paragraphs in the last one seem to hint that the Rebeccaites were either expanding their campaign into local, non-toll-related grievances, or that some people were disguising themselves as Rebeccaites as a way of trying to get their own vengeance and terrorism masked by the Rebecca phenomenon.

Later in November, The Sydney Morning Herald carried this report based on reporting from the Atlas and Times:

Outrageous Proceedings of “Rebecca and her Daughters”

Our readers are aware that for some time past a lawless band, somewhat fancifully yclept “Rebecca and her Daughters,” have produced considerable alarm in Wales, in consequence of their outrageous proceedings. This association contrived to shroud themselves in as much mystery as the Carbonari, and their deeds were more desperate and alarming than those of any secret body of modern days. Up to this hour, the chief who assumes the title of Rebecca, and dresses in women’s clothes, has alluded [sic] all the attempts made to discover his identity. Some say he is a county magistrate, others insinuate that he is a sill more important personage; but the only certain thing is, that the “great unknown” has succeeded in organizing a large number of followers, who appear ready to adopt the most violent measures to procure what they term the redress of their grievances. Hitherto, turnpike-gates alone excited their fury, and all their energies were solely deovted to their destruction. On Monday last, however, they made a furious attack on the workhouse at Carmarthen, which would, no doubt, have been entirely destroyed had it not been for the opportune, but tardy, arrival of the military. These misguided men previously paraded the town, and, in answer to the persuasions of the magistrates to return home, stated that they had assembled to make a demonstration of their force, in order that the authorities might be aware of the means which they had at disposal to compel a compliance with their demands. According to a correspondent of the Times—

They then read a list of their complaints, and the changes they desired, which included not only the removal of all the turnpike gates in the county, but also the abolition of all tithe and rent-charge in lieu of tithes, the total alteration of the present poor-law, towards which they expressed the most bitter hostility, abolition of church-rates, and an equitable adjustment of their landlords’ rents. These, with other alleged grievances, six or seven in number, they stated their determination to get remedied.

Thus it would appear that the Rebecca movement is still more dangerous than the [Irish anti-Union] repeal movement, because, exciting as may be the speeches of Mr. O’Connell, physical force is always repudiated. These Welsh malcontents, however, appeal to arms at once, and assume such a formidable aspect, that considerable alarm was necessarily created throughout the whole of the districts which were the scenes of their exploits. This outrage adds another melancholy proof — none was wanting — of the existence of deep distress and discontent. However well founded the complaints of these men may be, they must be taught that such demonstrations can no longer be tolerated. Indeed, we think it will be a general feeling throughout the country, that there has been negligent supineness on the part of the Government: for although week after week every newspaper in the kingdom teemed with accounts of their lawless proceedings, and the acts of Rebecca and her Daughters have been bruited about in all directions, nothing in the way of prevention has been attempted, and all the descriptions that we have seen of the last riot admit that no precautions had been used, and that if the military had not arrived without delay, the most disastrous results would have ensued. The executive functions of a Government, which form so essential a portion of its attributes, appear to have been wofully neglected, and thus the evil has spread to a fearful extent. Really, the “strong” and “popular” Government, as some men delight to call it, has enough upon its hands. Discontent in England, threatened rebellion in Ireland, and open insurrection in Wales, these are tolerably significant symptoms of popular confidence.

The Hartford Times, later that same month, noted that reprisals had begun:

Rebecca Riots.

A Special Commission has been opened in Wales, by Mr. Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Creaswell, for the trial of the parties connected with the late Rebecca riots. The proceedings occupied three days. One of the ringleaders was found guilty, and sentence to twenty years’ transportation.

And the good cop to the bad cop was, of course, an official government inquiry into whether there was anything to what these crazy Welshmen seemed so upset about. From The Bytown Gazette, 30 November 1843:

Wales.— Mr. Frankland Lewis has begun the inquiry into Welsh grievances in a fine spirit, which does credit to himself and the Government which appointed him. This passage in his address on opening the commission at Carmarthen extorts approval from the Times, even for a Poor-law Commissioner:— “They (the Ministers) are most anxiously desirous to ascertain whether there be any real causes of grievance subsisting, in order that by powers of the Executive Government or of Parliament, or of both combined, a legislative remedy may be effected; for which purpose we are here.

“Even to wrong-doers I will say, that this inquiry will be conducted with feelings of compassion and of kindness towards all. We know the infirmities of human nature, and cannot but feel deeply sorry for these who have been misled; for although the law must be upheld, we still feel (and it is my full conviction) that many have been misled from erroneous opinions, whom a wise, judicious, and I may say gentle treatment, may bring back into those right paths from which they have been induced to wander.”

The trial of John Hughes, the “Rebecca” in the attack on Portardulias gate on the night of the 6^th September, began last Saturday, at Cardiff.

The bad cop kept copping, but Rebecca’s daughters kept smashing up tollbooths, at least according to this Public Ledger article from 5 December 1843:

The Rebecca Riots.— The Commission for the trial of the Rebecca rioters for Glamorganshire was opened at Cardiff on Thursday morning, and ended on Monday, the judges being Mr. Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Cresswell. The calendar contained seventeen prisoners; two cases of maliciously cutting and wounding, a third for shooting with intent to murder, and the remainder for assisting at various riots in demolishing the turnpikes at Pontardulias and other places. One of the prisoners who were convicted, was sentenced to be transported for twenty years, two others for seven years each, some to various terms of imprisonment, and others were discharged on their own recognisances. Accounts from this part of the principality are far from indicating a return to quietness and submission to the law. Scarcely a night passes without some daring outrage against persons or property being committed; and this, notwithstanding the large military force at the disposal of the executive, besides a numerous body of the most experienced of the London police.

On 11 January 1844, The Sydney Morning Herald reported:

The lamentable disturbances in Wales, committed by parties disguised as women, and known as “Rebecca and her daughters,” continued to an alarming extent. At first they confined themselves to the destruction of toll-gates at which excessive tolls were charged, but gathering courage from the impunity with which they committed outrages, latterly they have taken upon themselves the right, after the O’Connell fashion, of settling disputes about rents and tithes. Several encounters between the Rebeccaites and the police had taken place, and two murders had been committed.

Later that month, the Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle reported on the Queen’s state of the union speech, or whatever it is they call it on that side of the pond:

The references to the agitation in Ireland and the tumults in Wales are both followed by promises in the first instance of amendments in the existing laws tending to improve the social condition of the country; and in the other of inquiry into the circumstances that have led a peaceable people to insubordination.

It is thus confessed that in both cases there has been wanting what the Legislature or the Government ought to have afforded, and that the commotions have had the effect of drawing attention to the grievances. So true is the maxim of Bentham, that “Never, but by making the ruling few uneasy, can the oppressed many hope for a particle of relief.” As Kings of old used to come forth to their palace gates and administer justice when the clamour of the complainants reached a certain pitch, so Governments now attend to the wrongs of the people when a sufficient uproar and commotion are made about them. But for Rebecca’s outrages, the Welsh would have been fleeced and oppressed by their magistrates till doomsday.

The Queen is made to tell the Welsh in substance that they will be punished for what they have done against the law, but that what they have done against the law shall obtain for them, after chastisement, inquiry and redress. This will serve at least encourager les autres.

The Times has some caustic remarks on the fall of the curtain and the lame epilogue to which we have adverted:—

“[O]n the subject of the Welsh disturbances, they tell us they have ‘adopted measures to repress’ them, and ‘have directed an inquiry to be made into the circumstances which led to them.’ We wish they had done the latter sooner, and done it in a more politic manner. What is the state of the case? These disturbances began as early as February or March last; and they began upon some very plain and tangible grievances, which might, we will be bold to say, have been effectually rectified, had they been attended to at first. Nothing is done, however, and the disturbances go on through March, April, May, June, July. They get worse and worse day after day, and month after month. Cavalry scour the country in vain; Rebecca begins to hold nocturnal meetings; Chartists appear. Turnpikes and market dues usher in the much more deep and ominous subject of rents. Under the auspices of a blundering magistracy, and a high-rental gentry, a fierce collision seems impending, and society to be on the brink of disorganization. What is done then? Mr. Hall, the Bow-street magistrate, is sent down to rescue the country.

Now, Mr. Hall is a clever man; Bow-street magistrates are a sharp class of men; but we have yet to learn that a Bow-street magistrate is exactly the person to deal with the evils of a country, and a whole disordered agricultural and trading system. A Bow-street officer is a dead hand at catching a thief, but that is all that he need be. Was Mr. Hall sent down to perform this professional office, and catch some three or four individuals of station who were suspected of being secret movers in these outbreaks — for the ‘detection of offenders,’ as the speech says? The policy of Government hardly improves upon such a view. What, are you going to put Wales in the watch-box — to bring her up before the sitting magistrate — place her at last before an omnipotent bar, and make her figure in the police reports? Nay, if the grievances of the Welsh are real, what so mighty offense is it, after all, if some respectable persons have taken them up? At all events, it is statesmanlike to be aiming at catching a few individuals instead of rectifying a system, and to be snapping at a few gnats when a whole atmosphere wants cleansing? Poor pin, needle, and bodkin work — mere ferreting, ratcatching! Sir James Graham has chosen an enviable profession, and is now, we presume, giving us a proof of his skill in it.”

The following month, the same paper reported:

The riots in Wales still continue unabated. Murder has been added to the other atrocities. a poor old woman, upwards of 70 years old, kept a gate near Contadulais, on the road from Llanelly. On the 10^th of September the house was set on fire over her head — she ran to beg her neighbors to assist her in putting out the fire and save her furniture — they refused from fear. She returned to save it by herself; they fired the house more effectually. She ran across the road and shouted, imprudently, that she knew them. One fired, and she fell. An inquest was held; her chest was full of blood, shots were found in her lungs, clearly the cause of her death. The jury returned a verdict — “That the deceased died from effusion of blood into the chest, which caused suffication; but from what cause is to this jury unknown.” The reporter of the Times says — “I shall, of course, make no comment upon this extraordinary verdict.”

There seems to be no doubt that the toll gates are a grievous injustice on the Welsh roads. Two shillings are required on one road for eleven miles; the tolls in some cases are more than the value of the goods carted, and on one road there has been paid in seven years £600 tolls, while not more than £3 has been expended during that period, and the road is in wretched repair.

That, notably, is the first time any of these newspaper accounts actually attempted to report on the Rebeccaist grievances in any sort of detail.

Clearly, I’m missing some important reporting from the London Times. And in relying on the press, I’m getting a distorted, third-party take on the events, with a strikingly conservative gloss. I’ll have to do some more research.

Interestingly, nearly a century before, some of the Whiteboy agitation in Ireland had a similar flavor to it, with the rebels declaring themselves to be in allegiance to “Queen Sive and her children.” The name Rebecca comes from a bible verse in Genesis in which Rebecca is told, “be thou the mother of thousands of millions, and let thy seed possess the gate of those which hate them.” But I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the template predates the arrival of the bible in the area.