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Was "taxation without representation"
tyranny?
"Anybody has the right to evade
taxes if he can get away with it. No citizen has a moral obligation to assist in
maintaining the government." Richard Kezirian recites J.P.Morgan the
famous banker.
Not according to Richard Kezirian and the British unwritten
constitution of that time. Kezirian stresses the point that taxes in the colonies were
five times greater in 1698 than in 1773, and in homeland Britania those taxes were much
higher than in the American colonies. Richard Kezirian says, "it was not the burden
of the taxes themselves. Far more important were the principles behind the taxation."
He points out that the people were annoyed about all new taxes, however much more
aggravating was, to the settlers, that those taxes were imposed without consent from
America's own directly elected representatives. The Americans' right to a fair trial was
also jeopardized as all infringements of the Sugar and Stamp Acts were to be settled in
British admiralty courts. Those courts were not much liked by the settlers for two obvious
reasons; At first they violated the colonials right to a jury trial by their peers, and
second those courts put the burden of proof on the defendants, assuming that they were
guilty until they provided evidence to the contrary.
Richard Kezirian goes on to say, "The settlers believed
that the continued high British troop level was intended to intimidate the colonials
themselves." He claims that by 1776 American distrust of the British had grown so
large that Americans would not have accepted taxation with representation. Americans had
simply outgrown their need for the British parentage.
From a strictly British standpoint one can only agree with
Richard Kezirian and therefor I think that England was not wrong in doing what they were
doing.
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last updated
02/19/07
