There has been a lot in the news about the so-called Tea Party protesting taxes, particularly taxes used for specific purposes. That is nothing new.

England and France ended the Seven Years War, aka, the French and Indian War, with both countries in debt because they financed the war using credit (something governments continually do). England decided to pay its debts by imposing various taxes, including taxation in the American colonies. Notable was the Stamp Tax on various documents. That was only one of many grievances in the colonies.

The British government also had the habit of creating monopolies that restricted free trade. Jamaican sugar planters were given a monopoly on the sale of sugar and molasses in England and its colonies, molasses being used in the manufacture of rum in Rhode Island distilleries. The Jamaican prices were considerably higher than the prices at French and Spanish West Indies islands, so large-scale smuggling ensued with Americans attempting (often successfully) to run contraband past British Revenue Service cutters.

Fred E. Camfield is retired and lives in Vicksburg.

Another monopoly was the grant given to the British East Indies Company for tea. The Boston Tea Party was actually not about taxation. The East Indies Company had imported too much tea for the market and had a surplus that they needed to unload. The British government (in the hip pocket of company interests) decided that the American colonies would be a good place for the excess tea. In modern terms this would be called dumping, i.e., disposing of excess inventory somewhere else at a lower price (prohibited under present day U.S. law). The merchants in Boston already had supplies of tea obtained at a higher price, and opposed the shipment of the excess tea to the American colonial market.  That led to the merchants organizing a raiding party that threw the tea into Boston Harbor. The British demanded payment for the tea, which was refused by the citizens of Boston, and the British closed the port and sent military units to enforce the closure. One thing led to another, and we had the Revolutionary War.

That war was also financed using credit. The new federal government agreed to assume the war debts of the individual states, something that mainly benefited financial speculators who had bought seemingly worthless colonial bonds for a nickel on the dollar. The U.S. government found itself in the same position as the British government at the end of the Seven Years War. In order to discharge the debts, the federal government had to impose taxes, one of the new taxes being a tax on the manufacture of whiskey, a thriving business in western Pennsylvania. That led to the Whiskey Revolt of 1794 when the distillers opposed the collection of the tax, and in some instances attacked tax collectors. President George Washington, in his role as commander in chief, put on his uniform and led armed troops to put down the revolt.

President Thomas Jefferson was basically against taxation, but realized that taxes were needed for purposes such as building a navy. There were problems with Barbary pirates as well as interference by the British and French in U.S. commerce. Among other events there was the quasi-war with France involving U.S. and French naval ships in the West Indies. The problems with England led to the hawks in Congress pushing through a declaration of war against England in 1812 over issues that had actually already been resolved at meetings in Europe.

Tax protests continued. In 1832, the Legislature in South Carolina passed an act nullifying the tariff acts passed by Congress, and tried to prevent the collection of the tariffs at the Port of Charleston. They objected to the fact that the money was being spent in other parts of the country for purposes not beneficial to South Carolina. Vice President John C. Calhoun warned President Andrew Jackson that events could lead to secession. The matter was finally settled by compromise, but there was a determination that a state could not nullify a federal law.

Various grievances continued to simmer under the surface in South Carolina, leading to secession in 1960 and the Civil War. That war was also financed by borrowing.

The question at the moment is about paying for social welfare, in particular, health care. There have always been various schools of thought on the matter. Some people at one extreme favor the policies of Count Vlad the Impaler, who invited the poor beggars to a banquet, locked the doors to prevent their escape and then set fire to the building. At the other extreme, you have people favoring Jacob Rees, who spent his personal fortune on social reform to help the less fortunate.

The underlying question has always been what should be paid from private initiatives like those of Jacob Rees, and what should be paid from public funds.

History tends to run in cycles. The Tea Party, like the citizens of South Carolina in the 19th century, oppose federal taxes and initiatives that would require federal spending. There are now states that seem to be trying to pass state laws nullifying federal legislation. Apparently people learned nothing from the events in 1832. The Tea Party also doesn’t seem to remember the Bull Moose debacle in 1912 that left the Democrats in control of the government for the next eight years.

We will have to see how things shake out. The Tea Party seems to want the Republicans to go “all in,” as they say in Texas Hold ‘Em, and either win big or lose big. It will be interesting to watch events as they develop.