Sydney Smith (June 3, 1771 - Feb. 22 1845):
Taxes upon every article which entres into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot. Taxes upon everything which is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell or taste. Taxes upo warmth, light & locomotion. Taxes on everything on earth or under the earth, on everything that comes from abroad or is grown at home. Taxes on raw materials, taxes on every fresh value that is added to it by the industry of man. Taxes on the sauce which pampers man’s appetite, & the drug that restores him to health; on the ermine which decorates the judge, & the rope that hangs the criminal; on the poor man’s salt & the rich mans spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, & the ribbons of the bride; at bed or board; couchant or levant, we must pay.
The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages his taxed horse with a taxed bridle on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon that has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death. His whole property is then immediately taxed from two to ten percent. Besides probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel. His vertues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble, & he will then be gathered to his fathers, to be taxed no more.
While he may have been describing England a couple hundred years ago, the old song never changes.
