Such a method is "isolated individual resistance to taxation."[835]
"Some year, when an Anarchist feels exceptionally strong and
independent, when his conduct can impair no serious personal
obligations, when on the whole he would a little rather go to jail than
not, and when his property is in such shape that he can successfully
conceal it, let him declare to the assessor property of a certain value,
and then defy the collector to collect. Or, if he have no property, let
him decline to pay his poll tax. The State will then be put to its
trumps. Of two things one,--either it will let him alone, and then he
will tell his neighbors all about it, resulting the next year in an
alarming disposition on their part to keep their own money in their own
pockets; or else it will imprison him, and then by the requisite legal
processes he will demand and secure all the rights of a civil prisoner
and live thus a decently comfortable life until the State shall get
tired of supporting him and the increasing number of persons who will
follow his example. Unless, indeed, the State, in desperation, shall see
fit to make its laws regarding imprisonment for taxes more rigorous, and
then, if our Anarchist be a determined man, we shall find out how far a
republican government, 'deriving its just powers from the consent of the
governed,' is ready to go to procure that 'consent,'--whether it will
stop at solitary confinement in a dark cell or join with the czar of
Russia in administering torture by electricity. The farther it shall go
the better it will be for Anarchy, as every student of the history of
reform well knows. Who shall estimate the power for propagandism of a
few cases of this kind, backed by a well-organized force of agitators
outside the prison walls?"[836]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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