John Dickinson | Letter from a Farmer, 1768
In 1767 the British Parliament passed a series of taxes on the American colonies to raise revenue and gain greater control of colonial government and trade. These Townshend duties outraged many colonists. John Dickinson, a prominent Pennsylvania attorney, wrote the most famous attacks on the Townshend Act using the pseudomyn “A Farmer.” Dickinson’s letters criticized British taxation policies, comparing them in Letter VII with enslavement, but he called for peaceful resistance to these policies.
I hope to demonstrate before these letters are concluded, yet even in such a supposed case, these colonies ought to regard the act with abhorrence. For who are a free people? Not those over whom government is reasonably and equitably exercised but those who live under a government, so constitutionally checked and controuled, that proper provision is made against its being otherwise exercised. The late act is founded on the destruction of this constitutional security.
If the parliament have a right to lay a duty of four shillings and eight pence on a hundred weight of glass, or a ream of paper, they have a right to lay a duty of any other sum on either. They may raise the duty, as the author before quoted says has been done in some countries, till it “exceeds seventeen or eighteen times the value of the commodity.” In short, if they have a right to levy a tax of one penny upon us, they have a right to levy a million upon us: For where does their right stop? At any given number of pence, shillings, or pounds? To attempt to limit their right, after granting it to exist at all, is as contrary to reason, as granting it to exist at all is contrary to justice. If they have any right to tax us, then, whether our own money shall continue in our own pockets, or not, depends no longer on us, but on them. “There is nothing which we can call our own,” or to use the words of Mr. Locke, “What property have we in that, which another may, by right, take, when he pleases, to himself?”
These duties, which will inevitably be levied upon us, and which are now levying upon us, are expressly laid for the sole purpose of taking money. This is the true definition of taxes. They are therefore taxes. This money is to be taken from us. We are therefore taxed. Those who are taxed without their own consent, given by themselves, or their representatives, are slaves. We are taxed without our own consent given by ourselves, or our representatives. We are therefore—I speak it with grief—I speak it with indignation—we are slaves.
Source: John Dickinson, Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies (New York: Outlook, 1903), 75–78.
Put It in Context
What does Dickinson’s complaint about colonists being treated as slaves suggest about the limits of his political vision?
Interpret the Evidence
What are Dickinson’s economic and political criticisms of the Townshend duties?
Why does Dickinson use the pseudonym “A Farmer,” and how does he define a just government?
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