"It is the small owner who offers the only really profitable and reliable material for taxation. He is made for taxation"
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Herbert’s line is a neat little dose of Victorian acid: the state doesn’t mainly live off grand villains or glamorous fortunes, but off the people who can’t slip away. The “small owner” isn’t just a socioeconomic category; he’s a design feature of governance. He has enough property to be legible, enough stability to be reachable, and not enough leverage to resist. That’s why he’s “profitable and reliable” - not because he’s especially wealthy, but because he’s predictable.
The phrasing “made for taxation” does the real work. It strips taxation of its moral varnish and recasts it as a kind of institutional husbandry. You don’t need to accuse individual tax collectors of cruelty; you just point out that systems gravitate toward the easiest yield. The small owner can’t dissolve into corporate shells, shift residence, or bargain like a major industrialist. He pays because he must keep his shop open, his land registered, his address fixed. Mobility is power; rootedness is revenue.
Context matters: Herbert was a radical classical liberal and anti-statist in an era when Britain was expanding administrative capacity and normalizing broad-based taxation alongside an expanding electorate. His warning isn’t “taxation is high.” It’s that modern states learn who can be squeezed with minimal risk. The subtext is almost contemporary: compliance is harvested where exit is expensive, and the people sold as the backbone of society often become the backbone of the tax base.
The phrasing “made for taxation” does the real work. It strips taxation of its moral varnish and recasts it as a kind of institutional husbandry. You don’t need to accuse individual tax collectors of cruelty; you just point out that systems gravitate toward the easiest yield. The small owner can’t dissolve into corporate shells, shift residence, or bargain like a major industrialist. He pays because he must keep his shop open, his land registered, his address fixed. Mobility is power; rootedness is revenue.
Context matters: Herbert was a radical classical liberal and anti-statist in an era when Britain was expanding administrative capacity and normalizing broad-based taxation alongside an expanding electorate. His warning isn’t “taxation is high.” It’s that modern states learn who can be squeezed with minimal risk. The subtext is almost contemporary: compliance is harvested where exit is expensive, and the people sold as the backbone of society often become the backbone of the tax base.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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