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The Things That Were Caesar's:
Tax Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Boston

CATHERINE S. MENAND


OF ALL THE RITUALS OF POLITICAL LIFE, the giving and receiving of public moneys is among the most significant. Short of conscription for combat, taxation is the most personal confrontation between citizen and government. It displays the power of the state to determine what shall be worthy of public support and to assign out-of-pocket shares of that support to individual taxpayers. To be perceived as fair, taxes must be publicly set for communally accepted purposes and assessed according to a known and agreed-upon schedule. A government that violates those standards is nothing more than a highwayman, collecting taxes at gunpoint, and soon ripe for replacement. Thus, read as a symbol of the acceptance of authority, popular attitudes towards taxes can be interpreted to decode fundamental attitudes towards the public purposes of a society and towards the legitimacy of its government. 1
      Modern Americans are familiar with a national tax system, but the imposition of state and local taxes on the real and personal property of individuals has its roots in colonial times. "The independence of the colonies where taxes were concerned," Robert Becker points out, "permitted each to apply its own form of tax relief to its own special needs, and to raise revenues through its own particular mixture of poll, property, and trade taxes."1 Although there was wide variation among the colonies, all shared a system of annual taxation to support the costs of government and the need to have those taxes paid without the use of coercive force. 2
      To the early settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, taxpaying must have seemed yet another collection plate passed among the community, an assessment to pay the secular costs of the sacred errand into the wilderness. "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's," Jesus had admonished. Ever obedient to the word of the Lord, no one in the Puritan Commonwealth disputed either the necessity or the right of the civil authority to collect taxes to pay for ministers and schoolmasters, firewards and nightwatch, roads and bridges, and care of the needy. Even a century later, when the Congregational colony had evolved into the more cosmopolitan royal province, and Locke had replaced Calvin, the assessment and allocation of tax revenues continued to reflect a commitment to the local community against the larger world. Taxes provided for visible town and county public needs and colonists viewed the salaries of royal officials as investments, with the governor accepting his pay from the legislature with the one hand while he signed its enactments with the other.2 3
      In 1774, Massachusetts helped to lead a revolution against imperial taxes raised by revenue acts imposed on the colonies by Parliament. No one objected to the use of revenue acts to regulate trade, but "No Taxation without Representation" became a powerful rallying cry, arousing support at all social levels. Resistance was based on constitutional principle, for the taxes imposed by the Stamp Act and the Townshend Acts could have been avoided by many of those who chose, in the end, to die fighting. What ignited widespread opposition was that these revenues would be raised and used in ways that upset the traditional rituals by which local affairs always had been conducted.3 Royally appointed customsmen, not locally elected town officials, would collect the duties; juryless Admiralty Courts, not juried civil actions, would hear the violations. Moreover, the revenues were to defray the costs of imperial administration, bypassing colonial legislatures. So, while the legislative leadership led the fight for constitutional rights, traditional attitudes toward the imposition and collection of taxes fueled the popular enthusiasm for the broader principle. 4
      The obverse of "No Taxation without Representation" is, of course, that self-imposed taxes are acceptable. Were they to those who shouted the slogan? Or was revolution the ultimate tax dodge? Did the rebellion against taxes imposed by London merely cover a rebellion against taxes in general? If an answer lies anywhere, surely it lies in Boston. While Boston is in some respects a special case, it is familiar territory because much has been written about its role in the struggle against imperial taxes. Less well known is the town's experience with its own taxes, their imposition and collection. 5
      The history of Boston in the eighteenth century is endlessly dramatic, featuring economic boom and bust, political confrontations, wars, fires, epidemics, currency crises, and even revolution. Yet the story of tax collecting in Boston is not. Viewed two centuries later, the townspeople appear less active than reactive, responding to crises rather than taking the initiative, as they made no changes in the system from 1733 until 1802. Despite its failings—and the frequent shortage of public money suggests it was a troubled system—the town simply could not devise a better way to meet its expenses. For that reason alone, tax collecting in Boston merits a close look. 6
      But first two caveats. Attempts to describe how Boston administered its tax collections must rely on the collation of very scattered data. Informed speculation is only possible by using public records from town meeting, the legislature, and the courts, and from the newspapers, for there are no surviving personal records of tax officials to explain motives or even, at times, actions.4 Furthermore, it would be a serious mistake to impose our sense of contemporary Boston city politics on the eighteenth-century town. Even for the direct descendants, the past is another country, and all we can describe at this remove is the procedure—the public ritual of tax collecting—and tell stories teased from the records of how that ritual was acted out in a risky attempt to read a period we can enter only in translation. What follows is a description of public taxation in Boston before the Revolution and after: Who set the taxes? How were they collected? By whom? Under what rules? 7
      Town constables elected annually at the March town meeting collected taxes in eighteenth-century Massachusetts. These open meetings permitted anyone to speak, but only "freeholders and other inhabitants ... ratable at twenty pounds estate, to one single rate besides the polls" could vote and elect all town officers.5 All male inhabitants could hold office, although some, such as justices of the peace, were exempt and others could be excused for reasons acceptable to the meeting. Those who declined to serve could pay a fee instead. Thus, to an extent, the men who held public trust were both peer-chosen and self-selected. All who served knew that they had been chosen personally by their neighbors, not merely drafted anonymously. Although some positions carried stipends, on the whole public office was, as John Adams pointed out to his fellow citizens in 1775, "an honorary" not a "lucrative employment."6 8
      Constables, usually young men in their first town office, served only once in seven years. They performed multiple tasks. They warned the town watch and ward; served writs for the town clerk, warrants for the coroners, and venires for jurors; announced town meetings; detained drunks; and gave receipts for wolves destroyed. And they collected a trinity of taxes: the province tax set by the legislature, the county tax set by the judges of general sessions, and the town tax imposed by the town meeting. They were exempt from military duties, and conversely, commissioned officers, members of the legislature, and church officers were exempt from the constabulary. In Boston, and probably elsewhere, the sons of prominent families, particularly recent Harvard College graduates, regularly paid a fee rather than serve.7 But not only the affluent disliked the post and it was often difficult to fill the roster. In 1732, Boston voters had to select fifty-one constables before the necessary fifteen had been sworn into office.8 9
      If a test of social justice is the fairness with which a society assigns its obligations and its rewards, what happens when those on whom a duty falls no longer consider it fair or reasonable? As it became increasingly difficult to get men to serve as constables, Boston made use of a statute that allowed the election of separate tax collectors and in 1733 chose three by written votes.9 These tax collectors, like the constables before them, earned a premium on taxes collected. Supply-side economics operated, for the town increased the premium when individuals refused to serve for less and protected itself by requiring collectors to produce bondsmen approved by the selectmen. 10
      In spite of the new system, it was frequently difficult to find men willing to accept. Those first elected in 1733, for instance, declined to serve, and it was not until late November that three men agreed.10 By 1738, the town treasurer reported a shortage of money "thro' the Deficiency of the Collectors," and the next year two incumbents refused reelection to the post "Upon Account of the growing difficulties which Attend it." Their replacements also declined. Still without collectors in October, the town directed the selectmen to "Confer with the Constables of the Town, Or any other Sutable Persons, in Order to their undertaking the Collecting the Taxes." But the constables declared that "they had no apprehension, when they accepted" that they would "be Charg'd with the Collecting of Rates" and refused to accept the post "on any Terms proposed to them." Finally, one incumbent collector consented to stay on and two others, one an assessor, agreed to serve.11 11
      The province tax, set by the legislature, was based on the real and personal property of all males over sixteen: their dwellings, working houses, servants for life, inventories of goods, grains, cider, and animals, and acreage by types of land. Only the governor, lieutenant governor, clergy, schoolmasters, and anyone connected with Harvard College—including students—were exempt.12 The legislature set a uniform rate for everyone so that all paid an equal portion of their wealth.13 While those who owned more paid more, they did not pay at a progressive rate.14 12
      Seven annually elected assessors compiled the actual tax books.15 The assessors could make reasonable abatements, but assessments also could be appealed to the selectmen, to the town meeting, and to the court of general sessions. Town meetings voted on very detailed matters of individual taxes, and the selectmen were not above sending the assessors names of inhabitants of other towns whom they believed should be taxed on their real estate and business in Boston. The meeting also set the date on which assessors closed their books and delivered them to the collectors. To earn their premiums, the collectors had to pay one half of the town tax within three months of receiving the books and the other half within three months. The first half of the province and county taxes were due in six months and the second half six months after.16 The collectors frequently made pleas for abatements for persons who died or left town, and when they petitioned to extend the sittings on abatements, town meeting usually agreed but shortened the period requested. It was often November before the books were delivered, which meant the collectors were still collecting into March and, thus, inclined to accept reelection for the following year in order to close their accounts. 13
      In the seventeenth century, constables had been subject to a fine of 20s. per month for arrears, but collectors could be sued on their bonds for unpaid taxes, and they were.17 For example, William Rand, a Boston physician elected a collector in 1734 served four years, long enough to fall into arrears of £1,300 on the province tax alone. With the taxes still unpaid in 1743, the provincial treasurer obtained an execution on Rand's bond. In a petition to the legislature, Rand explained that he had had trouble collecting "thro' the great poverty of many of said Inhabitants." Furthermore, during one five-month period he had been too busy caring for smallpox victims to collect the taxes, and many individuals on his list simply had absconded. He pleaded that to force him to pay the execution would cost him his dwelling and distilling house for half their value and would utterly ruin his family. He argued that his bondsmen provided sufficient surety and offered to mortgage his estate if granted a six-month extension. The petition was granted.18 14
      The experience of Dr. Rand, who found his own property in jeopardy from his failure to squeeze taxes out of a financially troubled population in a town periodically wracked by smallpox and fires, supports Gary Nash's conclusion that "Bostonians were no sullen pack of tax dodgers but residents of a badly buffeted town." Nash calculates that by the early 1740s, one-fourth of the town inhabitants "had fallen sufficiently near or below the subsistence level" to be too poor to pay taxes.19 No wonder men found tax collecting an unappealing duty: they simply could not get money from dead, destitute, or departed taxpayers. 15
      So many taxpayers were in arrears in 1743 that the town voted to exhibit the list at the next general meeting. When the legislature increased the provincial tax by £10 per £1,000, the town petitioned for relief, arguing that Boston was in a "Distressed State." It reported a steady decrease in ratable polls, noting that "some of Our Wealthier Inhabitants have already Left the Town that they may pay less Taxes in the Countrey and others are preparing to follow them." It presented facts to show that the distilling business was off, trade in general was one-half of what it had been in 1735, and poor relief costs had more than doubled. The petition argued that while Boston's number of taxpayers had decreased and its trade had declined, other towns had been added to the province and trade had improved elsewhere, so that it was only fair to shift the burden of taxes to relieve Bostonians, whose share of the provincial tax represented between one-fifth and one-sixth of the total.20 16
      The province tax paid salary grants, public debts, and such costs as the provincial sloop, but imperial requirements also affected the assessments. For example, taxes rose dramatically after 1735 to call in bills of credit in response to Royal Instructions limiting the amount of paper in circulation after 1741. In response to a public appeal from the House of Representatives, two private groups presented schemes to solve the currency shortage through the establishment of a Land Bank and a Silver Bank. A political firestorm broke out over the Land Bank, with the governor leading the opposition, even proroguing the House in an attempt to purge it of Land Bank supporters. Although he failed with the legislature, he succeeded in London when Parliament outlawed both banks. Controversy over the money supply subsided during the 1740s when the heavy cost of England's colonial wars led the Crown to abandon the limit on bills. 17
      Wartime expenses also placed tax burdens on the province, particularly in the face of a threatened invasion by the French from Canada. Boston's share rose to 18 percent, in addition to defense outlays of its own. Expenditures for fortifying the town in 1744 required a special tax of £12,500. The town named twelve collectors for the purpose, and while the town treasurer reported in January 1745 that the collectors had paid the whole, he also reported that there was no money in the treasury. The town offered taxpayers a 5 percent reduction if they paid their 1745 tax in advance. In March, the town voted to have six collectors assigned two wards each and allowed a premium of 9d. on the pound. In spite of the additional collectors, Boston continued to be troubled with arrears.21 18
      Thomas Hutchinson, in his role as historian of the Massachusetts Bay, offered his own explanation for the financial plight of the province. He argued that "light taxes," insufficient to meet expenses, led to extended credit, which became a crisis when the Crown requirement that bills of credit be drawn in by 1741 threatened to reduce the money supply. Since 1733, there had been a "general complaint" of an "unusual scarcity of money," and the price of silver had risen from 19s. in 1729 to 27s. per ounce in 1738. The seriousness of the inflation can be traced in the exchange rate for Massachusetts currency against the pound sterling, which went from £550 per £100 pounds in early 1740 to £1,125 by the end of 1749.22 19
      Hutchinson's solution was to put the currency on a silver backing, using the silver sent to Massachusetts by Britain as compensation for war expenditures in 1749. However, since it was absorbed in buying up bills of credit, the new money was not available to revive the colony's depressed economy. While Hutchinson claimed this "exchange [of] a depreciating paper medium ... for a stable medium of silver and gold" made Massachusetts "the envy of the other colonies" and that the people "were never in a more easy and happy situation," those caught in the gears of devaluation thought differently and complained vigorously.23 Finances were so unsettled that at the May 1749 meeting, "after a long Debate," the town voted it was not "practicable for the Inhabitants to form a List of the Valuation of their Estates." In addition, four of the six collectors "chose by a great Majority" refused election, and the town spent the rest of the year seeking men willing to serve in their place.24 20
      Although soaring inflation and declining trade might cause Boston to lose its financial bearings, the inhabitants did not lose their sense of humor. It does not require a novelist's imagination to relish the dramatic potential of the special town meeting held in early December to deal with the impasse. There are hints that the participants themselves found the occasion a bit of a lark when only twenty-seven qualified voters attended the meeting on December 8, called solely for the purpose of choosing collectors. Knowing they numbered less than one-tenth of the usual voters in a town election—and less than one-fifth of those usually electing representatives in May—they stayed in from the cold and amused themselves by electing four prominent merchants, three of whom, as the moderator at once informed them, "were not obliged by Law to serve as Collectors of Taxes." Samuel Welles, Andrew Oliver, and Thomas Hutchinson, all judges, were exempt; Edmund Quincy simply refused. Undaunted, they chose four more prominent citizens—including a Bowdoin and another Quincy—two of whom claimed to be excused as having been chosen constable within the past seven years (and thus by law not obliged to serve) and two refused. 21
      Having found this an enjoyable way to pass a winter day, tweaking tails and baiting lions, the meeting reassembled in the afternoon and elected another four leading merchants who "being inform'd thereof by a Constable sent their Answer to the Moderator that they would not serve." By this time, darkness and thoughts of dinner must have dampened the ardor of the participants, for they voted to dismiss the meeting with an order for the selectmen to call another "to consult upon the best Method that can be taken to chose such persons for Collectors of Taxes as will serve." A town meeting ten days later was no more successful. Someone needed to do some caucusing and apparently, during the week that followed, someone did. At the adjourned session, after the premium was increased by 3d., from 9d. to 12d. per pound, John Grant was reelected along with three new collectors, "all of whom Appeared & Accepted."25 22
      It is tempting to read darker messages into this drama and see it as a form of punishment of the well-to-do Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, who had promoted the generally unpopular redemption of paper money with royal silver.26 However, it would be a mistake to overlook the evidence of playfulness and humor in public life: political satire and snickering were eighteenth-century specialties. Whatever else they may have been doing, those twenty-seven voters were not attempting to change anything, only to indulge in a bit of sport with some of their more prosperous (and perhaps more pompous) fellow citizens who they knew would not have to serve. 23
      The task of tax collecting continued to be daunting. The Currency Act of 1751, which did away with paper money in New England, brought monetary stability in the long term, but initially people held onto their bills waiting to exchange them for silver, "whereby it is rendered very Difficult, if not Impractable" to collect the provincial tax.27 The legislature attempted to raise the entire 1750 tax appropriation by lottery. It proposed to sell 8,900 tickets for $3 per chance in milled silver coins to buyers whom they called "adventurers." When the minimum of 5,000 tickets could not be sold, the legislature offered to accept provincial bills as well. It promised to pay the winners within a year at 3 percent interest if the treasury had any money or later at 6 percent if the treasury did not. The lottery was a bust and the province ended up holding all the unsold chances itself.28 24
      The series of wars in the first half of the century had brought profits to some Bostonians, but the collapse of shipbuilding at the end of King George's War in 1748 and the draining off of manpower for the Louisbourg expedition, for examples, meant the loss of taxable polls and an increase of impoverished widows.29 Various committees studied the budget but could recommend few cuts. At midcentury, the major expenses of the town were the "Publick Schools [which consumed] more than 1/3 part of the whole Sum," and the costs of supporting the poor, for which there seemed to be "no Reduction that can be well made therein, except it be in the Doctors Accompts." The committee that examined the state of the town was reduced to suggesting as a budget cut that the expense "of Purchasing and Supporting Bulls [be charged to] such Inhabitants only as keep Cows." The report concluded by imploring "all who have the disposal of the Town's moneys to be as frugal as the nature of the respective Services, and the Interest of the whole will admit."30 25
      Other problems afflicted the town. In the winter of 1752, an epidemic of smallpox struck Boston. In their application to the General Court for relief, the selectmen estimated that in a town of fewer than 16,000 inhabitants, 6,000 were infected and another 3,000 to 4,000 likely to be. Calculating the cost for care at thirty shillings each, the total cost would come to £100,000, with additional loss of population from the disease and from those who would move from Boston to escape the pox and never return.31 Not surprisingly, two of the six collectors refused election in 1753, and the town quickly accepted the offer of the remaining four to collect the entire tax.32 This eased the problem of finding collectors but not the problems attending actual collection. The town remained so short of money that it petitioned the legislature to allow Boston a special tax to make up the shortfall for 1755 and 1756 resulting from abatements for those unable to pay.33 26
      Alarmed by the arrears, the town voted in 1756 not to elect anyone still owing for 1754, making Thomas Downe, Jr., ineligible for reelection. Although Downe finally paid in full for 1754 and collected that premium, he never collected the 1755 taxes, nor could his bondsmen. In 1758, one of them, whose property had been attached for the uncollected taxes, reported to the town meeting that he had collected what he could, and he petitioned for an abatement of those "so extremely Poor, that said Downe could not get one farthing of them, nor are they yet able to pay any part, many others have been dead for some time and left nothing." The petitioner pleaded that he "will be almost ruin'd by being unhappily bound for said Downe."34 27
      At that same meeting, the town voted to have only two collectors for 1758 and chose two prominent merchants, who promptly refused.35 In fact, no well-known Bostonian ever accepted election as a tax collector at any time in the eighteenth century. Should we read the teasing of the socially elite by electing them collectors as an acting out of class antagonism? When the well-to-do complained that tax collections were adequate to meet the costs of the town, did the town then elect some of them collectors as a way of challenging them to do better? 28
      Most elected officials in Massachusetts towns were—and in many New England towns continue to be—unpaid amateurs.36 Financial management, in particular, required expert guidance, and longevity in office was one way to turn amateurs into experts. Then, as now, many men became regular town officers. The town treasurer, elected annually, conducted the financial business subject to review by a committee of auditors chosen in town meeting. The position was virtually a lifetime job: only two men occupied the post between 1720 and 1775. Of the selectmen who proposed the budget, many served for a decade or more, and some of the assessors, who prepared the tax books, were chosen repeatedly. Even two of the tax collectors accepted election more than fifteen times. At least one incumbent was always reelected so that no entirely new group of selectmen, assessors, or tax collectors ever replaced those in office. These two quite simple expedients—long tenures for some and retention of at least one incumbent—assured continuity of policy and practice from year to year. While it is significant that some men served long tenures, the same group did not; no permanent majority ever exercised control. 29
      Of the twenty-six men who served as collectors between 1733 and the siege of Boston in 1775, the one familiar name is Samuel Adams. Although he was the only collector who graduated from Harvard and the only one elected to the House of Representatives, when first elected in 1756, Adams was not a prominent figure in Boston.37 He was a maltster; the man he replaced was a distiller. His fellow collectors during most of his nine years' tenure were a shipwright, a retailer, and a joiner. The list of Boston collectors includes a tallowchandler, a tavernkeeper, a bricklayer, and a bookseller, among other trades, as well as militia officers and members of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, an elite training group organized in 1638 and modeled on the London Artillery Company.38 30
      Town officers (and even judges), essentially unpaid amateurs, continued to work at their regular occupations during their terms of public service. Occupation indicated more than one's social status in eighteenth-century Boston—it was part of one's legal identity, helping to distinguish between persons bearing the same names.39 Tracing collectors in court records shows that many became gentlemen, indicating that they no longer earned their livelihoods primarily from trade. This may help to explain why some men accepted the task of tax collection, since they may have sought the premium either to supplement income in a period of economic hardship or to gain access to capital.40 It carried risks, but the bondsmen shared the risks, as is clear from the example of Thomas Downe, Jr., the man Samuel Adams replaced. 31
      However great the possible rewards, it is difficult to understand why anyone would seek to be a tax collector in the 1760s. One of the worst fires in its history swept through Boston in 1760 and a smallpox epidemic in 1761; the two events decimated the tax base and swelled relief costs. The General Court enacted legislation to prevent persons ruined by the fire from being destrained for taxes, and it also voted Boston a tax abatement of £1,100 and a loan of £3,500 at 6 percent.41 At the May 1763 town meeting, a committee reported that the collectors had paid only a portion of the province tax for 1761 and none for 1762.42 The town treasurer, already borrowing money from townspeople at 6 percent, was directed to pay interest to the schoolmasters on the sums overdue to them.43 32
      Just as the town treasurer could sue collectors who were in arrears, collectors could sue delinquent taxpayers in the civil courts. At least they believed they could. When John Ruddock brought what should have been a routine action of trespass on the case in the Suffolk County Court of Common Pleas in 1763 against a Boston merchant for 1761 taxes, they received an unpleasant shock. The defendant's attorney made the routine pleadings for abatement, including the claim that the action should have been for debt, not case.44 Ruddock lost and appealed to the Superior Court of Judicature, which, "After a full hearing of the parties by council," upheld the lower court. The Court added confusion, however, when "being asked by both Parties," it stated that a collector could not maintain an action to recover taxes where the remedy given by statute is to distress.45 This meant that the collector's only option was to seize all the delinquent's goods and sell them after five days. If there were no goods, the sheriff was to seize the person and hold him without bail; this discharged the collector from collecting the tax. 33
      Legislation was required, so the town asked for a bill permitting collectors to sue for debt the agents of absconding debtors, the deceased, those departed from town, and the husbands of female taxpayers. The collectors, in a memorial to the House of Representatives supporting the bill, anguished that without that legal right "they are exposed to the greatest hazards of loss, and even of ruin," since they had already "paid to the treasurer large sums for delinquents" in order to collect the premium. They argued that there was "much less damage" to delinquents in suits, since the distress sales of goods "seldom fetch more than half their value."46 34
      The debate on the issue in the newspapers provides a glimpse of popular attitudes toward the collecting of taxes. "T.Q.," writing in the Boston Gazette, a newspaper partial to the popular party, pointed out that articles printed in the Evening-Post, a newspaper partial to the administration, were intended "very artfully to mislead the minds of people and give them a prejudice against" the pending legislation. The power to sue, he noted, was "a right which never was thought doubtful, 'till within these eight months, and never was complained of at all." In fact, "those who have been delinquent for taxes in this town, have from time immemorial, been used to be sued, and have always chose it" over the "violent" and "harsh method of distraint." "T.Q." concluded by explaining that the collector "stands as it were a sponsor for his fellow townsmen" in that he contracts to "pay to the several treasurers, certain sums, which he is empowered to collect of the individual inhabitants." Once he pays, he is "releas'd from his contract, whether he ever collects the monies of the inhabitants or not." If the collector pays the money himself, then the delinquent is his debtor and should be subject to "the ordinary course of law."47 35
      The arguments advanced in the Gazette did not question the "integrity, moderation and judgment" of the collectors. Instead, they suggested that the opponents of the bill, in attempting to alter the traditional ritual of collection by removing a right practiced "from the beginning of the charter," pursued a hidden agenda. "T.Q." speculated that the Evening-Post writer "is a man of fortune" who would object to being forced to distrain to collect his own debts. "Those who could be contented with it," he chided, "are not among the most humane part of mankind." 36
      While "taxes are necessary" and "should be collected with speed," another writer pointed out that "those gentlemen of leisure & taste," whose "penetration & sagacity enables them to dive into schemes and designs quite concealed from the vulgar," and who "have so soon and loudly sounded the alarm" on this bill, were not likely to be affected by it: they sue and are sued. "What, is no difference to be made between the poor man and the Gentleman"? the author, "S.W.," asked sarcastically. Concerned that taxes would become a device for exacerbating class differences, he pointed out that the present law, before which "a gentleman is upon the same footing with the mechanick," does not discriminate. In fact, he went on, some believe it "prevents or destroys a due subordination," and "we shall never have good times in this country, till a greater difference is made between the poor and the rich." In that view, the collectors should be directed not to distrain from the merchant or gentleman, whose debts are safe, but "this is quite otherwise with your poor and low bred people, and they are to be treated otherwise." 37
      Distraint, then, was for the vulgar, and "A Tradesman" suspected that some who oppose the bill "are in hopes that what they have long pleased to call a turbulant, mobbish spirit in this town, which is rather a true spirit of liberty and independence, will be broken, by a frequent use of the power of distraint. I question whether the people would long endure it," he added, saying that he saw "much more tenderness to the whole of the town than for themselves" in the collectors' request for the power to sue. In addition, he pointed out, the bill proposed would require collectors to wait to sue until after the time for payment (and the premium) had elapsed, while under the current rules they could distrain fourteen days after delivering the tax bill and sell the goods five days later, making distraint "certainly the most expeditious for them." 38
      The writer made no criticism of the collectors, but did this reference to their "tenderness" have hidden meaning? Does it lend support to the view that the collectors were too lenient or that, as some historians have charged, they used their office to buy political favors? Merrill Jensen wrote that "Samuel Adams was merely one of Boston's tax collectors whose failure to collect taxes delighted the voters." G. B. Warden asserted that "assessors and collectors served inordinately long terms at the annual elections in spite of (or perhaps because of) their clumsiness and leniency." Even Gary Nash, who fully understood the town's economic distress, said that "Bostonians elected their tax collectors partially on the basis of their willingness to collect what they could, given a family's circumstances, and leave the remainder in arrears."48 39
      "What I tell you three times is true" may be a good rule for snark hunters, but it is a hazardous standard for historians. Yet it is accepted that Boston tax collectors were so eager for election that they chose not to collect all of the taxes assigned to them in order to win votes. How likely is this when, again and again, the town found it difficult to fill vacancies? Furthermore, collectors were legally bound for the amounts assessed to them in their assigned wards, and while it might profit a collector to pay in advance in order to collect the premium, it was his loss if he failed to collect from the delinquents. And, if the collector did not pay and the town considered him too long in arrears, it ordered the treasurer to sue on his bond.49 40
      Indeed, the collectors were unique among public officers. The letter from "T.Q." caught this perfectly when the writer called the tax collectors "sponsors for their fellow townsmen," since they were surrogates for their fellow citizens' responsibility to fund public life. No other official was contracted to fulfill someone else's obligation, one on one—not legislators (who embodied the many), not judges (who presided over contending adversaries), and not firewards, nor market clerks nor viewers of shingles (who performed services). Collectors had collective responsibility and individual guilt: while other officials could lose elections, they could be sued. 41
      Political power lies in discretionary control of public resources. Those who paid the taxes and those who assessed and collected them could appeal at any stage to the town meeting, the legislature, or the courts for relief from any perceived abuse or injustice. The direct democracy of town meetings, held at publicized times and places, limited the discretion of the selectmen by voting on every expenditure. If the assessed ratepayers did not want to pay for something, they could vote it down. Tax lists also served as voting lists by the town clerk, much as today's registration lists are used, and voting usually took place by written ballot. Moderators who allowed unqualified persons to vote could be sued, and on particularly contentious occasions, the meeting insisted on "strict Scrutiny."50 42
      The idea that the collectors forgave taxes in return for political favors is supported with an assertion that collectors served long terms and rose to higher office.51 While two of the twenty-six collectors between 1730 and 1776 served many years, the average length of service was 6.6 years. One and only one, John Ruddock, became a selectman and, although he ran for the legislature at least twice, he lost; Samuel Adams was the only former collector to represent the town in the legislature. Seventeen collectors held no further public office, burned up or burned out. "Historians," Edward Cook remarked, "have not been slow to draw large conclusions from the willingness of major figures like Elisha Cooke, Jr., and Samuel Adams to serve the town of Boston as tax collectors, and their assertions ring true."52 Since Cooke never appears in the records as a tax collector and since Adams is the only "major figure" who does, the "assertions" ring rather hollow. 43
      Historians have also accepted, on the basis of very scant evidence, the story of a Caucus Club composed of leaders of a popular party controlling town meeting elections.53 Both the assessors and the collectors have been accused of using "the political pressure which they could exert on every taxpayer and voter" to advance the power of the Caucus.54 Some historians date the club's founding from 1720 and the activities of Elisha Cooke, Jr., but the favored source is a description in John Adams's Diary, dated "Feby. 1763." It is double hearsay: Adams is told by someone who never attended a meeting that "the Caucas Clubb meets at certain Times" in Thomas Dawes's attic. Participants are said to include William Fairfield, a relative of Samuel Adams's mother and an assessor from 1743 to 1770; William Story, a justice of the peace since 1761 and deputy registrar of Admiralty whose house would be mobbed in 1768, indicating that members of the "Clubb" could not even protect their own property from the crowd which historians claim they led; John Ruddock, a collector from 1747 to 1764 and a justice of the peace; Samuel Adams, a collector from 1756 to 1764; and William Cooper, town clerk from 1760 to 1809. The group allegedly met at the house of a militia officer on Purchase Street, where Samuel Adams lived, in the South End.55 44
      As John Adams suggests, any such group would have to liaison with the Merchants Club in order to find candidates for town office, but the ubiquitous evening clubs and the camaraderie of the tavern, as well as the convivial fireward meetings, seem more likely loci of political caucusing. In that light, a more realistic interpretation of the "Caucas Clubb" might be as an informal gathering of local political leaders and not a "South End Caucus" at all, especially since Ruddock lived in the North End. 45
      Longtime public officials in their social cups undoubtedly discussed local politics and tried to identify men willing to serve in town posts. They still do. Certainly, the difficulties in finding constables and collectors were endemic to many other offices, and willing candidates would have to be sought out, particularly by those men who had themselves devoted long years to public office. The data suggests ad hoc caucusing when duties threatened to go unperformed. For example, the town literally could not afford to be without tax collectors, but with the voting frequently going on in November or December, clearly no waiting list of eager applicants existed. The playful selection of a series of prominent merchants as collectors in 1749 had been a legal act, yet not one of those elected took the job. Twenty years later, when the division between Court and Country, Tory and Whig, was much clearer and deeper, the wealthy merchants and high Tories willing to serve on special committees for the town still showed no appetite for the duties of tax assessment or collection. 46
      It would, of course, be simpleminded to presume that no politicking for the more prestigious town offices took place, and certainly the difficulties of filling lesser duties made pre-election "persuading" inevitable. However, the number of men who refused election as collectors—and the thirteen who refused reelection—argues against a regular caucus and against irregularities as rewards for votes. If there was a perception that some men abused their positions as assessors and collectors, clearly those who might have thought so had no desire to take their places. Our own period, with its prevailing bias that economic power is always the controlling factor, might assume that the collectors did it for the money. Clearly, the premium was influential since raising the premium proved one way to change the minds of those who refused election. Successful collectors could do well: each received £109 for 1764 taxes, on a par with the £100 paid the town treasurer or the schoolmaster. However, a 9d. premium represented only 3.75 percent, which was less than the 5 percent allowed on private loans to the town or the 6 percent paid for loans for the almshouse.56 Moreover, the risks were significantly greater, and failure could mean costly and troublesome suits against the collector and his bondsmen, as collectors well knew. 47
      Becker's observation that "the interest groups involved in the politics of New England taxation are difficult to define precisely" is particularly true of Boston.57 Even during the furor over the Stamp Act, the detailed examination of the town's budget in 1765 was driven more by the loss of tax revenues as a result of fire and epidemic than by the controversy over stamped paper. A committee's report to the town meeting found substantial arrears from the collectors. It argued that if taxes were "seasonable Collected," it would be possible for the town to purchase "at a much cheaper rate with the Cash than they can upon Credit." It proposed six collectors, instead of four, in order to expedite collections, but the town could not find six men willing to serve. When two of the four incumbents also refused, it took until November to fill the posts.58 48
      In 1767, the "Petition of a number of Inhabitants respecting the Monys due to the Town from the present and late Collectors of Taxes" led to yet another look at Boston's accounts. The committee on the premium used its report to chastise both the collectors and the assessors. It blamed the increase in the town tax on "the neglect of the Collectors, or some of them, and the backwardness of the Inhabitants to pay owing to the great lenity of the Collectors notwithstanding the generous Premium," and on the slowness of the assessors to deliver the books. Although the total arrears had been reduced by more than half since 1765, six collectors were found deficient. The meeting voted to sue on the bonds of two former collectors, John Ruddock and Samuel Adams, and of Jonathan Payson. The other three, all incumbents, were reelected and Nathaniel Coffin was chosen in the place of Payson. The premium had to be increased from 9d. to 12d. on the pound before they would accept, and even then Coffin declined. Payson, who had paid his 1764 arrears in April, was again elected but he, too, refused, and Abraham Savage was chosen in October.59 49
      The decision to sue the three collectors does not appear to be part of any campaign to establish conservative control of the town meeting in response to the disruptions caused by the new customs establishment and the quartering of British troops in town. Colin Nicolson estimates that fewer "than 30 Bostonians who held town office between 1758 and 1775 became loyalists." Two were elected in 1767, but Nathaniel Coffin refused and the other, Abraham Savage, was chosen only after Payson, who had been a collector since 1751, declined.60 As one of four, Savage made no real change in the make-up of the group. 50
      We should remember that the participants in this story had no knowledge of the future. They were faced with an immediate problem, the shortage of funds in the town treasury, and were meeting it as best they could. The decision to sue the collectors to clear accounts and allow the town to operate on a cash basis did not reform the system of tax collecting, it merely promised a change in the way the town itself did business. The economic uncertainties connected with the non-importation agreement adopted in October would make it difficult to rely on the merchants to have ready money to loan the town, so clearing the accounts was a way of saving money and of providing greater financial stability for the town. It is only historical hindsight that allows us to classify the participants by political labels or that makes the involvement of Samuel Adams seem significant. 51
      Although their terms as collectors overlapped, the three men sued had little in common. John Ruddock was, according to John Adams, "a very respectable Justice of the Peace, who had risen to Wealth and Consequence, by a long Course of Industry as a Master Shipwright."61 He would be one of those magistrates who angered Governor Bernard by issuing warrants against soldiers for offenses against civilians, but there is no reason to identify him as "the leader of the Caucus in the 1750s."62 If anything, Ruddock's defeat by Samuel Adams, in a special election in 1765 to fill the House seat of Oxenbridge Thacher and again in 1766, further weakens any claims for a Caucus Club, since no self-respecting political machine would split the vote by running two of its candidates against each other. Ruddock was never sued, not because he had political influence, but because he paid off his total arrears in April 1767 before any suit was filed. 52
      Those with predilections for conspiracy theories may see the town's suit against Samuel Adams as a political vendetta by the governor and his supporters. Adams, however, was seriously in arrears, the town was under financial strain, and the procedures against him were strictly legal. After he refused reelection in 1765, Adams was chosen as a representative and the town continued to elect him to the legislature and to appoint him to important committees. 53
      Following the vote in March 1767 to sue him for arrears—a debt he had no money to settle—the question of Adams's suitability for office was addressed in a letter appearing in the Boston Gazette prior to the May elections. Without mentioning Adams by name, the writer listed the qualifications of a good representative, such as wisdom, ability, and knowledge of the constitution, adding that it was not necessary to have wealth: "on the contrary tho' he is intimately acquainted with poverty, yet if he is in all respects otherwise qualified his poverty should be no obstacle to his choice, especially if he has been proved and found faithful: because his virtues will more surely keep him out of the reach of temptation than the riches of others." Harbottle Dorr, a Boston shopkeeper, penned in the margin of his copy of the newspaper: "A true Character of Samuel Adams ... who has always Proved himself a Steady wise Patriot in the Worst of Times."63 54
      Adams's wards had suffered heavily in the 1760 fire and he had, by his own accounting, attempted to clear his books by applying later collections to earlier arrears, leaving him with a substantial deficit for 1764. Even after one of his bondsmen collected in his place, the accounts fell short. The town treasurer won a judgment in inferior court, upheld on appeal, and an execution for £1,463 was ordered in March 1768; it was paid. Although Lieutenant Governor Thomas Hutchinson, who sat as chief justice on the appeal, claimed in his history that Adams "made defalcation, which caused an additional tax upon the inhabitants," it appears that Adams's friends raised the necessary funds by subscription to satisfy the execution without any "additional tax" on the town.64 55
      While one might speculate about Ruddock and Adams, Jonathan Payson is a closed book. Like the majority of collectors, he left only the faintest trail of his life. The entire text of his obituary in 1783 reads: "On the 9th Inst. departed the life, at Haverhill, in the 81st year of his age, Mr Jonathan Payson, formerly a Collector in this town, a man well respected by all his friends and acquaintances."65 A shopkeeper and sometime officeholder, he served sixteen years as a collector, most of those years with Ruddock. But, unlike Ruddock, Payson engaged in endless argument when the town voted in May 1769, once again, to put his bond in suit. Payson asked and received a three months extension, but when he still did not pay, the town treasurer sued Payson and his bondsmen, recovering £597 in April 1770. Although the defendants appealed, the Superior Court of Judicature also found against them. When Payson went back to the town meeting in May 1771 with a petition for abatements, the town clearly had lost all patience. An unusually tart report snapped that he had already been abated £10 of those same taxes and if he had failed to receive the others "it must be principally owing to his own negligence [since] several of the Persons taxed were to the personal knowledge of the Committee then in good circumstances, and well able to pay." The report charged that his abatements were already "equal if not more than" those of any other collector and his losses were "but small in proportion to the great benefit" he had received from the premiums.66 56
      The next year, 1772, Payson petitioned for remission of £109, which he claimed to have lost during his sixteen years of service through taxpayers' death, flight, or bankruptcy. The petition was dismissed. He paid the amount, thereby finally satisfying the execution of the court issued March 10, 1772, but it had taken six years to close his accounts.67 Clearly, suing collectors brought no quick relief to Boston's financial headaches. 57
      In 1768 the legislature ordered assessors to conduct a new valuation. As a result, the provincial tax for Boston declined from £4, 606 to £3,505, reflecting the loss of assets in the town, but town taxes rose from £6,000 to £8,000, more than making up the difference. The county tax, which had hovered at £300 to £350 for years, had been raised in 1765 to £1,500 to pay for a new jail, reaching a high of £3,000 in 1768 to finish the building. But no sooner had the work been completed, than, in January 1769, the inside was "entirely consumed by Fire, no part thereof but the Stonewalls being left." So instead of falling, the tax had to be set at £1,000 to rebuild. Boston's share was 55 percent, based on its share of the provincial tax for Suffolk County. But Boston was not the only town with revenue problems, for the Suffolk Court of General Sessions reported in 1769 unpaid county taxes of £3,401, with "considerable sums due from several towns for 1764, 1765, 1766, 1767." In fact, the county was so short that a committee of justices examined the prisoners list and discharged as many as "proper," with the county paying their fines and costs because this was cheaper than continuing them in jail.68 58
      Taxpayers had a very direct and personal relationship with each of the three levels of government. Disagreements over the town tax were thrashed out in town meeting. Although the county tax, set by the court of general sessions and subject only to the court's own audit, lay outside popular control, it elicited little criticism. When towns found the provincial tax, set by their duly elected representatives, too heavy, they could petition the legislature for relief. Petitions to Parliament were of a different nature. Yet, while the royal revenues from the Navigation Acts would have paid the salaries of judges and crown officers, they would also, as the colonists realized, come from the same pockets that had always borne the costs of government. Taxes on sugar and tea were no different from taxes on property and inventories to those who paid. If it was to be their money, Bostonians insisted it be raised and spent by their choice. If the citizens were niggardly in their support of public expenditures, they never disputed the right of the civil authority to impose taxes. In the end, they fought a revolution to preserve provincial taxes—that is, taxes raised and dispersed by a directly elected body—not to do away with taxes altogether. 59
      The legislature rather playfully passed a bill in 1771 taxing Crown officers, but Governor Hutchinson refused to sign it, recognizing it as aimed at harassing the Customs Commissioners whose complaints had brought the troops in 1768.69 In Boston, the annual tax accounts were cleared and premiums paid on the usual schedule until escalating opposition to imperial policies, culminating in the Coercive or Intolerable Acts, closed the port and suspended town meeting in May 1774. By November the "present Difficulties of Collecting the Town Taxes" had become so serious that the town voted the schoolmaster and the town clerk interest on their unpaid salary drafts. The collectors refused to receive the tax books on the usual terms, and it "was the sense of the Town that Nothing farther should be said at this Time." By March 1775, smallpox made tax collection impossible.70 60
      Meeting in 1775, the town wondered what to do about 1774 taxes. A committee recommended that the town appoint collectors to receive £8,000 in town taxes for 1774, with a 5 percent premium as encouragement. The collectors would not be held responsible for any sums beyond those collected and actually paid in, their accounts to be given on oath and accompanied by a list of non-payers. This was April 3, 1775. The meeting, adjourned until April 17, did not convene again until March 5, 1776, when it met at Watertown. Events had overtaken Boston. A report on November 27, 1776, showed that "the Town will be in Debt to the amazing Sum of £15681,,13,,11—which there appears no Fund to discharge."71 What would Boston do? 61
      Revolution changed remarkably little in the institutions of public life in Massachusetts. The new state preserved the forms of government in the executive office, the legislature, and the courts. Town government was virtually unchanged as well, and in Boston, after the evacuation of British troops, local government resumed much as usual. One symbolic change marking the new democracy eliminated the governor's exemption from taxation. Otherwise, nothing changed in the way Boston collected taxes. 62
      For the rest of the century, the town chose the customary four tax collectors at its March meetings and assigned wards with a premium for early payment. Three men served almost the entire period from 1777 to 1801, but the system did not work any better than before. There were the usual delinquent taxpayers, shortfalls in the treasury, and suits on collectors' bonds.72 As the eighteenth century ended, the town talked of "some more efficacious mode of collecting the Tax," but was unable to agree on any plan until 1802.73 The new system called for the election of a town treasurer as collector for the town, with printed tax bills payable at the treasurer's office. Those who paid within thirty days saved 5 percent, sixty days earned 3 percent, and 120 days 2 percent. The most significant change was that now the taxpayer became directly liable to the town for taxes. 63
      Can this be read as a symbol of change in civic relationships in the community? The eighteenth-century system, which made the tax collector a surrogate for the taxpayer, effectively privatized the most basic public responsibility of the citizen. Funding the public purse became a business for persons hired by the town. Although these people were elected annually by all the taxpayers, it did not change the essentially private nature of the position. The tax collector, unlike the constable, was not an officer of the court. The move to relieve the collector of the need to distrain (rather like a sheriff's sale) by allowing suits for debt only recognized that the collector was the taxpayer, backed by bondsmen like other private purveyors of public services, and the citizen who became delinquent was thus the collector's debtor. Now the treasurer would sue delinquent taxpayers directly. 64
      For whatever reasons, the new method, like the old, failed to keep the public coffers filled and the town still faced deficits and delinquents. Soon it hired deputy collectors and distrained those citizens who failed to pay. In 1811, a town-wide committee, unable to "discover that any material savings could be made in the annual expenses of the Town," concluded "that from the imperfect manner in which the taxes have been Collected, the affairs of the Town are in a state of derangement ill suited to its Interest, to its ability, or its credit." Its recommendations, which the town adopted, abolished the premium for early payment, "paid to the wealthy part of the community for doing what the law and the moral obligation arising from the duty they owe the Town, would induce them to do," and imposed penalties for late payments. 65
      The treasurer was to appoint four assistant collectors, who would be paid in proportion to the taxes they collected. The committee, in suggesting this, declared that they had "recurred to the old and well approved mode of Collecting the taxes by Special Collectors. A mode which," they averred, the town "never intended to abolish."74 But this was not a revival of the old system. The new collectors were not surrogates for the taxes imposed on their wards, and the town treasurer, not collectors, sued delinquent taxpayers. While the new system "bureaucratized" the position, did it indicate a desire to make public offices more professional? Most likely not, since the elected treasurer was not expected to have financial skills. Even today no one "trains" to become secretary of state or treasurer or clerk of court, and a person can become governor without any executive experience, without any public administration background, even without prior elective office-holding. In short, many positions requiring significant technical knowledge are filled by a process which pays no regard to technical competence. This fact has not changed since the seventeenth century. What has changed is that now a professional bureaucracy does the work. 66
      While I have cautioned against trying to read eighteenth-century Boston as a twentieth-century text, it is perhaps the business of historians to read present patterns for their inheritance from the past. Present-day proponents of "privatization" of public functions would do well to consult the record of tax collecting in eighteenth-century Boston.75 Passing the tax bill to collectors who are paid a premium to collect does not seem to alter that deep American ambivalence about taxes: a reluctance to vote them and a reluctance to pay them, at the same time that voters want services that government provides them both as a society and as individuals. But if Americans do not want to tax themselves, they most certainly do not want anyone else to do it for them. Perhaps it is just as well that they not have anyone else pay their taxes for them either. Better they should take to heart the words of the town committee in 1811, which reminded fellow townspeople of the reasons for taxes: "It is incurred for the education of our children; for the preservation of our health; for the godlike charity of Supporting our poor; for the preservation of our lives & limbs by repairing and lighting our Streets." For such obligations, they admonished, "The money ought to be paid at sight."76 67


CATHERINE S. MENAND, a legal historian and former director of Archives and Records Preservation for the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, is the author of A Research Guide to the Massachusetts Courts and their Records (1987).


NOTES

1. Robert A. Becker, Revolution, Reform, and the Politics of American Taxation, 1763–1783 (Baton Rouge, La., 1980), 41. Becker notes that "there is no history of taxes in the colonies overall, and there are very few of taxes in the individual colonies" (6). Although he offers some data on Boston taxes, his focus is primarily on the provincial tax; he does not describe how the tax laws were administered.

2. The House of Representatives wrote its London agent [Benjamin Franklin] in 1771 that they feared the "parliamentary revenue laws ... making the governors ... independent" because the legislative salary was the only check on the governor's power. Boston Gazette, July 29, 1771.

3. Jack Greene in "Why did they rebel?" concludes that a "very large majority" of the colonists "agreed that metropolitan efforts to tax the colonies and to regulate them in ways that were contrary to long-standing customary arrangements were impolitic." Times Literary Supplement, June 10, 1994, p. 5. "Impolitic" seems too mild.

4. Sources include the records of the Boston town meeting and selectmen, volumes 12 (1729–1742) through 35 (1796–1813), published under the title A Report of the Records Commissioners of the City of Boston (Boston, 1885–1905), hereafter cited as BR; the Acts and Resolves of the General Court, hereafter cited as Provincial Laws; Boston newspapers; the Judicial Archives of court records at the State Archives, Boston, hereafter cited as Judicial Archives. According to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Department of the Boston Public Library, which serves as Boston's archives, all pre-1782 tax records burned. Two tax inventories, 1689 and 1771, survive.

5. The legislature set qualifications for voting at town meetings; qualifications for voting for representatives to the General Court in May were based on the provincial charter. Province Law [hereafter P.L.] 1695–6, ch. 6, levied a poll tax on all males over 16 (4s. per poll) and all single women (2s.), and the estates of both groups were rated. Presumably single women (and free blacks) who paid both poll taxes and property taxes met the qualifications for voting.

6. P.L. 1692–3, ch. 28 (An Act for Regulating of Townships, choice of Town-Officers, and setting forth their Power); John Adams (writing as Novanglus), Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor et al. (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), 2:281.

7. In 1745, this was extended to once every ten years. BR, 14:66. The towns were liable for county and province taxes. In Boston, ministers were "supported by a free contribution or subscription," not a collected tax. P.L. 1735–36, ch. 15, ss. 4. The fee for a constable to be excused was £20 in 1747 when the town treasurer was paid £300. BR, 14:107, 120. It was £4 in 1759 when the treasurer received £100. BR, 16:17, 25.
      D. T. Konig says that men of substance were rarely chosen to serve as constables. Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1979), 119. Actually, many were chosen; few served. Examples include Oxenbridge Thacher (Harvard 1738) in 1746, Thomas Cushing (Harvard 1744) in 1747, and Samuel Adams (Harvard 1740) in 1744, all of whom declined; Adams's father had been a constable in 1717 and 1718.

8. BR, 12:27–31. Truly a policeman's lot was not a happy one: a jury presented Christopher and Susanna Hoskins for "an assault upon the Body of Samuel Torrey ... in the Execution of his duty as a Constable so that his life was despaired of & other Enormities." Suffolk, Court of General Sessions, misc. files, 1735 APR Torrey, Judicial Archives.

9. BR, 12:52. A fourth collector was chosen for Rumney Marsh until it became Chelsea in 1739. P.L. 1699–1700, ch. 26, ss.10, allowed towns to choose either collectors or constables to collect taxes; see also P.L. 1730, ch. 1.
      Even after constables no longer collected taxes, men still declined to serve. In 1737, the town meeting spent two days filling the roster—only 5 of 28 chosen on the first day agreed to be sworn and 19 had to be elected the next day to obtain another seven constables. BR, 12:152–159.

10. BR, 13:235–236; BR, 12:53.

11. BR, 15:150; BR, 12:242, 230, 241; BR, 15:214; BR 12:242. The premium was raised from 9 pence to 1 shilling on the pound for that year. The three collectors were sworn on Jan. 31, 1740. BR, 15:220.

12. Valuations were ordered approximately every seven years. See P.L. 1734–35, ch. 14; P.L. 1741–42, ch. 9; P.L. 1748–49, ch. 11; P.L. 1755–56, ch. 44; P.L. 1760–61, ch. 24; P.L. 1767–68, ch. 15. All persons were required to list on oath their real and personal property for a new tax assessment.

13. Those without property were liable only for the poll tax. There were also special taxes, such as the excise tax on liquors, wine, lemons, limes, and oranges, which went to the Crown. In Massachusetts, the legislature awarded the right to farm the excise on liquors in individual counties to the highest bidder; see P.L. 1757–58, ch. 19.

14. Taxes could be paid in a variety of mediums. The 1738–1739 tax act listed bills of credit of new tenor and old tenor, silver and gold coin, and hemp and flax; it continued to be possible to pay with stipulated commodities until 1757, although bills of credit were eliminated after 1753.

15. P.L. 1741–42, ch. 9, noted that Boston, Salem, and Marblehead "usually doomed their inhabitants." In other towns, each inhabitant submitted a list of "polls, rateable estates, and income by trade or faculty." P.L. 1740–41, ch. 8. In 1754, Boston petitioned to be allowed "to bring in a Valuation of their Estates in the same manner as other Towns do." BR, 14:258.

16. BR, 14:173. The due dates were altered from time to time, and the selectmen were often voted discretion in awarding the premium if the collectors were late.

17. P.L. 1697, ch. 4. See Wadsworth v. Vail for a suit against a constable in arrears, Suffolk, Court of Common Pleas, files, 1732JUL417, Judicial Archives.

18. Massachusetts Archives 102:326–328, Archives of the Commonwealth, Boston. Apparently things did not work out, for Rand's petition to the town in 1750 for abatement of unpaid taxes was dismissed. BR, 14:177, 183–184. The legislature that year directed the province treasurer to send warrants of execution against every deficient constable and collector. P.L. (Resolves) 1750–51, ch. 267. Boston directed its treasurer to sue on the bonds of all collectors delinquent for town taxes up to 1748. BR, 14:183.

19. Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 252, 117.

20. BR, 13:312–313; BR 14:12–14. The town thought its share "ought not" to be "more than One Tenth or at most One Eighth." Salem, the next largest town, paid 3 percent. In 1742–1743, when Boston was paying 18 percent of the province tax, the four largest towns in Essex County combined were paying 10 percent. Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1975) has no population figures for Massachusetts earlier than 1764 so there is no way to determine the per capita ratio between Boston and other towns. In 1765, when Boston had 6.9 percent of the population, it paid 11.2 percent of the province tax.

21. BR, 14:44, 48, 61, 69.

22.Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 2:287–290. See Malcolm Freiberg, "Thomas Hutchinson and the Province Currency," New England Quarterly 30(1957):190–208. "Difference between silver," Bristol, Court of General Sessions, files, June 1738, Judicial Archives. John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600–1775 (Chapel Hill, 1978), 141.

23. Hutchinson, History, 3:1.

24. BR, 14:164, 160, 168.

25. BR, 14:165–168.

26. A front-page article in Boston Evening-Post, Dec. 25, 1749, commenting on the meeting, claims Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, both councilors, were chosen to make the evil consequences of the conversion from paper to silver "appear more formidable." While Hutchinson had not been returned to the House in May, where he had been speaker, he was elected to the Council by the House, a much more prestigious position.

27. Comment in lead article in Boston Evening-Post, Jan. 22, 1750.

28. P.L.1750–51, chs. 15, 20; P.L. 1751–52, ch. 8. All contracts and debts were required to be paid in silver after Mar. 31, 1751. P.L. 1748–49, ch. 15, ss.9.

29. Nash, Crucible, 170ff. See also James Henretta, "Economic Development and Social Structure in Colonial Boston," William and Mary Quarterly 22(1965):75–92; Alan Kulikoff, "The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston," William and Mary Quarterly 3d ser., 28(1971):375–412; Gary B. Nash, "Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre-Revolutionary America," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6(Spring 1976):545–584.

30. BR, 14:197–198.

31. BR, 14:220–221. A mortality table in Boston Newsletter, Jan. 7, 1773, lists 1,009 deaths from smallpox in 1752 and 624 deaths from measles in 1751. By 1759, the town had appointed a standing committee to apply for tax relief "from time to time as they shall judge proper." BR, 16:23–24.

32. Although they were assigned wards and paid individually, after 1745 the collectors received equal shares of the total annual premium. BR, 17:109.

33. The petition setting out the town's difficulties is in BR, 14:302–303.

34. BR, 14:286; BR 16:8–9. After prolonged scrutiny, the petition was granted. BR, 16:20–21. The bondsman, Edward Hollyday, himself became a collector in 1765 and served for ten years.

35. BR, 16:4–5. Thomas Greene declined on the grounds that he was a justice of the peace and thus exempt; John Rowe was excused. The town then restored the previous collectors, but when one declined in June, the town had to increase the premium to 9d. before finding a replacement. BR, 16:15.

36. Gary Nash stresses urban poverty over ideology in the pre-Revolutionary period in "Urban Wealth and Poverty in Pre-Revolutionary America." Compare with Charles R. Lee, "Public Poor Relief and the Massachusetts Community, 1620–1715," New England Quarterly 55(Dec. 1982):564–585, who stresses as "a crucial aspect of community life in Massachusetts, the importance of civic virtue expressed through Christian charity" (585). For the larger role of civic virtue in republican ideology, see J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton, 1975).

37. Adams was elected to replace Thomas Downe, Jr. Clifford K. Shipton incorrectly identifies Thomas Downe, son of William and Harvard class of 1745, as the tax collector in Sibley's Harvard Graduates (Boston, 1960), 11:558. Thomas Downe, Jr., was more likely the sugar baker who was the son of Thomas Downe, distiller. Thwing Index, Massachusetts Historical Society.

38. See Oliver Ayer Roberts, History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, 1637–1888 (Boston, 1895–1901).

39. Parties to law suits were identified by name, residence, and occupation, and a writ could be abated if the occupation was incorrect.

40. The premium for 1744 was £198 and for 1745 it was £236, reflecting wartime inflation. BR, 17:137, 157. The figures for 1760 through 1766 also tell a story: 1760=£176 [BR, 20:236], 1761=£126 [BR, 20:277], 1762=£146 [BR, 20:203], 1763=£92 [BR, 20:203], 1764=£109 [BR, 20:222], 1765=£102 [BR, 20:302], 1766=£89 [BR, 20:293].

41. P.L. (Resolves) 1759–60, ch. 392; P.L. (Resolves) 1760–61, ch. 85; P.L. 1760–61, ch. 12. The province was also in difficulties: moneys due from Parliament for war costs did not arrive, so the legislature voted to borrow the total budget. P.L. 1760–61, ch. 6.

42. BR, 16:92. The committee recommended six collectors with two wards each and a tighter application of the schedule of payments for earning the premium. The town by vote rejected six collectors and left the payment of premiums to the discretion of the selectmen. BR, 16:107–108.

43. BR, 16:85, 95. The schoolmasters had "some of them nine some twelve and some eighteen Months Salary due to them." BR, 16:73.

44. Trespass on the case is an action for damages resulting indirectly from the defendant's acts. In the 18th century, no general negligence category existed and civil suits were based on such specific forms of action as debt, case, trespass on the case, and ejectment. Defendants' lawyers frequently disputed the form of action as grounds for abating a case.

45. Suffolk, Court of Common Pleas, files, Ruddock v. Gordon, 1763JAN364; Suffolk, Superior Court of Judicature, minutebook, August 1762–1763, and records book 1763–1764, February term, Judicial Archives. The case is reported in Samuel M. Quincy, ed., Reports of Cases Argued and Adjudged in the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, between 1761 and 1772 (1865; New York, 1969), 58ff.

46. The legislation enacted, P.L. 1763–64, ch. 18, conformed to the town's requests. Boston collectors who had paid the whole sum were to "have all the like remedies ... as other creditors have for recovering their proper debts" from absconding debtors and from deceased, departed, or "intermarried" female taxpayers. Printed in Evening Post, Sept. 12, 1763. Isaiah Thomas, in The History of Printing in America, ed. Marcus A. McCorison (New York, 1970), 143, says the Post was noted for its "impartiality," but Governor Bernard was believed to publish in it regularly, according to the Boston Gazette, Nov. 16, 1767.

47. "T.Q." [Oxenbridge Thacher?], Boston Gazette, Sept. 19, 1763. The quotations from "A Tradesman" and "S.W." in the following paragraphs appear in the Gazette on Oct. 3, 1763.

48. Merrill Jensen, "The American People and the American Revolution," Journal of American History 57(June 1970):11; G. B. Warden, "Inequality and Instability in Eighteenth-Century Boston," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 6(Spring 1976):607; Nash, Crucible, 252.

49. After 1745 bondsmen could not be selectmen or assessors. BR, 17:103. In 1769, Edward Hollyday's bondsman was found insufficient and the collector produced another, which indicates that approval of bondsmen was not automatic rubberstamping. BR, 16:265.

50. William E. Nelson, Americanization of the Common Law (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), 18. A notice of a special meeting to vote on extending Samuel Adams's time to collect added: "N.B. A strict Scrutiny will be made as to the qualification of Voters." BR, 20:287.

51. G. B. Warden admits his conclusion is merely "one possible hypothesis," but asserts that the collectors' power and popularity can only be explained by assuming that they manipulated taxes to "gain support and votes for the Caucus." G. B. Warden, "The Caucus and Democracy in Colonial Boston," New England Quarterly 43 (1970):36. He also claims that assessors were "promoted to Selectmen and Representatives with surprising frequency." Boston 1689–1776 (Boston, 1970), 97. Yet, of the thirty-three assessors between 1730 and 1775, only two became selectmen and not one became a representative, ever.

52. Edward M. Cook, Jr., The Fathers of the Towns (Baltimore, 1976), 45. Cook is relying on Warden.

53. The "one direct source of information," according to Alan and Katherine Day, "Another Look at the Boston 'Caucus,'" Journal of American Studies 5(April 1971):19, is the "Proceeding of the North End Caucus," minutes of meetings from Mar. 23, 1772, to May 9, 1774, a document "furnished by A.O. Crane, Esq., of Boston" without mention of its provenance and published as Appendix C in Elbridge Henry Goss, The Life of Colonel Paul Revere (Boston, 1891), 635–644. See Nash, Crucible, esp. 86–87, 277–280; Nash is relying on Warden, as was Cook.

54. Warden, Boston, 130.

55. Lyman H. Butterfield et al., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), 1:238. The editor emphasizes that it is hearsay in footnote 5, page 239. Speculation on the origins of the name range from "caulkers" for North End shipworkers to a corruption of "Cooke's house" among historians who trace the club to 1719. No one seems to have considered that it was generic for any meeting for discussing town political issues and candidates and was capitalized just as so many other nouns (not always proper nouns) were capitalized in 18th–century script.

56. BR, 20:222, 302; BR, 16:29, 68.

57. Becker, Revolution, 15.

58. BR, 16:144, 150, 158.

59. Arrears in 1765=£18,126 (BR, 16:144) and in 1767=£7933 (BR, 16:202). BR, 16:206, 216–217, 220.

60. Colin Nicolson, "'McIntosh, Otis & Adams are our demagogues': Nathaniel Coffin and the Loyalist Interpretation of the Origins of the American Revolution," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 108(1996):81n. Nicolson surmises that Coffin declined because he "sensibly, probably saw no virtue in being saddled with some of Adams's accounting problems." However, a collector was responsible only for his own assigned tax and not for any other collector. Savage would be one of the loyalists evacuated with the British army in 1776, leaving arrears of £523. BR, 18:258.

61. Butterfield, Adams Diary, 1:238.

62. Warden, Boston, 130. The item cited does not support Warden's claim. Ruddock's son Abiel is named in the only surviving list of Caucus members dated 1772–1774.

63.Boston Gazette, Apr. 27, 1767. Dorr collected and annotated Boston newspapers in the decade before the Revolution.

64. Adams's bondsmen were Benjamin Hallowell and Robert Pierpont; P.L. 1769–70, ch. 3, allowed Pierpont to collect Adams's taxes. Suffolk, Court of Common Pleas, files, Jeffries v. Adams, 1767JUL185. The appeal and execution (issued Mar. 8, 1768) are reported in Superior Court of Judicature, records book 1767–68, Judicial Archives. Hutchinson, History, 3:212. Andrew H. Ward lists the subscribers to Adams's debt, mistakenly identifying it as Land Bank debt. "Notes on Anti-Revolutionary Currency and Politics," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 14(July 1860):261–262.

65.Independent Chronicle (Boston), Feb. 20, 1783.

66. BR, 16:293, 295; Superior Court of Judicature, Suffolk, records book, August 1770, Jeffries v. Payson et al., Judicial Archives; BR, 18:59–60.

67. BR, 18:70, 73.

68. In 1769 the other towns in Suffolk County were Roxbury, Dorchester, Milton, Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Dedham, Wrentham, Brookline, Stoughton and Stoughtonham, Medfield, Medway, Walpole, Needham, Bellingham, Hull, and Chelsea. Suffolk, Court of General Sessions, records book, 1769–73, Judicial Archives.

69.Boston Gazette, July 8, 1771. The House stated, on July 5, 1771, "And we know no Reason, nor any Semblance of Reason, why the Commissioners, their Superior or Subordinate Officers, who are equally protected with the other inhabitants, should be exempted from paying their full Proportion of Taxes for the Support of Government." Journals of the House of Representatives, ed. Malcolm Freiberg (Boston, 1979), 48:110.

70. BR, 18:196, 223–224.

71. BR, 18:225, 258.

72. Alexander Thomas was unable to complete his collections because he was jailed in 1785 on an execution obtained by the state treasurer for failure to collect the state tax. BR, 31:92. See also Records of the Treasurer and Receiver General, Tax Execution Ledgers (1782–1830), State Archives, Boston. I am grateful to Albert Whitaker for bringing these to my attention.

73. Discussions began in 1796. BR, 31:432; BR, 35:121–123.

74. Full report, BR, 35:286–292. This is essentially the system today, and it is still not efficient. The Boston Globe reported in 1993 that $100 million in property taxes was going uncollected, with delinquent taxes due on one-quarter of the city's properties for 1992 alone. Boston Globe, Nov. 18, 1993, p. 22.

75. David Osborne and Ted Gaebler's Reinventing Government, published in 1992, became a handbook for politicians, such as former Governor of Massachusetts William Weld, who advocated an "enterpreneurial government" that turns over public responsibilities to private enterprises.

76. BR, 35:290.

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