QED

Mr. Shetterly has posted an excellent quote, over his way, which reminded me of one of those "Founder"* statements I've always preferred to the more common and celebrated ones:

"The Remissness of our People in Paying Taxes is highly blameable; the Unwillingness to pay them is still more so. I see, in some Resolutions of Town Meetings, a Remonstrance against giving Congress a Power to take, as they call it, the People's Money out of their Pockets, tho' only to pay the Interest and Principal of Debts duly contracted. They seem to mistake the Point. Money, justly due from the People, is their Creditors' Money, and no longer the Money of the People, who, if they withold it, should be compell'd to pay by some Law.

All Property, indeed, except the Savage's temporary Cabin, his Bow, his Matchcoat, and other little Acquisitions, absolutely necessary for his Subsistence, seems to me to be the Creature of public Convention. Hence the Public has the Right of Regulating Descents, and all other Conveyances of Property, and even of limiting the Quantity and the Uses of it. All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it."

* - Franklin was often an ass. I agree with Jay Griffith's interpretation of his impact (alongside the other nad basty, Bacon), but he's as on the money here as was possible for anyone from that era who didn't have the good fortune to be Thomas Paine. I'm not really endorsing Franklin's outlook, or his fondness for the State, but I found it preferable (and exceedingly so) to Teap Arty rhetoric and civics class fantasy tales. Especially paragraph two, which presages George and approaches the generous humanity and scope of the infinitely estimable Thom. Paine his right self.