Financial History Issue 122 (Summer 2017) | Page 17

Taxing to Build
a Commonwealth
Public Finance
in America,
1607–1861
Part printed tax circular ordering the collection of taxes by the
Sheriff of Fairfield County, Connecticut, dated April 12, 1787
and signed by John Lawrence.
By W. Elliot Brownlee
Histories of taxation in early America
often give center stage to the era of the
American Revolution. The usual story is
one of social crisis and resolution: oppres-
sive British taxes, fierce American resis-
tance to taxation, a revolution that con-
tained powerful tax revolt (“Tea Party”)
elements, the writing of a Constitution
that limited taxation and the formation of
an early republic of modest government
and low taxes.
There is something to recommend this
approach, but beneath the drama was a
more profound social trend, or a long swing,
as I call it. The swing encompassed far
more history than the American Revolution,
involved more elements of public finance
than just taxation and produced higher
rather than lower taxes. The long swing of
taxation and public finance in general was
toward creating and sustaining an American
“commonwealth,” to use a term employed
by historians Oscar and Mary Handlin. By
this, they meant a society that was republi-
can, capitalist and expansionist. The swing
began very early during the colonial period,
continued for more than a century and
accelerated during the formation of the new
republic and the building of a powerful
nation by the time of the Civil War.
The “commonwealth” swing originated
in the process of transplanting and adapt-
ing the fiscal system of England (and
Britain) to America and adapting it to
American conditions. The fiscal system
had emerged following the crisis of the
En glish Civil Wars in 1642 and constituted
the world’s first modern fiscal state. In this
new fiscal state, the crown and Parliament
relied on taxing domestic consumption
and international trade, collected taxes
indirectly (through third parties) and lev-
eraged their new tax revenues in under-
taking long-term lending.
The taxes on colonial trade raised rev-
enue that funded most of the routine costs
of governmental administration in the
American colonies and helped finance the
loans that the British floated to fight its
colonial wars. The taxes also served as a
means for regulating economic activity
according to mercantilist principles. The
current consensus of historians is that this
regulatory taxation proved only moder-
ately burdensome to the colonial economy.
Moreover, powerful commercial and agri-
cultural elites in the colonies understood
that the benefits of membership in the
www.MoAF.org  |  Summer 2017  |  FINANCIAL HISTORY  15