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AH
19th Century
Auberon Herbert
1838–1906 · Voluntaryism
Taxation without consent is compulsion, however many vote for it.
Herbert left Parliament for the argument that a majority can no more justify seizing a dissenter's earnings than a monarch can justify seizing a people's liberty. He proposed voluntary taxation, with the state surviving on what people pay by choice, and insisted that liberty is not a grant of votes but a limit on power, whichever body happens to exercise it.
Why it matters for freedom
His voluntaryism insisted that the state's only tool is force, and that a good end cannot sanctify it.
Who they stood against
the House of Commons he sat in, and the coercion he believed no majority could justify