Abstract
This chapter considers some of the most important political philosophers of the Enlightenment (taken as broad concept) – thinkers whose reflections on the idea of a social contract we relate to their views on taxation. Hobbes argues for an (almost) absolute political sovereignty and legal authority and corresponding obedience of citizens constituted by the social contract. For Hobbes, taxes are justified as the price of security. He advocates the benefit theory of taxation, best measured by consumption. The same goes for Locke, although for him the social contract serves to guarantee the individual’s property rights which embody his liberty. Taxes are the price of the protection of the right to property. Both Montesquieu and Hume do not have need for a social contract: man living in societies is a fact of life. Their focus is on legitimate government rather than sovereignty and obedience. Hume inherently adheres to the benefit theory of taxation as paying tax is contributing to society on which one depends to survive. Montesquieu is a proponent of indirect taxation, though he considers progressive taxation and a subsistence minimum which must not to be taxed. For him, tax fairness is a contextual affair, since taxation should be relative to a given form of government. Rousseau radicalises the notion of the social contract which is a device to protect an equal freedom for all. He transposes the emerging new ideal of equality to taxation which not only is to enable government to protect its citizens, but also to consider their subsistence. Taxes should enhance liberty and equality (distributive justice). Thus, progressive taxation based on the ability to pay is put on the agenda. Rousseau’s popular sovereignty was self-evident for Paine, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists alike. Paine argued for a more radical redistribution as taxes should pay for welfare provision which was part of his proposals for reform. Both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists elaborated on Montesquieu’s plea for the separation and distribution of powers, but unlike Montesquieu, their take focus was on multi-level governance. Like the other theorists, they approached taxation from their political-philosophical perspective.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
The cited letter is Letter to Jean Le Clerc (1706), quoted in Rand (2010 [1900], 353).
- 2.
The term is derived from the Roman use of a wax tablet (tabula), which was made of wood and covered with a layer of wax for writing on, which could be scraped and smoothed for reuse, getting rid of what had gone before. Given the political situations through which Locke lived, this fundamental underlying meaning of the term adds a further dimension.
- 3.
Ashcraft (1994, 258), however, comments on “the radical nature of Locke’s moves against contemporary arguments for political, epistemological, and religious authority”.
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
It should be remembered that ‘taxes’ at the date of Locke’s writing would primarily mean land tax and hearth tax, not excise or customs duties, the latter only predominating from the late 1690s, most probably reflecting their popularity in The Netherlands and the influence of William III, although the English were familiar with excises and customs duties, which generated substantial revenues.
- 7.
It is fair to comment that Locke’s justification of the right to private property on these principles continues to be the subject of academic debate (see Snape and Frecknall-Hughes 2017, 13–15). See also the thorough analysis of Locke’s basic argument/tenets by Shrader-Frechette (1993), McClelland (1996, 229–248) and Haworth (2004, 117–133).
- 8.
- 9.
It is commonly remarked that such a bargain or contract was never explicit. However, Pollock (1908, 108) makes the point that there is historical evidence to support such contracts being formal compacts between rulers and subjects, not least in the case of the Magna Carta , and notes as well that the Pilgrim Fathers, for instance, made a formal covenant for a body politic. Pollock cites the latter example from Hobbes, but does not give the reference to Hobbes’s work for this.
- 10.
The multi-volume Encyclopédie aimed to present a comprehensive overview of “all aspects of human endeavour and achievement, showing the progress of man in the newly liberated environment of universal reason and Enlightenment” ( Dent 1992, 111). The philosophes were a new phenomenon. They represented a new force in history: men of letters acting in concert, who wanted to put their ideas “to use, to persuade, propagandize, and change the world” around them (Darnton 1997).
- 11.
- 12.
The text referred to from Part I and Part II is an online edition, freely available. While it does not have page numbers per se, it is easy to identify specific page numbers from the online version.
- 13.
A tax on the raw ingredients which were used in brewing beer, most typically malt, would have meant that all brewers of beer, regardless of whether they sold the end product or not, could have borne the tax alike, but this does not seem to have been thought of at the time.
- 14.
The commutation tax was so named after the Commutation Act of 1784, whereby William Pitt the Younger reduced the tax on tea from 119% to 12.5%, to end the punitive rates, which had promoted smuggling.
- 15.
These rates are expressed in the pre-decimal currency used in the UK before 1971 – pounds (sterling, denoted by £), shillings (denoted by s) and pence (denoted by d), with 20 shillings to £1 and 12 pennies (or pence) to 1 s.
References
Adams, Randolph G. 1958. Political Ideas of the American Revolution. 3rd ed. New York: Barnes & Noble Inc.
Adams, Ian, and R.W. Dyson. 2003. Fifty Major Political Thinkers. London: Routledge.
Andrew, Edward. 2012. Possessive Individualism and Locke’s Doctrine on Taxation. Good Society 21 (1): 151–168.
———. 2015. Locke on Consent, Taxation and Representation. Theoria 62 (2): 15–32.
Arneil, Barbara. 1996. John Locke and America: The Defence of English Colonialism. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ashcraft, Richard. 1994. Locke’s Political Philosophy. In The Cambridge Companion to Locke, ed. Vere Chappell, 223–269. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ayer, A.J. 1988. Thomas Paine. London: Secker & Warburg.
Bailey, Bill. (ed.) undated. The Antifederalist Papers, at https://www.thefederalistpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/The-Anti-Federalist-Papers-Special-Edition.pdf. Accessed 30 Sept 2020.
Ball, Terence. 2003. The Federalist Papers. In Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, ed. David Boucher and Paul Kelly, 235–252. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bennett, John G. 1979. A Note on Locke’s Theory of Tacit Consent. Philosophical Review 88 (2): 224–234.
Berlin, Isaiah. [1958] 1969 Two Concepts of Liberty. In Four Essays on Liberty, ed. Isaiah Berlin, 118–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bertram, Christopher. 2004. Rousseau and The Social Contract. London: Routledge.
Bobbio, Norberto. 1989. Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Bonney, Richard. 1995. Early Modern Theories of State Finance. In Economic Systems and State Finance, ed. Richard Bonney, 163–229. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boucher, David. 2003. Rousseau. In Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, David Boucher, ed. Paul Kelly, 235–252. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Buckle, Stephen. 2001. Tully, Locke and America. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 9 (2): 245–281.
Burke, Edmund. [1790] 2019. Reflections on the Revolution in France. Dumfries and Galloway: Anodos Books.
Byrne, Donna M. 1999. Locke, Property and Progressive Taxes. Nebraska Law Review 78 (3): 700–738.
Cherno, Melvin. 1957. Locke on Property: A Reappraisal. Ethics 68 (1): 51–55.
Christian, William. 1973. The Moral Economics of Tom Paine. Journal of the History of Ideas 34 (3): 367–380.
Cobban, Alfred. 1960. Edmund Burke and the Revolt Against the Eighteenth Century. 2nd ed. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.
Cohen, Joshua. 1986. Structure, Choice, and Legitimacy: John Locke’s Theory of the State. Philosophy and Public Affairs 15 (4): 301–324.
———. 2010. Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Damrosch, Leo. 2005. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Darnton, Robert. 1997. George Washington’s False Teeth. New York Review of Books, 27 March, at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1997/03/27/george-washingtons-false-teeth/. Accessed 8 Nov 2021.
Day, J.P. 1966. Locke on Property. The Philosophical Quarterly 16 (64): 207–220.
De Dijn, Annelien. 2008. French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dent, Nicholas J.H. 1992. A Rousseau Dictionary. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Dent, Nicholas. 2005. Rousseau. London: Routledge.
Dickson, P.G.M. 1967. The Financial Revolution in England. A Study in the Development of Public Credit 1688–1756. London, Melbourne and Toronto: Macmillan.
Dienstag, Joshua F. 1996a. Serving God and Mammon: The Lockean Sympathy in Early American Political Thought. American Political Science Review 90 (3): 497–511.
———. 1996b. Between History and Nature: Social Contract Theory in Locke and the Founders. Journal of Politics 58 (4): 985–1009.
Dome, Takuo. 2004. The Political Economy of Public Finance in Britain 1767–1873. London and New York: Routledge.
Dorfman, Joseph. 1947. The Economic Mind in American Civilization 1606–1865, Vol. 1. London: George G. Harrap & Ltd.
Dry, Murray. 2000. The Debate Over Ratification. In A Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole, 482–494. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
Dunn, J. 1967. Consent in the Political Theory of John Locke. The Historical Journal 10 (2): 153–182.
Edling, Max M., and Mark D. Kaplanoff. 2004. Alexander Hamilton’s Fiscal Reform: Transforming the Structure of Taxation in the Early Republic. William and Mary Quarterly 61 (4): 713–744.
Elster, Jon. 2020. France before 1789: The Unraveling of an Absolutist Regime. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Epstein, Richard A. 1986. Taxation in a Lockean World. Social Philosophy and Policy 4 (1): 49–74.
Frecknall-Hughes, Jane. 2007. The Concept of Taxation and the Age of Enlightenment. In Studies in the History of Tax Law, ed. John Tiley, vol. 2, 253–286. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
———. 2014. Locke, Hume, Johnson and the Continuing Relevance of Tax History. eJournal of Tax Research 12 (1): 87–103.
———. 2019. Jeremy Bentham: Developing Ideas About Taxation and Law. In Studies in the History of Tax Law, ed. Peter Harris and Dominic de Cogan, vol. 9, 1–15. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
Goldsmith, M.M. 1996. Hobbes on Law. In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell, 274–305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gough, J.W. 1956. John Locke’s Political Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Goyard-Fabre, Simone. 1979. La Philosophie du Droit de Montesquieu. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck.
Grant, Ruth W. 1987. John Locke’s Liberalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Greene, Jack P., and J.R. Pole, eds. 2000. A Companion to the American Revolution. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
Gribnau, Hans, and Carl Dijkstra. 2019. Contractualism and Tax Governance: Hobbes and Hume. In Studies in the History of Tax Law, ed. Peter Harris and Dominic de Cogan, vol. 8, 17–54. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
———. 2020. Social Contract and Beyond: Sociability, Reciprocity and Tax Ethics. In Ethics and Taxation, ed. Robert F. van Brederode, 47–90. Singapore: Springer Nature Pte Ltd.
Gross, Jean-Pierre. 1993. Progressive Taxation and Social Justice in Eighteenth-Century France. Past & Present 140: 79–126.
Groves, Harold. 1974. Tax Philosophers: Two Hundred Years of Thought in Great Britain and the United States. Madison: WUP.
Halévy, Elie. [1928] 1972. The Growth of Philosophical Radicalism. London: Faber and Faber.
Hampsher-Monk, Iain. 1992. A History of Modern Political Thought. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Hampson, Norman. 1968. The Enlightenment. London: Penguin.
Harrison, Ross. 2012. The Equal Extent of Natural and Civil Law. In Hobbes and the Law, ed. David Dyzenhaus and Thomas Poole, 22–38. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hart, Herbert L.A. 1982. Commands and Authoritative Legal Reasons. In Hart, Essays on Bentham, ed. L.A. Herbert, 243–268. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Haworth, Alan. 2004. Understanding the Political Philosophers. London: Routledge.
Hobbes, Thomas. [1640] 1994. Human Nature and De Corpore Politico, ed. J.G.A. Gaskin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. [1642–1651] 1998. On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1651. In Leviathan. Or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Common-Wealth Ecclesiastical and Civill, ed. R. Tuck. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1991).
———. [1681–1682] 1971. A Dialogue Between a Philosopher and a Student of the Common Laws of England, ed. J. Cropsey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hoekstra, Kinch. 2007. Hobbes on the Natural Condition of Mankind. In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, ed. Patricia Springborg, 109–127. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoffman, Philip T. 1994. Early Modern France, 1450–1700. In Fiscal Crises, Liberty, and Representative Government, ed. Philip T. Hoffman and Kathryn Norberg, 226–252. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Hulliung, Mark. 1994. The Autocritique of Enlightenment. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Hume, David. 1739–1740. Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. H Selby-Bigge and P.H. Nidditch. Oxford: Clarendon Press (1978).
———. [1741a] 1875. Of the First Principles of Government. Essay 1. In Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 9–11. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
———. [1741b] 1875. Of Civil Liberty. Essay 11. In Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 49–55. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
———. [1742] 1987. Of Public Credit. Essay 9. In Part 2, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, E.F. Miller (ed.). Indianapolis, In: Liberty Fund, Inc., at http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Hume/hmMPL32.html. Accessed 18 Feb 2014.
———. [1748a] 1875. Of the Original Contract. Essay 34. In Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 270–283. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
———. [1748b] 1875. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Essay 39. In Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 308–385. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
———. [1751] 1875. An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Essay 41. In Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 407–501. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
———. [1752] 1875. Of Taxes. Essay 30, in Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 203–207. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
———. [1754–1761] 1983. The History of England. USA: Liberty Fund, Incorporated.
———. [1777] 1875. Of the Origin of Government. Essay 5. In Essays, Literary, Moral, and Political, 25–28. London: Ward, Lock, & Co.
Hume, David. [various] 1954. In New Letters of David Hume, ed. Raymond Kilbansky and Ernest C. Mossner. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Israel, Jonathan I. 2002. Radical Enlightenment. Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackson, Dudley. 1973. Thomas Hobbes’ Theory of Taxation. Political Studies 21 (2): 175–182.
Jaume, Lucien. 2007. Hobbes and the Philosophical Origins of Liberalism. In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, ed. Patricia Springborg, 199–216. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jefferson, Thomas. 1903. In The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew Lipscomb and Albert E. Bergh, Memorial ed. Washington DC: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association.
Kawade, Yoshie. 2003. Montesquieu. In Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, ed. David Boucher and Paul Kelly, 217–234. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, Paul. 2003. Hume. In Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, ed. David Boucher and Paul Kelly, 198–216. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Knights, Mark. 2011. John Locke and Post-Revolutionary Politics: Electoral Reform and the Franchise. Past & Present 213 (1): 41–86.
Koenigsberger, Helmut Georg. 1994. Early Modern Europe 1500–1789. London/New York: Longman.
Kwass, Michael. 2000. Privilege and the Politics of Taxation in Eighteenth-Century France. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Laslett, Peter. 1988. The Social and Political Theory of ‘Two Treatises of Government’. In John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, 2nd ed., 93–122. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lebovics, Herman. 1986. The Uses of America in John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (4): 567–581.
Lee, Natasha. 2010. Making History Natural in Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origins of Inequality. In Rousseau and Freedom, ed. Christie McDonald and Stanley Hoffman, 24–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lobban, Michael. 2012. Thomas Hobbes and the Common Law. In Hobbes and the Law, ed. David Dyzenhaus and Thomas Poole, 19–67. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Locke, John. [1690a] 1975. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. [1690b] 1988. The First Treatise of Government. In John Locke Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. [1690c] 1988. The Second Treatise of Government. In John Locke Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. [1691] 1824. Some Consideration of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money. In The Works of John Locke in Nine Volumes, vol. 4, 12th ed. London: Rivington. http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/763. Accessed 12 Feb 2014.
Loughlin, Martin. 2010. Foundations of Public Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Macpherson, C.B. 1951. Locke on Capitalist Appropriation. Western Political Quarterly 4 (4): 550–566.
Madison, James, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. [1788] 1987. The Federalist Papers, ed. Isaac Kramnick, London: Penguin.
Manent, Pierre. 1994. An Intellectual History of Liberalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Mann, Fritz Karl. 1978. Steuerpolitische Ideale. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Martinich, Aloysius P. 1999. Hobbes: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
May, Larry. 2013. Limiting Leviathan: Hobbes on Law and International Affairs. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
McClelland, J.S. 1996. A History of Western Political Thought. London and New York: Routledge.
Molivas, G.I. 1999. A Right, Utility and the Definition of Liberty as a Negative Idea: Richard Hey and the Benthamite Conception of Liberty. History of European Ideas 25 (1–2): 75–92.
Montesquieu. [1721] 1973. Persian Letters. Trans. C. J. Betts. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
———. [1748] 1989. The Spirit of the Laws. Transl. and eds. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold F. Stone. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Newey, Glen. 2014. The Routledge Guidebook to Hobbes’ Leviathan. London: Routledge.
Outram, Dorinda. 2005. The Enlightenment. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Paine, Thomas. 1776. Common Sense, at http://americainclass.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Common-Sense-_-Full-Text.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2021.
———. 1776–1783. The American Crisis, ed. Steve Straub, at https://thefederalistpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/The-American-Crisis-by-Thomas-Paine-.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2021.
———. 1780. Pamphlet 9b The Crisis Extraordinary. On The Subject of Taxation, at http://www.vlib.us/amdocs/texts/crisis9b.html. Accessed 8 June 2021.
———. 1791. The Rights of Man, Part I, at https://infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/rights_of_man/. Accessed 8 June 2021.
———. 1792. The Rights of Man, Part II, at https://infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/rights_of_man/. Accessed 8 June 2021.
———. 1795. Agrarian Justice, at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Paine1795.pdf. Accessed 8 June 2021.
Pangle, Thomas L. 1973. Montesquieu’s Philosophy of Liberalism, A Commentary on the Spirit of Laws. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Pollock, Frederick. 1908. The Social Contact in English Political Philosophy. Journal of the Society of Comparative Legislation, New Series 9 (1): 107–112.
Porter, Roy. 2000. Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World. London: Penguin.
Rahe, Paul A. 2001. Forms of Government: Structure, Principle, Object, and Aim. In Montesquieu’s Science of Politics: Essays on The Spirit of Laws, ed. David W. Carrithers, Michael A. Mosher, and Paul A. Rahe, 69–108. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.
———. 2009. Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Rand, Benjamin (ed.). [1900] 2010. The Life, Unpublished Letters and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury. Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, LLC.
Rapaczynski, Andrzej. 1981. Locke’s Conception of Property and the Principle of Sufficient Reason. Journal of the History of Ideas 42 (2): 305–315.
Riker, William H., and Itai Sened. 1991. A Political Theory of the Origin of Property Rights: Airport Slots. American Journal of Political Science 35 (4): 951–969.
Riley, Patrick. 1982. Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau and Hegel. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
———. 2005. Social Contract Theory and its Critics. In The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought, ed. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, 347–375. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. [1754] 1973. A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (Second Discourse). In Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, ed. G.D.H. Cole, J.H. Brumfitt, and J.H. Hall, 2nd ed. London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent & Sons.
———. [1755] 1973. Discourse on Political Economy. In Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, ed. G.D.H. Cole, J.H. Brumfitt, and J.H. Hall, 2nd ed., 128–168. London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent & Sons. Originally in Encyclopédie Volume V, ed. Denis Diderot, and Jean Le Rond D’Alembert.
———. [1762] 1994. On the Social Contract or Principles of Political Right. In The Collected Writings of Rousseau, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, vol. 4, 129–244. Hanover and London: University Press of New England.
———. [1789] 1995. Confessions. The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volume 5, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover/London: University Press of New England.
———. 1994. Political Fragments. In The Collected Writings of Rousseau, ed. Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, vol. 4, 16–75. Hanover/London: University Press of New England.
Russell, Paul. 1986. II. Locke on Express and Tacit Consent. Political Theory 14 (2): 291–306.
Ryan, Alan. 1996. Hobbes’s Political Philosophy. In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes, ed. Tom Sorell, 208–245. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sabine, George H. 1961. A History of Political Theory. 3rd ed. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.
Seliger, Martin. 1963. Locke’s Theory of Revolutionary Action. Western Political Quarterly 16 (3): 548–568.
Shapiro, Ian. 1986. The Evolution of Rights in Liberal Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shklar, Judith N. 1987a. Montesquieu. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
———. 1987b. Men and Citizens. In A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shrader-Frechette, Kristin. 1993. Locke and Limits on Land Ownership. Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (2): 201–219.
Skinner, Quentin. 2008. Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2009. A Genealogy of the Modern State. Proceedings of the British Academy 162: 325–370.
Smith, Adam. [1776] 1976. An Inquiry in the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations II. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.
Snape, John. 2012. Montesquieu – ‘The Lively President’ and the English Way of Taxation. In Studies in the History of Tax Law, Volume 5, ed. John Tiley, 73–90. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
———. 2015. David Hume: Philosophical Historian of Tax Law. In Studies in the History of Tax Law, Volume 7, ed. Peter Harris and Dominic de Cogan, 421–464. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
Snape, John, and Jane Frecknall-Hughes. 2017. John Locke: Property, Tax and the Private Sphere. In Studies in the History of Tax Law, Volume 8, ed. Peter Harris and Dominic de Cogan, 1–35. Oxford and Portland, Oregon: Hart Publishing.
Sommerville, Johann. 2012. Life and Times. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes, ed. Sharon A. Lloyd, 1–28. London: Bloomsbury.
Sorell, Tom. 2007. Hobbes’s Moral Philosophy. In The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes’s Leviathan, ed. Patricia Springborg, 128–153. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Steedhar, Susanne. 2012. Obligation. In The Bloomsbury Companion to Hobbes, ed. Sharon A. Lloyd, 192–193. London: Bloomsbury.
Tully, James. 1980. A Discourse on Property: John Locke and his Adversaries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1993a. An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1993b. Placing the Two Treatises. In Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, 253–280. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 1994. Rediscovering America: The Two Treatises and Aboriginal Rights. In Locke’s Philosophy: Content and Context, ed. G.A.J. Rogers, 165–196. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
———. 1995. Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Vaughn, Karen I. 1980. John Locke’s Theory of Property. Literature of Liberty: A Review of Contemporary Liberal Thought 3 (1): 5–37.
Viroli, Maurizio. 1987. The Concept of Ordre and the Language of Classical Republicanism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden, 159–178. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2002. Republicanism. New York: Hill and Wang.
Voegelin, Eric. 1999. The New Order and Last Orientation. In History of Political Ideas: New Order and Last Orientation, Volume 7 (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 25), ed. Jurgen Gebhardt and Thomas Hollweck. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Waldron, Jeremy. 2003. Locke. In Political Thinkers: From Socrates to the Present, ed. David Boucher and Paul Kelly, 181–197. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Weaver, David R. 1997. Leadership, Locke and the Federalist. American Journal of Political Science 41 (2): 420–446.
Webber, Carolyn, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1986. A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Werner, John M. 1972. David Hume and America. Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (3): 439–456.
Wills, Gary. 1981. Explaining America. London: The Athlone Press.
Witteveen, Willem. 2006. The Montesquieu Connection. In The Perils of Pervasive Instrumentalism. Tilburg Law Lectures Series, I-XVII, ed. Brian Z. Tamanaha. Nijmegen: Wolf Legal Publishers.
Wokler, Robert. 1995. Rousseau. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Woolhouse, Roger. 2007. Locke: A Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wootton, David. 2018. Power, Pleasure, and Profit: Insatiable Appetites from Machiavelli to Madison. Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Zaretsky, Robert, and John T. Scott. 2009. The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume and the Limits of Human Understanding. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gribnau, H., Frecknall-Hughes, J. (2022). The Enlightenment and Influence of Social Contract Theory on Taxation. In: van Brederode, R.F. (eds) Political Philosophy and Taxation. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1092-0_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1092-0_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-19-1091-3
Online ISBN: 978-981-19-1092-0
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)