Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

Karl Marx

ON THE PROCLAMATION OF THE BRANDENBURG-MANTEUFFEL
MINISTRY CONCERNING THE REFUSAL TO PAY TAXES

Cologne, 21 November. The Brandenburg-Manteuffel ministry has
sent orders to all royal governments to collect the taxes by forcible
measures.

The Brandenburg-Manteuffel ministry, which stands on an illegal
footing, recommends coercive measures against the refusers and leniency
towards the indigent.

It thus sets up two categories of non-payers. The ones who do not pay
in order to comply with the will of the National Assembly, and the
others who do not pay because they cannot pay. The ministry’s intention
is only too clear. It wants to divide the democrats; it wants to induce
the peasants and workers to count themselves among the non-payers from
inability, in order to separate them from the non-payers from legality,
and thereby to deprive the latter of the support of the former. But this
plan will fail; the people realise that they are jointly and severally
responsible for the refusal to pay taxes, just as they were previously
jointly and severally responsible for their collection.

The struggle will be decided between the force that pays and the force
that is paid.