Boz among the Radicals : Charles Dickens and Tax Reform

Taxes on consumption items necessary for subsistence burdened the British middle and working classes heavily throughout the early nineteenth century. At a crucial moment, an editorial in the True Sun newspaper strongly urged the Whig government to replace the window tax, not with a house tax, but with an income tax, and urged readers to refuse to pay current taxes until the reform had taken place. Young Charles Dickens transcribed the seditious libel trial of the proprietors and printer for advocating the use of “physical force” against the government. Years later, Dickens remembered the Whig indecision over tax policy and invoked it in an editorial of his own, successfully persuading Parliament to preserve the income tax when its fate was in doubt. This article sheds light on how tax reform was finally achieved and that Dickens had a role in it