THOMAS PAINE and HENRY GEORGE

       When precedents fail to assist us, we must return to the 
     first principles of things for information and think, as 
       if we were the first men that thought.
                                            -- Thomas Paine

     
  But the great class of taxes from which revenue may be 
     derived without interference with production are taxes 
     upon monopolies - for the profit of monopoly is in itself
     a tax levied upon production, and to tax it is simply to
     divert into the public coffers what production must in 
       any event pay.
                                           -- Henry George