"You lye, you are not sure [...] 'tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes---therefore hold your Tongue [...]."
- Christopher Bullock, 1716
The Cobler of Preston, A Farce. As It is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, London, 1716 (Fifth Edition: S. Bladon, London, 1767), p, 21.
"A Man can hardly refrain, after all that has been said, from flattering the Nation with Hopes, that they shall once more live to see themselves delivered from Task-masters, and Tax-gatherers. [...] This would be the reviving the Halcion Days, and bringing the Golden Age once more upon the Earth. Then it would be no more a Proverb or by-Word among us, that there is nothing sure, but Death and Taxes."
- Daniel De Foe, 1717
Fair Payment No Spunge: or, some considerations on the unreasonableness of refusing to receive back money lent on publick securities. And the necessity of setting the nation free from the insupportable burthen of debt and taxes. (London: J. Brotherton, W. Meddows, J. Roberts, 1717), p. 75.
"But now, alas! this part is out of the question, not the man in the moon, not the groaning-board, not the speaking of friar Bacon’s brazen-head, not the inspiration of mother Shipton, or the miracles of Dr. Faustus, things as certain as death and taxes, can be more firmly believed: the Devil not have a cloven foot!"
- Daniel De Foe, 1726
The Political History of the Devil. As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts (T. Warner, London, 1726). From: The Novels and Miscellaneous Works of Daniel De Foe, Vol. X (Oxford: D. A. Talboys. 1840), p. 246.
"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."
- Benjamin Franklin, 1789
"Letter to M. Le Roy, 13 November, 1789" in: The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. XII, (ed.) John Bigelow (Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1904), p. 161.
____
Part II
The Defoe Quotes (From Utopia to the Devil's Foot)
SO WHAT about the name; is it Daniel 'De Foe' or 'Defoe'? Originally it was written 'De Foe' but it has become standard to write 'Defoe'. When citing the quotations up at the top, I decided to preserve the original 'De Foe', but throughout the prose I am using 'Defoe'. Same person; my odd decision to preserve them both.
The first Defoe quote contradicts what I have said so far about the phrase 'death and taxes' being used in an only 'incidental' way (see 'Part I'). In this quote, it is anything but incidental, indeed the whole pamphlet in which this quotation appears may be said to culminate in a criticism and aspiration to move beyond the idiom itself. In the second Defoe quotation, however, the phrase resumes its default incidental role. The fact that the same author uses the same idiom both as a focal point to overcome, on the one hand, and in the usual incidental manner, on the other, only goes to show that when it is not used incidentally, it becomes an object of derision, as indeed it should.
Our purpose here in Part II is not so much to give a detailed account of the two sources themselves, but rather to see how the phrase 'death and taxes' is used following our incidental/significant distinction, and likewise expand upon what has been said in Part I about the (always problematic) nature/nurture distinction. To simplify things for this section, we may see 'death' as nature, and 'taxes' as nurture (in the sense of a custom and social practice). To better understand the dubiousness of their coupling, we turn to Defoe.
Defoe's two quotes show us both the truth and the façade of the couplet 'death and taxes'.
Significant
In the first quote Defoe refers to the phrase directly, envisioning a time when the expression is not only not taken for a 'by-word' or a commonplace, but indeed would likely not even be understood at all due to its obvious absurdity.
For it is obviously absurd: death and taxes are not at all similar. We are absurd for seeing them as similar, indeed even 'understanding' their being placed together as a pair and finding humor in the pairing's cleverness! Yet this is how the phrase functions. For it is precisely because their comparison is obviously untrue and absurd (i.e., that the necessary cycle of growth and decay which underlies all natural living phenomena could be anything like the completely unnecessary, made up bureaucratic practice of taxation), that we find it humorous and clever, and start to think "oh but ha, there's some truth in it!" Thus do we make it so, and then accept it as somehow inevitable, a necessity.
We have tamed ourselves. We have tamed our own shrewdness into the subservient acceptance of an obvious absurdity; just as Winston is tortured by Big Brother into saying 2+2=5, so too have we tamed ourselves into saying that death+taxes=necessary. At least Winston had to be tortured, for apparently all we really need to do is feign some cleverness; being desperate to gain approval and even the false appearance of wisdom, we have turned an obvious absurdity into a 'witty', good-sensed practical person's truism.
Incidental
How absurd is it? Defoe's second quote heaps it upon us, compounding the self-convinced disposition of one absurdity upon the next, until it all sounds true. I will explain what I mean.
Set theory is perhaps a good example (or in many ways any computation with unimaginably large or small quantities). It is obvious that we cannot exactly understand infinity, but we are able to not understand it so well that we can speak of different 'kinds' of infinity, and can deal with those different infinite sets (none of which we fully comprehend) through otherwise fairly ordinary and comprehensible mathematical operations. In the Defoe quote, he is 'simply' illustrating how convinced people are that the Devil has a cloven hoof for a foot by imitating the indignation of one whose belief in that 'fact' might be challenged. Such a person would sooner deny the much more widely accepted 'truths' (a series of absurdities) culminating in the ultimate absurdity, 'death and taxes', before questioning the cloven-footedness of the Devil.
Just to be clear, I am not making an argument against set theory or in any way calling it nonsensical. Quite the contrary, I use it here to illustrate how we are able to make sense of things that are not immediately apparent and can do it successfully. However, such an ability is also the manner in which we can be lulled or fooled into thinking that something which is blatantly absurd might have some logic to it, i.e., that taxes are as 'certain' as death.
Admittedly Defoe's second quote is a strange passage and difficult to follow especially from our present historical context and current conventions of speech and grammar. However, Defoe illustrates the absurdity of one conviction by having us imagine someone who supports that conviction through a series of other absurdities, thereby both giving the rhetorical illusion of a reasoned argument while at the same time sending us into an ever deepening swamp of untruth from which we simply cannot hope to resurface or recover.
Significant
The genius and beauty of Defoe's doing so is that we are at least made to laugh for the right reasons; he not only highlights the oddity of the things we take to be true, but at the same time shows how we use those oddities as certainties in order to demonstrate the certainty of yet other more far-fetched oddities. If it were an axiomatic system, one would be using the falsehood of one proposition in order to demonstrate the truth of the next falsehood (or some such).
The absurd coupling of 'death and taxes', then, takes its place among these false propositions, and indeed claims its rank as being the proudest and chief-most 'certainty' among them all (excepting that of the Devil's cloven feet, of course).
In Part III (coming soon!) we will bring this 'So What...?' discussion into our more immediate everyday attitudes and experiences by reference to one of those American 'founding fathers', Benjamin Franklin, whose popularity has seemingly helped 'seal the deal' and tightened the certainty around our false convictions.
It's time to break the seal....
By: V. Duane J. Lacey, Ph.D.
Last Updated: April 16, 2026