"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.
_____
SO WHAT is it about these quotes that makes us smirk and squirm, chuckle and sigh, dislike yet agree? Is it a clever turn of practical 'wisdom'? A dark and sullen cynic's truth? An uneasy but resigned 'such is life' realist's shrug?
I can tell you that the seeming wit of this coupling, 'death and taxes', the pretense of its wisdom and insight, the false façade and fake factum of this wanna-be factum brutum, are the hallmarks of both its danger and its ignorance. As we shall see from its occurrence in these different sources, the phrase is mostly incidental, such that it sneaks its way into various contexts merely as an offhanded witticism but never itself takes center stage. Such inadvertence and misdirection are actually essential to how it functions; it is treacherous precisely because it seems so innocuous.
Here we will consider the earliest written sources of this quotation. A quick look shows that the well-known, widely read and popular figure of Benjamin Franklin, who used the expression in a 1789 letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, may be the likeliest and most widespread written occurrence that can account for its having become the familiar and popular sentiment that we know today. However, Franklin himself probably came across the formulation in the work of Daniel Defoe, who made use of it both in 1717 and again in 1726. Defoe, in turn, is likely to have seen or heard it in what appears to be its first written coinage in a play from 1716 by Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston.
Without going into a full-fledged literary analysis of these sources, we can at least get a better sense of their historical contexts and the spirit of the phrase itself. I emphasize 'written' here because I would speculate that the expression was already a common idiom familiar to all of these authors, and was most likely commonly heard by word of mouth in social circles, at cafes, pubs, inns, etc. (but based on written evidence alone it is possible that Bullock really did coin the phrase for the first time). Either way, what we will see in these sources is both its incidental, seemingly harmless usage, as well as its deeper and otherwise unnoticed, more tragic significance.
Part I
First Source: Christopher Bullock, The Cobler of Preston, A Farce, 1716.
Christopher Bullock's The Cobler of Preston is already surrounded with a bit of controversy. Some have asserted that he may have stolen the play, or least the title and idea of it, from his contemporary playwright Charles Johnson. In fact one version of events tells of a pickpocket who was hired to steal a description of Johnson's lead character. It is a compelling sleuth tale but it seems unlikely (drama and theater surround the theatrical dramatists, indeed). It is true, however, that Johnson also wrote a play bearing the very same title at roughly the same time as Bullock, and that the two knew about each other's having done so. Yet while Johnson's work is a musical farce focused on the politics of the Jacobite revolution at the time, Bullock's play, also farcical (as the title indicates), focuses more on class struggle, sexism and gender roles. For a more detailed and researched account of Bullock's and Johnson's versions and background, I recommend the article by Charles Conaway. "Shakespeare, Molly House Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Stage" (Comparative Drama, Vol. 38, No. 4,Winter 2004-05, pp. 401-423).
As Conaway explains both Bullock and Johnson were influenced directly by Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. Bullock made this influence explicit as part of an open acknowledgment in his Preface that the play stems directly from Shakespeare's "Induction" (the larger initial setting in which the main play-within-a-play takes place). For our purposes it is Bullock's work where we find the first instance of the death and taxes quote when his main character, Toby Guzzle, claims "...'tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes." Here we may consider how it is both Incidental and more Significant.
Incidental
The scene in which Guzzle utters this phrase is already humorous. Like the character Sly in Shakespeare's "Induction," Toby Guzzle wakes from a drunken sleep and is tricked into thinking he is a Lord and Judge, and that his previous life, including his work as a Cobbler, his wife Dorcas, and the inn-keeper Hacket to whom he owes money, are all just a dream he's been having for the past fifteen years. The character who orchestrates this trick is an actual Lord named Jasper, along with his servants, who have convinced Guzzle that none of his previous life was real. Just as Guzzle is coming to believe the farce, he is made to sit as Judge for a case. The case turns out to be that between Hacket the inn-keeper and his actual wife Dorcas. Hacket accuses Dorcas of slandering her, which she did when they were arguing about the money that Guzzle owes to Hacket for all of the drinking, eating, and breaking of glasses he's done at her Inn. Now believing that he is a Judge, Guzzle hears the case. This is part of their exchange:
Guzzle.: What was your husband's name?
Dorcas.: Guzzle, Toby Guzzle, so please you.
G.: Pha! Pha! You know not what you say, Woman; 'tis all a dream, I tell you.
D.: Indeed my Lord, 'tis true.
G.: How! Sure I know better than you, you Baggage: would you give the lye to Authority? Throw the Lye into the very face of Authority?--I tell you I am Authority, and were I to say the Moon is made of Mustard-Pot, you must believe it [...] I say 'tis all a Dream, you have no Husband, nor is there any such a man as Toby Guzzle.
D.: I know what your Honour means, but I'm sure----
G.: You lye, you are not sure; for I say, Woman, 'tis impossible to be sure of anything but Death and Taxes---therefore hold your Tongue, or you shall both be soundly whipped--Sure I know my office [...] Why I was in a Dream for fifteen Years myself, and dreamt I marry'd you--Dorcas is your name?
D.: Toby! Odds-daggers! Mr Justice's Honour, my Husband! A Lord, with a pox to you! I'll claw you, you Dog!
G.: Lay hold on her-----
Hacket: Ah, you Carrion Cur, do we come to you for Justice?
G.: She's in a Dream too, lay hold on her----- (p. 21)
The phrase about death and taxes here is incidental to the actual substance of the scene and plot of the play. Its use is rhetorical in order to strengthen Guzzle's claim that Dorcas can't be sure or certain of anything, etc. Yet indirectly, there is a much deeper significance to the phrase that can only be grasped when we consider the other points that Guzzle makes about Authority. The sinister significance of what this phrase actually represents is thus hidden in plain sight, so to speak, and works by means of misdirection and inadvertence.
Significant
The deeper meaning of this phrase can be more clearly seen when we consider Shakespeare's play from which Bullock's is derived. In Shakespeare's work, and by extension Bullock's as well, there is a more primordial conflict at stake, a kind of dichotomy between 'nature' and 'nurture', wild and tamed, primitive and civilized, etc. The apparent conflict takes shape first with the character Sly, an impoverished drunkard, who, in the "Induction," is tricked into believing that he is a wealthy Lord with a wife (a male Page is told by his Lord to dress up and pretend to be her). Thus Bullock's play is an extension of this "Induction." As part of the ruse in Shakespeare's version, Sly and his false wife are shown a play for entertainment, i.e., the main part of The Taming of the Shrew featuring the characters Petruchio and Katharina, wherein the former 'tames' the latter and marries her.
It is the manner in which Katharina is 'tamed' that requires more serious consideration, and it is the transformation of her character that leads us to the deeper significance at work. Bullock, however, also hits upon this theme when Guzzle claims that what the Authority says is true, and that it is true because the Authority says so. This is the sinister trend that also (seemingly) characterizes Katharina's complete transformation by the end of Shakespeare's play. What happened to her? She not only proclaims her obedience to Petruchio, now her husband, but even chastises the other wives for not being obedient and subservient enough to their own!
Here one is reminded of works such as Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, and many such dystopian tales that portray the power of coercion, propaganda, mind control and the darker side of 'nurture' in the 'nature/nurture' dichotomy. It may be that Burgess' A Clockwork Orange presents a counter-example to these instances of 'taming' and 'reform', but then again the utter depravity of the character Alex who seems to break this cycle and the system that tried to break him, is therefore no real testament to a hopeful outcome. Neither is there much hope in Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest regarding Randal McMurphy's fate; although there is perhaps something further to consider in Chief Bromden's escape, and perhaps it is precisely a character such as Chief Bromden to whom we should be looking with respect to our overall theme in order to understand the deeper significance of 'death and taxes'.
Once the parallels between these characters are glimpsed, we can also then recognize the philosophical debates that are recurrent with Industrialization, the Enlightenment, Romanticism and other earlier phases of thought in terms of theories about a 'natural' human state in relation to the role and influence of education and culture. These debates and the underlying conflict that they reveal stretches further into the past in many diverse and famous works, such as Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Plato's Republic, and indeed all the way back to the first 'recorded' story, The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Clearly such various works do not all say the same thing, far from it. They do, however, either take up similar themes in different contexts, are responses to their predecessors, or somehow arrive at a similar and deeper conflict from various perspectives and lines of inquiry. Thus, we begin to uncover what is entrenched and buried within our subject, this coupling of 'death and taxes'. There is a fundamental conflict which leads not only to incidentally comedic, but also to significantly tragic transformations.
As we continue next time with our questions about these quotations and their use of the dubious couplet, we will hopefully gain an even deeper insight into what's at stake for us today. For it may be that this ancient tension takes a new turn and has a new twist, in this, our still 'new' century... Part II, coming soon!
By: V. Duane J. Lacey, Ph.D.
Last Updated: April 8, 2026