Taxation and representation: Pennsylvania bachelors and the American Revolution
Pennsylvania breathed a little easier that year thanks to the removal of the Townshend duties and the hope that a violent conflict with Great Britain had been avoided, Newlin's mind focused not on the taxes imposed by a far off government but on a levy demanded by his own county. Newlin was twenty-three in the summer of 1771 and resided in Chester County's Concord Township. Like most young men in colonial Pennsylvania, Newlin spent his days in agricultural toil, working in the fields of either his father or another landowner. He owned no property and it is probable that he was working and saving for the day when he could acquire an estate of his own. And Richard Newlin was single. A man dependent on another man, he could not expect to support a wife and family in his current state. As long as Newlin remained without prop erty of his own, he would remain a bachelor. Richard Newlin's life was not remarkably unlike that of most young men in colonial America, with one exception: as a single man who owned no property, he owed a special tax. Specifically, Newlin owed Chester County a poll tax of six shillings. Although six shillings was not an onerous amount, it was higher than the property tax collected on three-quarters of the estates in Concord Township that same year.1 Nor was it a one-time occurrence. Every year after his twenty-first birthday, Newlin owed Chester County six shillings. He also was rated annually for fifteen