Benjamin Franklin, (1706-1790)

Our legislators are all landholders, and they are not yet persuaded that all taxes are finally paid by the land... therefore, we have been forced into the mode of indirect taxes. All the property that is necessary to a man for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right which none may justly deprive him of; but all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public.