Argumentum Pedis Transfixus

John Ray has an interesting post on Left vs Right in the Tudor era:

[Cecil's] [Left] complacent eagerness to sacrifice the household goods of poor folk was backed by Bacon. The poor ought to be taxed as heavily as the rich: because, as he quoted in Latin, it was a right and ‘sweet course to pull together in an equal yoke'.

This smug hypocrisy brought Ralegh [Right] to his feet. `Call you this an equal yoke, when a poor man pays as much as a rich? His estate may be no better than he is assessed at, while our estates are entered as £30 or £40 in the Queen's books -- not the hundredth part of our wealth!' His outrageous frankness over this unfair advantage given to his own class, shocked his opponents. His final blow demolished them: 'It is neither sweet nor equal.'

As I say, it's interesting, because I recall Raleigh's objections to Cecil being raised in modern times against Margaret Thatcher's Poll Tax and Victorian Treasurer Alan Stockdale's fixed rate property tax. By the Left.