Written from Rushett, Faversham, [Kent]. Manuscript. Marked ‘Private’
His gardener, Edward Oxford, has just pointed out to him Robinson’s letter in ‘Gardening Illustrated’; the way in which Robinson has shown up the government is admirable; the ‘State’ and its locust host of officials takes away their possessions, and gives bribes to any who they think will support them; in 1826, after he married, he bought his house and 12 acres of land, and two years ago he bought a cherry orchard of 6½ acres in order to make his land a better shape and easier to sell on for £500; naturally he wishes to leave this to his wife and children, but he is over 86 years of age, and though he has only just sufficient to live there, death duties will take a year and a half’s income and at his wife’s death the same (or it may be the other way) so his home is confiscated; patriotism, like charity, begins at home so should be directed against those who destroy the fatherland; laws made by a log rolling Parliament, who have destroyed the Constitution, are not lawful and should be resisted by all honest men and women; signed ‘John H Howard (Captn RN retired), Queens Nag as a Volunteer of 1st class in 1840’; the postscript is hard to decipher but appears to present a proposal for a fairer system of death duties in which only the surviving marriage partner pays the tax
Undated [1914; an article by Robinson protesting against the government and the Insurance Tax was published in ‘Gardening Illustrated’ in 1914]