Rich, that’s all well and good, but it misses the point. Whatever the merits or not of tax relief on kids’ bows and arrows, it’s got nothing to do with a Super-Duper-Mega-Ultra-Urgent Act-Now-Or-Else Save-The-Global-Economy Bailout Bill. No reasonable person would expect to find the urgent issue of toy arrows addressed in such a bill. So, when it is, it’s an arrow at the heart of one of the great bedrock principles of republican government: public accountability. No citizen can follow the dispositions of his legislature in a world in which the Highways (Emergency Paving) Bill also includes a tax credit for transgendered blow-up dolls. Earmarks are an affront to government by the people.

With hindsight, Lord North could have prevented the entire revolution. If, instead of naively calling it “An act to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea to any of his Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America; to increase the deposit on bohea tea to be sold at the India Company’s sales; and to impower the commissioners of the treasury to grant licences to the East India Company to export tea duty-free”, Parliament had just tacked it as an earmark onto the Birmingham and Manchester Pox Relief Act, would the American colonists have figured it out in time to hold the Boston Tea Party?