There must be something different about the place
From the IA Richmond volume, “Roman Britain”, in the Pelican History of England Series:
The responsibilities of local government and increasing fiscal burdens tended in the later Empire to convert the decurionate, as membership of the tribal council was called, from an honour to an anxiety. But in the earlier Empire it was a prized distinction and an object of family rivalry and ambition. In Gaul, where such rivalry (aemulatio) laid the foundation of the French emulation, the effect was to run the committees into heavy expenditure upon building programmes, financed from both public funds and private pockets. In Britain there must have been something of this, but it cannot be claimed as an outstanding feature of Romano-British town-life. This contrast is plainly due to a different attitude in Britain towards Romanisation and its implications, and it has been held by notable authorities that it was based upon the relative poverty of British cantons as compared with the Gaullish civitates. But, if the Gallic manifestation of public spirit was due to an outlook characteristic of the province, it should not be forgotten that Tacitus cited certain points of view native to Britain; and prominent among these, no less clearly persistent than emulation, was the habit of acquiescence in taxes and demands so long as justice was observed. It may be asked what effect, as compared with Gaul, such an attitude may have had upon the relations between British landowners and their tenants, or upon cantonal taxation? If the exactions of the great Gallic landlords tended to provoke the tenantry to revolt and outlawry, British landlords were presumably held by public opinion to fairer conditions….
This was written in the 1950s about that period of time when Angles and Saxons were still the pirates one paid government for protection from. And yet it’s spooky how well it explains the gilet jaunes, isn’t it? What really was largely the same society, speaking the same Celtic language, worshipping the same Gods, of the same cultural expansion into Western Europe, was still this different across that mere division of the Channel. The British being more in favour of lower tax and less government aggrandisement of the two even then.
No doubt this is that cause for despair among Polly Toynbee and others who bemoan the reluctance of the British to be fully taxed - meaning about 25% more of everything than already happens - to provide for a proper social democracy. But we do tend to think that if the reluctance has been there this two thousand years, even despite the significant changes in the composition of the population, then it’s probably something embedded in being British really. We simply are a lower tax and less government sorta society.