What, then, in this evolution, is the point of departure of society, and by what circuitous route does it reach political reform, -- that is, economy in its expenditures, equality in the assessment of its taxes, and the subordination of power to industry? That is what we are about to state in a few words, reserving developments for the sequel.
The original idea of the tax is that of REDEMPTION.
As, by the law of Moses, each first-born was supposed to belong to Jehovah, and had to be redeemed by an offering, so the tax everywhere presents itself in the form of a tithe or royal prerogative by which the proprietor annually redeems from the sovereign the profit of exploitation which he is supposed to hold only by his pleasure.This theory of the tax, moreover, is but one of the special articles of what is called the social contract.
Ancients and moderns all agree, in terms more or less explicit, in regarding the juridical status of societies as a reaction of weakness against strength.
This idea is uppermost in all the works of Plato, notably in the "Gorgias,"
where he maintains, with more subtlety than logic, the cause of the laws against that of violence, -- that is, legislative absolutism against aristocratic and military absolutism.In this knotty dispute, in which the weight of evidence is equal on both sides, Plato simply expresses the sentiment of entire antiquity.Long before him, Moses, in making a distribution of lands, declaring patrimony inalienable, and ordering a general and uncompensated cancellation of all mortgages every fiftieth year, had opposed a barrier to the invasions of force.The whole Bible is a hymn to JUSTICE, -- that is, in the Hebrew style, to charity, to kindness to the weak on the part of the strong, to voluntary renunciation of the privilege of power.Solon, beginning his legislative mission by a general abolition of debts, and creating rights and reserves, -- that is, barriers to prevent their return, -- was no less reactionary.Lycurgus went farther; he forbade individual possession, and tried to absorb the man in the State, annihilating liberty the better to preserve equilibrium.Hobbes, deriving, and with great reason, legislation from the state of war, arrived by another road at the establishment of equality upon an exception, -- despotism.His book, so much calumniated, is only a development of this famous antithesis.The charter of 1830, consecrating the insurrection made in '89 by the plebeians against the nobility, and decreeing the abstract equality of persons before the law, in spite of the real inequality of powers and talents which is the veritable basis of the social system now in force, is also but a protest of society in favor of the poor against the rich, of the small against the great.All the laws of the human race regarding sale, purchase, hire, property, loans, mortgages, prescription, inheritance, donation, wills, wives' dowries, minority, guardianship, etc., etc., are real barriers erected by judicial absolutism against the absolutism of force.Respect for contracts, fidelity to promises, the religion of the oath, are fictions, osselets,(2*) as the famous Lysander aptly said, with which society deceives the strong and brings them under the yoke.
The tax belongs to that great family of preventive, coercive, repressive, and vindictive institutions which A.Smith designated by the generic term police, and which is, as I have said, in its original conception, only the reaction of weakness against strength.This follows, independently of abundant historical testimony which we will put aside to confine ourselves exclusively to economic proof, from the distinction naturally arising between taxes.
All taxes are divisible into two great categories: (1) taxes of assessment, or of privilege: these are the oldest taxes; (2) taxes of consumption, or of quotité,(3*) whose tendency is, by absorbing the former, to make public burdens weigh equally upon all.
The first sort of taxes -- including in France the tax on land, the tax on doors and windows, the poll-tax, the tax on personal property, the tax on tenants, license-fees, the tax on transfers of property, the tax on officials' fees, road-taxes, and brevets -- is the share which the sovereign reserves for himself out of all the monopolies which he concedes or tolerates;
it is, as we have said, the indemnity of the poor, the permit granted to property.Such was the form and spirit of the tax in all the old monarchies:
feudalism was its beau ideal.Under that regime the tax was only a tribute paid by the holder to the universal proprietor or sleeping-partner (commanditaire), the king.
When later, by the development of public right, royalty, the patriarchal form of sovereignty, begins to get impregnated by the democratic spirit, the tax becomes a quota which each voter owes to the COMMONWEALTH, and which, instead of falling into the hand of the prince, is received into the State treasury.In this evolution the principle of the tax remains intact; as yet there is no transformation of the institution; the real sovereign simply succeeds the figurative sovereign.Whether the tax enters into the peculium of the prince or serves to liquidate a common debt, it is in either case only a claim of society against privilege; otherwise, it is impossible to say why the tax is levied in the ratio of fortunes.
Let all contribute to the public expenses: nothing more just.But why should the rich pay more than the poor? That is just, they say, because they possess more.I confess that such justice is beyond my comprehension....
