The
landholders who spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby the
creators of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces out of
which their revenues arise. Very nearly the same arguments will apply to
the representative share given on account of _direct_ contribution:
because the direct contribution must be assessed on wealth, real or
presumed; and that local wealth will itself arise from causes not local,
and which therefore in equity ought not to produce a local preference.
It is very remarkable, that, in this fundamental regulation which
settles the representation of the mass upon the direct contribution,
they have not yet settled how that direct contribution shall be laid,
and how apportioned. Perhaps there is some latent policy towards the
continuance of the present Assembly in this strange procedure. However,
until they do this, they can have no certain constitution. It must
depend at last upon the system of taxation, and must vary with every
variation in that system. As they have contrived matters, their taxation
does not so much depend on their constitution as their constitution on
their taxation. This must introduce great confusion among the masses; as
the variable qualification for votes within the district must, if ever
real contested elections take place, cause infinite internal
controversies.
To compare together the three bases, not on their political reason, but
on the ideas on which the Assembly works, and to try its consistency
with itself, we cannot avoid observing that the principle which the
committee call the basis of _population_ does not begin to operate from
the same point with the two other principles, called the bases of
_territory_ and of _contribution_, which are both of an aristocratic
nature.
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