We are next to see how they have conducted themselves in contriving
equal impositions, proportioned to the means of the citizens, and the
least likely to lean heavy on the active capital employed in the
generation of that private wealth from whence the public fortune must be
derived. By suffering the several districts, and several of the
individuals in each district, to judge of what part of the old revenue
they might withhold, instead of better principles of equality, a new
inequality was introduced of the most oppressive kind. Payments were
regulated by dispositions. The parts of the kingdom which were the most
submissive, the most orderly, or the most affectionate to the
commonwealth, bore the whole burden of the state. Nothing turns out to
be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government. To fill up all the
deficiencies in the old impositions, and the new deficiencies of every
kind which were to be expected, what remained to a state without
authority? The National Assembly called for a voluntary
benevolence,--for a fourth part of the income of all the citizens, to be
estimated on the honor of those who were to pay. They obtained something
more than could be rationally calculated, but what was far indeed from
answerable to their real necessities, and much less to their fond
expectations. Rational people could have hoped for little from this
their tax in the disguise of a benevolence,--tax weak, ineffective, and
unequal,--a tax by which luxury, avarice, and selfishness were screened,
and the load thrown upon productive capital, upon integrity, generosity,
and public spirit,--a tax of regulation upon virtue.
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