energy for some time past. Fourier, if he did
not actually hatch, foster-fathered an idea
which lie called Garantisme. But no one
gives a fair hearing to any proposition coining
from Fourier. Since then, Emile de Girardin,
the editor of La Presse newspaper, has
worked the scheme, agitating and keeping it
continually before the public with the ability
he is so well known to possess. His grand
project is no less than to engraft a general
assurance on the national taxation, and to
transform the payment of taxes into an
assurance payment. The State would insure
every individual against loss by fire, flood, or
storm. The vastness of the undertaking
frightens many; but independent of mundane
motives, there is a party, comprising a certain
sect of religionists, who regard the inundation
as a penance inflicted by the immediate
hand of Heaven, in punishment for national
sins of commission and omission, and that the
duty of inundated France is to bow her head
in penitent submission, reform her conduct,
correct her moral and religious delinquencies,
leaving the palliatives and the remedies of
the evils to be tended by the Power which
has inflicted it. The same disparagement of
social prudence has been put forward in
times of cholera, epidemics, malaria fever
curable by drainage, in cases of apoplectic
sudden death, of preventible accidents by sea
and land, and of the whole class of events
that are swept into the grand category of
public and of private judgments. Persons
who entertain such views as these relative to
divine and human providence, rarely advocate
sweeping reforms.

Does anybody like to be taxed, as there
are exceptional individuals who like to be
despised? The Times is evidence that there
are people who do. To such, De Girardin's
scheme must be doubly welcome, from its
combining the useful with the sweet. But it
also involves a radical reform,—no less than
utter abolition of the present confusion of
taxes which, he says, not without reason, is a
monstrous promiscuity of systems that
exclude each other—a legal falsehood—a
jumble of fiscal tyranny. Taxes are now
assessed, sometimes on capital, sometimes on
income; sometimes on the person, and
sometimes on the thing; on the production and on
the consumption—on the raw material and
on the manufactured article, and are paid in
money and in kind. All which discordant
elements of a nation's revenue cry aloud for
a reform, whose consequence would be the
suppression of inequitable taxation, the
establishment of a sole and unique tax, and the
transformation of compulsory assessment into
a voluntary assurance-payment. But how?

Thus: first,—for general principles. A tax
ought to be no more than the contribution
which every member of civilised society
brings, that he may participate in the benefits
of that civilisation. It ought to be
proportioned to the advantages reaped by the
contributor. Its object is to spread general
welfare, and not to protect luxury.

In fixing the revenue of a nation, regard
must be had both to the necessities of the
state and the necessities of the citizen. The
real wants of the people must not be curtailed
to supply the imaginary wants of the state.
The list of imaginary wants includes the
things demanded by the passions and
weaknesses of the individuals who govern, the
charm of extraordinary projects, the diseased
hankering after vain glory, and a certain
weakness in resisting capricious fancies. The
public revenue should be measured not by
what a people is able to give, but by what it
ought to be called upon to give. Taxes are
not a burden imposed by strength on
weakness; for government is not founded on the
right of conquest as its leading principle.
In such a case, the sovereign would be
regarded as the common enemy of society;
the strongest would defend themselves from
taxation as well as they could, while the weak
would submit to be crushed without resistance;
and in the end, the rich and powerful
would shift the whole weight from their own
shoulders to those of the poor. Such a
consummation hardly accords with the idea of a
paternal government constitutionally
conducted, where the monarch is raised above
every one else, for the sake of the universal
happiness of the nation.

A country is never utterly without
resources; the great point is to search for them
where they actually exist, and not where
they are not to be found. Taxpayers are
subscribers to, and shareholders in, a national
undertaking; and they are entitled to a
dividend of benefits, in proportion to the
number of shares they pay for.

The levying of taxes may be compared to
the action of the sun, which absorbs the mists
from the earth, in order to distribute them
afterwards in the form of rain on every spot
which has need of water to render it fruitful.
When this restitution is performed with
regularity, fertility is the consequence; but
when the heavens, in their anger, shower
down the vapours they have imbibed in
concentrated tempests and local waterspouts,
the germs of reproduction are destroyed, and
barrenness is the result; for too much rain
is given to some, while others languish for
the want of a sufficiency. Nevertheless,
whatever may have been the beneficent, or
the destructive action of the atmosphere, the
same quantity of moisture has almost always
been drawn from and restored to the earth.
It is the distribution only which makes the
difference. When equitable and regular, it
creates abundance; when scanty and partial,
it induces dearth. If the sums annually
Ievied on the mass of a population are devoted
to unproductive uses such as the foundation
of serviceless offices, the raising of sterile
monuments, the maintenance in the midst of
peace of a more expensive army than that