which conquered at Austerlitz—taxation
becomes a crushing burden. It exhausts the
country; for it takes away money without
ever giving back money's worth. But if, on
the contrary, fiscal resources are employed
in the creation of new elements of
productiveness, in re-establishing the equilibrium
of wealth, in destroying poverty by
unremitting and profitable employment of labour,
then certainly the payment of taxes is the
best investment that a patriotic citizen can
make.

Taxation as it is, considered relatively to
itself, has the unequal strength of living
horses; which varies according to country,
age, breed, health, and nutriment.
Taxation, as it ought to be, should have the
precise force of the standard steam-horse
by which steam-power is estimated, which
is constantly and universally the same,
without the distinction of English or French,
European or American. As soon as
taxation—that is, what Monsieur de Girardin
understands by taxation,—is adopted by one
country on a proper basis (the prophecy is
not so bold as it looks), it will be successively
and immediately welcomed by all;
for, to all, and to each, its advantages will
be manifest. The unit of strength already
exists—namely, the one-horse steam-power;
the unit of the rail is also spreading; the
units of coins and measures have only a feeble
and final effort to make, in order to pass from
the condition of a general desideratum to
the rank of an accomplished fact, in spite of
the Committee of London Bankers, who
weigh a national benefit against their own
convenience, and find it wanting. The unit
of taxation will be the crowning pinnacle of
the grand edifice erected to Peace and
Liberty. Unity of taxation is the means of
dispersing the industrial and commercial
complications which are assumed to be
inextricable. Everything is simplified. The tight
knot in that tangled skein which is styled
free-exchange, is united of itself. Artificial
inequalities fall to their level; natural
inequalities are the only ones that survive.
Superiority ceases to be relative by becoming
absolute. There ought to be but one sole
tax, everywhere the same, and so mathematically
just that in fact it is obligatory, though
in right it is voluntary.

And so runs on our high-mettled racer.
Some of the preceding heats are rather sharp.
For want of training, we require a moment's
breathing time. It cannot be denied that
the editor of La Presse is a rattling literary
pugilist, who renders the service of a bottle-
holder far from superfluous between the
rounds. But time is up; let us at it again.

One tax, without exception or reservation!
What a holiday for the Chancellor of the
Exchequer! And a tax on what? On
consumption, on income, or on capital? The
taxing of articles of consumption is the
opposite pole to unity of impost, for it is
necessarily a diversity of impost; so that tax
will not do, setting every other objection
aside. A tax on income is equally objectionable,
from the innumerable forms into which
income varies; it may be the amount of
annual profits made, of wages earned, or of
interest paid by invested capital. The
incomes derived from commerce, banking,
agriculture, the arts, the sciences, and industrial
labour, are essentially variable and
unseizable. Many a man may gain ten thousand
francs one year, to lose twenty thousand the
following; many a vineyard which gives this
year six thousand francs worth of wine shall
cost next season for its culture three thousand
francs more than its produce; many an
artisan may work three hundred days in the
year eighteen hundred and fifty-six who will
not work a hundred in 'fifty-seven. The
porter, the cabman, the merchant, the portrait
painter, the surgeon, the barrister, the attorney,
the auctioneer—in short, whoever exercises
any calling, profession, or trade, is unable to
say what will be his salary, his gains, or his
profit at the expiration of the twelvemonth.
Even in the same calling there are inequalities.
A farm-labourer maybe boarded in the house,
or may have to board himself. Peter is an
out-door journeyman, without board; he
earns six hundred francs. James is a servant,
well fed in doors, with three hundred francs
wages. How will you manage to establish
the quantity of tax which Peter ought to pay
as compared with James? Will you estimate
the board? If so, on what basis? No;
an income-tax is out of the question, if you
want to combine simplicity with justice. An
income-tax may be compared to a shifting
sand, on which you attempt to construct a
jetty or a harbour. It is a basis deficient in
the primary condition of every solid foundation
—namely, in fixity.

M. de Girardin's tax is the antipodes of an
income-tax; he calls for a tax on capital. A
capital tax is the egg of Christopher Columbus;
it is the pyramid seated on its base,
consolidating itself by its own weight; it is
the torrent which digs its own bed, and raises
a dike against its own inundations; it is a
revolution without insurgents; it is progress
without disturbance; it is motion without
collision; in short, it is ideal simplicity and
legislative verity.

Take capital as the basis of your taxation—
instantly, locked-up capital begins to circulate;
the capital which slept awakes; the
capital employed redoubles its efforts and
stimulates credit. Capital can no longer
remain idle and unproductive for a single
instant, without paying the penalty of suffering
diminution of its sum. It is condemned to
forced activity. Timid capital takes courage;
for, the tax on capital being the same,
whether it produces three or six per cent.,
capital, by the first of natural laws—the law
of self-preservation—will strive to obtain the
highest interest possible. Instead of burying