Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/786

768 which question, if any answer could be made, it must be that those would suffer most who were weakest in mind or body, either by nature or by position. Indeed, such persons would almost infallibly be slaves. If there were any justice, therefore, in the theory of justice under consideration, those who are the least capable of helping or defending themselves, being those to whom the protection of Government is the most indispensable, ought to pay the greatest share of its price; the reverse of the true idea of distributive justice, which consists not in imitating but in redressing the inequalities and wrongs of Nature. Government must be regarded as so pre-eminently a concern of all that to determine who are most interested in it is of no real importance. If a person or class of persons receive so small a share of its benefit as make it necessary to raise the question, there is something else than taxation which is amiss, and the thing to be done is to remedy the defect instead of recognizing it and making it a ground for demanding less taxes."

M. Menier, of France, widely known as a manufacturer of chocolate, but who has shown himself to be an economist of repute and a most valuable member of the French Chamber of Deputies, in a comprehensive treatise on taxation (L’ Impost sur le Capital, Paris, 1874; English translation, London, 1880) re-enforces the conclusions of Mr. Mill respecting the popular theory of discriminating taxation by different though not less forcible arguments and illustrations, taking as a text the following remark of M. Léon Faucher, another distinguished French writer on economic subjects: "It seems just that he who, thanks to his talents, to his property, or his capital, procures for himself and his family the enjoyments of luxury should pay to the state a tribute proportionately more considerable than he who has only the produce of his daily labor to nourish and bring up his family." "To those," says M. Menier, "who do not reflect, nothing seems more simple than this proposition. A minimum of wants is spared taxation. In proportion as income increases the tax increases. Let us see the consequences.

"A principle is or is not. A principle recognized as true ought never to be given up, whatever may be its apparent dangers. Once admitted, it must be submitted to, followed out to the end, and its consequences accepted. If by following out its consequences we perceive that we are getting at the absurd, we must return to the principle, and subject it again to the touch of observation. There are many who content themselves with stopping halfway, not daring to advance, and afraid to turn back to discuss the principle on which they have long relied. They are the inventors of compromises, who adjourn questions instead of solving them.

"But taxation, it is claimed, may be ‘wisely progressive.’ I