Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/697

Rh of Finance. But it would be easy, and even necessary, to go considerably further in this direction.

To accomplish this reduction without the treasury losing anything, it is only necessary to charge the less prolific families with one fifth additional tax. The demographic condition of France is, in fact, so deplorable that families of more than three children form only one sixth part of the whole number, or are 2,122,210 out of 12,127,023; hence, in order to clear fully from liability for taxes these two million families, it is enough to charge the other ten million families with supplementary taxes of twenty per cent—a thing that is entirely practicable. It may, however, seem more expedient to scale the supplementary impost, so that it shall fall in inverse proportion to the number of children. Thus, let bachelors more than thirty years old pay fifty per cent; households without children, forty per cent; families with one child, thirty per cent; families with two children, ten per cent; families with three children, the present tax without addition; while families with more than three children should be wholly exempt. A simple calculation will show that the treasury would gain by such an adjustment. It would lose 2,122,210 contributors of taxes, and would gain, against these, 2,456,112. Furthermore, families with more than four children are usually poor and hardly able to pay even light assessments, while those we propose to tax supplementarily are mostly wealthy, whence the tax against them would be generally productive.

These scalings and exemptions might be applied to all the various kinds of direct taxes, so that the state should say, in effect, to the infertile families: "You have done a wrong to your country. "We have no thought of punishing you for it, but it is not right that you profit by it. You must pay damages for it."

The plan actually followed by the state, instead of making lighter the meritorious burden which the head of a numerous family assumes, does everything to make it harder. All the direct and indirect taxes seem to fall higher upon families having many children. It would not be exact to say that the law is indifferent to natality. It would be more just to say that it does all it can to discourage it, and that every Frenchman is officially invited, in his own interest and that of his posterity, to limit it as much as possible. The contrary is what should be done.