It is unlimited and unbridled absolutism, given to
power over everything which, by labor, by economy, by
improvements, contributes to public wealth.
But what is the use of wandering about in chimerical hypotheses
when the truth is at hand. It is not the fault of the
proportional principle if the tax falls with such shocking
inequality upon the various classes of society; the fault is in
our prejudices and our morals. The tax, as far as is possible in
human operations, proceeds with equity, precision. Social
economy commands it to apply to product; it applies to product.
If product escapes it, it strikes capital: what more natural!
The tax, in advance of civilization, supposes the equality of
laborers and capitalists: the inflexible expression of necessity,
it seems to invite us to make ourselves equals by education and
labor, and, by balancing our functions and associating our
interests, to put ourselves in accord with it. The tax refuses
to distinguish between one man and another: and we blame its
mathematical severity for the differences in our fortunes! We
ask equality itself to comply with our injustice! Was I not
right in saying at the outset that, relatively to the tax, we are
behind our institutions?
Accordingly we always see the legislator stopping, in his fiscal
laws, before the subversive consequences of the progressive tax,
and consecrating the necessity, the immutability of the
proportional tax.
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