Surely, if
motives only are in question, I have no reason to reproach the
government which has effected this useful reduction; much less
still will I seek to diminish its merit by miserable criticisms
upon matters of detail, the vile pasturage of the daily press. A
tax, considerably burdensome, is reduced thirty per cent.; its
distribution is made more equitable and more regular; I see only
the fact, and I applaud the minister who has accomplished it.
But that is not the question.
In the first place, the advantage which the government gives us
by changing the tax on letters leaves the proportional--that is,
the unjust--character of this tax intact: that scarcely requires
demonstration. The inequality of burdens, so far as the postal
tax is concerned, stands as before, the advantage of the
reduction going principally, not to the poorest, but to the
richest. A certain business house which paid six hundred dollars
for letter-postage will pay hereafter only four hundred; it will
add, then, a net profit of two hundred dollars to the ten
thousand which its business brings it, and it will owe this to
the munificence of the treasury.
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