Political Economy [55]
and the rich, force the man to pay who has nothing, for whom society does nothing, equally with him who has too much; for whom society lays out enormous expenses. Others have attacked with considerable imposts, inheritances, sales, and all exchange of property; though, in thus encroaching on capital, not on revenue, they diminish the productive cause of wealth, nearly as if tithes were levied on the seed, instead of being levied on the crop. Others have established imposts on loans, by pledge and judicial acts, on stamps, and a train of accidents which ought to be taken as Symptoms of poverty, not of riches. Others, in fine, by establishing lotteries, have profited by encouraging a ruinous vice. This review of the different kinds of taxation shows clearly, that one of the most essential qualities which a nation can ask in its government is economy. States, in the vigour lent them by freedom, in the full enjoyment of all their advantages, give way to all the dreams of ambition; they listen to all the suggestions of pride, of jealousy, or of vengeance; under the pretext of being on their guard against distant or imaginary dangers, they rush headlong, with light hearts, into ruinous wars, and persist in them with obstinacy; though the voice of humanity calls for peace in vain, the superiority of their nation does not yet appear sufficiently established, their enemy is not yet sufficiently humbled; the work which they thought accomplished has been overturned; it must be reestablished at any price. Present resources, however, are exhausted, and recourse is had to borrowing: credit is still entire; the national capitals are drained away from commerce, and placed, one after another, at the disposal of a minister, who dissipates them, and replaces them by assignments on the future; and the passion which blinded men for a few months, condemns their posterity to suffering for ages. Perhaps no invention was ever more fatal to men than that of public loans: none is yet enveloped with more illusions. The passions excited by politics are so violent; the questions to be decided by negotiations or by arms so important; all sacrifices become so natural, when the prosperity, the existence, the honour of all are at stake, that governments and the people, before yielding, are to exhaust every resource to the very uttermost. They will send out the last man to battle, they will expend their last shilling, if they can possibly dispose of either; and they will do this not alone for the safety of the people, but for any war, any quarrel in which they happen to engage, because there is no one in which their offended pride may not be confounded with honour, in which they cannot honestly say what is true only in extreme cases, that a nation had better cease to exist than exist dishonoured. If the possibility of making such preternatural exertions could be furnished to nations, and reserved at the same time for an extraordinary necessity, no doubt a great service would be done to human society, which is shaken to its foundation every time that one of its members is overthrown. But each mean of defence becomes in its turn a mean of attack. The invention of artillery, happy for society if it could have been employed only in the defence of towns, has served to overthrow them: the invention of standing armies has opposed discipline to discipline, and talent to talent; the invention of conscriptions has opposed all the youth of one nation to all the youth of another; the invention of landsthurms and levees en masse, has made even women and old men descend to the field of battle to assist regular troops; the invention of loans has attacked and defended the present generation, with all the hope and all the labour of posterity. The strength of nations, though becoming still more formidable, has continued still in same proportion. The state, in danger, has not found deliverance more easily. but humanity herself has been sacrificed, and, amid those gigantic combats, it is she that must perish. As, after those destructive expenses rendered possible