In the same way, if the State wishes to discourage vegetarianism and temperance, it will tax sugar, currants, raisins, tea, cocoa and coffee, and will continue to tax them till it has diminished the consumption; and incidentally it will let meat go free. But it will not pass moral judgments—having the fear of human nature before its eyes—on those who conscientiously bear the burden of those taxes rather than give up what they think good for them.
I could imagine the State, in its wisdom, seeking to discourage luxury and the accumulation of wealth into the possession of the few, by imposing a graduated income tax of far more drastic severity than that which is now depleting the pockets of our millionaires—but not therefore saying that all who incurred income tax above a certain scale were guilty of moral obliquity.
We have seen a State which required an increase of its population setting a premium on children so as to encourage parents to produce them; and I can imagine a State which required a diminution in the increase of its population setting a tax on children, but not therefore joining in the cry of the Neo-Malthusians that every married couple who produced more than four children were guilty of a kind of moral depravity. And further, I can imagine a State which wished to encourage pure and unadulterated monogamy putting a graduated tax, practically prohibitive in price, on any other course of conduct productive of
