or appropriated by man, and the capital of the nation is the ensemble (the whole) of the utilities it possesses. In the case of a private person the conditions are the same. His capital is the ensemble of the utilities he possesses. The result which he, equally with the state, seeks to attain, is the same—namely, to make the capital which they control fructify to the greatest possible extent for the benefit of the citizens of the state on the one hand and the individual on the other; and between the expenditures which it is necessary to incur for the attainment of these ends on the part of the state and the individual there is no essential difference. And from this analogy, thus urged to identity, M. Menier deduces the following definition of taxes:
They represent, he says, he investment of the capital of the nation, or state, and the general expenses of its care and development[1]
It is obvious, however, that M, Menier's analogy would not hold good under a system which failed to recognize any difference between a tax and an arbitrary exaction.
"So far as it is necessary for the security of person and property, money spent for the support of government is as usefully expended as is the purchase of clothing or provisions; but when the sum taken exceeds what is required for that purpose, it is only a question of amount between the sovereign of India, who exacts one half of the produce, and the legislator of Great Britain or the United States, who exacts a million of pounds or of dollars for which an equivalent is not given."—H. C. Carey, On Wealth, p. 343; Philadelphia, 1888.
An almost self-evident corollary from these sound deductions would be, that any tax or system of taxation that did not protect but diminished private property would tend to imperil or dry up the sources of public revenue.
A recognition of the true relation which a just and equitable system of taxation sustains to the state and to the capital or property of its citizens, and also of the fact that under such a system a tax works to a diminution of the income of the property taxed, and not to a diminution of the value of the property itself, ought
- ↑ M. Menier, in proposing the above definition, himself recognized the necessity of accompanying it with the following explanation: "When I say that taxes 'represent the investment of national capital,' it is of course understood that I speak only of that of the investment assigned to the state, and that I am very far from the communistic theory, according to which the state, being the owner of the national capital, should turn it to account for its own profit. In the useful employment of the capitals of the nation there are an individual part and a collective part. In my definition of taxes only that collective part, the syndicate contribution, is taken into account."—A Treatise on the Taxation of Fixed Capital, by M. Menier, of the French Chamber of Deputies. English translation, by I. O. Gallegan, Fellow of the University of France; London, 1880.
