THE DEPOPULATION OF FRANCE. 677 



ister of Finance.* But it would be easy, and even necessary, to go 

 considerably further iu this direction. 



To accomplish this reduction without the treasury losing any- 

 thing, it is only necessary to charge the less prolific families with 

 one fifth additional tax. The demographic condition of Trance is, 

 in fact, so deplorable that families of more than three children 

 form only one sixth part of the whole number, or are 2,122,210 

 out of 12,127,023; hence, in order to clear fully from liability for 

 taxes these two million families, it is enough to charge the other 

 ten million families with supplementary taxes of twenty per cent — 

 a thing that is entirely practicable. It may, however, seem more 

 expedient to scale the supplementary impost, so that it shall fall in 

 inverse proportion to the number of children. Thus, let bachelors 

 more than thirty years old pay fifty per cent; households without 

 children, forty per cent; families with one child, thirty per cent; 

 families with two children, ten per cent; families with three chil- 

 dren, the present tax without addition; while families with more 

 than three children should be wholly exempt. A simple calcula- 

 tion will show that the treasury would gain by such an adjustment. 

 It would lose 2,122,210 contributors of taxes, and would gain, 

 against these, 2,456,112. Furthermore, families with more than 

 four children are usually poor and hardly able to pay even light 

 assessments, while those we propose to tax supplementarily are 

 mostly wealthy, whence the tax against them would be generally 

 productive. 



These scalings and exemptions might be applied to all the va- 

 rious kinds of direct taxes, so that the state should say, in effect, 

 to the infertile families: " You have done a wrong to your country. 

 "We have no thought of punishing you for it, but it is not right that 

 you profit by it. You must pay damages for it." 



The plan actually followed by the state, instead of making 

 lighter the meritorious burden which the head of a numerous fam- 

 ily assumes, does everything to make it harder. All the direct 

 and indirect taxes seem to fall higher upon families having many 

 children. It would not be exact to say that the law is indifferent 

 to natality. It would be more just to say that it does all it can to 

 discourage it, and that every Frenchman is officially invited, in his 

 own interest and that of his posterity, to limit it as much as pos- 

 sible. The contrary is what should be done. 



* France is not the first country that has started on this course. The spirit of justice 

 has suggested similar reforms in countries which have no questions of depopulation to deal 

 with. Reductions of taxes proportioned to the number of children have been granted in 

 Prussia, Saxony, most of the secondary states of Germany, Servia, Xorway, Sweden, several 

 Swiss cantons, and Austria. 



