The German economist Bluntschli, who has carefully studied this question of the final incidence of all just and equitable taxes, is in substantial agreement with the above conclusions, but prefers to use a different term for characterizing such finality than consumption, and expresses himself as follows: "In the end taxes fall on enjoyments. Hence the amount of each man's enjoyments and not his income is the justest measure of taxation." (Bluntschli, vol. x, p. 146.)
M. Thiers, the French statesman and economist, was also a believer and earnest advocate of the theory of the diffusion of taxes, and lays down his principles in the following words: "Taxes are shifted indefinitely, and tend to become a part of the price of commodities, to such an extent that every one bears his share, not in proportion to what he pays the state, but in proportion to what he consumes." And in his book Rights to Property he thus illustrates the method in which taxation diffuses itself: "In the same manner as our senses, deceived by appearances, tell us that it is the sun which moves and not the earth, so a particular tax appears to fall upon one class, and another tax upon another class, when in reality it is not so. The tax really best suited to the poorest member of society is that which is best suited to the general fortune of the state; a fortune which is much more for the possession and enjoyment of the poor man than it is for the rich; a fact of which we are never sufficiently convinced. But of the manner, nevertheless, in which taxes are divided among the different classes of the state, the most certain thing we can say is: That they are divided in proportion to what each man consumes, and for a reason not generally recognized or understood, namely, that taxes are reflected, as it were, to infinity, and from reflection to reflection become eventually an integral part of the prices of things. Hence the greatest purchasers and consumers are everywhere the greatest taxpayers. This is what I call 'diffusion of taxation,' to borrow a term from physical science, which applies the expression 'diffusion of light' to those numberless reflections, in consequence of which the light which has penetrated the slightest aperture spreads itself around in every direction, and in such a manner as to reach all the objects which it renders visible. So a tax which at first sight appears to be paid directly, in reality is only advanced by the individual who is first called upon to pay it."
[19] As applied to the wages of labor, the truth of this principle is equally incontestable. "The sewing girl performing her toilsome work by the needle at one dollar a day, the street sweeper working the mud with his broom at a dollar and a half, the skilled laborer at two and three dollars, the professor at five, the editor at five or ten, the artist and the songstress at ten or five hundred dollars a day are all members of the working classes, though working at different rates. And it is only the difference in their effectiveness that causes the difference in their earnings. Bring them all to the same point of efficiency, and their earnings also will be the same."—W. Jungst, Cincinnati.
John Locke, in his treatise On the Standard of Value, treats of taxation, and shows conclusively that if all lands were nominally free from taxation, the owners of lands would proportionally pay more taxes than now, because the same amount of money must continue to be collected in some form, and the average profits of lands would only be equal to the average profits of other investments; and further, that the expense and annoyance (another form of expense) would be increased if the tax were exclusively levied in the first instance upon personal property; and hence the landowner would be burdened with his proportion of the unnecessary expense and annoyance. He also shows that you may change the form of a uniform tax, but that you can not change the burden; and that the change will increase the burden, if the new system is more expensive and annoying than the old. Locke wrote nearly a century before Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations, and it would seem probable that Smith acquired his ideas relative to the average profits of investments from Locke.
[20] The meteors shown in the two ideal pictures are, of course, entirely disproportionate in size to the earth and stars. If seen by an observer above the earth, we might imagine an envelope of light around the globe from the continuous ignition of the 150,000,000,000 or more meteors which it is estimated strike the earth every year; in which case, the striking meteors would be represented in the illustrations as a thin light line surrounding the atmospheric envelope of the earth.
[21] The pessimists are further mistaken. The idea that conquest is disastrous, even to the conqueror, is much more widespread in modern societies than is generally thought. But social reflexes urge the masses to obey their chief blindly. It requires only a Gothic spirit—like Bismarck, for example—to set a whole army in motion, and make it do things which every officer and every soldier would condemn as a personal act.
[22] The difference is the extent of Alsace-Lorraine.
[23] About the extent of the British Isles, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland combined.
[24] See Seeley's Expansion of England, p. 21. This figure is very moderate. Between 1802 and 1813 France alone spent 498,000,000 francs ($99,600,000) a year. See Laroque, La Guerre et les Armées permanentes, Paris, 1870, p. 203.
[25] See P. Leroy-Beaulieu, Recherches économiques sur les Guerres contemporaines, Paris, p. 181.