The principle of the vote-tax held sway until the recent introduction of universal suffrage.
Our socialist, proceeding directly to the question of taxes, proves that the bourgeoisie moderne, without inventing indirect taxation, has nevertheless made it the basis of an entire system, and has settled upon it all the expenses of state. Now, indirect taxes are such as are levied beforehand upon all necessaries, as salt, corn, beer, meat, fuel, or, still more, upon what we need for our protection—the expenses of the administration of justice, stamped paper, etc. Generally, in making a purchase, the buyer pays the tax, without perceiving that it is that which increases the price. Now, it is clear that because an individual is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times richer, it does not follow that he will, on that account, consume twenty, fifty, or a hundred times more salt, bread, meat, etc., than a workman or a person of humble condition. Thus it happens that the great body of indirect taxes is paid by the poorest classes (from the single fact that they are the most numerous). Thus is it brought about, in a hidden way, that the tiers état pay relatively less taxes than the quatrième état.
Concerning the instruction of adults, Lassalle says that, instead of being left to the clergy as heretofore, it now in fact belongs to the daily press. But securities, stamps, and advertisements give to journalism another privilege of capital.[61]
This sketch suffices; and I deem it needless to add that I am far from concluding with the socialists. I am so much the more free to disagree with them as I do not by any means admit the “immortal principles,” but it seems to me to follow evidently from the preceding observations that it is not true, in fact, that the general will has made the laws since 1789.
VII.—DOES UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE EXPRESS THE GENERAL WILL?
Has the introduction of universal suffrage modified, in any great degree, this state of things? Is it any more certain since 1848, than before, that the nation is governed by the general will? We may content ourselves here by appealing to the testimony of honest men. If the general will were truly the master of all the powers in France, our country, which to-day, so it is said, has only the government that it desires, would be a model of union and concord; there could be in the opposition party only an exceedingly small minority (otherwise the term general would be unjustifiable), and we would follow peacefully the ways most pleasing to us.
This would not be saying—mark it well!—that those ways are good. That is another question, to which we will return; but now we are dealing with the question, Are our laws to-day formed or not formed by the general will, according to the formula which I have quoted from the Declaration of the Rights of Man?
Notwithstanding the evidence for the negative, I think it well here to analyze hastily that which M. Taine has just given in a little pamphlet containing many truths.[62] M. Taine, being a free-thinker and a man of the times, cannot be suspected of taking an ultramontane or clerical view of the case.
M. Taine is far from demanding the abolition of universal suffrage. He believes it in conformity with justice; for he does not admit that his money can be demanded or he himself sent to the frontier without his own consent, either expressed or tacit. His only wish is that the right of suffrage be not illusory, and that the electoral law be adapted “to the French of 1791, to the peasant, the workman, etc.,” be he “stupid, ignorant, or ill-informed.” From this M. Taine proves at the outset that the ballot-roll is a humbug; and I believe that no person of sense will contest the point. He immediately enters upon a statistical examination of the composition of the elective world in France; and he arrives at the following result: “Of twenty voters, ten are peasants, four workmen, three demi-bourgeois, three educated men, comfortable or rich. Now, the electoral law, as all law, should have regard to the majority, to the first fourteen.” It behooves us, then, to know who these fourteen are who are called to frame the law; that is to say, to decide, by their representatives it is true, but sovereignly, on good and evil, justice and injustice, and, necessarily, the fate of the country.
M. Taine, in this connection, makes some new calculations which may be thus summed up: The rural population embraces seventy out of one hundred of the entire population, hence fourteen voters out of twenty. Now, in France, there are thirty-nine illiterate out of every hundred males, almost all belonging to the classes which M. Taine numbers among the rural population; which enables him to find that seven out of every fourteen rural voters cannot even read. I may observe, in passing, that a peasant who cannot read, but who knows his catechism, may be of a much sounder morality than M. Taine himself; but I willingly proclaim that the seven electors in question could and should have a mediocre political intelligence.