the individual very frequently pays in the price of the
commodity without knowing or perceiving that he is being taxed, that
the tax increases the price.

Now no man, of course, who is twenty, fifty, or a hundred times as
rich as another eats by any means twenty, fifty or a hundred times as
much salt, or bread, or meat; or drinks fifty or a hundred times as
much beer or wine; or has fifty or a hundred times as much need for
heat, and therefore for fuel, as the workingman or the relatively poor
man.

The result of this is that all indirect taxes, instead of falling
upon individuals according to the proportion of their capital and
income, are paid in the main by the propertyless classes, the poorer
classes of the nation. It is true that the capitalists did not invent
indirect taxes--they were already in existence--but they were the
first to develop them into a monstrous system and to throw upon them
nearly the whole cost of government. To make this clear to you, I will
simply allude to the Prussian financial administration of 1855. (Shows
by official statistics that out of a budget of 109,000,000 thalers all
but 12,800,000 were derived from indirect taxes.)

Indirect taxation is therefore the institution through which the
capitalistic class obtains the privilege of exemption for its capital
and lays the cost of the government upon the poorer classes of
society.

Observe, at the same time, Gentlemen, the peculiar contradiction and
the strange kind of justice of the procedure of laying the whole
expense upon indirect taxation, and therefore upon the poor people,
and of setting up as a test and a condition of the franchise, and
therefore of political control, the direct taxes, which contribute for
the total need of the State only the insignificant sum of twelve
million out of one hundred and eight million.

I said further with reference to the nobility of the Middle Ages, that
they held in contempt all activity and industry of the commoners. The
situation is the same today. All kinds of work, to be sure, are
equally esteemed today, and if anybody became a millionaire by
rag-picking he would be sure of obtaining a highly esteemed position
in society.

But what social contempt falls upon those who, no matter at what they
labor or how hard they toil, have no capital to back them--that is a
matter which you, Gentlemen, do not need to be told by me, but can
find often enough, unfortunately, in your daily life. Indeed, in