small taxpayers a portion more
or less great of the sum they pay to the octroi.--Accordingly, in the
towns as in the country, they are favored at one time through fiscal
relief and at another through administrative favor, now through
compulsory deduction and now through total or partial reimbursement.
Always, and very wisely, the legislator apportions the burden according
to the strength of the shoulders; he relieves them as much as he can, at
first, of the general tax, and next, which is still better, of the local
tax. Hence, in local expenditure, their quota diminishes out of all
proportion and is reduced to the minimum. Nevertheless, their quota of
local benefit remains full and entire; at this insignificant price
they enjoy the public highways and profit by all the precautions taken
against physical ills; each profits by this personally, equally with any
millionaire. Each personally receives as much in the great dividend of
security, health, and convenience, in the fruit of the vast works of
utility and enjoyment due to improved communications, which preserve
health, assist traffic, and beautify the locality, and without which, in
town as well as in the country, life would be impossible or intolerable.

But these works which cost so much, these defensive operations and
apparatus against inundations, fires, epidemics, and contagions, these
500,000 kilometers of district and department roads, these dikes, quays,
bridges, public gardens, and promenades, this paving, drainage, sweeping
and lighting, these aqueducts and supplies of drinkable water, all
this is paid for by somebody, and, since it is not done by the small
taxpayer, it is the large or average taxpayer who pays for it. The
latter then, bears, besides his obligatory weight, a gratuitous surplus
burden, consisting of the weight of which the other is relieved.

Evidently the greater the number of the relieved, the heavier will be
this overweight, and the relieved count by millions. Two millions and
a half of declared poor[4217] are relieved of any direct tax, and,
therefore, of all the centimes which have just increased the burden.
Out of 8 millions of real-estate owners,[4218] 3 millions, considered
as insolvent, pay neither the real estate tax nor the centimes which it
comprises. In the octroi towns, it is not the minority but the majority
of the inhabitants who are relieved in the way just described; in
Paris,[4219] out of 685,000 rentals, 625,000, in other