daily subscribes anew to the statute. Here, then,
is a perfectly free association; its is accordingly perfectly equitable,
and its statute serves as a model for others.

Now this statute always makes a distinction between the small and the
large stockholders; it always attributes a greater share of authority
and influence to those who share most largely in the risks and expenses;
in principle, the number of votes in confers on each associate is
proportionate to the number of shares of which he is the owner or
bearer.--All the stronger is the reason why this principle should be
embodied in the statutes of a society which, like the local community,
diminishes the burden of the small taxpayer through its reductions,
and increases by its extra taxation the burden of the large or average
taxpayer; when the appointment of managers is handed over to universal
suffrage, counted by heads, the large and average taxpayers are
defrauded of their dues and deprived of their rights, more so by far and
more deeply wronged than the bearer or owner of a thousand shares in an
omnibus or gas company if, on voting at a meeting of stockholders, his
vote did not count for more than that of the owner or bearer of a single
share.--

How is it then when a local society adds to its natural and unavoidable
purpose an optional and supplementary purpose;

* when, increasing its load, it undertakes to defray the cost of public
charity and of primary education;

* when, to support this additional cost, it multiplies the additional
centimes;

* when the large or average taxpayer pays alone, or nearly alone, for
this benevolent work by which he does not benefit;

* when the small taxpayer pays nothing, or next to nothing, to this
benevolent work by which he does benefit;

* when, in voting for the expense thus apportioned, each taxpayer,
whatever the amount of his contribution, has one vote and only one?

In this case, powers, benefits, reductions, and exemptions, all the
advantages are on one side, that of the poor and half-poor forming the
majority and who if not restrained from above, will persistently abuse
their numerical force to augment their advantages, at the increasing
expense of the rich or well-do-do minority. In the future, in the local
society, the average or large taxpayer is no longer an associate but a
victim; were he free to choose he would not enter into it; he would like
to go away and establish himself elsewhere; but were h