e to enter
others, near or remote, his condition would be no better. He remains,
accordingly, where he is, physically present, but absent in feeling;
he takes no part in deliberate meetings; his zeal has died out; he
withholds from public affairs that surplus of vigilant attention, that
spontaneous and ready collaboration which he would have contributed
gratis; he lets matters go along without him, just as it happens;
he remains there just what he is, a workable, taxable individual in
capricious hands, in short, a passive subject who gives and has become
resigned.--For this reason, in countries where an encroaching democracy
has not yet abolished or perverted the notion of equity, the local
statute applies the fundamental rule of an equitable exchange; it lays
down the principle that

he who pays commands, and in proportion to the sum he pays.[4222]

In England, a surplus of votes is awarded to those most heavily taxed,
even six votes to one voter; in Prussia, local taxation is divided into
thirds, and, accordingly, the taxpayers into three groups, the first one
composed of heavy taxpayers, few in number, and who pay the first third,
the second composed of average taxpayers, average in number, and who pay
the second third, and the third composed of the great number of small
taxpayers, who pay the last third.[4223] To each of these groups is
assigned the same number of suffrages in the commune election, or the
same number of representatives in the commune representation. Through
this approximate balance of legal burdens and of legal rights, the
two sides of the scales are nearly level, the level which distributive
justice demands, and the level which the state, special interpreter,
sole arbiter and universal minister of distributive justice, should
establish when, in the local community, it imposes, rectifies, or
maintains the articles in accordance with which it derives its income
and governs.

IV. On unlimited universal suffrage.

How unlimited universal suffrage found its way into local
society.--Object and mode of the French legislator.

If the government, in France, does just the opposite, it is at the
height of a violent and sudden revolution, forced by the party in power
and by popular prejudice, through deductive reasoning, and through
contagion. According to revolutionary and French usage, the legislator
was bound to institute uniformity and to make things symmetrical;
having placed univers