e tyranny of the more wealthy? Is it by adding
to the wealthy further and more systematical means of oppressing them?
When we come to a balance of representation between corporate bodies,
provincial interests, emulations, and jealousies are full as likely to
arise among them as among individuals; and their divisions are likely to
produce a much hotter spirit of dissension, and something leading much
more nearly to a war.

I see that these aristocratic masses are made upon what is called the
principle of direct contribution. Nothing can be a more unequal standard
than this. The indirect contribution, that which arises from duties on
consumption, is in truth a better standard, and follows and discovers
wealth more naturally than this of direct contribution. It is difficult,
indeed, to fix a standard of local preference on account of the one, or
of the other, or of both, because some provinces may pay the more of
either or of both on account of causes not intrinsic, but originating
from those very districts over whom they have obtained a preference in
consequence of their ostensible contribution. If the masses were
independent, sovereign bodies, who were to provide for a federative
treasury by distinct contingents, and that the revenue had not (as it
has) many impositions running through the whole, which affect men
individually, and not corporately, and which, by their nature, confound
all territorial limits, something might be said for the basis of
contribution as founded on masses. But, of all things, this
representation, to be measured by contribution, is the most difficult to
settle upon principles of equity in a country which considers its
districts as members of a whole. For a great city, such as Bordeaux or
Paris, appears to pay a vast body of duties, almost out of all
assignable proportion to other places, and its mass is considered
accordingly. But are these cities the true contributors in that
proportion? No. The consumers of the commodities imported into Bordeaux,
who are scattered through all France, pay the import duties of Bordeaux.
The produce of the vintage in Guienne and Languedoc give to that city
the means of its contribution growing out of an export commerce. The
landholders who spend their estates in Paris, and are thereby the
creators of that city, contribute for Paris from the provinces out of
which their revenues arise. Very nearly the same arguments will apply to
the representative share given on a