There are wealthy families which are in a position to contribute most liberally to the perpetuity of the nation, and yet, strangely, they are the most abstemious. It would not be fair to tax them according to the number of servants they have, for this must increase as children multiply; but the tax might be adjusted to the excess of servants over children.
As an objection to our plan, it may be asked if we really believe that those "neo-Malthusian" families who have only one or two children will decide to have four in order to save themselves from some taxes? We do not cherish this illusion; but the sordidness of the family customs of the country should not be exaggerated. Most of the families sin through selfishness, while they do not realize that their selfishness is culpable, harmful, and ignoble. This must be made clear to them, and no method of publishing the fact is as imposing and effective as the tax-collector's schedule. The reform in direct taxes which we propose will therefore have an educational influence.
The same principle might be applied in the military service by expediting the discharge of soldiers who are married. A bill to this effect has been introduced in the French Senate, and an amendment has been proposed extending the favor to the eldest son of a family of five children.
The inheritance tax is a particularly fitting form of impost in which insufficiently fruitful families might pay the indemnity which they justly owe the state on account of their sterility; for the prime object of the neo-Malthusians is to forestall the necessity of dividing their fortunes among too many children. The laws of succession are so framed now that only sons pay less than others; not only are the expenses of notarial acts less for them than for families with several children, but the latter are liable to pay the tax several times, for when one of the heirs dies his brothers and sisters will have to pay new succession taxes. In all cases of this order the treasury burdens numerous families, and spares neo-Malthusian ones. The institution of heritage stimulates industry, and is one of the chief reasons for it. A great many men, we are sure, would work less and would certainly save less except for the prospect of leaving the fruit of their labor and economy to their children—or, too often, to their only child. But as the institution of heritage becomes under these conditions one of the prime factors of depopulation, it will have to be modified.
The state is as much interested in the fecundity of families as it is in their industry and thrift. To stimulate the latter virtues it guarantees them the right of inheritance. It might withdraw it or diminish it to its own profit, if their fertility was not judged
