The rich had reached the
point after which it was inconvenient to them to pay any more. The
middle classes were spending the greater part of their time in devising
methods by which the exorbitant and intempestive demands of the
collectors could be either evaded or, more rarely, complied with. In a
word, a new and juster system of taxation was an imperative need, and
the Emperor, who had just ascended the throne at the age of eighteen,
and whom a sort of greenness had preserved from the iniquities of this
world, was determined to effect the great reform.
With the advice of his Ministers (all of whom had had considerable
experience in the handling of money), the Emperor at last determined
that each man and woman should pay to the State one-tenth and no more of
the wealth which he or she produced; those who produced nothing it was
but common justice and reason to exempt, and the effect of this tardy
act of justice upon the very rich was observed in the sudden increase of
the death-rate from all those diseases that are the peculiar product of
luxury and evil living. Paupers also, the unemployed, cripples,
imbeciles, deaf mutes, and the clergy escaped under this beneficent and
equable statute, and we may sum up the whole policy by saying that never
was a law acclaimed with so much happy bewilderment nor subject to less
expressed criticism than this.
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