Suppose that instead of our system of taxes, so complex, so burdensome, so annoying, which wehave inherited the feudal nobility, a single tax should be established, not on production,circulation, consumption, habitation, etc., but in accordance with the demands of justice and thedictates of economic science, on the net capital falling to each individual. The capitalist, losing by taxation as much asmore than he gains by rent and interest, would be obliged either to use his property himselfto sell it; economic equilibrium again would be established by this simple and moreover inevitable intervention of the treasury department.