Note 104 — Chapter VII · THE EFFECT OF RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION ON POPULATION AND THE FUTURE OF THE RACE.

“Direct taxes,” says M. Javal, “are in a great measure a tax on children: compulsory road labour is forced on young men before they are adult. The tax on doors and windows is a tax on air and light, the inconvenience of which increases directly with the increase in the size of the family and the consequent necessity of occupying a larger apartment. The license itself, which applies to the amount of the rent of one’s habitation, is in a great measure proportional to the necessary expenses and not to the resources of the person taxed.” (Revue scientifique, No. 18, November 1, 1884, p. 567.) “It is well known,” says M. Bertillon, “that the city of Paris pays to the state the tax on apartments that rent for less than four hundred francs. In principle nothing could be better, but in practice: suppose two neighbours, one of them an unmarried man, possesses a comfortable lodging of two rooms with the accessories; one of these two rooms can scarcely be called a necessity for him and is distinctly a simple addition to his comfort, and the city pays his tax. His neighbour has a family and four children, and lives in three rooms which constitute a very narrow, and hardly a sufficient lodging, but the rent of it is five hundred francs and the unhappy man must pay: (1) Six times greater taxes on what he consumes than his neighbour; (2) A furniture tax; (3) Some portion of the tax that the city pays on the apartment of the celibate neighbour. Evidently the result is precisely the opposite of what it should be.” (Bertillon, La statistique humaine de la France.)