He remains, accordingly, where he is, physically present, but absent in feeling; he takes no part in deliberate meetings; his zeal has died out; he withholds from public affairs that surplus of vigilant attention, that spontaneous and ready collaboration which he would have contributed gratis; he lets matters go along without him, just as it happens; he remains there just what he is, a workable, taxable individual in capricious hands, in short, a passive subject who gives and has become resigned .-- For this reason, in countries where an encroaching democracy has not yet abolished or perverted the notion of equity, the local statute applies the fundamental rule of an equitable exchange; it lays down the principle that he who pays commands, and in proportion to the sum he pays.[4222] In England, a surplus of votes is awarded to those most heavily taxed, even six votes to one voter; in Prussia, local taxation is divided into thirds, and, accordingly, the taxpayers into three groups, the first one composed of heavy taxpayers, few in number, and who pay the first third, the second composed of average taxpayers, average in number, and who pay the second third, and the third composed of the great number of small taxpayers, who pay the last third.[4223] To each of these groups is assigned the same number of suffrages in the commune election, or the same number of representatives in the commune representation.

Through this approximate balance of legal burdens and of legal rights, the two sides of the scales are nearly level, the level which distributive justice demands, and the level which the state, special interpreter, sole arbiter and universal minister of distributive justice, should establish when, in the local community, it imposes, rectifies, or maintains the articles in accordance with which it derives its income and governs.
IV.

On unlimited universal suffrage.
How unlimited universal suffrage found its way into local society .-- Object and mode of the French legislator.
If the government, in France, does just the opposite, it is at the height of a violent and sudden revolution, forced by the party in power and by popular prejudice, through deductive reasoning, and through contagion.

According to revolutionary and French usage, the legislator was bound to institute uniformity and to make things symmetrical; having placed universal suffrage in political society, he was likewise determined to place it in local society.

He had been ordered to apply an abstract principle, that is to say, to legislate according to a summary, superficial, and verbal notion which, purposely curtailed and simplified to excess, did not correspond with its aim.