Proportionality

“ In analysing proportionality, the courts must exercise some deference to the position of the legislature, proportionality not requiring perfection but only that the limits placed on the rights and liberties be reasonable. ”

“ Thus the very nature of things, as well as his own wants, indicates to the laborer the order in which he should effect the production of the values that make up his well-being. Our law of proportionality, then, is at once physical and logical, objective and subjective ”

“ Uniformity or proportionality in taxation is, therefore, one of the fundamental principles of every free and just government; and the safety of all tax-payers against the grossest abuses demands that in taxing any class or locality the principle of equality of rate should be kept sacred and inviolate. ”

“ For them the law of proportionality is inverted: while social wealth is formed and increased in the direct ratio of the quantity, variety, and proportion of the effective products furnished by the four great industrial categories, the development of this same wealth, the perfecting of social order, suppose, on the contrary, so far as the personnel of police is concerned, a progressive and indefinite reduction. ”

“ The institutions of the Union shall apply the principle of subsidiarity as laid down in the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. National Parliaments shall ensure compliance with that principle in accordance with the procedure set out in that Protocol.
4. Under the principle of proportionality, the content and form of Union action shall not exceed what is necessary to achieve the objectives of the Constitution. ”

“ There is, then, in the monetization of gold and silver something that the economists have given no account of; namely, the consecration of the law of proportionality, the first act in the constitution of values. Humanity does all things by infinitely small degrees: after comprehending the fact that all products of labor must be submitted to a proportional measure which makes all of them equally exchangeable, it begins by giving this attribute of absolute exchangeability to a special product, which shall become the type and model of all others. ”

“ As a general conclusion he notes that the limitation of constitutional rights for a purpose that is necessary in a democratic society involves the weighing up of competing values, and ultimately an assessment based on proportionality. ”

“ If, ridiculing this system, any one were to say that, in order to find the mean proportional and give form to the body of the government, it is only necessary, according to me, to find the square root of the number of the people, I should answer that I am here taking this number only as an instance; that the relations of which I am speaking are not measured by the number of men alone, but generally by the amount of action, which is a combination of a multitude of causes ”

“ As an illustration of the effect in popular government of looking to popular impulse for the initiation of measures, it may be observed that perhaps the worst of all expedients for remedying the defective working of a government by a legislature like ours, that which combines the evils of them all, is one which is urged by perfectly disinterested advocates of reform, and is known as proportional representation. ”

“ Among ourselves, every political writer and speaker have got some inkling of the central principle of proportional representation, and not a few feel, sometimes with reluctance, that it has come to stay, that it will indeed be worked into our own system when the inevitable moment arrives for taking up again the reform of the House of Commons. ”

“ Thouret, in the name of the new committee of constitution, presents to the National Assembly a report on the basis of proportional representation.
Gentlemen, the work that your new committee has the honor of submitting to you, is based, through a double report, on two major parts of the Constitution.
On the one hand, you are organizing representative government, the only kind suitable for a free people; but its justice and stability depend on the establishment of proportional equality in representation, and of a fixed and simple order in elections. ”

“ It must not be forgotten that this rule is one of proportionals, as its name imports. It therefore teaches proportion in all its relations, social and political; it is the rule of our country, and seeks to develop that beautiful equality and justice, so conspicuous in all our institutions, exemplified in the following well-known legal and constitutional maxim, viz. "One man may steal a horse, but another must not look over the hedge." ”

“ Whether the person with 10,000l. a year cares less for 1000l. than the person with only 1000l. a year cares for 100l., and if so, how much less, does not appear to me capable of being decided with the degree of certainty on which a legislator or a financier ought to act.
Some indeed contend that the rule of proportional taxation bears harder upon the moderate than upon the large incomes, because the same proportional payment has more tendency in the former case than in the latter, to reduce the payer to a lower grade of social rank. ”

“ He thought, also, that the ratio of representation proposed could not be safely fixed, since in a century and a half our computed increase of population would carry the number of representatives to an enormous excess; that the number of inhabitants was not the proper index of ability and wealth; that property was the primary object of society; and that, in fixing a ratio, this ought not to be excluded from the estimate. With regard to new states, he observed, that there was something peculiar in the business, which had not been noticed. ”

“ No responsible advocate of proportional representation has contended that proportional systems, save when the country is treated as one constituency, will result in a mathematically accurate representation of opinion. ”

“ The term proportional, which is largely used in constitutional provisions and in statutes relating to taxation, has, however, a meaning so much broader and of such greater significance than is generally attributed to it by law-makers and even law interpreters, that it is worth while to institute an inquiry and endeavor to understand clearly what it does mean. Scientifically considered, it means the making of the burden of taxation equal upon all subjects of immediate competition. ”

“ Proportional representation, which is at present being tested abroad, and earnestly considered in France, England and Germany, may be a bridge leading over from the present plan of geographical to that of vocational representation. The proportional system itself, it is true, is still based on the individualistic idea. ”

“ Where property is as generally distributed as it is in this country, a proportional tax ordinarily reaches in one form or another a majority of the constituents of those who vote the taxes, and the sense of responsibility to these constituents operates as a conservative force and as a check upon unfair and unjust taxes, as well as upon improvident and extravagant expenditures. A proportional tax generally creates a large body of tax-paying voters whose property interests impel them to watch their representatives closely and to hold them to strict accountability. ”

“ They know and confess so much among themselves, but they want to be familiarized with the best machinery for working proportional representation, and they would not be sorry to have the arguments for and against its principles once more clearly examined so that they may be properly equipped for the reception of the coming change. ”

“ If, therefore, a particular process of apportionment be adopted, and objection be made to the injustice or inequality of its result, it is, surely, no answer to such objection to say, that the inequality necessarily results from the nature of the process. Before such answer could avail, it would be necessary to show, either that the constitution prescribes such process, and makes it necessary, or that there is no other mode of proceeding, which would produce less inequality and less injustice. ”

“ A force of one thousand men working twenty days has been paid the same wages that one would be paid for working fifty-five years; but this force of one thousand has done in twenty days what a single man could not have accomplished, though he had labored for a million centuries. Is the exchange an equitable one? Once more, no; when you have paid all the individual forces, the collective force still remains to be paid.
Consequently, there remains always a right of collective property which you have not acquired, and which you enjoy unjustly. ”

“ Whatever might be the merits of insistence on absolute equality if it could be attained, the majority's pursuit of precision is a search for a will-o-'-the-wisp. The fact is that any solution to the apportionment and districting problem is at best an approximation because it is based upon figures which are always to some degree obsolete. ”

“ It is no easy matter to frame the valuation of all the property of a country: and it is a scheme I should be very far from proposing, unless the spirit of a nation took such a turn as to wish for it. But where a determinate sum has been in use to be levied upon a certain district, it does not appear so difficult to make a proportional distribution of it according to equity, and to adhere for the future to that distribution, considering it as a proportional valuation, if not a real one. ”

“ One very good method of raising proportional taxes, without great expence or oppression, when the situation of a country will admit of it, is to levy no such duties, but at the gates of towns and villages, which in this light appear to be political inclosures. ”

“ This last
basis rests entirely on property. A principle totally different from the
equality of men, and utterly irreconcilable to it, is thereby admitted; but
no sooner is this principle admitted than (as usual) it is subverted; and
it is not subverted (as we shall presently see) to approximate the
inequality of riches to the level of nature. The additional share in the
third portion of representation (a portion reserved exclusively for the
higher contribution) is made to regard the district only, and not the
individuals in it who pay. ”

“ He entered elaborately into the defence of a proportional representation, stating, for his first position, that, as all authority was derived from the people, equal numbers of people ought to have an equal number of representatives, and different numbers of people, different numbers of representatives. ”

“ A census was introduced, that is to say a specified amount of private property was, by means of the franchise—this first and most important of all political rights—made the condition of participation in the direction of the will of the State, and the determination of its object.
All those who paid no direct taxes at all, or a less amount than the above, or who worked for wages, were excluded from exercising power over the State, and reduced to an inferior subject class. ”

“ If the state discerns in business operations uniformities and averages that seem to point the way to a system easier to administer than one based upon a report of profits, and yet likely in the long run to work out approximate equality, it ought not to be denied the power to frame its laws accordingly. ”

“ But I speak here of those laws which have a direct and known tendency to secure to us what we have, and to preserve us what we are: A free people are kept so, by no other means than an equal distribution of property; every man, who has a share of property, having a proportionable share of power ”

“ In proportional or equal taxation, whereby every property owner contributes toward the expenses of the common government according to the amount of property he owns or inherits, or according to the income he enjoys, we find a perfectly safe and consistent rule and a definite and logical principle upon which to work. ”

“ Face to face with that you had an institution not popular, one whose public functions were followed by but a small proportion of the population, one in which income was most unequally distributed, and one whose feudal property yielded in dues an amount equal to more than a quarter of the total revenue of the State. ”

“ They wish it to be most distinctly understood that they have no irresistible objection to proportional representation. They indeed openly confess that conditions may arise among ourselves at some future time which would appear to be not necessarily distant, when the balance of expediency may turn in favour of its adoption. ”

“ If there is power, as we think there is, to draw a line based on considerations of proportion or amount, it is a rare case, of which this is not one, that a constitutional objection may be made to the particular point which the legislature has chosen. ”

“ To determine whether the impost will act proportionably or not, we must consider in what respect the proportion is to be taken. If it be a proportion [244] between two of the States, that will be considered under the second head; if it be a proportion among the people of the same State, it is only recurring to the question, whether the taxes on consumption are useful; for so long as no man pays the tax, but he who chooses to purchase the article, the disproportion, if any, is of his own creating. The necessity of a revenue to a certain amount must be admitted. ”

“ They will produce more than the thousand measures did, but not more in proportion; not double. They will produce, say, 60 measures, or 3 per cent., upon the capital. The action of this universal principle automatically checks the accumulation of capital when it has reached such a point that the proportionate return is the least which a man will accept. ”