Such a mode of levying the taxes as
does not impede the industry, or unnecessarily interfere with the
liberty, of the citizen, promotes, not the preservation only, but
the increase of the national wealth, and encourages a more active
use of the individual faculties. And vice versa, all errors in finance
and taxation which obstruct the improvement of the people in wealth
and morals tend also, if of sufficiently serious amount, positively to
impoverish and demoralise them. It holds, in short, universally,
that when Order and Permanence are taken in their widest sense, for
the stability of existing advantages, the requisites of Progress are
but the requisites of Order in a greater degree; those of Permanence
merely those of Progress in a somewhat smaller measure.
In support of the position that Order is intrinsically different
from Progress, and that preservation of existing and acquisition of
additional good are sufficiently distinct to afford the basis of a
fundamental classification, we shall perhaps be reminded that Progress
may be at the expense of Order; that while we are acquiring, or
striving to acquire, good of one kind, we may be losing ground in
respect to others: thus there may be progress in wealth, while there
is deterioration in virtue. Granting this, what it proves is not
that Progress is generically a different thing from Permanence, but
that wealth is a different thing from virtue.
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