The reply is obvious if we have grasped their system. The only available fund is the net product, which is the only new wealth that is really dispensable—the rest is necessarily absorbed in the repayment of the advances made for the upkeep of the agricultural and industrial classes. Were taxation to absorb a proportion of the revenues that are devoted to production it would gradually drain away the source of all wealth. So long as it only takes the surplus—the true net product, which is a mere tributary of the main stream—no harm will be done to future production. All this is quite clear. But if taxation is to absorb the net product the question arises as to who is to pay it. It is equally evident that it can only be taken from those who already possess it, namely, from the landed proprietors, who must bear the whole burden of taxation. Just now we were amazed at the privileges which the Physiocrats so light-heartedly granted them: this is the ransom, and it is no light one. The next problem is how to assess this tax. The Physiocrats were extremely loth to rob the gentry of their incomes, and a number of pages in their writings are devoted to a justification of their claims upon them. Not only were they willing to leave them everything that was necessary to compensate them for the outlay of capital and labour, but also all that might be required to make the property thoroughly valuable and the position of the landowner a most enviable one.[95] The preference shown for the landowner is just the result of the social importance attributed to him by the Physiocrats. “If some other class were preferable,” says Dupont de Nemours, “people would turn their attention to that.” They would no longer spend their capital in clearing or improving the land. But if the possession of land be so desirable, is there not some danger lest everybody should become a landlord and neglect the other walks of life? The Physiocrats thought not, for, since Nature has set a limit to the amount of land in existence, there must also be a limit to the number of landowners. A third of the net product, or, if we accept Baudeau’s figures, six-twentieths, _i.e._ 30 per cent., was to be paid in taxes. Taking the net product at 2 milliard francs, which is the figure given in the _Explication du Tableau économique_, this gives us exactly 600 million francs as the amount of the tax.[96]