The scheme was a scheme for automatically adjusting all incomes and reducing them to something like equilibrium--that is, the operation of the process set in motion would tend in that direction. All incomes, no matter from what sources derived, were to be fixed according to an algebraic formula, and the formula was this: ·0001 (x - m)² = The income tax levied upon each citizen. Here x=the actual income earned by the citizen; m=1,000 pounds sterling, or an equivalent in francs or dollars, if you prefer it. When x=m, then of course there could be nothing to pay; which is only another way of saying that a man with £1,000 a year was free from all taxation. When x was greater than m, then taxation upon the income in excess of £1,000 came into operation with rather alarming rapidity: until when a man was convicted of having in any single year made £10,000 his taxation amounted to £8,100 for that year, and if he were ever found guilty of having made an income of £12,000 the State claimed the whole in obedience to this great and beneficent law. But what happens in the case of those who have an income below the £1,000 a year--that is, when x is less than m? In this case the grandeur and sagacity, not to speak of the paternal character of the scheme, become apparent. The moment a man begins to earn more than the normal £1,000 a year, that moment he begins to pay his beautifully adjusted quota of taxation to the State; but the moment that his income falls below the £1,000, that moment the State begins to pay him. Of course you will not forget that _minus_ into _minus_ gives _plus_, therefore the square of the _minus_ quantity represented by x-m, where m is greater than x, offers no difficulty. The two poles of this perfect sphere, if I may so speak, this financial orb--_teres atque rotundus_--are reached, first when x=0, last when x = £11,000. In the first case the State comes to the help of the pauper who has earned or can earn nothing, and gives him a ten-thousandth part of a hypothetical million, which amounts to exactly £100 a year; in the other case the State deprives the bloated plutocrat of a ten-thousandth part of the same million, and relieves the dangerous citizen of ten thousand out of the eleven, saying to him, “Citizen, be grateful that you still have your thousand, and beware how you persist in piling up riches, for the State knows how to gather them.” “Now, my dear Polus, next time you come, do bring me tidings of my Frenchman, and do work the thing out on paper, for I never was much of a mathematician, and now my decimals are scandalously vague!” So Polus went his way with a dainty rosebud in a dainty paper box for Mrs. Polus, and a saucy message from the Lady Shepherd. “Tell her, with my love, I’m very sorry her husband’s such a goose!” We watched him floundering through the snowdrifts; and I verily believe he was working out my problem with his stick, ·0001 (x-m)².