pleasure to pay? The current taxes are not a pleasure to pay."

"I grant that," said Peter, "without reservations."

"Now there is only one sort of tax that I can imagine anybody paying
gladly, and that would be a tax on his virtues."

"Still hankering after your own exemption," growled Peter.

"Leave me out of account. Take, by preference, yourself. You have
virtues and are proud of them."

Hilda intervened, as I had anticipated. "The pride is admitted," said
she, "but as for the assessment value of the virtues----"

"Never mind that. You are proud of your virtues"--I turned to Peter
again--"yet you are sometimes troubled, like the rest of us, by a fear
that you may not really possess them after all. But the assessment
of your virtues by the Board of Inland Revenue would prove their
existence to yourself and to all the world."

"Except his wife," said Hilda.

"Her evidence would not be accepted. If you had paid taxation for the
possession of a virtue, the receipt would be a guarantee that you did
possess that particular virtue, and it would consequently be a source
of profound moral satisfaction to you. You would pay with pleasure.
Besides, it is a poor kind of virtue that will not abide a test. The
tax would be a test. Suppose that five pounds was levied upon you for
honesty. If you refused to pay how could you ever again claim to