"You have found the solution," I said to Hilda. "If you impute to a
person a virtue he does not possess he probably denies that he has it,
but he is really flattered and his denial is not sincere. He would be
willing to pay on it; he would rather pay than not."

At this point Peter grew tired of refraining from comment. "I don't
want you to suppose," he said, "that I am taking any interest in your
fatuous scheme, but doesn't it occur to you that under your system it
would be simply ruinous to have any virtues at all, and that the only
people who would flourish would be those who had no virtues and were
not ashamed of it?"

"For one thing," I replied confidently, "the taxes would be graduated
in the ordinary way in accordance with means. The slightest flicker of
a conscience in Park Lane would be more heavily mulcted than the most
blameless life in Bermondsey. But the main point is that under my
system taxation would become the measure of a man's moral worth, and
people who did not pay taxes would be simply out of it. All the
plums would go the highly-taxed men. Their tax receipts would be
certificates of character, and the more they earned the more the
Treasury would be able to get out of them. So far from dodging
taxation, people would scramble to pay it."

"But how," asked Hilda, "would you make the tax receipt a trustworthy
testimonial? Your rich man with one virtue would have a better receipt
than your poor one with ten."

"The virtues taxed would be shown on the receipt," I replied.
"Besides, poor and virtuous men would, as I have suggested, get an
abatement on their virtue taxes, and the amount of the abatement would