Point 133. The making-up of patrimony

1. The new order will honour and respect property all the more if it is of patrimonial value and entails services to society. In every profound civilisation there exists a bond between property and persons, between wealth and its social function, between the prestige of the property owner and his moral obligations. On the contrary, in abolishing “ privilege ”, the Revolution discredited property, freed it from all honour and service, and thus made of it a purely material wealth exclusively for individual and vulgar enjoyment.

2. Consequently, every family community, or every local community, professional, moral or religious, with an important responsibility of service and great stability, needs to feel that it is the master of its own work and revenue, its savings and patrimonial or mortmain wealth, for perpetuity, without any threat of confiscation troubling it and tempting its management to indulge in fraudulent concealment or speculation in an attempt to guard their property from any unjust erosion.

A return to a greater freedom of donations and a relaxation of the rule of succession will give the final desirable guarantees to communitarian and family property rights. The State will consider it as a certain ecological advantage not to impose unreasonable taxation on family capital and inheritance or on property belonging to the great social institutions and to the nation’s great bodies.

3. In order to respect and to honour property, the State itself must correct the two fundamental vices of the capitalo-socialist modern economy: inflation and the tax system.

The sovereign authority will consider it its duty to ensure that the nation has a sound currency, one that corresponds to the wealth and genuine activity of the nation. It will see to it that this currency keeps a stable value for decades, in contrast to all the theories and bad habits of modern societies. For inflation is a disguised despoliation of savers and honest workers by big business financial speculators, exploiters of the people, and by the State and its ravenous organisms.

The sovereign authority will consider taxation as compensation for services rendered but in accord with the common good of the nation. Unless there are serious necessities, the authority will thus attend to limiting its services according to its real financial capacities. It will manage its budget extremely well so that tax levy does not break into the capital of the nation.

Wanton and unregulated inflation and fiscal pressure actually favour individual wealth, which is monetary, irresponsible, undeclared and fraudulent, to the detriment of visible wealth – which cannot be concealed to the tax authorities –, consisting in the revenue from honest activity and family property, servants of the common good. The sovereign authority will support the latter and hound the former. It will be mindful that the first and golden rule of all good public finance, as of any healthy economy, is confidence. Its paternal authority alone can give this to his honest people.

4. The intellectual heritage, the talents and the experience that may be found in a family will be also preserved and fostered. For example, the transfer of the occupational activity and its apprenticeship to the members of a same family will be facilitated.

Thus, the restoration of property rights will be warmly approved by every father of a family, and it will reanimate the birth-rate, vitality, and energy of the nation.