ave a voice in the subject
matter of taxation. "No taxation without representation" is a
right which was fundamentally established at the very birth of
our country's independence; and by what ethics does any free
government impose taxes on women without giving them a voice upon
the subject or a participation in the public declaration as to
how and by whom these taxes shall be applied for common public
use? Women are free to own and to control property, separate and
free from males, and they are held responsible in their own
proper persons, in every particular, as well as men, in and out
of court. Women have the same inalienable right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness that men have. Why have they not
this right politically, as well as men?

Women constitute a majority of the people of this country--they
hold vast portions of the nation's wealth and pay a proportionate
share of the taxes. They are intrusted with the most vital
responsibilities of society; they bear, rear, and educate men;
they train and mould their characters; they inspire the noblest
impulses in men; they often hold the accumulated fortunes of a
man's life for the safety of the family and as guardians of the
infants, and yet they are debarred from uttering any opinion by
public vote, as to the management by public servants of these
interests; they are the secret counselors, the best advisers, the
most devoted aids in the most trying periods of men's lives, and
yet men shrink from trusting them in the common questions of
ordinary politics. Men trust women in the market, in the shop, on
the highway and railroad, and in all other public places and
assemblies, but when they propose to carry a slip of paper with a
name upon it to the polls, they fear them. Nevertheless, as
citizens, women have the right to vote; they are part and parcel
of that great element in which the sovereign power of the land
had birth; and it is by usurpation only that men debar them from
this right. The American nation, in its march onward and upward,
can not publicly choke the intellectual and political activity of
half its citizens by narrow statutes. The will of the entire
people is the true basis of republican government, and a free
expression of that will by the public vote of all citizens,