, or sells apples
and peanuts on the street corners of our cities, is compelled to
pay taxes from her scanty pittance. I would that the women of
this republic at once resolve, never again to submit to taxation
until their right to vote be recognized. Miss Sarah E. Wall, of
Worcester, Mass., twenty years ago, took this position. For
several years, the officers of the law distrained her property
and sold it to meet the necessary amount; still she persisted,
and would not yield an iota, though every foot of her lands
should be struck off under the hammer. And now, for several
years, the assessor has left her name off the tax list, and the
collector passed her by without a call. Mrs. J. S. Weeden, of
Viroqua, Wis., for the past six years has refused to pay her
taxes, though the annual assessment is $75. Mrs. Ellen Van
Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal., who sued the County Clerk for
refusing to register her name, declares she will never pay
another dollar of tax until allowed to vote; and all over the
country, women property holders are waking up to the injustice of
taxation without representation, and ere long will refuse, _en
masse_, to submit to the imposition.

There is no she, or her, or hers, in the tax laws. The statute of
New York reads:

Every person shall be assessed in the town or ward where he
resides when the assessment is made, for the lands owned by
him, etc. Every collector shall call at least once on the
person taxed, or at his usual place of residence, and shall
demand payment of the taxes charged on him. If any one shall
refuse to pay the tax imposed on him, the collector shall
levy the same by distress and sale of his property.

The same is true of all the criminal laws:

No person shall be compelled to be a witness against
himself, etc.

In the law of May 31, 1870, the 19th section of which I am
charged with having violated; not only are all the pronouns
masculine, but everybody knows that that particular section was
intended expressly to hinder the rebels from voting. It reads:

If any person shall knowingly vote without his having a
lawful right, etc.

Precisely so with all the papers served on me--the U. S.
Marshal's warrant, the bail-bond, the peti