e history of England has proved that white men of
different grades can not legislate with justice for one another,
how can you, Honorable Gentlemen, legislate for women and
negroes, who, by your customs, creeds and codes, are placed under
the ban of inferiority? If you dislike this view of the case, and
claim that woman is your superior, and, therefore, you place her
above all troublesome legislation, to shield her by your
protecting care from the rough winds of life, I have simply to
say, your statute books are a sad commentary on that position.
Your laws degrade, rather than exalt woman; your customs cripple,
rather than free; your system of taxation is alike ungenerous and
unjust.

In demanding suffrage for the black man of the South, the
dominant party recognizes the fact that as a freedman he is no
longer a part of the family therefore his master is no longer his
representative, and as he will now be liable to taxation, he
must also have representation. Woman, on the contrary, has never
been such a part of the family as to escape taxation. Although
there has been no formal proclamation giving her an individual
existence, unmarried women have always had the right to property
and wages; to make contracts and do business in their own name.
And even married women, by recent legislation in this State, have
been secured in some civil rights, at least as well secured as
those classes can be who do not hold the ballot in their own
hands. Woman now holds a vast amount of property in the country,
and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included; on what
principle, then, do you deny her representation? If you say women
are "virtually represented" by the men of their household, I give
you Senator Sumner's denial, in his great speech on Equal Rights
in the First Session of the 39th Congress. Quoting from James
Otis, he says: "No such phrase as virtual representation was
known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and
illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by
any such phantom or any other fiction of law or politics, or any
monkish trick of deceit or hypocrisy."

In regard to taxation without representation, Lord Coke says:
"The supreme power can not take from any man any part of his
property without hi