ise--nothing short of this. The grant to you of this
right will secure all others; and the granting of every other right,
whilst this is denied, is a mockery. For instance: What is the right
to property without the right to protect it? The enjoyment of that
right to-day is no security that it will be continued to-morrow, so
long as it is granted to us as a favor, and not claimed by us as a
right. Woman must exercise her right to the elective franchise, and
have her own representatives in our National councils, for two good
reasons:

1st. Men can not represent us. They are so thoroughly educated into
the belief that woman's nature is altogether different from their own,
that they have no idea that she can be governed by the same laws of
mind as themselves. So far from viewing us like themselves, they seem,
from their legislation, to consider us their moral and intellectual
antipodes; for whatever law they find good for themselves, they
forthwith pass its opposite for us, and express the most profound
astonishment if we manifest the least dissatisfaction. For example:
our forefathers, _full of righteous indignation_, pitched King George,
his authority, and his tea-chests, all into the sea, and because,
forsooth, they were forced to pay taxes without being represented in
the British Government. "Taxation without representation," was the
text for many a hot debate in the forests of the New World, and for
many an eloquent oration in the Parliament of the Old. Yet, in forming
our new Government, they have taken from us the very rights which they
fought and bled and, died to secure to themselves. They not only tax
us, but in many cases they strip us of all we inherit, the wages we
earn, the children of our love; and for such grievances we have no
redress in any court of justice this side of Heaven. They tax our
property to build colleges, then pass a special law prohibiting any
woman to enter there. A married woman has no legal existence; she has
no more absolute rights than a slave on a Southern plantation. She
takes the name of her master, holds nothing, owns nothing, can bring
no action in her own name; and the principle on which she and the
slave is educated is the game. The slave is taught what is considered
best for him to know--which is nothing; the woman is taught what is
best for her to know--which is little more than nothing, man being the
umpire in both cases. A woman can not follow out the impulses of her
own mind