Suffrage and four Full Political
Equality; but this is only a fraction of the justice which
belongs to a government founded by statesmen whose watchword was,
"No taxation without representation."

Miss Elizabeth Burrill Curtis (N. Y.) answered the question, Are Women
Represented in our Government?

"Taxation without representation is tyranny" was one of the
slogans of liberty in this country one hundred and twenty years
ago. Have we outlived this principle? If not, why is it supposed
to have no application to women?

That a century ago the latter were not thought of as having any
rights under this motto is not surprising. So few women then held
property in their own name that the injustice done them was not
so apparent. But the situation is changed now, and the right of
women to be considered as individuals is everywhere acknowledged
save in this one particular. Even those who feel that the
granting of universal male suffrage was a mistake, and that the
right to self-government should be proved by some test,
educational or otherwise--even those do not assert that it would
be anything but gross injustice to tax men without allowing them
a voice in the disposal of their money....

But there is still another side to the question. It is not only
that the disfranchised women are unfairly treated, but the public
good inevitably suffers from the political nonexistence of half
the citizens of the republic. Either women are interested in
politics or they are not. If the former, the country is
distinctly injured, for nothing is more fatal to good government
than the intermeddling of a large body of people who have never
studied the questions at issue and whose only interest is a
personal one. If, on the other hand, women are not interested in
politics, what is the condition of that country, half of whose
citizens do not care whether it be well or ill governed? That
women influence men is never denied, even by the most strenuous
opponents of woman suffrage. It is, on the contrary, most
violently asserted by those very people; but of what value is
that interest if woman is utterly ignorant of one of the most
important duties of a man's life?...

On one hand the public good demands that no class of citizens be
arbitrarily prevented from serving the