rthrown and not
its erroneous interpretation.

If with our present experience of the needs and dangers of
co-operative government and our present observation of woman's
social and economic status, we could divest ourselves of our
traditions and prejudices, and the question of suffrage should
come up for incorporation into a new organic law, a distinction
based upon sex would not be entertained for a moment. It seems to
me that we should divest ourselves to the utmost extent possible
of these entanglements of tradition, and judicially examine three
questions relative to the proposed extension of suffrage: First,
Is it right? Second, Is it desirable? Third, Is it expedient? If
these be determined affirmatively our duty is plain.

If the right of the governed and the taxed to a voice in
determining by whom they shall be governed and to what extent and
for what purposes they may be taxed is not a natural right, it is
nevertheless a right to the declaration and establishment of
which by the fathers we owe all that we possess of liberty. They
declared taxation without representation to be tyranny, and
grappled with the most powerful nation of their day in a
seven-years' struggle for the overthrow of such tyranny. It
appears incredible to me that any one can indorse the principles
proclaimed by the patriots of 1776 and deny their application to
women.

Samuel Adams said: "Representation and legislation, as well as
taxation, are inseparable, according to the spirit of our
Constitution and of all others that are free." Again, he said:
"No man can be justly taxed by, or bound in conscience to obey,
any law to which he has not given his consent in person or by his
representative." And again: "No man can take another's property
from him without his consent. This is the law of nature; and a
violation of it is the same thing whether it is done by one man,
who is called a king, or by five hundred of another
denomination."

James Otis, in speaking of the rights of the colonists as
descendants of Englishmen; said they "were not to be cheated out
of them by any phantom of virtual representation or any other
fiction of law or politics." Again: "No such phrase as virtual
representation is known in law or constitution. It is altogether
a subtl