Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887Various
History
Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Various
Women -- Suffrage -- United States
I would refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my
city three women pay more taxes than all the city officials
included. Those women are good temperance women. Our city council
is composed almost entirely of saloon men and those who visit
saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men
being in the minority, the voices of these women are but little
regarded. All these officials are paid, and we have to help
support them. All that we ask is an equality of rights. As Sumner
said, "Equality of rights is the first of rights." If we can only
be equal with man under the law it is all that we ask. We do not
propose to relinquish our domestic circles; in fact, they are too
dear to us for that; they are dear to us as life itself, but we
do ask that we may be permitted to be represented. Equality of
taxation without representation is tyranny.
REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, OF NEW YORK.
Miss ANTHONY: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I
would make an argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take
it for granted that the members of this committee understand that
we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument would
be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The
theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect
equality to all the people. That is shown by every one of the
fundamental principles, which I need not stop to repeat. Such
being the theory, the application would be, of course, that all
persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the
Government should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But
instead of adopting a practice in conformity with the theory of
our Government, we began first by saying that all men of property
were the people of the nation upon whom the Constitution conferred
equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were
the people to whom should be practically applied the fundamental
theories. There we halt to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as
the application of our theory may go. We women have been standing
before the American republic for thirty years, asking the men to
take yet one step further and extend the practical application of
the theory of equality of rights to all the people to the other
half of the people--the women. That is all that I stand here
to-day to attempt to demand.
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