The ballot is like charity, which never faileth, and without which man is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The ballot is the one thing needful, without which rights of testimony and all other rights will be no better than cobwebs, which the master will break through with impunity. To him who has the ballot all other things shall be given--protection, opportunity, education, a homestead. The ballot is like the Horn of Abundance, out of which overflow rights of every kind, with corn, cotton, rice, and all the fruits of the earth. Or, better still, it is like the hand of the body, without which man, who is now only a little lower than the angels, must have continued only a little above the brutes. They are fearfully and wonderfully made; but as is the hand in the work of civilization, so is the ballot in the work of government. "Give me the ballot, and I can move the world." Do you wish to see harmony truly prevail, so that industry, society, government, civilization, may all prosper, and the Republic may wear a crown of true greatness? Then do not neglect the ballot. Lamartine said, "Universal Suffrage is the first truth and only basis of every national republic." In regard to "Taxation without representation," Mr. Sumner quotes from Lord Coke: The Supreme Power cannot take from any man any part of his property _without consent in person, or by representation_. Taxes are not to be laid on the people, but by their consent in person, or by representation. I can see no reason to doubt but that the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, or real or personal, fixed or floating, property in the colonies, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonies, as British subjects, _and as men_. I say men, for in a state of nature no man can take any property from me without my consent. _If he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave._ The very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to deprive them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right. For what one civil right is worth a rush, after a man's property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure without his consent?