Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost AdvocatesJohnson, Helen Kendrick
History
Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates
Johnson, Helen Kendrick
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
The many-sided oppression, and the deprivation as a married woman, belong
in other chapters. The remaining portions of the two counts may be summed
up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did
that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English
tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no
redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the
Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke
upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of
Englishmen living in England, the chief of which was, that they could only
be taxed by their own representatives," and on that was founded the
resolution adopted by them that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed
in a body in which they were not represented; for the colonies, as well as
individuals, had no vote in Parliament. They meant that their property
could not be so taxed, and they meant far more. The more that they meant
was embodied by Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of
Independence, when he said: "Can any one reason be assigned why a hundred
and sixty thousand _electors_ in the island of Great Britain should give
law to four million in the States of America?" John Hancock meant that and
more when he said: "Burn Boston and make John Hancock a beggar, if the
public good requires it." He was offering his taxed property to defend the
liberties of the four millions against the hundred and sixty thousand
electors. The refusal of the majority to be ruled longer by the minority
was the main motive of determination not to submit. But at that time all
voting was connected with a tax on property, and so was the suffrage
established by these men. And under those property-tax laws women who held
property could vote. It was when taxation ceased to go with
representation, that the women ceased to vote. There is now no connection
between taxation of property and representation. When people were allowed
votes in proportion to the amount of property they held, and could vote in
different counties and States, there was a connection, and that law gave
the rich man more voting power than the poor man. But all aristocratic
qualification was done away with, and the government came to rely solely
on the strength of individual men for its defence, instead of upon men and
women with money enough to raise soldiery. There is a money tax levied on
the property of men and women alike; and in return for the payment of this
tax the property of both men and women is made secure against unlawful
injury. In order to make it secure, the state lays, upon men alone, a
service tax, and with that tax goes representation, or the vote. This
service tax does not fall upon woman, and it cannot be demanded of her; so
it is not true that "Man has taxed her to support a government which
recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." He
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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