To illustrate the extreme injustice with which women are treated in this
matter of taxation, to show you how contrary it is to all natural right,
let us suppose that all the taxable property in the city of Rochester
belonged to women, with the exception of a single small house and lot,
which were owned by a man. As the law is now interpreted, the man who
owned that house and lot could vote a tax upon the property of all those
women at his own will, to build CITY HALLS, COURT HOUSES, JAILS, could
call an election and vote an extraordinary tax to bring in water from a
dozen different lakes, erect fountains at every corner, fence in twenty
parks, vote himself in, Mayor, Alderman, Assessor, Collector with a fat
salary from these women's money, attached to each one of these offices,
and in the end elect himself the sole policeman of the city, to protect
the women from--himself; and this you call just government. It is no
more unjust, no more unrepublican, to take the property of fifty, or a
hundred, or a thousand women in this way, than it would be to take the
property of a single one; the principle is still the same. The women of
to-day, protest, as did their fore-mothers, for principle. Women come
into the world endowed with the same natural rights as men, and this by
virtue of their common humanity, and when prevented or restrained from
their exercise, they are enslaved.
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