s 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 can not 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?

In demanding suffrage for the black man you recognize the fact that, as
a freedman, he is no longer a "part of the family," and that therefore
his master is no longer his representative; hence, as he will now be
liable to taxation, he must also have representation. Woman, on the
contrary, has never been such a "part of the family" as to escape
taxation. Although there has been no formal proclamation giving her an
individual existence, the single woman always has had the right to
property and wages, the right to make contracts and do business in her
own name. And even married women, by recent legislation, have been
secured in these civil rights. Woman now holds a vast amount of the
property in the country and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue
included. On what principle, then, do you deny