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Rh all other rights of citizenship—one that can not, justly, be withheld, as the following admitted principles of government show:

"First. 'All men are born free and equal.'

"Second. 'Government derives its just power from the consent of the governed.'

"Third. 'Taxation and representation are inseparable.'

"We, the undersigned, therefore, petition your honorable body to take the necessary steps for a revision of the Constitution, so that all citizens may enjoy equal political rights."

Your Committee have given the subject referred to them a careful examination, and now

Your Committee believe that the prayer of the petitioners ought to be granted. Our opinion is based both upon grounds of principle and expediency, which we will endeavor to present as briefly as is consistent with a due consideration of this subject.

The founders of this Republic claimed and asserted with great emphasis, the essential equality of human rights as a self-evident truth. They scouted the venerable old dogma of the divine right of kings and titled aristocracies to rule the submissive multitude. They were equally explicit in their claim that "taxation and representation are inseparable."

The House of Representatives of Massachusetts, 1764, declared, "That the imposition of duties and taxes, by the Parliament of Great Britain, upon a people not represented in the House of Commons, is absolutely irreconcilable with their rights." A pamphlet entitled "The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted," was sent to the agent of the Colony in England, to show him the state of the public mind, and along with it an energetic letter. "The silence of the province," said this letter, alluding to the suggestion of the agent that he had taken silence for consent, "should have been imputed to any cause—even to despair—rather than be construed into a tacit cession of their rights, or the acknowledgment of a right in the Parliament of Great Britain, to impose duties and taxes on a people who are not represented In the House of Commons." "If we are not represented we are slaves!" Some of England's ablest jurists acknowledge the truth of this doctrine. Chief Justice Pratt said: "My position is this—taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in the law of nature. It is more; it is itself an eternal law of nature." In defence of this doctrine they waged a seven years' war: and yet, when they had wrung from the grasp of Great Britain the Colonies she would not govern upon this principle, and undertook to organize them according to their favorite theory, most of the Colonies, by a single stroke of the pen, cut off one-half of the people from any representation in the government which claimed their obedience to its laws, the right to tax them for its support, and the right to punish them for disobedience.

This disparity between their theory and practice does not seem to have excited much, if any notice, at the time, nor until its bitter fruits had long been eaten in obscurity and sorrow by thousands who suffered, but did not complain. Indeed, so apathetic has been the public mind upon this subject, that no one is surprised to see such a remark as the following by a distinguished commentator upon American institutions: "In the free States, except criminals and paupers, there is no class of persons who do not exercise the elective franchise." It seems women are not even a class of persons. They are fairly dropped from the human race, and very naturally, since we have grown accustomed to recognize as universal suffrage, that which excludes by constitutional taboo one-half of the people. To declare that a voice in the government is the right of all, and then give it only to a part—and that the part to which the claimant himself belongs—is to renounce even the appearance of principle. As ought to have been foreseen, the class of persons thus cut off from the means of self-protection, have become victims of unequal and oppressive legislation, which runs through our whole code. We first bind the hands, by the organic law, and then proceed with deliberate safety, by the statute, to spoil the goods of the victim. Whatever palliation for the past hoary custom, false theology, and narrow prejudice may furnish, it is certainly time now to remedy those evils, and reduce to practice our favorite theory of government.

The citizens thus robbed of a natural right complain of the injustice. They protest