Thus women are everywhere going back to fundamental principles, and this action of the women of Rochester is but the commencement of a protest which will soon become a resistance, and which will extend from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  The women of the city of Rochester pay taxes on seven millions of property, and yet not one of these tax payers is consulted as to how, or when that tax shall be raised, or for what purpose used.  This seven millions is but a small proportion of property on which the women of that city really pay taxes, as it does not include that much larger amount of property of which they have been robbed, and over which they are assumed to have no control.  The foundation of a new city hall has recently been laid in that city.  Women’s property, without their consent, has been used for this purpose.  Water is soon to be brought in from Hemlock Lake, and a dozen other projects are on foot, all of which require money, and towards all of which, the money of tax-paying women will be taken without their consent.

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.  Old Ben Franklin once said, “those that have no vote or voice in the laws, or the election of those who administer them, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes, and their representatives.”  That sentiment is as true to-day as when uttered.  While the women of this nation are restrained from the exercise of their natural rights of self-government, they are held enslaved to those who do administer the laws.  Said an old minister of revolutionary fame, “One who is bound to obey the will of another