If, on the other hand, we accept the doctrine of egalitarian equity with the qualification that it shall apply only so far as what it enjoins is conformable to public advantage, we shall again make expediency the criterion of the justice of woman’s suffrage.

Before passing on it will be well to point out that the argument from Justice meets us not only in the form that Justice requires that woman should have a vote, but also in all sorts of other forms.  We encounter it in the writings of publicists, in the formula Taxation carries with it a Right to Representation; and we encounter it in the streets, on the banners of woman suffrage processions, in the form Taxation without Representation is Tyranny.

This latter theorem of taxation which is displayed on the banners of woman suffrage is, I suppose, deliberately and intentionally a suggestio falsi.  For only that taxation is tyrannous which is diverted to objects which are not useful to the contributors.  And even the suffragist does not suggest that the taxes which are levied on women are differentially applied to the uses of men.

Putting, then, this form of argument out of sight, let us come to close quarters with the question whether the payment of taxes gives a title to control the finances of the State.

Now, if it really did so without any regard to the status of the claimant, not only women, but also foreigners residing in, or holding property in, England, and with these lunatics and miners with property, and let me, for the sake of a pleasanter collocation of ideas, hastily add peers of the realm, who have now no control over public finance, ought to receive the parliamentary franchise.  And in like manner if the payment of a tax, without consideration of its amount, were to give a title to a vote, every one who bought an article which had paid a duty would be entitled to a vote in his own, or in a foreign, country according as that duty has been paid at home or abroad.

In reality the moral and logical nexus between the payment of taxes and the control of the public revenue is that the solvent and selfsupporting citizens, and only these, are entitled to direct its financial policy.

If I have not received, or if I have refunded, any direct contributions I may have received from the coffers of the State; if I have paid my pro rata share of its establishment charges—­i.e. of the costs of both internal administration and external defence; and I have further paid my proportional share of whatever may be required to make up for the deficit incurred on account of my fellow-men and women who either require direct assistance from the State, or cannot meet their share of the expenses of the State, I am a solvent citizen; and if I fail to meet these liabilities, I am an insolvent citizen even though I pay such taxes as the State insists upon my paying.