At least, this is the experience and promise of America. If woman
does not vote because she is woman, so and for the same reason she is
not subject to personal taxation. It is an error to suppose that voting
is a privilege, and taxation, ever and always, a burden. Both are
duties; and the privilege of the one and the burden of the other are
only incidental and subordinate. The human family is an aggregation of
families; and the family, not the man nor the woman, is the unit of the
state. The civil law assumes the existence of the family relation, and
its unity where it exists; hence taxation of the woman brings no revenue
to the state that might not have been secured by the taxation of the
man; and hence the exercise of the elective franchise by the woman
brings no additional political power; for, in the theory of the relation
to which there are, in fact, but few exceptions, there is in the
household but one political idea, and but one agent is needed for its
expression. The ballot is the judgment of the family; not of the man,
merely, nor of the woman, nor yet, indeed, always of both, even. The
first smile that the father receives from the child affects every
subsequent vote in municipal concerns, and likely enough also in
national affairs. From that moment forward, he judges constables,
selectmen, magistrates, aldermen, mayors, school-committees, and
councillors, with an altered judgment.
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