Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

208 LETTERS.
write to you on what is called the'" Woman Question," but I have foreborne, because I thought your
shoulders (strong and willing as they are) were already loaded with sufficient weight. Moreover, when
I have perfect confidence in the moral and intellectual insight of a man, I am not desirous to hurry his
conclusions. You are so organized that you cannot
help following principles, wheresoever they may lead;
and, sooner or later, you will see clearly that our republican ideas cannot be consistently carried out
while women are excluded from any share in the government. I reduce the argument to very simple elements. I pay taxes for property of my own eatlning
and saving, and I do not believe in c" taxation without representation." As for representation by proxy,
that savors too much of the plantation-system, however kind the master may be. I am a human being;
and every human being has a right to a voice in the
laws which claim authority to tax him, to imprison
him, or to hang him. The exercise of rights always
has a more salutary effect on character than the enjoyment of privileges. Any class of human beings
to whom a position of perpetual subordination is assigned, however much they may be petted and flattered, must inevitably be dwarfed, morally and intellectually.
But I will not enlarge on the theme. For forty
years I have keenly felt my limitations as a woman,
and have submitted to them under perpetual and indignant protest. It is too late for the subject to be
of much interest to me personally. I have walked in
fetters all my pilgrimage, and now I have but little
farther to go. But I see so clearly that domestic
and public life would be so much ennobled by the