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.

Now if a woman insists, in the face of warnings that she had better
not do so, on taxing man with dishonesty for withholding from her
financial control over the revenues of the State, she has only herself
to blame if she is told very bluntly that her claim to such control is
barred by the fact that she is, as a citizen insolvent. The taxes paid
by women would cover only a, very small proportion of the
establishment charges of the State which would properly be assigned to
them. It falls to man to make up that deficit.

And it is to be noted with respect to those women who pay their full
pro rata contribution and who ask to be treated as a class apart from,
and superior to, other women, that only a very small proportion of
these have made their position for themselves.

Immeasurably the larger number are in a solvent position only because
men have placed them there. All large fortunes and practically all the
incomes which are furnished by investments are derived from man.

Nay; but the very revenues which the Woman Suffrage Societies devote
to man's vilification are to a preponderating extent derived from