Tax Riot in Mexico
El Paso, Texas, . — Telegraphic dispatches from Guerrero, Mexico, to the Government announce the capture of the Federal General Ranjel, commander of the second military zone, and the utter rout of his troops in the mountains southwest of Guerrero on .
The trouble has grown out of the oppressive tax imposed upon the people by the State Government. The people refused to pay the taxes, and determined to fight it out to the bitter end. The people of the district are organized, and as soon as the Federal troops arrived they drove them to a rough place and managed to capture Ranjel, after which the troops were driven in every direction. Many of them were killed.
Troops from Chihuahua and Sonora have left for the scene. Gen. Ranjel is being held by the revolutionists as a hostage, and the insurgents will demand of the Government that the obnoxious tax be removed and their leaders pardoned.
Mexican General Captured in Guerrero Tax Riot
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was unable to attend the Woman’s Rights Convention in Syracuse in , but sent a letter, addressed on , in which she wrote:
My Dear Friends:— As I cannot be present with you, I wish to suggest three points, for your serious and earnest consideration.
1st. Should not all women, living in States where woman has a right to hold property, refuse to pay taxes, so long as she is unrepresented in the government of that State?
Such a movement, if simultaneous, would no doubt produce a great deal of confusion, litigation and suffering, on the part of woman; but shall we fear to suffer for the maintenance of the same glorious principles, for which our fore-fathers fought, and bled, and died. Shall we deny the faith of the old revolutionary heroes, and purchase for ourselves a false peace, and ignoble ease, by declaring in action, that taxation without representation is just? Ah! no; like the English Dissenters, and high-souled Quakers, of our own land, let us suffer our property to be seized and sold — but let us never pay another tax, until our existence as citizens, our civil and political rights, be fully recognized.
The poor. crushed slave, but yesterday toiling on the rice plantation in Georgia, a beast, a chattel, a thing, is to-day, in the Empire State, if he own a bit of land, and a shed to cover him, a person, and may enjoy the proud honor of paying into the hand of the complaisant tax-gatherer the sum of seventy-five cents — even so with the white woman: the satellite of the dinner-pot; the presiding genius of the wash-tub; the seamstress; the teacher; the gay butterfly of fashion; the femme covert of the law. Man takes no note of her through all these changing scenes. But lo! to-day, by the fruits of her industry, she becomes the owner of a house and lot, and now her existence is remembered and recognized, and she too may have the privilege of contributing to the support of this mighty Republic — for the “white male citizen” claims of her one dollar and seventy-five cents a year — because, under the glorious institutions of this free and happy land, she has been able, at the age of fifty years, to possess herself of a property worth the enormous sum of three hundred dollars. It is natural to suppose, she will answer this demand on her, joyously and promptly; for she must, in view of all her rights and privileges, so long enjoyed, consider it a great favor, to be permitted to contribute thus largely to the governmental treasury.
One thing is certain, this course will necessarily involve a good deal of litigation, and we shall need lawyers of our own sex, whose intellects, sharpened by their interests, shall be quick to discover the loop-holes of retreat. Laws are capable of many and various constructions; we find among men, that as they have new wants, as they develope into more enlarged views of justice, the laws are susceptible of more generous interpretation, or are changed altogether; that is, all laws touching their own interests: for while man has abolished hanging for theft, imprisonment for debt, and secured universal suffrage for himself, a married woman, in most of the States of the Union, remains a non-entity in law — can own nothing; can be whipped and locked up by her lord; can be worked without wages; be robbed of her inheritance, stripped of her children, and left alone, and penniless — and all this, they say, according to law. Now, it is quite time that we have these laws revised, by our own sex — for man does not yet feel, that what is unjust for himself, is also unjust for woman. Yes, we must have our own lawyers, as well as our physicians and priests. Some of our women should go at once into this profession, and see if there is no way by which we may shuffle off our shackles, and assume our civil and political rights. We cannot accept man’s interpretation of the law.
