1891.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 229 



instead of setting men running around the country after us? 

 Is not that fair, Mr. Gold? 



Mr. Gold. It appears to be. 



Professor Roberts. A man who does not do his duty as 

 an American citizen should be debarred from voting. He 

 has no right to vote in this country if he does not do his 

 duty as a citizen. No man who is not a good citizen has a 

 moral right to vote. Cut him off, and assess him so that it 

 will bring him next year to a realizing sense of his duty as 

 an American citizen. If he hides his property, confiscate 

 it, just the same as you confiscate the contents of my trunk 

 that I bring over from Germany and am trying to run 

 through the custom house without paying the duty, thus 

 breaking the laws of my country. 



It does not matter whom you send up to the Legislature. 

 That is not it. It is the power behind the man that makes 

 the man do the work. Say to these gentlemen whom you 

 send to the Legislature, "Thou shalt," and '-Thou shalt 

 not," and it will be so. It seems to me that the time has 

 gone by for talking. We know, — we do not guess, as we 

 do in many problems, — we faioio that every man who owns 

 real estate is paying at least three dollars in taxes where he 

 ought to be paying one, and in many cases five or six dollars. 

 I am talking right against my own' interest, gentlemen, to 

 the tune of fifty dollars probably in taxes every year. I am 

 not afraid of the truth, and I say the time has passed for 

 milk-and-water resolutions. The time has come for you to 

 say, " Thou shalt make a just law for taxation, and every 

 dollar of value in this Commonwealth and in the United 

 States shall pay its fair proportion of the expense of watch- 

 ing over it and caring for it." Is not that justice? A large 

 part of the personal property costs ordinarily two or three 

 times as much to watch as the real. We will give the owners 

 of that personal property that advantage ; but the eternal 

 principle is that every hundred cents of real value, at a fair 

 valuation, shall pay its true and right proportion of the 

 expense of watching over that dollar. Now, there is nothing 

 wrono- in that, and we can have it before next vear's snow 

 flies if we just stand together and say, " Thou shalt ! We 

 will lift every one of you out of your chairs, from Governor 



