His face was an exclamation and interrogation point fused into one.
“Indeed! and how do you manage it,—how, for instance, can you prevent them from voting?”
“O, they don’t often try it,” I said, laughing. “When they do, we simply throw their ballots out of the count.”
“Is it possible! That seems to me a great unfairness. However, it can be accounted for, I suppose, from the fact that things are so different on the Earth to what they are here. Our government, you see, rests upon a system of taxation. We tax all property to defray governmental expenses, and for many other purposes tending toward the general good; which makes it necessary that all our citizens shall have a voice in our political economy. But you say your women have no property, and so—”
“I beg your pardon!” I interposed; “I did not say that. We have a great many very rich women,—women whose husbands or fathers have left them fortunes.”
“Then they of course have a vote?”
“They do not. You can’t make a distinction like that.”
“No? But you exempt their property, perhaps?”