By Edwin Melvin Williams

Of all American municipalities, Washington, the capital city of the United States, most beautiful of North American cities and one of the most beautiful in the world, should be the world's outstanding example of the benefits of republican government. But is it? Alas! no. One has, in fact, to look elsewhere to find the great principles of American Democracy in full and consistent practice. Upon closer acquaintance, the Capital City is found, indeed, to belie its honored name. To perpetuate truly the principles of its founder and namesake, who led and won the fight for American freedom a century and a half ago, the city of Washington should be free. Yet it is not-not even as free as Amsterdam was, in the Dutch republic of feudal times.

In reality, the city of Washington is bound hand and foot-enslaved by a governmental system as feudal and despotic, in this one municipal exception, as any system that mediaeval Europe clamped on to the people. Certainly, those who care to study the political plight of the people of the American capital will find here conditions that fit more logically into a feudal state than into a republic. Those who search, in the government of this municipality, for evidences of those great republican principles, which foreigners expect to find in the world's first and foremost modern democracy, will search in vain. Surprising as it may seem, Washington, which should be the easy-running hub of the Great Democracy, is in fact not in the wheel of Democracy at all. Rather, the wheel that carries Democracy to one hundred and twenty millions of Americans runs over the prostrate bodies of a half-million supine Washingtonians. Like a Juggernaut, American Democracy, year after year, passes over them, crushing out their political life, while trumpeting to the world the glorious advantages that Democracy offers to man; and the wheel has been revolving to the detriment of Washington for more than a century and a quarter.

In her political relation to other parts of the great American republic, Washington can hardly be classed higher than the pitying Charles Lamb was able to class the "poor relation" who sat, silent and subdued, at the table of a rich relation. The "poor relation," indeed, was more fortunate than the well-dressed Washingtonian. The patronizing, or tolerant, rich relation did at least seat his miserable dependent kin "above the salt" at his table, though he did not expect her to presume to raise her voice above an undertone; but to the Federal City a patronizing nation denies both seat and voice at the Congressional table. For a century and a quarter, Washington has served-literally served-the nation, and, in return, has been denied privileges offered even to aliens.

To strangers who look upon this nation as the greatest democracy of all time -as the abundantly blessed land wherein all men are free and have votes, by constitutional provision as well as inalienable right, it will seem a queer anomaly that for more than a century the people of its capital city have supinely suffered encroachments upon their imprescriptible rights, infringements as flagrant and unjust as those that caused the Revolution a century and a half ago. Taxation without Representation has been the unfortunate lot of the people of Washington-they a highly intellectual human group now one-sixth as large as that which a century and a half ago cried out against such tyranny in the British king against a despotism so intolerable that it caused colonists to grip their guns and physically, as well as mentally, endorse Patrick Henry's words: "Give me liberty

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or give me death." "All the horror of civil war," wrote John Jay, will never compel America to submit to taxation by authority of Parliament" in which America has no representation. Those resolute colonists whose shouts and shots were heard around the world were probably no more numerous than the half million Washingtonians of the present, whose grievance is the same; yet the Capital City's voice seems almost too weak to reach even Richmond or Baltimore. Certainly, the average American has no idea of the injustice done to this half-million group of Americans.

The average American thinks idealistically of his national capital. When he visits it, his eyes rest with pride upon the Halls of Congress-upon the Capitol, so stately, so strong, so simple in outline yet so inspiringly serene in unostentatious strength. To him, the Capitol seems to typify the strength of the nation, the mightiest in the world, the wealthiest, yet the one that has never raised its hand to oppress a weaker nation, but rather, in its idealism, has been more inclined to offer a helping hand to any faltering neighbor-nation. To the Visiting American, the dome of the Capitol seems to signify the world-the democratic world-a safe, sane, sympathetic world. Above the Capitol dome he sees, in Armed Freedom, the Guardian of Democracy. Under it he believes are always to be found true, alert and capable Ministers of Democracy-those idealistic legislators who, though they err at times, have always seemed to be imbued with the desire to make only such laws as are for the best good of all the people. From one point of vantage, on Capitol Hill, the visiting American sees in the distance, beyond the Appian Way of the Republic, the shaft that all the world helped to build for the ages-the Washington Monument which honors the memory of the "Father of his Country," and seems to raise its pencil-point into the sky as high again as the sky-line of the hills beyond the Potomac. To the visitor, the noble shaft seems to take the shape of a Gulliver's pencil, and its point to have a particular purpose in resting so upon the sky. Thoughts of Washington, of the Great Patriot and his purpose, seem to bring that peerless leader back to life-to a stronger, fuller, more inspiring life than that which surged through his mortal frame in Revolutionary days, when he led three million Americans to independence. Now, the immortal Washington returns, to find in his hand the strength of 120,000,000 people; to find also a mission that only he can undertake. Like a gigantic democratic Gulliver, the immortal Washington reaches out a strong arm from Capitol Hill-out along the Appian Way and the Mall. In his steady hand he takes the huge pencil, and with it writes upon the clear sky, where all the world might see, the four words that bound his compatriots of Revolutionary days in a common brotherhood, to do, dare, die if needs be, that their posterity might have political freedom. Upon the azure sheet, in a bold hand, the father of the city of Washington firmly shapes the four significant words: "No Taxation without Representation." Lilliputians along the Appian Way see the words, and take up again the clarion cry of the Revolution; and their cries are heard by Armed Freedom, who stands steady, immovable, in pedestaled majesty upon the Capitol dome-a Queen of Queens, reassuring even in her immobility. As the Guardian of Democracy, as the custodian of the independence that General Washington won for America, Armed Freedom seems to take up the cause and declare that under her roof the principles of democracy shall be forever safe and sacred-secure, inviolable, as sure of protection in Senate and House as the Nation is of life.

So thinks the idealistic American who visits Washington. Never for one moment does he dream that Senate and House, in carrying the democratic benefits they enact to the 120,000,000 Americans beyond the Capital City, they have to trample over the bodies of the 500,000 people who inhabit Washington, and to whom they deny suffrage.

Ah !- well ! Let the Visiting American enjoy his blissful idealism for yet a while. With idealism still strong, let him imagine that the stately trees which seem to link branches to shade his way from the Capitol to the Library of Con-

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gress suggest to him the inestimable blessings of the American system of government, of a brotherhood one hundred and twenty million strong joining hands in sincere fellowship and mutual aid. Do not suggest that 500,000 of his blood brothers are outside the fraternal ring. Let him enjoy the true happiness that he, a genuine democrat, will find in the Library of Congress, the most gorgeously ornate library building in the world, yet open to the humblest American who seeks knowledge. Let him realize that here, open to the world, free to anyone and everyone who would profit by the vast literary treasures that America, at great expense, has gathered within for their benefit, is a convincing example of democracy. In itself, the Library Building, with its marble floors and walls, its mosaics, its colorful and descriptive, murals, its statuary, inspires the Visiting American. In its stacked three and a half million volumes the visitor will take pride, realizing that tens of thousands of volumes testify to the heroic struggles of his forefathers to win for him the privileges that he and his generation enjoy in this democratic land. Truly, the Library of Congress is -a great institution of a great people. But of all the inspiring works that the Library houses, one precious document that it guards thrills him through and through with the realization of his own priceless safeguarded birthright. Before him is the Great Document. In reverent awe he gazes upon the original Declaration of Independence, the priceless Apostle's Creed, -as it were, of American Democracy.

After his first feeling of awe has passed, he reads the Declaration eagerly --- as eagerly as his forefathers, in darker days, read it. It confirms what he already knew fairly well:-that in this great -and glorious country, and for that matter in all countries, "all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights;" that to "secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the governed." He nods his head, as his lips mutter again: "from the Consent of the governed." ... ... Tis true," he agrees. "Upon this principle Democracy is based." Not even yet does he realize that he stands in the midst of a people who for a century, and more, have been governed without their consent. His ignorance is excusable, if ignorance can be excused. These hundreds of thousands of voteless people do not even themselves seem to have protested very audibly. Many Washingtonians have not yet realized that the Declaration of Independence expressly states: "That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter it or to abolish it."

Why are the people of Washington so apathetic? Are they listless, in this, to fend off a worse state? Does the racial question constitute the "bogie" that frightens white Washingtonians into inaction? If so, they might, in being true to democracy, find courage and placidity in the belief that "the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never come." They might even give a little closer thought to the history of the Revolution that won independence for their forefathers. They would find a parallel in it. A positive majority of Washingtonians fight for national representation, though only a resolute minority demand full local government, just as only a resolute minority took to their guns and followed General Washington, the others remaining noncommittal, or openly Loyalist, until the determined Patriots in the field destroyed the "bogie" of Britain's might in America.

But the Visiting American who stands before the Declaration of Independence in the Library of Congress has no such thoughts. To him all Americans were and are one. Reading on, he learns from the precious document the reasons why our forefathers-his, and yours; yes! and the forefathers of Washingtonians, too-rose in revolution. He learns that they were determined to abolish the governmental curbs that King George III and his ministers would hamper them with; he gathers that Americans refused to recognize that King and Parliament, three thousand miles away, were "invested with power to legislate" for American colonists "in all cases whatsoever"; further, that the signers of the Declaration protested against a royal despotism which would refuse to pass laws

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for the colonies unless the colonists themselves "would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only." A right so inestimable, indeed, that they would give up their lives rather than relinquish it. The quoted words are from the Declaration of Independence itself; and strange words they must seem to those who know that for a century and a quarter the American Congress, though based on the principle of "government of the people, by the people, for the people," has in everything legislated for the people of the Capital City. Significant words, too, are those in the Declaration---significant either of an empty democracy, or of hope for Washington.

However, no doubt of Democracy enters the head of the altruistic Visiting American. Indeed, in every word, the Declaration of Independence interests and impresses him. Especially is he impressed by the courage of those determined signers, who, though within the shadow of the noose if captured and taken to Britain, were not afraid to put their signatures to this incriminating evidence. Although the instrument clearly stated, just above the bold signature of John Hancock, that the signers, in defense of their natural rights, "mutually pledge(d) to each other" their "lives," their "Fortunes" and their "sacred honor," they signed, unafraid.

Perhaps the Visiting, American realized that the Declaration of Independence went by post-riders to every capital city; that it was proclaimed in. every convenient public place; that its principles were, in fact, the battle cries of most of the Americans of that day who preferred death to despotism; that with it Absolutism in America passed; that soldiers in the field found the Declaration their stay, their hope, their moral and political platform through the chaotic years of personal danger; that the Declaration was their political creed, their reiteration of Magna Carta, the shield of man against the attacks of royal despots; that with the Declaration ever before them, Americans fought on until victorious; and that, with Independence won., they were willing to entrust the future to republican government consistent with the Declaration. Of course, the Visiting American, did not, in his musing, specifically recall that among those who fought were ancestors of Washingtonians of today; Americans were all one at that time, he assumed.

So let it be supposed that, bowing in reverence to the Declaration, the Visiting American passed out of its sacred presence strengthened in patriotism, ready to take up the pledge that his forefathers made for themselves and also, he feels sure, for their posterity. Injustice shall not be tolerated in free America, the first, fairest, truest democracy of modern times. In any case, humans have certain natural rights which no generation can take from posterity. So the Visiting American is now strong enough in true democracy to be told that for a century the people of the great city he is visiting have had to bow their heads in a political nonentity destructive of personal morale, and foreign to the true spirit of republican America.

Why has this strange anomaly been allowed to go on, uncorrected, for so long, in the heart of republican America, where Democracy is the spoken creed of everyone?

There must be a justification, or if not justification, then an excuse.

Let us see.

At the back of all legislative endeavors of State representatives in Senate and House is the so-called States' Rights, that hindrance to complete unanimity of Americans. Somewhere in the dim distance, but nevertheless quieting the misgivings of those legislators who realize that their actions in behalf of Washingtonians do not harmonize with true democracy, is the "bogie" that made all the former colonies jealous and suspicious of the Federal Government in the first precarious years of the Republic, when the United States Constitution was being made. The Federal Government should be given no territory of its own, no base wherein it might raise armies to jeopardize the sovereign authority of the con-

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federated states. There are other well-known reasons, or stated justifications for the denial of full franchise to the people of Washington; nevertheless, if our forefathers deemed, as the Declaration of Independence asserts, that representation in the Legislature is a right "formidable to tyrants only," this antiquated "bogie" should not come into the minds of the 120,000,000 Americans of today. Of course, the very thought of it will bring a smile to the faces of the 120,000,000; the injustice to 500,000 Washingtonians continues.

However, in the future there is hope. It seems likely that this blot on American Democracy will be soon removed, though Washingtonians, remembering yet past experiences and frustrated hopes, refrain from very positive predictions. Last Congress had before it a resolution to submit to the States a constitutional amendment which would give Washingtonians, in other words the people of the District of Columbia, representative seats in Senate and House, also the right to vote in the election of President and Vice-President, and to sue and be sued in United States courts. This amendment, in other words, would release Washingtonians from a bondage they have suffered for a century and a quarter. But that session of Congress, like many before it, passed into history without definitely disposing of this question, so vital to the people of the District of Columbia.

So hope is still hope deferred. The only certainty that remains is that the question will again, in this particular form or in some other, come before the Congress of the United States. Meanwhile, those Americans who take interest in political science might consider the question themselves.

To begin the study sympathetically inclined toward the voteless people of the District, they might note the opinion of Senator Capper, who has studied the question from all angles, and states his opinion in the following words: "As a matter. of justice to American citizens, as one of the means necessary to build a Capital eminently worthy of this nation, and as final proof of our general belief in the principles of democracy, the District of Columbia should be liberated."

In case any Americans are still somewhat in doubt as to what true democracy is, let the fundamental dogmas of democracy be stated here, as given by Bryce, in his "Modern Democracies." This eminent authority on government found the substance of the American Declaration of Independence and the French Rights of Man to be as follows:

Each man who comes into the world comes into it Free, with a mind to think for himself, a will to act for himself. The submission of one man to another except !by his own free will is against Nature. All men are born equal, with an equal right to the pursuit of happiness. That each man may secure this right and preserve his liberty as a member of a community, he must have an equal share in its government, that government being created and maintained by the consent of the community. Equality is the guarantee of independence.

These axioms, being delivered as self-evident truths, antecedent to and independent of experience, require no proof. They are propounded as parts of the universal Law of Nature, written on men's hearts and therefore true always and everywhere.

Knowing these truths, Americans, characteristically idealists, flatly opposed to hypocrisy, fervently desirous to be true to democracy, and naturally imbued with the spirit of good fellowship, will now, at last, it would seem, insist that the wrongs Washingtonians have suffered at the hands of Congress for so long be righted.

Some Americans may not even yet be convinced. They may prefer to draw their own conclusions than to accept the interpretations of even so great a student of government as the late Ambassador Bryce. Possibly what follows herein may help them to see the issue more clearly.

Thomas Jefferson, in an "Opinion upon the question of whether the President should veto the Bill declaring that the Seat of Government shall be transferred to the Potomac in the year 1790," was quite positive in asserting, on July 15, 1790, that: "Every man and every body of men on earth possesses the right of self-government."

In this, Jefferson voiced no new political principle. More or less vividly, through tens of centuries of communal life, man has been conscious of this right

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to freedom. A colonial group not half as numerous as the Washington community rose, in 1689, in rebellion against an English governor, Andros, who dared to extort taxes by command, and also twit them about their precious inalienable rights in Magna Carta. "Do you think the laws of England follow you to the ends of the earth," he asked, tauntingly. Andros was ousted, just as James II was ousted in England, and as Charles I, before him, had been.

"I would be content to lend," said the Buckinghamshire squire, James Hampden, two generations earlier, to the commissioners of King Charles I, who sought to levy taxes without consent of Parliament, "but fear to draw upon myself the curse in Magna Carta, which should be read twice a year against those who infringe it." The Massachusetts Bay Colony was the outcome of this, resistance to taxation without representation, and the Massachusetts "Body of Liberties," drafted in 1641, and not unlike the basic principles of government in other colonies, shows how sacred, sensible and inalienable are the natural rights of man. The "Body of Liberties" declared that "the free fruition of such liberties, Immunities and priveledges as humanitie, Civilitie and Christianitie call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and Infringement hath ever been and ever will be the tranquilitie and Stabilitie of Churches and Commonwealth. And the deniall or deprival thereof, the disturbance if not the ruine of both." Therefore, "dutie and safetie'' influenced the Massachusetts General Court to "religiously and unanimously decree and confirm these following Rites liberties and priveledges . . . to be respectively impartiallie and inviolably enjoyed and observed throughout our jurisdiction for ever."

What does Magna Carta, the Great Charter wrested from King John in 1215 A. D. say? It provides that: "No scutage (tax) nor aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless by the common, council of our kingdom." Without a voice the people should not be taxed. But here in Washington, the inhabitants are not only taxed their fair share of the public expense. Without being able to say a word against it in the legislative houses, they are taxed by outsiders levies that should be borne by others. Washington is back beyond the days of the Barons.

Magna Carta did not lay down new principles. As a matter of fact, it merely confirmed the fundamentals of the Charter of Henry the First, and both were in accord with the governmental customs of the early English period in Britain --- the sixth century, when the sons of Hengist and Aella were settling down in their new land in little pastoral village-commonwealths of kinsfolk, tilling the soil, observing the blood-bond in judging by witness of the kinsfolk, making laws in the assembly of the freeman, and choosing their leaders much as their forefathers had, in earlier centuries beside the Weser -and the Elbe, thus manifesting traits like those of their Aryan ancestors of the time of the northwestern migration from Central Asia, and, indeed, not unlike those of the Aryan tribes of the southeastern migration-the Indians and Persians who, in their village commonwealths of even modern times have shown similar habits of communal life.

The so-called Bill of Rights, which stands at the head of most American State Constitutions, is, said Lord Bryce in his "American Commonwealth," the legitimate child and representative of Magna Carta, and of those other declarations and enactments by which the liberties of Englishmen have been secured." Alas! Washington has no constitution to speak for it against violations of Magna Carta.

But we Americans can go farther back than Magna Carta, in tracing our heritage of freedom. Macaulay declared that the English polity adhered to fundamental principles "so ancient that none can say when they began to exist." It drew from imperial Rome, and from papal Rome, from the old Germany and from much earlier civilizations. The Roman emperors, Augustus and Tiberius for instance, acknowledged that the emperor was but the mouthpiece of the people; that he was "the representative of the senate, the comitia, and the whole republic."

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The Athenian sage, Solon, in 594 B. C., gave ancient Greece a new constitution, one in which the whole people were accorded some control over government, by their right to vote. But twenty-six centuries later, here in the heart of the greatest democracy of modern times, half a million taxed inhabitants are allowed no voice at all in the Government that taxes them. King Charles the First, of England, lost his head on the block for violations of Magna Carta; but here in this Land of the Free, American senators and representatives, year after year, for more than a century, have violated that heritage of free-born Americans-ignored it with impunity and ever-increasing injustice to a human group larger than those of many states. These legislators shelter under the Constitution, but the original constitution-makers had no intention of inflicting such gross injustice upon any Americans, it would seem. One of the great trio, Hamilton, Jay and Madison, who wrote the "Federalist" articles explaining the original Constitution, wrote as follows: "It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part." Washingtonians, for a century and more, have suffered an injustice that no principle of American democracy can condone. What Roman emperors accorded to the people of Rome, modern Americans, seated under the dome that lauds Liberty to the skies, persistently deny to the American people who inhabit a city greater than the Rome of the day of Tiberius.

In the Federalist, No. XLV, Madison wrote: "We have heard of the impious doctrine in the Old World, that the people were made for kings, not kings for people. Is the same doctrine to be revived in the New, in another shape that the solid happiness of the people is to be sacrificed to the views of political institutions of a different form?" Madison was not referring to the Federal City, which of course had not then been set apart, had not, as it were, yet been disfranchised. He referred to the rights of the people in general. Still, Washingtonians of today-supposedly American citizens, though of a grotesque grade, denied, as they are, the rights and privileges of true republican citizenship ---might apply his words to their own case, and think, admonishingly, of the legislators who have the power to legislate the Capital City out of its humiliating servitude, but do not. An act of Congress could change the District of Columbia to the State of Columbia. And the Act would not be unconstitutional, it is contended.

On June 24, 1826, Jefferson wrote to Roger C. Weightman, of Washington, regretting that "the sufferings of sickness" prevented him from attending the celebration in the capital city of the Fiftieth Anniversary of American Independence. Jefferson, in his letter, expressed a hope that the celebration might be "the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves and to. assume the blessings and security of self-government." "All eyes are opened, or opening," thought the aged President, "to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately." Jefferson, the Great Democrat, had in mind, of course, the throwing off of the monarchical yoke by other nations, but Washingtonians might apply Jefferson's words to their own painful political plight, and bemoan their lot in being born with the Congressional saddle on their backs, so that the Honorable Member, just in from, say, Oskaloosa or Ypsilanti, might ride them out of breath, or money, in his legislative exercise at their expense.

Senator Arthur Capper, in pleading for political freedom of the District of Columbia said, on January 15, 1928:

As chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia of the United States Senate, I am partly responsible for the government of Washington. Nevertheless, I do not, cannot, defend that system of government. Not that the actual administration of the municipal affairs of Washington is bad. . . . But no one who sincerely believes in the principles of

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a democracy can look with satisfaction upon the system of government of our National Capitol-or its results.

Four hundred and thirty-five members of the House of Representatives and ninety-six members of the Senate rule this city of 550,000 people. Those persons have no vote, no representation whatever, in the ruling body. They are not permitted even non-voting delegates, or commissioners, such as represent Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands in the House of Representatives.

Committees of Congress-senators and representatives from Colorado, Kansas, Maryland, Illinois and other States-decide what to do with the $25,000,000 or more collected in annual taxes from the people of the District of Columbia. No official representative of those, elected by their votes, can say a word in their behalf-because there is no such representative and there has been none for more than half a century.

It is Congress which, by more or less solemn act of legislation decides which of Washington's streets shall be paved, how much trash and garbage shall be collected and disposed of; where street lights shall be placed; where and what kind of schools shall be built; how many policemen Washington shall have and what they shall be paid.

Could there be a better-or worse-example of taxation without representation?

The people of Washington have no legal redress, though they contend that the nation is actually filching from their pockets money to meet national and state expenses. Each year the City of Washington pays more than $200,000 to educate children of Marylanders and Virginians. Virginian and Maryland representatives and senators in the National Congress have power to vote these assessments upon Washingtonians for the benefit of the states they represent. Washington has no representation, no voice, the Constitution having vested in Congress, before the city was born, the right to legislate for her. In 1801, James Madison, declared that "the authority of Constitutions over governments, and the sovereignty of the people over Constitutions, are truths which are at all times necessary to be kept in mind." But what of it? Who heeded his words? Surely not the congressmen and senators of the next century and a quarter. They might have amended the constitutional article which held the people of Washington in bondage, but they did not. They might have seen that the Constitution gave them power to legislate the District into a state, just as they have made many states out of the Northwest Territory over which Congress once had legislative control. But they did not bother excepting for a few years from 1871.

Year after year, in recent years, the Nation makes helpless Washington pay many millions of dollars that she herself-the wealthiest nation on earth-should pay. And Washingtonians have no redress, without resort to sensational measures. Almost three hundred years ago (1644) the peaceful Dutch of New Netherland (New York) were stirred almost to rebellion by the act of their arbitrary governor, Kieft, who "usurped the power of the people and imposed taxes without the consent of the Eight Men," the people's representatives. The people protested to their High Mightinesses, the States General of the Dutch Republic, and the Governor was recalled, one result being the chartering of the City of New Amsterdam (New York) in 1653. But to whom should the people of Washington protest? To the people of the United States, it seems, mindful, as Madison pointed out, of the sovereignty of the people over the Constitution if indeed it is decided that the Constitution is the hindrance to freedom of 500,000 Americans.

There is urgent need that they should protest-if only to rectify an imposition which takes so many millions unjustly from Washington taxpayers. Senator Capper said some months ago: "The act of Congress which deprived the people of Washington of the right to even limited self-government specifically provided that the National Treasury should bear half the cost of maintaining the city. This was only just, in view of the fact that the United States owned, and still owns, entirely tax exempt, large and immensely valuable tracts of ground and buildings. . . . Congress, however, repudiated its solemn contract to pay half the expenses of the District. First, the Federal Government cut its own contribution from 50 to 40 per cent, and in recent years had paid only about one-fourth the cost of administration of the District of Columbia. Thus, an unfair share of the cost of developing and maintaining a Capital worthy of a

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great nation has been placed on a people entirely without representation in the Government." Washington and L'Enfant planned a capital city for a rich, mighty and noble nation of one hundred millions of people, not a mere townsite for a municipality of half a million people. The latter would see only unjustifiable expense in the broad avenues and spacious parks that the capital of the wealthiest nation of modern times should have. To expect the municipality to bear, uncomplainingly, three-quarters of the cost of maintaining these evidences of a wealthy and great nation, would be as reasonable as to expect a $1,500 clerk in the Treasury Department to preserve the dignity of the department by driving to work in a Packard, although a Ford could deliver him at the door quite as soon and use up all the gas and rubber his slender stipend could bear. The City Budget for the current year is almost $40,000,000, of which the beneficent indulgent Congress decrees that the United States shall bear $9,000,000, though one Congressman; suggested that a further reduction to $7,000,000 be made. On the basis of a decade ago, the United States contribution would be almost $20,000,000.

On a per capita basis, this filches from each of the 500,000 Washingtonians a twenty-dollar bill to save what?---to save 120,000,000 Americans a dime each that has been, or is to be, spent for them, in their national capital.

Congressmen, in closing the United States purse to the Capital City budgeteers may, or may not, have remembered that the half-million; Washingtonians have no vote, but seem to have forgotten that 120,000,000 voting Americans can make drastic change in Congressional personnel, if stirred by dime-filching.

Is there a voting American worthy of the name who would stand idly by and see the Law take from some other helpless brother's pocket a dime that he himself should pay? No!

Is there an American, proud of his heritage and of the eminence of his nation among the great nations of the world, who would want to see his national capital dirty, shabby, dilapidated, because Washingtonians have not the means, unaided, to make the Capital City what it should be-if it is to express, as President Coolidge hoped it soon would, "the soul of America"? No! The United States Government, it is true, has decided to take a couple of dollars out of every American's pocket to build magnificent public buildings in Washington, for United States use, but that fund does not help Washington to pay the $20,000,000 (one-half of the City Budget --- the United States half).

The average American has sent his representative to Congress not to save him a dime at the expense of a helpless brother. He is willing to put his hand into his own pocket for more than a dime each year, if necessary, to give his national capital the true reflection of the democracy he ever wishes the world to see and his congressman to observe. Certainly, in his thought of the city which the "Father of his Country" founded in the first years of the Republic, the average American earnestly wishes it to be able to show perpetual honor to the great patriot whose name it bears. To have a less noble thought would be to slur the memory of him whose great effort a century and a half ago made our present prosperity possible; and the average American is neither ignoble nor penurious.

Cheese-paring never gave any man a substantial meal. Americans don't haggle over dimes. Americans do big things, courageously, optimistically, and well; and they get corresponding returns. They will willingly do what is right and fair to Washingtonians and to Washington, because: 1. This is the Land of the Free, from which feudalism, it was thought, was swept away with monarchism one hundred and fifty years ago; 2. To honor the great man who won for Americans their independence; 3. To show the world that American democracy is not a sham democracy; 4. To satisfy American self-respect, which could not happily tolerate an impoverished shabby capital city; 5. To remove the blot from a common brotherhood, a bad mark black with age, in having held in bondage for a century a large body of Americans who are just as much entitled to full citizenship as they themselves are.

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The United States Constitution, which, rightly or wrongly construed, has bound the inhabitants of Washington for so long-bound them in silent servitude-gives, in the preamble, the basic reasons for the constitution. The constitution makers sought "to establish justice . . . . promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity." These are words written into the Constitution itself-the unanimous opinion of all those who had part in its making, not the indirect vaporous theories of some ultra-democratic dreamer at the convention. If, therefore, that part of section 8 of article I which vests in Congress the power to "exercise exclusive legislation, in all cases whatsoever over such district (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by cession of particular states and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of government," can rightly be interpreted as it always seems to have been, the section violates the fundamental objects of the Constitution, and therefore the Constitution itself. Is there no logic in the assertion that a clause which violates the stated fundamental purposes Of the Constitution is null and void? If it is not, then it annuls the preamble. Both should not be in the same instrument. To retain both, they should be harmonized, and that is impossible if section 8 continues to be interpreted as it has been for a century and a quarter. "As final proof of our genuine belief in the principles of democracy, the District of Columbia should be liberated," says Senator Capper. As final proof that we believe that the constitution makers were sincere followers of the democracy they preached, the District of Columbia should be liberated. Let those who have the power to do so, seriously consider whether section 8 of article I of the Constitution of the United States is not, in fact, unconstitutional.

Madison, in explanatory notes on this section of the Constitution, stated, in No. XLIII of the Federalist Papers, that "as it (the federal district) is to be appropriated to this (federal) use with the consent of the State ceding it; as the State will no doubt provide in the compact for the rights and the consent of the citizens inhabiting it; as the inhabitants will find sufficient inducements of interest to become willing parties to the cession; as they will have had voice in the election of the government which is to exercise authority over them; as a municipal legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed them . . . . every imaginable objection seems to be obviated." Certainly, Madison seems to have felt it necessary to hedge the section around with many vital and important conditions, and above all, to recognize that the people of the District to be created should have a voice in their own affairs.

Paragraph 3 of section 2 of article I provides that "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States." This should not be lightly passed over. It shows that the fundamental relationship of taxation to representation was acknowledged by the constitution makers. It shows more. In recognizing the right of taxed people to representation, it exempts from taxation those who have no representation. For instance, the same paragraph specifically excludes Indians from voting strength, and in the words "not taxed," the constitution makers give the reason for the exclusion. The white inhabitants of the federal-district-to-be are not specifically mentioned, but inasmuch as they, too, have been excluded from voting rights, should they not also be exempt from taxation? They should, if the principles that governed the Revolution should bind the republic. "No taxation without Representation" was the political platform on which the Revolution was fought; yet Washingtonians have paid taxes without demur, or at least positive refusal, since the beginning. Dutiful long-suffering Americans they are, it would seem. As Willard of Massachusetts significantly said, more than two centuries ago, under like provocation during the despotic reign of James II and more despotic rule of his colonial viceroy, Andros: "We have not yet resisted unto blood warring against sin." Is it not a sin-against the fundamentals of American democracy-to take money from the pockets of Washingtonians without so much as "By your leave"?

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The movement to secure national representation for the District of Columbia has been almost a life-long crusade of one Washingtonian, Theodore W. Noyes. His writings on the subject during the last thirty years have been voluminous and logical; his statistics have been well-nigh irrefutable, at least by just argument; his research has been so extensive and comprehensive, his understanding so thorough, that he has naturally gravitated to the head of the movement, commonly acknowledged by his associates as its best-informed proponent; and to his testimony legislative committeemen, of many congresses, have given respectful hearing.

At his hand, through this long period, has been a forceful medium, his own journal, the Washington Evening Star; and he has stinted neither editorial nor column space. So his campaign to right the wrongs suffered by Washingtonians has not been "a flash in the pan." Instead, it has proceeded persistently and consistently ever since, and gains in force with each year.

One of the best papers Mr. Noyes has written on the subject is that which has place in the printed records of -a "Hearing before the Committee on the judiciary, House of Representatives, Sixty-ninth Congress" (1st Session on H. J. Res., 208; Serial 20, April 20, 21, and 28, 1926). This paper contains a summary of Washington's case entitled: "The Washingtonian Americanization Catechism;" but it might well have been captioned: "Washington's Bill of Rights."

One of his papers on the subject was read before the Columbia Historical Society on March 21, 1916; and in it Mr. Noyes traces the association of the Presidents of the United States with the capital city. All the Presidents, it seems, had deep affection for the national capital. Several expressed themselves quite emphatically and sympathetically as to the unfortunate political plight of Washingtonians.

Mr. Noyes said that George Washington's personal interest in the Capital City was "notable and conspicuous;" that the city was, indeed, "the apple of his eye." The most poignant regret that came to President Washington's successor, John Adams, was (as Mr. Adams expressed it in 1800, in the first presidential address delivered in the new federal city) that our great first President did not live to see the city he had founded enter into its dignified national place as the Seat of the Government of the United States.

John Adams doubted whether Congress wished to exercise "the local powers over the District of Columbia, vested by the Constitution in the Congress of the United States." However, if they did, he hoped they would, while exercising it, give due consideration to "the future probable situation of the territory for the happiness of which you are about to provide." Adams saw Washington "as a capital of a great nation," and in his thoughtful words to Congress he seemed to hint that, in time, the place would become a community of such dimensions that its right to full citizenship could not be ignored.

Thomas Jefferson looked upon the District as a precious national heritage that should not be wasted. Madison hoped it would be made the seat of learning as well as of government. President Monroe hoped that the national metropolis would be made worthy of the nation, but also he seemed to hope that the nation would be worthy of its fundamental principles of government. Monroe, in his Message to Congress, on November 16, 1818, refers to the fact that the people of Washington "have no participation" in the legislative power exercised by Congress over the Federal City. The President points out that this is a "departure" from the "general principles of our system." He thought Congress might consider "whether an arrangement better adapted to the principles of our government . . . may not be devised."

President John Quincy Adams, like his father, was particularly desirous to develop the Capital City as an educational centre. Andrew Jackson almost admonished Congress, as guardian of the District, to be more careful of its ward. "Placed by the Constitution under the exclusive jurisdiction and control of Congress," said Jackson, "this District is certainly entitled to a much greater share of its consideration than it has yet received." Jackson was also "the first of

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the Presidents to urge specifically representation of the District in Congress by an elected delegate," points out Mr. Noyes. The President thought that an elected delegate of the District "to represent the wants of the citizens of this District on the floor of Congress" was "due to them and to the character of our government."

Jackson recognized the incongruity almost one hundred years ago, and most Presidents since his time have noticed it. So have thousands of legislators. Nevertheless, the original condition remains in force. President Jackson returned to the subject again in 1831. In the previous year he had said: "No portion of our citizens should be without a practical enjoyment of the principles of freedom, and there is none more important than that which cultivates a proper relation between the government and the governed." He would like their voice to be heard in Congress. In 1835, he recommended "the extension of every political right to the citizens of this District which their true interests require and which does not conflict with the provisions of the Constitution." Van Buren urged a "liberal and even generous attention to the interests of the District and a thorough and careful revision of its local government."

In his Inaugural Address, in 1841, President Harrison refers quite pointedly to the unfortunate political status of Washingtonians. "It is in this District only," said Harrison, "where American citizens are to be found who, under a settled policy, are deprived of many important political privileges without any inspiring hope as to the future. Their only consolation under circumstances of such deprivation is that of the devoted exterior guards of the camp-that their sufferings secure tranquility and safety within."

"Are there any of their countrymen who would subject them to greater sacrifices?" asks President Harrison. "Are their rights alone not to be guaranteed by the application of those great principles upon which our constitutions are founded?"

How does this "settled policy" of government after government of this great republic read, when considered beside such thoughts as Jefferson expressed in his "Summary View of the Rights of British America," which defends the protesting colonists? "Single acts of tyranny," wrote Jefferson, "may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period, and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematic plan of reducing us to slavery." Who can say that the comparison is one that can bring credit upon any American Government since that of John Adams? Yes! credit can be given to one Government-Grant's-in this respect. General Grant, for a brief period, did unshackle Washington, but, with this exception, Americans of the last century and a quarter who have had any inclination to do so, might logically have looked upon Washingtonians not as fellow-citizens, but as their "subjects."

President Harrison, in 1841, said: "We are told by the greatest of British orators and statesmen that at the commencement of the War of the Revolution the most stupid men of England spoke of 'their American subjects.' " Most Americans have an honored place in their thoughts for Isaac Barre, the English member of Parliament, who defended the cause of the colonists, and in Parliament declared that to him, Americans were rather "Sons of Liberty" than "children of England's planting," which was the bearing the King's minister, Townshend, thought that colonists held to the motherland. Paternalism was distasteful to full-grown self-reliant colonists. Three-quarters of a century after Barre's time, President Harrison was asking Americans: "Are there, indeed, citizens of any of our states who have dreamed of their subjects in the District of Columbia? Such dreams can never be realized by any agency of mine." Yet now, in 1928, three-quarters of a century after Harrison's time, any American who finds pleasure in the thought might still refer to Washingtonians as his subjects. It was idle for Harrison to assert that "the people of the District of Columbia are not the subjects of the people of the United States,

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but free American citizens." They were not then citizens, and are no different even now. Once upon a time, long, long ago, inhabitants of the federal district-to-be did enjoy true citizenship. Washingtonians were, said Harrison, "free American citizens" when the Constitution was formed; and there was force in his contention that, because they were then free, "no words used in that instrument could have been intended to deprive them of that character." Carrying the thought through, the President said: "If there is anything in the great principle of unalienable rights so emphatically insisted upon in our Declaration of Independence, they could neither make, nor the United States accept, a surrender of their liberties and-become the subjects --- in other words the slaves --- of their former fellow-citizens."

Slavery was soon to absorb the thoughts and stir the passions of Americans as overwhelmingly as Taxation without Representation had our forefathers. Emancipation came; Slavery was swept away; and Americans of Civil War days could pass "Uncle Tom's Cabin" on to their sons, so that, in reading it, the boys might understand what great principles had sustained the North through four terrible years. Who will write an "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for Washingtonians? Who will tell the story of Washington's bondage so forcibly that even legislators will be touched, and drop the whip they hold over the District?

As President Harrison looked upon the liberty-destroying clause of the Constitution, this "grant to Congress of exclusive jurisdiction in the District of Columbia can be interpreted, so far as respects the aggregate people of the U. S., as meaning nothing more than to allow to Congress the controlling power necessary to afford a free and safe exercise of the functions assigned to the general government by the Constitution." Still, that was merely a President's opinion. Congress has a mind of its own. Every man, indeed, has a right to think and speak for himself - every man except a Washingtonian. Half a million inhabitants in 1928, and hundreds of thousands of earlier years and decades, have been gagged, politically, throughout their life in Washington, because a score of landowning inhabitants, one hundred and thirty-eight years ago pledged their birthright of freedom "in consideration of the good benefits" they expected "to derive from having the Federal City laid off" upon their lands.

Of course, they had no power to do so. just as Anglo-Saxon law gives each head of family merely a life-interest in entailed estate, so only does an individual possess a life-interest in Man's natural rights. Governments cannot rob Man of his Magna Carta, and Man cannot rob his posterity of their birthright. Willingness of the original proprietors of Washington to submit to political serfdom does not cancel for all time the right of Washingtonians to political freedom. In fact, the agreement which nineteen original proprietors (or their agents) signed on March 30, 1791, merely conveyed to the President of the United States, in fee simple, "the whole of our respective lands which he may think proper to include in the lines of the Federal City." It is true, that in the same instrument, they gave to the President "the sole power of directing the Federal City to be laid off in what manner he pleases," but is not this relinquished "power of directing the Federal City" rather the right to lay its realty lines without interruption than the power of governing the city-to-be? If this is the only instrument in which the original proprietors signed away their own birthright, also the unassignable natural rights of their posterity, the claim of the United States to absolute despotic dominion over the District of Columbia rests upon very weak title.

However, possession is supposed to be nine-tenths of the law. Certainly, grievances cannot be righted unless they are taken to court and, unfortunately, in this case, so many wronged persons prefer to suffer supinely than initiate litigation. Had not God's command been so inescapable many morally weak Israelites may have been reluctant to follow Moses into the Promised Land. They had. learned the ways of their captors, and though their lot was not enviable, the future was unknown. Strong leaders were necessary to stir them

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from their lethargy for their own good. During the early days of our own Revolution, too, Tories and Pacifists far outnumbered the Patriots. The latter needed the strength of a true and honorable purpose to carry on, fighting for their own freedom and for that of those who would not fight for themselves. The latter would rather bow their heads to royalty, stifle what thoughts of independence they might in their more manly self-reliant moments have, and take with resignation if not with thankfulness what crumbs might fall from the royal table upon which they waited. So, now, in this century, one finds some Washingtonians unable, or unwilling, to stir their spirit of self-respect and independence into such action as will bring them into line with those stronger fellow-townsmen who say, loud enough for Congress to hear, that "Taxation without Representation" is an injustice that should and must be removed.

Congressmen can, and should remove it. A little original thinking would help them. As one writer sees the issue, Congress has power to exercise legislation over the District of Columbia, but the Constitution does not compel her to exercise that power any more than the power she has "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises," or that "to borrow money on the credit of the United States," or "to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the several states," or "to declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisals" imposes upon Congress the imperative necessity to lay taxes, or borrow money, or regulate commerce, or make war, unless there is need. But in the case of the District of Columbia, the constitutional authority to Congress has been interpreted to mean that she must and forever govern that part of the Republic, and deny the people of that region any voice at all in their own governmental affairs. Unfortunately, Congresses do not last long enough. By the time one Congress has begun to see the light, its life ends, and another Congress must trim a new lamp.

There is but one other thought that it might be well for fair-minded Americans to dwell upon for a moment. It is only supposition, but it ought to influence them, in deciding what the political status of the inhabitants of the national capital should be. General Washington thought much of this city. He personally bought several building lots in it, and upon two of these, at his command, houses were built. He did not intend either of them for his own use. "For my own convenience," he explained to the commissioner, Dr. Thornton, "another site will be chosen when, if ever, I am in circumstances to encourage the expense." The illustrious Ex-President was then in the last year of his life; but assuming he had lived much longer, and supposing he had built a residence for himself in the national capital, and that, in some way, he had lost possession of all his Virginia estate, would he, as a resident in the national capital, be literally "a man without a country" - in the country he had fathered? Would he, the man who had freed us, be denied freedom for himself? Your eyes open wide. Indignation shows in your face, or you smile, at such a preposterous supposition. But how, as a Washingtonian, could the great man be freed-if the constitutional article which has held Washingtonians in bondage from his day to ours has any force at all.