one of these women was hanna lee corbin of virginia. the sister of richard henry lee. she was a wealthy widow who paid taxes on her land. in 1778, she wrote a scathing letter to her brother asking why revolutionary principles did not apply to her. why, she asked, should she be deprived in her voice when she had at much stake in society as many men. her brother, richard henry lee, was flabbergasted. he simply did not anticipate this line of inquiry, and he had no adequate rejoinder for her question. he simply pointed to custom and tradition as the grounds of exclusion. but what this meant, in fact, is that hanna lee corbin and all the widows paying taxes like her were being deprived of representation simply on the basis of their sex, simply because they were women. surely, no woman in philadelphia in 1776 anticipated this. maybe john adams because abigail had primed him. now, what happened in new jersey is that the legislatures -- legislators in the state of new jersey took this principle of no taxation without representation seriously. and took it to its furthest extre