Having failed to realize their great purposes through the regular means, the leaders in the movement set to work to secure by a circuitous route the assembling of a Convention to “revise” the Articles of Confederation with the hope of obtaining, outside of the existing legal framework, the adoption of a revolutionary programme.
Ostensibly, however, the formal plan of approval by Congress and the state legislatures was to be preserved.
CHAPTER IV
PROPERTY SAFEGUARDS IN THE ELECTION OF DELEGATES
Under the protection afforded by these outward signs of regularity, the leaders in the movement for the new Constitution set to work in their respective legislatures to secure the choice of delegates prepared to take the heroic measures which the circumstances demanded. The zealous and dynamic element, of course, was favored by the inertness, ignorance, and indifference of the masses, and the confidence of the legislatures in their ability to exercise the ultimate control through the ratifying power. No special popular elections were called to complicate the problem of securing the right kind of a Convention and the leaders were confronted with the comparatively simple task of convincing the legislatures of the advisability of sending delegates. Naturally the most strenuous and interested advocates of change came forward as candidates.
The resolution of the Congress under the Articles of Confederation calling for the Convention provided that the delegates should be “appointed by the states.” The actual selection was made in each case by the legislature, both houses participating, except in Georgia and Pennsylvania, which had unicameral assemblies. That is, the delegates to the federal Convention were selected in the same fashion as were United States Senators under the present Constitution, in all states, previous to the adoption of the principle of direct election. This fact in itself removed the choice of delegates one degree from the electorate.
A further safeguard against the injection of too much popular feeling into the choice of delegates to the Convention was afforded by the property qualifications generally placed on voters and members of the legislatures by the state constitutions and laws in force in 1787.[[95]] In order to ascertain the precise character of the defence afforded to property by this barrier to universal manhood suffrage, it is necessary to inquire in detail into the qualifications then imposed.[[96]]
The New Hampshire constitution of 1784 was in force when the call for the election of delegates came. It provided that “no person shall be capable of being elected a senator who is not of the Protestant religion, and seized of a freehold estate in his own right of the value of two hundred pounds.”[[97]] Members of the lower house were required to possess an estate “of the value of one hundred pounds, one-half of which to be a freehold.” The suffrage was widely extended, for freeholders, tax payers, and even those who paid a poll tax could vote.
Massachusetts conferred the suffrage upon all males possessing a freehold estate of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds. A senator was required to be “seized in his own right of a freehold within this commonwealth, of the value of three hundred pounds at least, or possessed of a personal estate of the value of six hundred pounds at least, or of both to the amount of the same sum.” Every member of the house of representatives was required to be “seized in his own right of a free hold of the value of one hundred pounds, within the town he shall be chosen to represent, or any ratable estate to the value of two hundred pounds; and he shall cease to represent the said town immediately on his ceasing to be qualified as aforesaid.”
Like the neighboring state of Rhode Island, which sent no delegates to Philadelphia, Connecticut had continued after the Revolution under the old royal charter form of government without taking the trouble to draft a constitution. Under this old system, the suffrage was restricted to holders of real or personal property of a certain value. According to McKinley, “The forty-shilling freehold, translated later into seven dollars income from land, was retained as one of the alternative qualifications of the suffrage until the amendment in 1845 of the constitution of 1818.”[[98]] The alternative qualification here spoken of was the ownership of forty pounds’ worth of personal property, which was established in 1702 and remained until after the Revolution. The Connecticut Register of the time thus quaintly describes the franchise: “The qualifications for freemen are that they be at least twenty-one years of age, possessed of freehold estate to the value of 40s. per ann. or £40 personal estate in the general list of estates in that year wherein they desire to be admitted Freemen; or are possessed of estate as aforesaid and by law excused from putting it into the list; and being of quiet and peaceable behaviour.”[[99]]
New York gave a special position to the rights of property in the senate. Senators were required to be freeholders, and were chosen by freeholders “possessed of freeholds of the value of one hundred pounds.” With regard to the voter for members of the lower house, it was stipulated that “he shall have been a freeholder, possessing a freehold of the value of twenty pounds within said county, or have rented a tenement therein of the yearly value of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to this state.” An exception to this rule conferred the suffrage on all who were freemen in Albany, and in New York City, on or before October 14, 1775.