RECORDS OF THE FEDERAL CONVENTION ?O? T?d?y MADISON .4?g? 7 litfie duped by the association of the words, "taxation & 1Kepre- senration"--The man who does not give his vote freely is not represented. It is the man who dictates the vote. Chil- dren do not vote. Why? because they want prudence. because they have no will of their own. The ignorant & the dependent can be as little trusted with the public interest. He did not conceive the difficulty of defining "freeholders" to be insuperable. Still less that the restriction could be unpopular. ? of the people are at present freeholders and these will certainly be pleased with it. As to Merchts. &c. if they have wealth & value the right they can acquire it. If not they don't des6rve it. Col. Mason. We all feel too strongly the remains of antlent prejudices, and view things too much through a British Medium. A Freehold is the qualification in England, & hence it is imagined to be the only proper one. The true idea in his opinion was that every man having evidence of attachment to & permanent common interest with the Society ought to share in all its rights & privileges. Was this quali- fication restrained to freeholders ? Does no other kind of prop- erty but land evidence a common interest in the proprietor? does nothing besides property mark a permanent attachment. Ought the merchant, the monied man, the parent of a number of children whose fortunes are to be pursued in their own (Country), to be viewed as suspicious characters, and unworthy to be trusted with the common rights of their fellow Citizens Mr. (Madison.) the right of suffrage is certainly one 'of the fundamental articles of republican Government, and ought not to be left to be regulated by the Legislature. A gradual abridgment of this right has been the mode in which Aristoc- racies have been built on the ruins of popular forms. Whether the Constitutional qualification ought to be a freehold, would with him depend much on the probable reception such a change would meet with in States where the right was now exercised by every description of people. In several of the States a freehold was now the qualification. Viewing the subject in its merits alone, the freeholders of the Country would be the safest depositories of Republican liberty. In future times a
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