Early Male Inhabitant of Full Age.
739
When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had constitutions of their own. Rhode Island continued to act under its charter from the Crown. Upon an examination of those constitutions, we find that in no State were all citizens permitted to vote. Each State determined for itself who should have that power.
Thus, in New Hampshire, "every male inhabitant of each town and parish, with town privileges and places unincorporated in the State, of twenty-one years of age and upwards, excepting paupers and persons excused from paying taxes at their own request," were its voters; in Massachusetts, "every male inhabitant of twenty-one years of age and upwards, having a freehold estate within the Commonwealth of the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the value of sixty pounds"; in Rhode Island, "such as are admitted free of the company and society" of the colony; in Connecticut, such persons as had "maturity in years, quiet and peaceful behavior, a civil conversation, and forty shillings freehold or forty pounds personal estate," if so certified by the selectmen; in New York, "every male inhabitant of full age, who shall have personally resided within one of the counties of the State for six months immediately preceding the day of election, ... if during the time aforesaid he shall have been a freeholder, possessing a freehold of the value of twenty pounds within the country, or have rented a tenement therein of the yearly value of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to the State"; in New Jersey, all inhabitants ... of full age, who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate in the same, and have resided in the county in which they claim a vote for twelve months immediately preceding the election"; in Pennsylvania, "every freeman at the age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State two years next before the election, and within that time paid a State or county tax which shall have been assessed at least six months before the election"; in Delaware and Virginia, "as exercised by law at present"; in Maryland, "all freeman above twenty-one years of age, having a freehold of fifty acres of land in the county in which they offer to vote and residing therein, and all freemen having property in the State above the value of thirty pounds current money, and having resided in the county in which they offer to vote one whole year next preceding the election"; in North Carolina, for Senators, "all freemen of the age of twenty-one years, who have been inhabitants of any one county within the State twelve months immediately preceding the day of election, and possessed of a freehold within the same county of fifty acres of land for six months next before and at the day of election," and for members of the House of Commons, "all freemen of the age of twenty-one years, who have been inhabitants in any one county within the State twelve months immediately preceding the day of any election, and shall have paid public taxes"; in South Carolina, "every free white man of the age of twenty-one years, being a citizen of the State, and having resided therein two years previous to the day of election, and who hath a freehold of fifty acres of land, or a town lot of which he hath been legally seized and possessed at least six months before such election, or (not having such freehold or town lot), hath been a resident within the election district in which he offers to give his vote six months before said election, and hath paid a tax the preceding year of three shillings sterling toward the support of the Government"; and, in Georgia, such "citizens and inhabitants of the State as shall have attained to the age of twenty-one years, and shall have paid tax for the year next preceding the election, and shall have resided six months within the county."
In this condition of the law in respect to suffrage in the several States, it can not for a moment be doubted that, if it had been intended to make all citizens of the United States voters, the framers of the Constitution would not have left it to implication. So important a change in the condition of citizenship as it actually existed, if intended, would have been expressly declared.
But if further proof is necessary to show that no such change was intended, it can easily be found both in and out of the Constitution. By
