“The charter of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay being that of a trading company, and not municipal in its character, the officers of the Colony were originally chosen at general meetings of the whole body of freemen, precisely as at the present day the directors of a business corporation, a bank, for example, are chosen by the stockholders at a general meeting. In the choice of Assistants, who were to be eighteen in number, at these meetings of the Company, or, as they were called, Courts of Election, the practice seems to have been for the names of the candidates to be regularly moved and seconded, and put to the question, one by one, in the same manner with all other motions. This was then, as it is now, the mode of proceeding in England, in the election of the Speaker of the House of Commons, and in the appointment of committees of the House, when they are not chosen by ballot. Probably, also, it was the usual mode of proceeding in electing the officers of a private corporation or company. In voting upon the names thus proposed, it was ordered--with a view, doubtless, to secure the independence and impartiality of the electors--that the freemen, instead of giving an affirmative or negative voice in the usual open and visible manner, should give their suffrages by ballot, and for that purpose should ‘use Indian corn and beans: the Indian corn to manifest election, the beans contrary.’ The names of the candidates being thus moved and voted upon, each by itself, it followed, of course, that no person could be elected but by an absolute majority.”[4] The rule, thus curiously explained, continued in Massachusetts down to a recent day; at last it yielded to the exigency of public convenience, so that at this moment, I believe, popular elections throughout the United States are by the plurality rule. But I repeat, that this is no authority for overturning the rule of the majority in a legislative body, having in its favor so many reasons of law and tradition.