Though Gooch was solicitous for the welfare of the poor planter, he was not in favor of manhood suffrage. So he affixed his signature to a bill limiting the right to vote to freeholders owning 100 acres of unoccupied land or twenty-five acres with a house.[15] Had he had his way the limitation would have been greater. "Yet as the former laws had allowed any kind of a freehold to give that right, and all attempts made heretofore to exclude the mob of the populace ... had proved vain, it is much better to have that point fixed on some certain basis, than to leave all persons indefinitely at liberty to have a vote. ... After such a beginning it may be hoped a further regulation will follow to remove from the House such members as have little recommended them to the people's choice besides the art of stirring up discontents."[16] Though Gooch thus frankly avowed his dislike of democracy, he promoted its growth by encouraging the westward expansion of settlement, not only in the Piedmont, but in the Shenandoah Valley. In 1736 he wrote the Lords of Trade: "Great numbers, as well of his Majesty's natural born subjects as foreigners, ... have removed into this colony on the west side of our mountains." This he pointed out would be a protection to the older parts of the colony by heading off any attempt of the French at penetration. Perhaps it had not occurred to Gooch that expansion would divide the colony into two parts--the democratic up-country, and the aristocratic tidewater. Spotsylvania, Brunswick, Goochland, Amelia, Caroline, and other counties in the Piedmont were filling up with small farmers from the east, Frederick with poor Germans and Swiss. It is true that some well-to-do planters established "quarters" managed by overseers above the Fall Line, and later invaded parts of the Valley, but even as late as the French and Indian War frontier conditions persisted in the regions on either side of the Blue Ridge. The influence of the west grew steadily as each new county sent its two representatives to the House of Burgesses. Whereas in 1727 when there were 65 members of the House, only 10 were from the west, in 1752, when the members numbered 104, 46 were from the western or southwestern counties. The time was not distant when the up-country members would count a majority. A bewigged Carter, or Harrison, or Wormeley, in his broadcloth suit with silver buttons, may have been resentful when a roughly clad delegate from Albemarle or Frederick took a seat beside him, but he dared not show it.