The species of a democracy which we now have, where capacity is unrecognized and unrepresented, and where the votes of men without standing in the community may and do offset and defeat the votes of men of property, of business experience and sagacity was not the creation of the Fathers of the American Republic and was not tolerated by them. In no sense is manhood suffrage or a democracy of numbers an integration of their spirit. They sought rather to establish a system of government by capacity and intelligence, and desired that the measures thereby enacted from time to time should be the result not of an appeal to numerical superiority but of wise and careful discussion and deliberation by bodies containing the most capable and disinterested men in the community. Most of them no doubt expected a property qualification for voters materially to contribute to this result and they saw no injustice or tyranny in demanding a qualification which any man might acquire by industry and thrift. It was not the men of 1776 who established the doctrine of manhood suffrage in the United States; and though in some of the more sparsely settled or mountainous states, such as Vermont, Kentucky and New Hampshire, the population was so small and conditions were so primitive that suffrage qualifications seemed superfluous and were never adopted, yet the country as a whole, including the great states of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Virginia, stood for the principle of a properly qualified electorate long after American independence.