A very short sketch of the history of manhood suffrage in this country may be useful here as a preliminary to a brief review of its actual operations. Though some traces of a belief in the abstract right of all men to vote may be found in the England of the middle ages, yet our English ancestors prior to the Protestant Reformation had, generally speaking, no idea of a vote not founded on property or on such a recognized business standing as might give an assurance of stability of character or of a substantial interest in the affairs of the community or nation. The first English public utterance in favor of manhood suffrage that has come to the writer’s attention was made in 1647 by some of the sect of Congregationalists or Independents. That body was divided in opinion on the subject. Those who favored it were called “Levellers,” and in so doing were opposed by the other Independents as well as by the Presbyterians, Catholics and Episcopalians. The Levellers claimed that the right to vote was conferred by natural law upon all freemen. Cromwell and Ireton of the Puritan leaders opposed them, and insisted that no man had a right to vote on the affairs of the country or the choice of lawmakers who had not a property or a business interest; saying that those who have “noe interest butt the interest of breathing” should have no voice in elections. The establishment of qualifications for voters in the American Colonies during the Colonial period was left entirely in the hands of the Colonies themselves; Great Britain not interfering. The first colonists were without any settled policy on the subject. Massachusetts had a religious qualification and some of the Puritans who wished to establish a theocracy or a church government in New England on the basis of the Independent or Congregational polity were in favor of making church membership the only qualification. The first settlers being without holdings in the colony, probably dispensed with a property qualification at first or waived it as impracticable. But very soon it was decided that only those having an interest in the colony should have a voice in its affairs; and the rule of a property qualification for voters was speedily established in all the colonies; in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut in 1630; in Rhode Island in 1658; in New Jersey in 1665 and North Carolina in 1663; in Maryland and in Virginia in 1670; in Pennsylvania in 1682; in South Carolina in 1692; in New York about 1701; in Delaware 1734; and in Georgia in 1761. In five colonies, namely, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, the property held might be either real or personal; in all the others it was required to be land. Some American theorists at the time of the Revolution held a belief or a half belief in manhood suffrage but they were few in number. In certain political declarations published not long prior to 1776 we find propositions that all men are naturally entitled