minimum tax qualification and that Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818 and Missouri in 1820 were admitted as manhood suffrage states, while some of the others, such as Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, merely prescribed tax qualifications which were far from onerous. In the older states the advance of the manhood suffrage movement was aided by the influences already referred to; by the French Revolutionary party, including many foreigners; the city laboring classes, the thriftless and discontented, and the restless horde of theorists, dreamers, penny-a-liners, political adventurers, demagogues, agitators, radicals of every stripe, and many of that numerous class who had more facility in talking than in thinking. There is even yet among people of small intelligence a widespread belief in the miraculous efficiency of voting; and that belief is no doubt accountable for some of the eagerness with which the suffrage was demanded by superficial men who thought to better their condition by politics, and who, though plainly lacking in efficiency, unable even to get together a few hundred dollars in property to qualify them as voters, nevertheless rated high their own capacity to decide problems of state. We may add to this as helping the movement the plausibility to shallow minds of the assertion that all men are equal; and the prestige given it by its being quite unnecessarily put by Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence. Another cause which has been said to have contributed, was the severe financial panic of 1819 which brought widespread distress and consequent discontent with things as they were. Why not try a change? is an argument which has more or less success at every election. Then too the American easy good nature and hospitality of character must have helped along; that softness which makes many dislike to refuse a boon which will not cost anything in cash or its equivalent. It must have seemed to many men easy and pleasant to vote to allow their neighbors to vote, especially when to a dull man the reasons to the contrary were not altogether obvious.