These Virginia Convention debates were the last, the ablest, and the most exhaustive public discussions of the suffrage question in the United States and must be considered as having included all the arguments on either side which were strongly present to the minds of American politicians and publicists of the time. They were opened with great ability by Judge Upshur in a very forcible argument lasting several days in favor of property representation. Many of the superficial minded among the delegates favoring extension had come to Richmond relying upon the proposition that suffrage is a natural right. Upshur shattered this notion right at the beginning, and it was but little heard of in the Convention afterwards. The absurdity of a savage being born with a natural right to participate in a government which was not even imagined until thousands of years afterwards was easily made apparent. “Is it not a solecism” (said Barbour) “to say that rights which have their very being only as a consequence of government, are to be controlled by principles applying exclusively to a state of things when there was no government?” Some of the delegates were evidently familiar with Rousseau, and with his theory of a social compact. They discussed at length, but without result, the question whether suffrage is or is not a right derived from this supposed agreement; and if so, whether it was strictly personal or individual, or whether property rights were also included within the contract, and might therefore properly be considered in allotting suffrage privileges. This naturally raised the question also inconclusively debated whether property as such is a constituent element of society; or whether it is not rather a result of society action, and its acquisition one of the principal inducements to enter social bonds.