Although the doctrine that governments were instituted and maintained for the protection of private property as well as life and limb was prominent in the minds of all the conservatives and was acknowledged by nearly every delegate in the Virginia Convention, yet the undoubted fact that the act of political voting is a responsible public function needing special preparation and qualification was not in Richmond any more than previously in Boston realized by the body of delegates; nor was the fact that government is a business organization, needing the services of expert business men, suggested among them; nor the manifest expediency of using the practice of business as a school for the voter. The philosophy of the delegates did not go beyond the theory of government as an agency for the protection of private property rights and the kindred belief that a permanent and tangible interest in the State was a necessary requirement of a voter. We have seen that in the Virginia Bill of Rights, adopted in 1776, the right of suffrage was expressly limited to men having “sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with and attachment to the community.” In 1829 the principal, and with most of the Virginia delegates the only objects aimed at in imposing a qualification upon the voters were the protection of property and the creation of an electorate interested in the prosperity of the state; the right of society to demand that the voter bring to the polls a trained and disciplined mind was lost sight of altogether.