Before the amendment of the organic law herein next mentioned I find but one piece of such legislation; by an act approved in 1803 the "freeholders, landholders and householders" of the city of Natchez were authorized by a majority vote to elect municipal officers, and the act further reads that "for the better understanding of the meaning of the term householder, it is hereby declared that any person who shall be in the occupancy of a room, or rooms, separate and apart to himself, shall be deemed a householder, and entitled to vote at the annual and other meetings of the said city: Provided that such occupancy shall have existed six months next preceding such election." Were this explanatory enactment omitted it would seem that to entitle a person to vote he should have been a freeholder and a landholder and a householder, all three conjointly, but it is apparent that the legislature did not so intend, since it provided by the explanation that if he were a householder alone, he would have been entitled to vote. The explanation, while directed at a definition of a householder, settles by indirection the only doubt arising from the text sought to be explained, but unfortunately the proviso brought with it a greater difficulty than the explanation had removed, and that was whether other householders than those directed to be so deemed, were required to have been such for six months before offering to vote. The phraseology suggests legislative amendments and indicates a difference of opinion as to who should be intrusted to vote; but all seem to have agreed upon permanent residence anchorage to the soil as an essential qualification, the difference being as to rigidity and extent to which it should be carried. The most notable thing about this, the first legislative act of Mississippi conferring the right of suffrage, is that no distinction is made because of age, color, or sex. Whether this were by accident or design, and whether other persons than adult white males really voted thereunder, does not appear. By an Act of Congress, approved Jan. 9th, 1808, the organic law so far as it related to Mississippi Territory, was amended so as to provide that every free white male person in the Mississippi Territory, above the age of 21 years, having been a citizen of the United States, and resident in the said territory one year next preceding an election of representatives, and who has a legal or equitable title to a tract of land by virtue of any act of Congress, or who may become the purchaser of any tract of land from the United States of the quantity of fifty acres, or who may hold in his own right a town lot of the value of one hundred dollars within the said territory, shall be entitled to vote for representatives to the general assembly of said territory. The change just made in the suffrage laws of the territory can best be appreciated by the use of parallel columns.