The two houses of Parliament had made the colonists accustomed to the bicameral system. In Virginia under company management the corporation council in England served in a measure as the upper house, with powers of general direction. In Massachusetts (where the company was technically resident in the colony), and in the proprietary and royal colonies as well, there was for a long time but one house. Finally, often as the result of dissensions between the deputies and the officials, the former came to sit apart,--the colonies thus in most cases returning to the English system of two houses; but the council was small, and had administrative functions which made it very different from the House of Lords. These colonial assemblies were schools for the cultivation of the spirit of independence. Burke said the colonists "had formed within themselves, either by royal instruction or royal charter, assemblies so exceedingly resembling a parliament in all their forms, functions, and powers that it was impossible they should not imbibe some opinion of a similar authority." 26. Privileges of the Colonists. Sidenote: The suffrage. Electoral qualifications varied greatly. In the consideration of this, as well as of other institutions, Massachusetts and Virginia must be taken as types of opposite systems, the other colonies departing more or less from them, according to proximity. Originally in Massachusetts, "any person inhabiting within the town" could vote at town-meetings; later, with the arrival of objectionable immigrants, this privilege was restricted (1634) to freemen,--practically all the members of the church,--and still later (1691), to "the possessors of an estate of freehold in land to the value of 40s. per annum, or other estate to the value of £40." In Virginia, at the start, all freemen were allowed to vote. But it was afterwards decided (1670) that the "usuall way of chuseing burgesses by the votes of all persons who, haveing served their time, are freemen of this country," was detrimental to the colony; and the principle was laid down that "a voyce in such election" should be given "only to such as by their estates, real or personall, have interest enough to tye them to the endeavour of the publique good." By the beginning of the eighteenth century a freehold test obtained in most, if not in all, the colonies. In 1746 Parliament added a further qualification, in the guise of a general naturalization law, providing that a voter must have resided seven years in his colony, taken the oath of allegiance, and professed the "Protestant Christian faith." Sidenote: Representation.