As a result of the unwelcome legislation, the Republicans received the whole vote of the Methodists for the "Toleration and Reform Ticket" of 1817, which repeated the nominations of the preceding election. The Episcopalians of course favored the reëlection of Lieutenant-Governor Ingersoll. One small provocation by the Congregationalists of the First Church of New Haven--the attempt to place the odium of expulsion upon a member who became an Episcopalian--did not tend to allay feeling. The Toleration party were sure of the votes of the more feeble dissenters, whose interests they promised to regard, as well as of those of the Baptists and of such Federalists as disapproved of the high-handed policy of the Standing Order. The Tolerationists were also counting upon a steady increase of recruits from the Federal ranks as soon as the appreciation of a recent attack by the legislature upon the judiciary and its danger should become more and more realized. Many such recruits, convinced of the necessity of constitutional reform, had gathered at the general meeting of Republicans held in New Haven in October, 1816, to make up the ticket for the spring election of 1817. The campaign issue was "whether freemen shall be tolerated in the free exercise of their religious and political rights." It was met by the election of Governor Wolcott with a majority of 600 votes over ex-Governor J. Cotton Smith, and by no opposition to the reëlection of Lieutenant-Governor Ingersoll. [w] At the same election many minor Republican officials were seated, and the House went Republican by an assured majority of nearly two to one, the Senate remaining strongly Federal. Governor Wolcott's inaugural placed before the Assembly the following subjects for consideration: (1) A new system of taxation; for, as the governor pointed out, the capitation tax was equivalent to about one-sixteenth of the laboring man's income. (2) Judges of the Superior Court should hold their office during good behavior instead of by annual appointment by the legislature. (3) There should be a complete separation of legislative and judicial powers of government. (4) Rights of conscience and the voluntary support of religion, though if necessary with "laws providing efficient remedies for enforcing the voluntary contracts for their [ministers'] support," should be considered; and (5) Freedom of suffrage. In concluding, the governor urged that "whenever the public mind appears to be considerably agitated on these subjects, prudence requires that the legislature should revise its measures, and by reasonable explanation or modifications of the law, restore public confidence and tranquillity." [x]