Another incident, of less importance, but interesting as showing the feeling abroad and the means by which it might, for a time, be suppressed, occurred at a meeting of the inhabitants of Boston later in the year, to choose some men to divide additional town-land. The voting was by secret ballot, for the first time, and Winthrop, Coddington, and the other leaders failed of election. The first stated in his account of the affair, that the electors chose mostly men of “the inferior sort,” fearing that the richer men would give the poor an unfairly small proportion of land, the policy, he added, having been to leave a large amount undivided for newcomers and commons.[385] The argument, which was sound, might perhaps have been considered sounder by the discontented, had the governor himself, for example, not acquired by that time above eighteen hundred acres, Saltonstall sixteen hundred, and Dudley seventeen hundred.[386] After Winthrop had made a speech, and the Reverend Mr. Cotton had “showed them that it was the Lord's order among the Israelites to have all such businesses committed to the elders,” a new vote was ordered and the magistrates were elected.[387] Footnote 385: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 181. Footnote 386: Adams, _Three Episodes_, vol. I, p. 365. Footnote 387: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 181. It was evident that, if the little group of leaders, lay and ecclesiastic, were to retain power permanently, in view of the spirit evinced by the people, and the extremely rapid growth of the population, it could be only by securing a firmer hold upon the body of magistrates and the election of freemen. A few months previously, Cotton had preached a sermon arguing that the magistrates, who were annually elected under the charter, were entitled to be perpetually reëlected, except for “just cause”; and he compared their rights to office with those of a man in his freehold estate.[388] This suggestion seems to have borne fruit something more than a year afterward, when, it having been shown “from the word of God, etc., that the principal magistrates ought to be for life,” it was voted that a council should be created, to have such powers as the General Court should grant them, and not to be subject to removal except for crimes or “other weighty cause.” This, of course, was again a violation of the charter, and, like so much of the reactionary legislation, was due to the direct influence of the clergy.[389] Though Winthrop, Dudley, and Endicott were elected to the new offices, the council was never granted any powers, and the plan failed.[390] Footnote 388: _Ibid._, vol. I, p. 157. Footnote 389: R. C. Winthrop, _J. Winthrop_, vol. II, p. 271. Footnote 390: J. Winthrop, _History_, vol. I, p. 220; _Massachusetts Records_, vol. I, pp. 167, 174, 195, 264.