The elevation to office of many of the hated, aristocratic supporters of Great Britain inflamed the minds of the “Liberty boys” and their followers, and made the chasm between the classes, already wide, yet wider. The bitterest feeling cropped out. Hamilton, put upon the defensive, took pains in his addresses to assure the people of the baselessness of the accusation that he aimed to keep the rich families in power. That result, however, had been partially assured by the State constitution of 1777. Gaging sound citizenship by the ownership of property, the draughtsmen of that instrument allowed only actual residents having freeholds to the value of £100, free of all debts, to vote for Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and State Senators, while a vote for the humbler office of Assemblyman was given only to those having freeholds of £20 in the county or paying forty shillings rent yearly. Poor soldiers who had nobly sustained the Revolutionary cause were justly embittered at being disqualified by reason of their poverty, while full political power was given to the property-owning Tories. “The inequality,” wrote one who lived in those days, “was greatly added to by the social and business customs of the times.… There was an aristocracy and a democracy whose limits were as clearly marked by manner and dress as by legal enactment.… The aristocracy controlled capital in trade, monopolized banks and banking privileges, which they did not hesitate to employ as a means of perpetuating their power.” Dr. John W. Francis tells, in his _Reminiscences_, of the prevalence in New York for years after the Revolution of a supercilious class that missed no opportunity of sneering at the demand for political equality made by the leather-breeched mechanic with his few shillings a day. Permeated with democratic doctrines, the populace detested the landed class. The founding of the Society of the Cincinnati was an additional irritant. Formed by the officers of the Continental army before disbandment, this society adopted one clause especially obnoxious to the radicals. It provided that the eldest male descendant of an original member should be entitled to wear the insignia of the order and enjoy the privileges of the society, which, it was argued, would be best perpetuated in that way. Jefferson saw a danger to the liberties of the people in this provision, since it would tend to give rise to a race of hereditary nobles, founded on the military, and breeding in turn other subordinate orders. At Washington’s suggestion the clause was modified, but an ugly feeling rankled in the public mind, due to the existence of an active party supposedly bent on the establishment of a disguised form of monarchy.