Laws for the government of the territory were to be chosen by the Governor and the judges from the laws of the states. The judges were Jesse B. Thomas and William Sprigg, natives of Maryland, and Alexander Stuart, a native of Virginia. It is worthy of note that of the twelve laws chosen before the meeting of the first territorial legislature, five were from Kentucky, three from Georgia, two from Virginia, one from South Carolina, and one from Pennsylvania.(266) A people practically southern in origin was being governed by officials from the south under southern laws. Illinois entered the second grade of territorial government in 1812, electing its first legislature in October.(267) In the preceding May, Congress had passed an act making radical and most important extensions in the suffrage in Illinois, over that which had been prescribed by the Ordinance of 1787. The new provision was: “Every free white male person who shall have attained the age of twenty-one years, and who shall have paid a county or territorial tax, and who shall have resided one year in said Territory previous to any general election, and be at the time of any such election a resident thereof, shall be entitled to vote for members of the Legislative Council and House of Representatives of the said Territory.” Each county was to elect one member of the Legislative Council, to serve for four years. The territorial delegate to Congress was also made elective by the citizens.(268) One has but to consider what a complete revolution this act brought about to appreciate its great significance. Previously the Legislative Council had been appointive by the President of the United States, from nominees of the territorial House of Representatives, the nominees being twice the number necessary; the delegate to Congress had not been chosen by popular vote; and a freehold qualification for the elective franchise had obtained. Early petitions show how much the people complained of a landed aristocracy,(269) and letters written by Governor Edwards early in 1812 show how well founded was the complaint. No preëmption act had yet been passed, and of the more than twelve thousand inhabitants of Illinois some two hundred and twenty possessed a freehold of fifty acres, thus giving the balance of power, if the territory should enter the second grade under the old provision, to one hundred and eleven persons. Nearly one-third of the entire population lived either near the Ohio or between it and the Kaskaskia, and among them there were not more than three or four freeholders, and not one who possessed two hundred acres—the necessary qualification for a representative. With no public lands yet offered for sale, with no right of preëmption, with a freehold qualification for the suffrage, this law enfranchising squatters was of prime importance.(270)