Note 131 — b. An Association against the Stamp Act in a Virginia County, 1766 (continued 2)

The sixth article seems to have been designed by George Mason, who drew it, as an argument for extending the franchise to heads of families. Mason drew also a plan for the frame of government, which the convention in the main adopted on June 29. In this plan he proposed to "extend" the franchise to leaseholders with seven-year terms, and to any "housekeeper" who was also the father of three children (Article V of Mason's Plan; printed in full in Kate Mason Rowland's Life and Correspondence of George Mason, I, 444 ff.). The convention, however, left the franchise as "now established by law"—on a freehold basis (American History and Government, §§ 105, 107). Mason, in his plan, suggested graded landed qualifications for holding office: £500 freehold to act as a member of his proposed electoral college to choose state senators; £1000 freehold to sit in the lower House; £2000 freehold to sit in the upper House.

It is often said that Mason proposed a £1000-freehold qualification for the franchise. The language of Section III of his "plan," taken by itself, would so indicate. But the clauses III and IV are very loosely worded and punctuated; and, when they are read in conjunction with Section V, the only possible conclusion is the one stated above. In proposing so liberal a franchise, however, Mason stood alone in Virginia in his day. Even Jefferson's plan for a Virginia constitution called for "a freehold of ¼ of an acre of land in a town, or 25 acres in the country" (Works, Ford edition, II, 7 ff.).

Eleven years later at the Philadelphia convention, Mason used the same language as in the Virginia bill of rights, in opposing a real-estate qualification for the national franchise; but he still advocated a landed qualification for membership in even the lower House of Congress.