Note 27 — THE REPRESENTATIVE SYSTEM, AND ITS PROPER BASIS.
Reading edition
The House for many years numbered upwards of five hundred members,—in 1835, '36, and '37 swelling to the truly "enormous and unwieldy size" of 615, 619, and 635; and even under the greatly reduced apportionment established by the Amendment of 1840, the numbers in the two years (1851 and 1852) preceding the present Convention were no less than 396 and 402. See Gifford and Stowe's Manual for the General Court, (Boston, 1860,) p. 130.