As the flood of population moved towards the west and offered these
attractive examples of democratic growth, the influence reacted on
the older states. In her constitution of 1818, Connecticut gave the
franchise to tax-payers or members of the militia, as did
Massachusetts and New York in their constitutions of 1821. Maine
provided in her constitution of 1820 for manhood suffrage, but by
this time there was but slight difference between manhood suffrage
and one based upon tax-paying.
Webster in Massachusetts and Chancellor Kent in New York viewed with
alarm the prospect that freehold property should cease to be the
foundation of government. Kent particularly warned the landed class
that "one master capitalist with his one hundred apprentices, and
journeymen, and agents, and dependents, will bear down at the polls
an equal number of farmers of small estates in his vicinity, who
cannot safely unite for their common defense." [Footnote: Carter and
Stone, Reports of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention of
1821, 222.
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