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264 corporations. The elections were held whenever the assembly was dissolved, sometimes at such short notice that the total voting population, such as it was, could not be got to the polls. But the whole voting population, on account of the limitations of the suffrage, was small. In 1790 the proportion of voters for assemblymen to the total population was approximately twelve per cent. Using this as a percentage previous to the Revolution the voting population increased from 2,168 in 1698 to 20,256 in 1771. This is a liberal estimate too, because the percentage of people of African birth was less in 1791 than during the pre-revolutionary period." But even so, the voting population was small and therefore proportionately easy to manage. A voting population of from two to twenty thousand, scattered over twelve counties, gave no great difficulty to an aristocracy as coherent and well organized as that of New York province. And this was made easier still by the personal relation of the aristocracy to a portion of the voting population, and by the method of voting. That tenant voters would be largely influenced by lords of manors is perhaps sufficiently obvious. The method of voting, too, contributed to the same end. It was