Page:Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1st ed, 1833, vol II).djvu/98

 90 of superior excellence, adapted to all ages, and all nations.

§ 613. In Great-Britain, besides those negative qualifications, which are founded in usage, or positive law, such as the exclusion of persons holding certain offices and pensions, it is required, that every member for a county, or knight of a shire, (as he is technically called,) shall have a clear estate of freehold, or copyhold, to the value of £600 sterling per annum; and every member for a city or borough, to the value of £300, except the eldest sons of peers, and of persons qualified to be knights of shires, and except the members of the two universities.

§ 614. Among the American colonies antecedent to the revolution, a great diversity of qualifications existed; and the state constitutions, subsequently formed, by no means lessen that diversity. Some insist upon a freehold, or other property, of a certain value; others require a certain period of residence, and citizenship only; others require a freehold only; others a payment of taxes, or an equivalent; others, again, mix up all the various qualifications of property, residence, citizenship, and taxation, or substitute some of these, as equivalents for others.

§ 615. The existing qualifications in the states being then so various, it may be thought, that the best course would have been, to adopt the rules of the states respectively, in regard to the most numerous branch of their own legislatures. And this course might not have been open to serious objections. But, as the qualifications of members were thought to be less carefully defined in the state constitutions, and more susceptible of