constitution of the Court of Proprietors. In this case, as in almost all
the rest, the remedy was not applied directly to the disease. The
complaint was, that factions in the Court of Proprietors had shown, in
several instances, a disposition to support the servants of the Company
against the just coercion and legal prosecution of the Directors.
Instead of applying a corrective to the distemper, a change was proposed
in the constitution. By this reform, it was presumed that an interest
would arise in the General Court more independent in itself, and more
connected with the commercial prosperity of the Company. Under the new
constitution, no proprietor, not possessed of a thousand pounds capital
stock, was permitted to vote in the General Court: before the act, five
hundred pounds was a sufficient qualification for one vote; and no value
gave more. But as the lower classes were disabled, the power was
increased in the higher: proprietors of three thousand pounds were
allowed two votes; those of six thousand were entitled to three; ten
thousand pounds was made the qualification for four. The votes were thus
regulated in the scale and gradation of property. On this scale, and on
some provisions to prevent occasional qualifications and splitting of
votes, the whole reformation rested.

[Sidenote: The ballot.]

[Sidenote: Indian interest.]

Several essential points, however, seem to have been omitted or
misunderstood. No regulation was made to abolish the pernicious custom
of voting by _ballot_, by means of which acts of the highest concern to
the Company and to the state might be done by individuals with perfect
impunity; and even the body itself might be subjected to a forfeiture of
all its privileges for defaults of persons who, so far from being under