The above law was passed by the Legislature of 1801, which derived its authority from the first Constitution of the State.
The act recommending a convention of the people of this State, passed March 13, 1821. Session Laws of 1821, act 90, page 83, sec. 1. "Persons entitled to vote":
All free male citizens, of the age of twenty-one years or upward, who shall possess a freehold in this State, or who shall have been actually rated and paid taxes to this State, or who shall have been actually enrolled in the militia of this State, or in a legal, volunteer, or uniform corps, and shall have served therein either as an officer or private, or who shall have been or now are, by law, exempt from taxation or militia duty, or who shall have been assessed to work on the public roads and highways, and shall have worked thereon, or shall have paid a commutation therefor according to law, shall be allowed during the three days of such election to vote by ballot as aforesaid in the town or ward in which they shall actually reside.
Extract from Sec. 6th, Act 90:
And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates to be chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of Assembly from the respective cities and counties of this State, and that the same qualification for voters shall be required on the election for delegates, as is prescribed in the first section of this act, and none other.... And that all persons entitled to vote by this law for delegates, shall be eligible to be elected.
Extracts from the first Constitution of the State of New York, under and by virtue of which the Legislatures sat, which passed the acts of 1801 and 1821, from which the extracts above are taken. Sec. 7. Qualification of electors:
That every male inhabitant of full age, who shall have personally resided for six months within one of the counties of this State, immediately preceding the day of election, shall at such election be entitled to vote for representatives of the said county in Assembly, if during the time aforesaid, he shall have been a freeholder possessing a freehold of the value of £20, within the said county, or have rented a tenement therein of a yearly value of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to this State.
Sec. 10. And this Convention doth further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain, determine, and declare that the Senate of the State of New York shall consist of twenty-four freeholders, to be chosen out of the body of the freeholders, and they be chosen by the freeholders of this State, possessed of freeholds of the value of £100 over and above all debts charged thereon.
By section 17, the qualifications for voters for Governor are made the same as those for Senators.
The laws above quoted show this striking fact: Those men, black and white, prohibited from voting for members of the Assembly, were permitted to vote for delegates to said Conventions; and more than this, on each occasion they were eligible to seats in the body called to frame the fundamental law—the fundamental law from which Governors, Senators, and Members derive their existence.
The Constitutional Convention of Rhode Island, in 1842, affords another precedent of the power of the Legislature to extend the suffrage to disfranchised classes.
The disfranchisement of any class of citizens is in express violation of the spirit of our own Constitution. Art. 1, sec. 1:
No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land and the judgment of his peers.
