That from the date of the Rhode Island charter down to the year 1841, a period of nearly two hundred years, no person has been allowed to vote for town or State offices unless possessed of competent estates and admitted free in the several towns in which they resided.

That since the statute of 1728 no person could be admitted a freeman of any town unless he owned a freehold estate of the value fixed by law (now $134) or was the eldest son of such a freeholder.

That until the past year no attempt has been made, to our knowledge, to establish any other fundamental law, by force, than the one under which the people have lived for so long a period.

That at the January session of the legislature in 1841 a petition signed by five or six hundred male inhabitants, praying for such an extension of suffrage as the legislature might in their wisdom deem expedient to propose, was presented.

That, influenced by that petition, as well as by other considerations, the legislature at that session requested the qualified voters, or freemen, as they are called with us, to choose delegates at their regular town meetings to be holden in August, 1841, for a convention to be holden in November, 1841, to frame a written constitution.

That the result of the last meeting of this legal convention in February, 1842, was the constitution[118] accompanying this statement, marked ——­, which, in case of its adoption by the people, would have been the supreme law of the State.

[Footnote 118:  Omitted.]

Most of the above facts are contained in the printed report of a numerous committee of the legislature at their session in March, 1842, which report was adopted by the legislature.

That in May, 1841, after said legal convention had been provided for by the legislature, and before the time appointed for the choice of delegates by the qualified voters (August, 1841), a mass meeting was held by the friends of an extension of suffrage at Newport, at which meeting a committee was appointed, called the State committee, who were authorized by said mass meeting to take measures for calling a convention to frame a constitution.

That this committee, thus authorized, issued a request for a meeting of the male citizens in the several towns to appoint delegates to the proposed convention.

That meetings (of unqualified voters principally, as we believe) were accordingly holden in the several towns, unauthorized by law, and contrary to the invariable custom and usage of the State from 1663 down to that period; that the aggregate votes appointing the delegates to that convention were, according to their own estimate, about 7,200, whereas the whole number of male citizens over 21 years of age, after making a deduction for foreigners, paupers, etc., was, according to their own estimate, over 22,000.

That this convention, thus constituted, convened in Providence in October, 1841, and the constitution called the “people’s constitution” was the result of their deliberations.