Cite as: 514 U. S. 779 (1995)
Thomas, J., dissenting
If the majority can draw no support from state treatment of religious qualifications and rotation requirements, we are left only with state treatment of property qualifications. It is true that nine of the State Constitutions in effect at the time of the framing required members of the lower house of the state legislature to possess some property, see ante, at 823-824, n. 33, and that four of these Constitutions were revised shortly after the framing but continued to impose such requirements, see ante, at 824-825, and n. 35. Only one State, by contrast, established a property qualification for the Federal House of Representatives. But the fact that more States did not adopt congressional property qualifications does not mean that the Qualifications Clauses were commonly understood to be exclusive; there are a host of other explanations for the relative liberality of state election laws.37 And whatever the explanation, the fact remains that
the State Constitution to narrow the legislature's choices for Senator than they could amend the State Constitution to take the appointment of Senators entirely away from the legislature. It obviously would not follow that they doubted their ability to amend the State Constitution to impose constraints on their own choice of Representatives. The ratifying convention's proposal thus sheds absolutely no light on whether New Yorkers considered the Qualifications Clauses to be exclusive.
37 Property qualifications may simply have seemed unnecessary. For instance, it surely was far more likely that a pauper would secure one of the 202 seats in the South Carolina House of Representatives than that he would secure one of South Carolina's five seats in the United States House of Representatives. Compare S. C. Const. of 1778, Art. XIII, in 6 Thorpe 3251, with U. S. Const., Art. I, § 2, cl. 3; cf. S. C. Const. of 1790, Art. I, § 3 (providing for a 122-seat State House of Representatives), in 6 Thorpe 3258. It may be significant, then, that the one State that saw fit to enact a congressional property qualification was also the State that had the largest congressional delegation. See U. S. Const., Art. I, § 2, cl. 3 (allocating 10 seats to Virginia). In addition, people of the day expected that "[t]he representatives of each State [in the federal House] . . . will probably in all cases have been members . . . of the State legislature." The Federalist No. 56, at 348 (Madison); see also n. 17, supra (quoting article by John Stevens, Jr.). Because most States had property re-
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