" These three millions became, by the
Bill of '93, entitled to the elective franchise; or, as the Bill itself
more correctly expressed it, "such parts of all existing oaths," as put
it out of their power to exercise the elective franchise, were repealed.
The Catholics were not slow in availing themselves of this important
privilege, which they had not enjoyed since the first year of George the
Second's reign--a period of sixty-six years.[54] They soon began to
influence the elections in at least three out of the four provinces; but
they influenced them only through their landlords, not daring, for a
full generation after, to give independent votes. A landlord had
political influence in proportion to the number of voters he brought, or
rather drove, to the poll. To secure and extend this influence, the
manufacture of forty-shilling freeholders went on rapidly, and to an
enormous extent. The Catholics were poor, numerous, subservient, and
doubtless grateful for recent concessions; so bits of land, merely
sufficient to qualify them for voting, were freely leased to them, which
they as freely accepted.[55] On these they built cabins, relying on the
potato for food, and on a little patch of oats or wheat, to pay their
rent and taxes.
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