There is, further, a memorandum of his motion in regard to the right of suffrage, by virtue of which "every freeman who has attained the age of twenty-one years, and been a resident and inhabitant during one year next before the day of election, every naturalized freeholder, every naturalized citizen who had been assessed for state or county taxes for two years before election day, or who had resided ten years successively in the State, should be entitled to the suffrage, paupers and vagabonds only being excluded." Certainly, in his conservative limitations upon suffrage, he did not consult his own interest as a large landholder inviting settlement, nor pander to the natural desires of his constituency.
In an account of this convention, written at a later period, Mr.
Gallatin said that it was the first public body to which he was elected, and that he took but a subordinate share in the debates; that it was one of the ablest bodies of which he was ever a member, and with which he was acquainted, and, excepting Madison and Marshall, that it embraced as much talent and knowledge as any Congress from 1795 to 1812, beyond which his personal knowledge did not extend.

Among its members were Thomas McKean, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the Continental Congress, Thomas Mifflin and Timothy Pickering, of the Revolutionary army, and Smilie and Findley, Gallatin's political friends.

General Mifflin was its president.
But mental distraction brought Mr.Gallatin no peace of heart at this period, and when the excitement of the winter was over he fell into a state of almost morbid melancholy.

To his friend Badollet he wrote from Philadelphia, early in March, that life in Fayette County had no more charms for him, and that he would gladly leave America.

But his lands were unsalable at any price, and he saw no means of support at Geneva.
Some one has said, with a profound knowledge of human nature, that no man is sure of happiness who has not the capacity for continuous labor of a disagreeable kind.