Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1778

Transcription

Even after independence, or especially after independence, Boston remains a revolutionary place. And one of the most significant achievements of this generation is the creation of the Massachusetts Constitution, which is the oldest functioning written constitution in the world. Now, initially the old provincial assembly, which the governor had suspended in 1774, kept meeting as a provincial congress and simply declared the office of governor vacant once we had declared independence in July of 1776. So, this Provincial Congress continues to meet, continues to be elected as a Provincial Congress, meeting in the Old State House in Boston. But then, the Provincial Congress is calling on people to pay taxes and to go into the military, and in fact over the course of the war almost a third of the man who serve in the Continental Army will come from Massachusetts. The people start asking what gives the Provincial Congress the power to enlist us in the military or ask us for taxes? And the Provincial Congress has said that the office of governor is vacant, well what gives them the power to do this? They're operating under the Charter of 1691. The charter was granted by the British monarch, we no longer recognize the authority the monarch. Where does their authority come from? So, in 1778 the Massachusetts assembly drafted a new constitution, they said this will be the fundamental law of Massachusetts. They sent it to the towns of Massachusetts for ratification, and much to their surprise the people in the towns rejected it. They said that this body, the Provincial Congress, does not have the authority to pass a constitution. A constitution is a fundamental law that derives from the sovereign power the people of the Commonwealth. You can't have a legislative body drawing up a Constitution which is the fundamental law. So, in the fall of 1779 a constitutional convention is elected, this convention will represent the sovereign power of the people of Massachusetts and will be able to devise a fundamental law. It's fortunate for us that John Adams happened to be in town at the time, he had come home on a six-month leave from his job as a minister in Europe. He comes home, is elected by the voters of Braintree to be one of their delegates to this assembly, this convention which assembled in Cambridge. Adams goes to the convention, there are about three hundred other people there, and they formed a committee to draw up a constitution, and as Adams said, the committee put him on a subcommittee, the subcommittee was John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin, and then the subcommittee created a sub-subcommittee which consisted of John Adams to draft a constitution. And this Constitution creates the, or devises the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it begins with a declaration of rights, the fundamental rights that people will enjoy, and the purpose of government is to protect these rights. It also creates a system of government, a balanced system. Adams believe there had to be a balance between rich and poor, as well as between the executive and legislative power. He thought that the government works best when there are checks on the different branches of government. So, the Massachusetts example: we have an assembly that represents the towns, in fact the people of the towns needed to have a moderate income to vote, you had to pay a pound in taxes every year, the equivalent to about forty dollars today. It is a property requirement but not an onerous one, it really is meant to represent a middle-class as we might configure it today. And to be a member of the assembly you had to have an estate worth at least 100 pounds in the town you represented, and each town would have one representative for every 150 taxpayers, or "ratable polls." Everyone in Massachusetts paid a one pound per person head tax, so for every person in town paying this tax, or for every 150 people paying this tax you have one representative in the assembly. So, the assembly would be quite large but would be very broadly representative of the people in the towns. To balance this, there would be a state senate, the senate would represent property. In order to be a member of the senate you had to have an estate worth 600 pounds, that is six times what you would need to be a member of the assembly. This body was to represent property, because Adam saw that those with property and those without property, or with less property, formed different interests. And if you simply let the rich people trample over the poor people that wouldn't be a suitable government, nor if you simply let the poor people overwhelm the rich people, because both have a certain role in society. The senate would represent property, there would be 40 senators and senatorial districts were determined by tax levies, so there would be eight senators from Suffolk County, which is where Boston is, eight from Essex County, where Salem is, one from Barnstable County, Berkshire County. The counties that contributed less in tax revenues would have fewer senators. So this balance is the rich against the poor, and Adams wrote that the "Great art of law giving is balancing the rich against the poor in the legislature." In addition, there will be governor someone who will govern. The governor will be elected directly by the people, and Massachusetts is the only state to have the governor elected by a popular vote. He is supposed to be a balance against parochial interests of the senators and the representatives. The governor has to be very rich person, he has to have an estate worth 1000 pounds, ten times what it would take to be a member of the assembly. And the idea is a really rich person is not as susceptible to bribery as someone with less means. And the governor also has to be a professing Christian. Now, most of these property qualifications have been dispensed with over the two centuries and more since the Constitution was created. So, Massachusetts creates a government with the fundamental idea of balancing different interests in the society, and Adams also wrote that the "You have to balance the executive again the legislative branch because their natural rivals, whichever doesn't have control over the other will ever be the lamb in the paws of the wolf." Periodically politicians denounced gridlock, typically if their party doesn't control the other branch of government they say you should give us control. Adams thought the gridlock with a good thing, it was an essential thing to protect liberty. And so the Massachusetts Constitution has this balance and these fundamental checks, it recognizes that people have interests but also isn't going to give your interest predominance in this system. So, it's a very carefully constructed government which recognizes that people have interests which they might pursue to the detriment of the liberty of others. So it's a marvelous achievement of 1780, creating this system of government with also a judiciary, a legal system, or a judicial system, and it also calls on the legislature to cherish education and says not only the college at Cambridge, but the grammar schools in all the towns, wanting in educated citizenry here for this new commonwealth being created. So, the Massachusetts Constitution, created in 1780, is still the fundamental governing system in Massachusetts with a three-part system, a governor, assembly, and a judiciary. The governor, elected in 1780 for a one-year term by a popular vote had a veto over legislative acts, the only governorship created in the 1770s-1780s who had a veto, also the only one who was popularly elected, and it does in some way become a model for the United States Constitution which is created seven years after the Massachusetts Constitution.