USA > Connecticut > Tercentenary pamphlet series, v. 1 Connecticut and the British Government > Part 38
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In 1819 Thomas S. Williams, later chief judge of the Supreme Court of Errors, objected to the custom by which senators were allowed to act as justices of the peace throughout the state. This privilege, which had previ- ously been granted to members of the governor's council, was criticised as an unconstitutional union of legislative and judicial functions in the same persons. Republicans
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rallied to the support of senatorial privilege, and when the question was put to vote the custom was sustained. On several occasions after the ratification of the constitu- tion, doubt was expressed as to the propriety of the legis- lature's retaining control of petitions for divorce, a sub- ject which could more properly be disposed of by court action. In October, 1818, the assembly resolved to retain its jurisdiction in divorce cases, a policy not modified until 1843 when the Supreme Court was authorized to grant divorce on grounds of habitual intemperance or in- tolerable cruelty, action regarding all other cases to re- main with the legislature.
In 1820, while the assembly was considering the gen- eral problem of appropriations for the common or public schools, Seth P. Beers, later commissioner of the school fund, proposed to have the money, which the state ad- vanced to the towns, allotted on the basis of the number of children between the ages of four and sixteen. It was the custom to divide these funds among the towns ac- cording to the size of local grand lists upon which state taxes were laid. The scheme advocated by Beers was a reasonable one, because there was no connection between the wealth of a town and its need for school money. In fact, the towns with small tax lists usually needed more state aid than did wealthier centers. Nathan Pendleton of North Stonington declared categorically that the con- stitutional principle of equality of laws required school money to be allocated per child rather than by tax list, but the assembly held this scruple to be of small conse- quence, and the old system of distribution was retained.
A year later the house of representatives debated an- other question involving a fine point of constitutional in- terpretation. Elisha Tracy of Norwich introduced a bill to prohibit judges and justices of the peace from serving in
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the senate. The motion touched the problem, becoming very familiar to the lawmakers, of the separation of the powers of government. Calvin Willey of Tolland thought that all judicial officers should be excluded from both houses of the legislature, but the measure under discus- sion was not amended so as to embrace the lower house, and because it was held to be improper for the latter to force a restriction on the other branch of the assembly, the bill failed to pass. No satisfactory answer was made to the objection that the former practice was a violation of the spirit of the new constitution.
In 1822 there appeared another issue of similar nature, when a delegate from Greenwich asked for the repeal of a law which prohibited tavern keepers from being justices of the peace. Some opposition to this proposal was voiced by those who feared that taverners would try to create business for themselves as justices by plying quarrelsome men with liquor so as to stir up brawls. Elisha Tracy said that he would not like to see judges sitting in a barroom, polluting the stream of justice with ardent spirits. A con- stitutional aspect was injected into the discussion by Ralph I. Ingersoll of New Haven, who supported the mo- tion for repeal on the ground that every elector had a right to office. He saw no reason why a man should be denied a justiceship because he earned a living by the honest labor of keeping a tavern. This opinion did not impress a majority of the assembly, and the former pro- hibition was allowed to stand.
By this time the legislators had advanced beyond a consideration of issues involving only the separation of powers, and were discussing at length many questions which arose whenever the principles of the constitution clashed with established customs. In 1826, as the result of two bank failures, a new problem was debated. During
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the preceding autumn the Derby Bank, and the Eagle Bank of New Haven, had closed under circumstances which called for investigation. When a motion authoriz- ing a legislative review of the financial tangle was made, Charles Shepard of Suffield contended that the assembly had no right to make an investigation since the bank charters did not include provisions allowing such a pro- cedure. In making this point Shepard was not wholly guided by the state constitution but partly by the clause in the national constitution requiring states to respect the obligation of contracts, a legal issue which had been given prominence by John Marshall in the Dartmouth College case of 1819. The assembly, mindful of its past omnipotence, overruled his scruples whether they pro- ceeded from either the state or the national constitution, and created a committee to investigate the affairs of both banks. The reports of this body, which appeared inter- mittently over a period of nine years, were made the basis of legislation providing for state control of bank and insur- ance companies.
From a consideration of these incidents, each one of which may appear insignificant in itself but the culmina- tive effect of which was considerable, we cannot escape the conclusion that the assembly did not consider itself bound by any features of the constitution which placed restrictions upon the freedom of legislative action. The assemblymen believed, and court opinions of the time strengthened their conviction, that the Connecticut leg- islature could do anything not specifically denied to it by the constitution. Not until 1897 did a distinguished judge of the Supreme Court of Errors, William Hamersley, put a definite limitation upon this theory by declaring that it was the obvious intent of the constitution that the legis- lature should not exercise judicial functions.
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In many other respects than those associated with constitutional interpretation did the Republican party continue practices which, though not in accord with the reform principles on which the organic law was founded, were sanctioned by years of tradition. During the first decade of constitutional government at least three de- termined efforts were made to change the system of town representation in the lower house. A rational theory of popular government could hardly be reconciled to the fact that, in 1820, New Haven with a population of 8,327, and Union with a population of 757, both should have the same number of delegates in the assembly. Divergences of this sort grew more extreme in later years, yet the theory that towns should be equally represented has per- sisted so that in the twentieth century a spokesman of the small town interests could say: "There is not a man in the town of Haddam that would vote to change our pres- ent town representation; no, not a man or woman, boy or girl, from the cradle to the grave. They are not trained that way, and what is true of Haddam is true of the other towns."
Another significant feature of the early constitutional period is the fact that suffrage laws were not modified in any important particular. Just previous to the conven- tion of 1818 there was some sentiment in favor of extend- ing the franchise to anyone who paid taxes, either state or local. The convention retained the customary and more elaborate qualifications, that electors should maintain a good moral character, and should possess a freehold es- tate of the yearly value of seven dollars or should have paid state taxes within a year of the time at which they offered themselves for admission to the elector's oath. "Our prudent and discerning ancestors," declared a press correspondent, "did not consider the extension of this
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privilege [the franchise] to all classes and descriptions of men as being consistent with the genuine principles of civil liberty, or the stability and safety of government." Men sought to evade the property qualification by vari- ous devices; during periods of public excitement party leaders had voters qualified by making them gifts of small plots of cheap land which would be reconveyed after election. The legislature of 1819 placed an obstacle in the way of this practice by requiring that parcels of real estate must be held for one year, free of encum- brance, to qualify an elector, but the limitation was not always observed. Poll taxes were abated for persons of little property, and even town paupers found selectmen willing to admit them to the polls. The property qualifi- cation, nevertheless, was retained on the statute books until 1845.
In view of this tendency on the part of our forefathers to shape their policies by traditional considerations rather than by the constitution, we may raise the ques- tion as to whether the state underwent any important political changes in the years immediately following 1818. Respecting the general subject of government finances, it will be found that the Republicans adopted a policy of economy, and enforced it so strictly that many came to regard the treasury officials as cheese parers. Legislation in 1818 and 1819 materially reduced the liability of the state for the support of paupers, so that the Connecticut system of poor relief became the nearest approach to a purely town plan that could be found anywhere in Ameri- ca. In 1818 the Superior Court bench was reduced from nine members to five, a measure which saved the state some four thousand dollars a year. A little later, new regulations respecting the militia and state's prison fur- ther reduced yearly expenditures by seven or eight thou-
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sand dollars. This policy was a reasonable one when first inaugurated, as the nation suffered a period of hard times from 1819 to 1821, but it was continued long after the real need for economy had passed. The program had an unfortunate result in that it prevented the state from encouraging the advance of agriculture or industry and, more serious still, from making adequate provision for schools, insane asylums, and institutions for the deaf, the dumb, and the blind. Until after the middle of the cen- tury, humanitarianism was entirely a private concern, and local politicians set aside only small sums for philan- thropy, sums which cared for less than half of the needy cases.
But the picture of Connecticut's development during the early years of constitutional government is not quite as dark as the preceding features would seem to indicate. In 1819 the Republicans reformed the system of state taxes so that the burden on small farmers and tradesmen was lessened, and that on wealthy holders of stocks and bonds increased. Five years later aliens were freed from the necessity of petitioning the legislature for the right to purchase, hold, or convey real estate, permission to do these things being entrusted to the Superior Court. In 1828 the first amendment to the constitution was adopted, a measure which divided the state into districts for the election of senators, and thus gave the people more con- trol over the selection of candidates for the upper house. The senate was at the same time increased from twelve to twenty-one members.
Some other features of political life, which cannot be attached to laws or debates in the assembly, show that as the year 1830 approached the people were beginning to take a greater interest in governmental concerns. From 1819 to 1828 there had been but one political party of any
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size, the Republican, but after the latter year elections were contested by two and sometimes three strong or- ganizations. Officials no longer enjoyed extended terms, so that governors seldom remained in office more than two or three years, and assemblymen kept their seats but one or two sessions. These changes, however, were forced upon the state by the Jacksonian-Democratic party- they did not result from any ideas embodied in the con- stitution of 1818. Hence for at least a decade following the close of the convention, Connecticut was governed by the same principles that had been observed before the advent of a reforming party. The men who ruled the state were different-they were Republicans instead of Federalists-but their opinions were shaped by the same conservative training that former magistrates had re- ceived in little red schoolhouses and the white churches on barren hilltops. The making of a new constitution did not mark the beginning of a new era-it only threw into clear relief the fact that eighteenth-century habits of thought and action were still in the ascendency. This situation was later modified to some extent, because in the second quarter of the century secular trends in education and the rise of an industrial society forced the state to become more democratic, and certainly more progressive. But in the early constitutional period Connecticut had a government not of laws, or of men, but of traditions.
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Bibliography
THE available works on Connecticut history do not treat the period following the adoption of the constitution in a satisfactory manner. The latest, and best, general his- tory of the state, published in 1914 by George L. Clark, does not furnish the reader with much material on poli- tics subsequent to the Revolutionary period, as the author was especially interested in economic and social problems. An earlier work, by Alexander Johnston, pub- lished in 1887 in the American Commonwealth Series, is very inaccurate for the years following 1818, and I have found, on the average, two serious mistakes a page for the chapters covering the middle years of the nine- teenth century. The large cooperative work edited by Norris G. Osborn, contains several good essays on non- political features of local history, among which the fol- lowing are especially worthy of note: E. H. Jenkins, "Connecticut Agriculture"; G. B. Chandler, "Industry"; and Mrs. S. K. Mitchell, "Social Life and Customs." With these exceptions the historian must turn to original sources for material relating to the state in the nineteenth century. For those interested in a further study of local history through the medium of available printed works, I recommend as a guide the bibliographical notes ap- pended to the work by R. J. Purcell, Connecticut in Transition, 1776-1818 (Washington, 1918).
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4.6 54 .18
ConnecLicuL. History
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TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
QUI
SUSTINET
TRANSTULIT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
The New England Meeting House
PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 1933
TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS
The New England Meeting House"
NOAH PORTER
HE New England meeting house is the symbol of much that is characteristic of the New England life. Its erection was the start- ing point of every one of the earlier New England communities, and it has been the rallying point for nearly everything which is distinctive in their history. Around it are gathered the most interesting associations which bind the New Englander to his early home. For these reasons it has been selected as the topic for a few rambling thoughts which may be appropriate to the present occasion.
A meeting house supposes an organized community or society of men who have occasion to assemble together at regular intervals of time for the transaction of public business or the discharge of public duties. Inasmuch as the New England settler regarded the meeting house as
"This paper was written by the Rev. Noah Porter, president of Yale College, who died in 1892. It was read by request before the New England Society of Brooklyn, New York, on the evening of December 5, 1882, and printed in the New Englander for May, 1883. In preparing the article for inclusion within this series of pamphlets, a considerable portion of the material has been omitted as not of special interest to the reader of today, who will be careful to note the date (1882) when the paper was prepared.
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almost the prime necessity of his life, if not as essential to his existence, he must have recognized himself most dis- tinctly as what Aristotle calls a political animal, that is, an animal made for society and holding definite relations to the community. I make this observation because the impression is very commonly entertained that the typical New Englander, with all his excellencies, has pushed individualism to an extreme; that in his vivid sensibility to his private interests and rights he has often been in- sensible to his public duties, and that in excessive respon- sibility for himself he became altogether too careless of his fellow men. Hence as is reasoned, the tenacity and general impracticability with which he is supposed to have exemplified the right of private judgment. Hence the pertinacity with which he demanded a reason for every doctrine and measure, and the slowness with which he was convinced. Hence the silly stiffness with which, as some flippant critics insist, he rejected the rites and usages of what is called "the historic church" of England, and tried every existing practice and arrangement in church and state by some ideal standard of impossible perfection, either insisting with impracticable pertinacity upon use- less reforms, or separating himself from those organiza- tions which did not conform in every particular to the supposed divine will.
I do not deny that the New Englander carried many things to excess, as, for example, when he required a divine sanction for every religious observance, and even for every trivial action, going to such an extreme, as Coleridge humorously says, that he would not apply a corn plaster without a text of Scripture. I wish, however, to emphasize the fact, once for all, that he was emphati- cally what Bishop Hackett calls a public soul, that he was anything rather than an individual, separated from, or
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disbelieving in organized society, or unmindful of his responsibilities to his fellow men. The typical New Eng- lander did not cross the ocean to enjoy an isolated inde- pendence or to exercise what was called soul-liberty in the separate indulgence of his imaginative whimsicalities or the independent service of a private religion. The few who came hither with such theories, or who adopted them after they landed, like Roger Williams and Henry Vane, were strangers to the true New England spirit and the true New England theory. They did good service in their time, but it was not the special service to which the New Englander was called. They tempered the sharp grittiness of the original steel to an elastic flexibility, but they added nothing to its masterly power to build and defend. Whatever else Roger Williams accomplished, and all the rest of the "advanced men" of his time, they built few meeting houses, they organized few communi- ties, they provided few schools, they laid out few villages, they contributed very little to that remarkable organific and constructing power, and that indomitable public spirit which you can trace wherever the New England emigration has spread itself all over this land. The in- tolerance of the New Englander towards all sorts of intruders, the Quakers, the Baptists, and the Prelatists, grew out of his jealous zeal for the ideal perfection of the Christian commonwealth. It is explained by his devotion to what he conceived as the ideally perfect society, which he was called by God to build up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, leaving Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations to try their own experiments.
But to return to the meeting house. It was needed for an organized society, and that society was a church, that is, a community ordered after what was believed to be the one divine plan, definitely outlined and expressly
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sanctioned, as was supposed, by the highest authority. This society, in the eyes of the New Englander, should be small enough to meet in one place and perform all its functions within a single edifice, but in respect of author- ity be independent of all the world besides. Mark you, in respect of authority, but not in respect of duty; the duty to admonish and protest to other churches and the duty to receive admonitions and protests from them. While each of these churches was so tenacious of its theoretic isolation and its unshared autonomy as not even to rec- ognize the minister of any other church as having any official relations to itself, it was held by its very essence and aim to be so closely confederated with every other church as through council and synod to be capable of a well-compacted organization, such as was needed in the early generations of the New England life.
Out of the church grew the town; or rather the town was evolved or developed along with the church. Whether church members, as in Massachusetts and New Haven, were at first the only voters, or whether as in Connecticut, the town voted into its commonwealth, those men, and those only, who were fit to be freemen, it was all the same, as the church was the germ and the meeting house was the center of the self-governed commonwealth, and became the scene of all those public transactions which should connect man with his fellow man, and with his God, in an organized and common life.
It was of necessity, then, that the New Englander should provide a meeting house as soon as a church and a town were organized. The edifice was called a meeting house; possibly at first because it was to be used indif- ferently as a place for both religious and civil transactions. To the early New Englander both were equally solemn and sacred. Then again, being performed by the same
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persons, and in an equally reverent spirit, there could be no thought of desecration or indecorum in the association of the two functions with the same place. The New Eng- lander would not call this building a church. That, in his view, was a sacred and significant name, which should be applied only to one of the most exalted conceptions which had ever come to the mind of man. For any other use of the word there was, in his view, no warrant in the Scrip- tures. In the language of Richard Mather, "There is no just ground from scripture to apply such a trope as church to a house for a public assembly."
The original structures were doubtless built of logs and thatched, with here and there a possible exception. None of those of the first age are now standing. We know the dimensions of one built in Dedham, Mass. in 1638, viz., that it was 36 feet long, 20 feet wide and 12 feet "in the stud." The oldest dwelling house in New England, and probably in the United States, is in Guilford, Conn. This was built in 1639, but it was built of stone, with very thick and solid walls, and is in excellent repair. There is a tradition that the first church in Guilford was also con- structed of stone. This is the more probable as the town abounds in ledges of more or less loosely-lying rock mate- rial. This, however, did not hold of the majority of the New England towns. The number of stone buildings of any kind was singularly small. Perhaps this is to be ac- counted for by the native tendency to work in wood, with the pen-knife as well as the axe. More soberly, the difficulty and expense of procuring lime and the want of skill in quarrying and fitting stone, with the greater labor involved, must be accepted as the probable explanation. In what may be called the second period of church building, the structures are known to have been covered with boards or planks, either sawn or rived. Their inte-
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riors were ceiled with boards, and often packed with clay or rude mortar. The structure was square, or nearly so; the roof was pyramidal, and terminated in a belfry over the center, requiring the bell ringer to stand in the middle of the edifice. We have an excellent example of a building of this type in the meeting house at Hingham, Mass., built in 1681, which is still in good preservation and in constant use. The original churches in New Haven and Milford were after this model, and were respectively 50 and 40 feet square, each with a tower, so called, in the center.
A marked deviation from this type, with close adher- ence to its genetic features, is furnished in the meeting house erected for the First Church in Boston, the most expensive and elaborate up to its time, which was erected in 1713, and survived till 1808. This was built of brick, rectangular in form, with sides nearly equal, furnished with a porch on the longest side, and crowned with a pyramidal spire from the middle of the roofridge. It was three stories in height, and probably had two galleries.
In 1723 Christ Church, in the same city, was erected for the second Episcopal Society, and is still standing, except that its steeple was replaced after having been blown down. This is after a new pattern, in that the form deviates very decidedly from the square, and becomes rectangular. In this particular it follows the London churches, built after the great fire by well known archi- tects. The form of these churches is not an accident, but in it the idea of the altar and chancel is recognized. These more sacred portions of an edifice would naturally be withdrawn to the end for comparative seclusion and ampler room. This edifice was elaborate and elegant, and is at the present day a model of its kind, as well as inter- esting for the most stirring associations. The first Episco-
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