USA > Connecticut > The tercentenary of Connecticut, 1635-1935 : the Connecticut ode, the tercentenary in review, Connecticut celebrates, Connecticut and her founders, the evolution of the government of Connecticut > Part 4
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But perhaps even more notable than the fact that the Fundamental Orders were the beginning of constitutional gov- ernment on this continent is the fact that in it the settlers along the banks of the Connecticut assumed of their own right to establish a Commonwealth. Neither in the Fundamental Orders nor in the oaths provided for officers, magistrates and freemen do we find any reference to King or Parliament, any pledge of loyalty to any sovereign power. Instead the people dwelling along the banks of the Connecticut assumed of their own right to constitute a government for themselves. They answered Hooker's challenge : As God had given them liberty, so they took it. Then was laid the foundation of that Com- monwealth of which today all of us are proud to be citizens. So is justified the legend upon the medal issued by the Ter- centenary Commission : "Three Centuries of Self-government based on Constitutional Liberty".
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Came the Revolution in England and the Restoration of the Stuarts, Connecticut, still a part of the English domain, had no direct relation with the English Crown, no royal grant of territory or rights. Sufficient unto herself within, she felt the need of some guaranty from King or Parliament against the deprivation of the rights she had assumed, some protection against encroachments by the neighboring Crown Colonies. So she determined to seek a Royal Charter. On that mission she sent to England her much beloved Governor, that very. gentle man, Winthrop the Younger. Into the troublous times of the Restoration he plunged and out he came with one of the most liberal charters ever granted to a Colony by a reign- ing sovereign. The first draft of it had in fact been prepared here, under the supervision of the General Court. Largely its provisions followed along the lines which had already been established by the Fundamental Orders. It in effect recog- nized the existing government of the Colony, which had been set up in virtual defiance of the Royal authority. It gave to the Colonies full power to make such laws as they saw fit, without any reservation of a right of revision to Crown, Par- liament or English courts, only requiring that they be not "contrary to the laws of this realm of England". It made the Colony answerable for its acts to no authority under heaven.
The charter became to the Colonists very precious, not so much for the protection it afforded in external affairs as for its effect in validating the government which they had them- selves constituted. Swift in his "System" sums up their atti- tude to it: "The application of the people for this charter and their voluntary acceptance of it, gave efficacy to the gov- ernment it constituted, and not the royal signature * The authority of the government was supposed to have origi- nated in the assent of the people, and never to have been dependent upon the royal charter. During the whole period of the existence of the Colonial government, Connecticut was considered as having only paid a nominal allegiance to the
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British Crown, for the purpose of receiving protection and defence, as a part of the British Empire; but always exercised legislation respecting all internal concerns of the community ; to the exclusion of all authority, and control from the King, and Parliament, as much as an independent State".
Save for the brief period when Sir Edmond Andros was in power, the provisions of the charter of King Charles con- trolled the government of the Colony until the independence of this nation came, and for more than forty years after, until the adoption of the Constitution of 1818. Strange it seems that Connecticut, which had established a government of its own, in virtual independence, in 1638-9, Connecticut which has been hailed as the birthplace of American democ- racy, Connecticut where was adopted, in the words of John Fiske, "the first written constitution known to history that created a government", for more than forty years after the declaration of Independence continued to conduct its govern- ment under a Royal charter. The explanation lies in the atti- tude of the citizens of the State toward that charter, in the fact that they looked upon it not as a source of their govern- ment but as a guaranty of that government in internal affairs and a protection for it from encroachments from without. True, in the act of October, 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was approved and our own General Assembly resolved that "This Colony is and of right ought to be a free and independent State", it was enacted that the form of civil government should continue to be as established by the charter, so far as consistent with absolute independence. But of course such a legislative act could not give to the charter the attributes of a constitution as they had then come to be understood. It is not strange that soon the question was raised, whether Con- necticut had any constitution. Able scholars and leaders in the Colony maintained that it did, men like Zephanish Swift and Judge David Daggett. But the contrary view gradually gained ground and ultimately resulted in the calling of the
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convention which submitted to the people for ratification the Constitution of 1818.
For that Constitution in all its details I hold no brief. But this must be said for it. Modeled upon the Federal Constitu- tion, it is confined to broad definitions and limitations upon the agencies of government, leaving it largely to the Legisla- ture by its own acts to adapt their functions and determine their powers in view of the needs of the particular time, thus avoiding many of those difficulties which in other States have attended the embalming in the lasting form of constitutional provisions of measures essentially ephemeral. Few States have in operation a Constitution as old as ours, and in none has there been less of constitutional change.
Thus have I briefly outlined the great landmarks in the governmental history of Connecticut. In that history the great directing force from the beginning has been the General Court or the General Assembly. No other legislative body in the English speaking world, not excepting the English Parlia- ment, has I think, over so long a period played so large a part in determining the internal policies and in guiding the desti- nies of a people, as has our Legislature. Nor has that been so because the people were weak and supine. Hooker's maxim of three hundred years ago: "The foundation of authority is laid in free consent of the people", has never for a moment been forgotten by them. The unusual power continuously re- posed in the General Court or General Assembly has no other explanation than that the Legislature has, except perhaps for short times and on particular occasions, acted with prudence, carefully, with an eye to the best welfare of the State. Perhaps this is nowhere better seen than in the fact that from time to time the Legislature has voluntarily surrendered certain of its powers, not that it might shirk the responsibility which inevi- tably attends the exercise of public authority, but because it became satisfied that to do so would best serve the interests of the people of the State. I have already commented on the
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way in which it established courts and had voluntarily released. to them much of its judicial power before the Constitution divided the departments of government, and in which even to these recent times it has largely yielded to the courts control of judicial proceedings, because it felt that they could better manage such matters. There is one other striking example of the surrender of power by the Legislature. In the early days of the Commonwealth the members of the General Court were representatives not less of the established Church-the Con- gregational-than they were of the body politic. Yet gradually as times changed and the conceptions of people broadened they loosed the strong bonds in which that Church held the people until finally they were entirely removed; and so is justified the remark of an eminent Scotch divine, that Connecticut Congregationalism is the only established Church that ever voluntarily disestablished itself. The Legislature throughout its history by and large has represented the people of Con- necticut, not so much in the sense of giving effect to their current moods and passions, but in the sense that its members ยท themselves took the responsibility involved in the delegation of power to them, of seeking such solutions to the problems of the times as their own sound wisdom and enlightened com- mon sense might dictate.
As one studies the governmental history of Connecticut the clearer becomes the conviction that it discloses certain definite characteristics, characteristics which are the expres- sion of, and have their source in, the genius of the people of this State. One comes to sense in that history a spirit of cour- age, self-reliance and independence. One perceives in it a pur- pose quietly to serve the interests of the Commonwealth, not a desire for individual aggrandizement within or without its confines, a characteristic which has today one of its outward manifestations in the way in which, to an extent I believe unprecedented elsewhere in this country, many of its finest citizens are serving upon its boards and commissions without
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compensation and without honor. One sees in that history, too, that spirit of conservatism which is not ready to go forward by long leaps into unknown and unknowable situa- tions but seeks progress rather by gradual development, mov- ing on from that which by trial has become known, with its good qualities and its defects, only so far as the effects of change can reasonably be anticipated; but nevertheless moving on, until today no State in the Union is better governed than is Connecticut.
The evolution of the government of Connecticut has been by growth from within, not as a result of the impact of external forces. There is a measured tread to its onward march, a sense of power held in restraint. If I were attempting to sum up in a single word the ultimate impressions created by a study of that hitsory, that word would be "Stability". Through the stress of changing times, in the State, in the Nation, in the World, for three hundred years the government of Connecticut has stood unchanged in its essence, surprisingly little changed in its structure. That could be said only of a strong government, strong because it has had its root in a people, whatever be their defects, who are strong, self-reliant and independent. We who are gathered here today are not merely heirs of that structure of government which has been builded by those who have gone before but we sit as suc- cessors in their seats. Well for us is it to ask in these troubled and doubting times, whether in the long run, the welfare of the people of this State will not best be served if we strive to preserve those qualities which in the past have characterized its government. Well for us is it to test ourselves and our own conduct by that high standard of wise and disinterested pub- lic service which they have set.
Doctor Horace Bushnell in his great oration upon Con- necticut quotes these words from the historian Bancroft: "There is no State in the Union, and I know not of any in the world, in whose early history, if I were a citizen, I could find
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more of which to be proud". Doctor Bushnell then adds this comment : "My own conviction is that this early history, though not the most prominent, is really the most beautiful that was ever permitted to any state or people in the world". Beautiful seems a strange adjective to use. There is not much of grace or symmetry in that history, certainly little of pleas- ing color. Yet does not the word ring true ? There is simplicity in that history; there is in it a homeliness like unto the homeli- ness of this land of ours, with its rolling hills and pleasant valleys, its verdant fields and rustling woods, its babbling streams and quiet lakes; and as sometimes through a homely countenance shines out the beauty of the inward spirit, so the history of Connecticut is bright with the indwelling of that high spirit which is its genius. It is a beautiful history, a history in the continuation of which every one of us should be proud that we play a part.
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