USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 3 > Part 20
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Whatever the technical rights of the legislature, however, the dictates of justice will no doubt always insure a fair hear- ing for any accused judge. In the few applications of this power, hearings were held, and the accusations thoroughly in- vestigated. Three addresses were presented against Judge Loring of the Probate Court of Suffolk County before he was removed in 1858. In two of these, no reasons were assigned. No limitation is stated to the causes for which a judge may be removed by this method. The legislature may petition for removal for any cause that a majority thereof determine as adequate.
Some demand was made in the Convention of 1780 that judges be elected by the House of Representatives or the people. A stronger demand was heard, particularly from Berkshire County, that the towns should elect their own pro- bate judges; and that, as a matter of convenience, a registry of deeds should be located in every town. These western communities were reluctant to give up any local rights. They took occasion frequently to assert their local independence. They feared the domination of the more populous East. John Adams in 1776 condemned their views in severe language: "The projects of county assemblies, town registers, and town
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probates of wills are founded in narrow notions, sordid stin- giness, and profound ignorance, and tend directly to bar- barism."
AMENDMENT AND INTELLECTUAL INTERESTS (1780)
The constitution provided (Chapter VI, Article X) that, "to form such alterations as from experience shall be found necessary," a convention should be held in the year 1795, provided that two-thirds of the qualified voters are in favor of such revision or amendment. No provision for future amendment appeared in the Adams draft; but the quoted pro- vision was adopted on the report of the committee appointed to consider this question. Most of the opposition to this article, which was formidable, preferred a future convention fixed definitely, rather than have it depend upon the vote of the people as the time approached. When the question of revision was submitted in 1795, it was defeated by a large majority.
John Adams' favorite paragraph was Section ii of Chapter V on "The Encouragement of Literature, etc." This, a dis- tinguishing feature of the Constitution, was a general plea for the diffusion of "wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue," and an exhortation to legislatures and magistrates "to cher- ish the interests of literature and the sciences, to encourage the promotion of agriculture, arts, commerce, trades, manu- factures, and a natural history of the country, and to inculcate the principles of humanity and general benevolence, public and private charity, industry and frugality, honesty and punc- tuality in their dealings; sincerity, good humor, and all social affections and generous sentiments, among the people."
The corporate privileges and property rights of the Presi- dent and Fellows of Harvard College, acquired in 1636, and by gifts and grants at sundry later times, were ratified and confirmed to them and to their successors forever by Section i of the same Chapter.
COUNT OF THE POPULAR VOTE (1780)
The Convention, having adjourned to await the action of the towns, reassembled in the meetinghouse of the Brattle Street Church in Boston on June 7, 1780. Twenty-seven new
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THE STATE CONSTITUTION
delegates presented themselves. A committee, originally of five but later added to, was appointed "to revise and ar- range" the returns. This, as can well be imagined, was a difficult task. An unusual method of tabulating the votes cast was employed, of which a specimen was submitted by the committee to the convention, June 12. The first column recorded the yeas and nays if amended; the second, the yeas and nays if the amendments do not obtain. Then came a column for every article, with the yeas and nays, followed by a column headed "ditto if amended." For instance, in Essex, on Article III of the Declaration of Rights, there were 922 votes in favor, 287 against, 448 in favor if amended, and 29 against if amended. Apparently, however, the votes in favor of the amendment were not, as they should have been, counted against the article. "In computing the vote for a given article the returns of practically all the towns that op- posed it were either counted in favor of it or not counted at all." This being so, a two-thirds majority was recorded for every article. Hence there is certainly grave doubt whether the Constitution of 1780 was legally ratified. Public opinion seemed to favor an end of the five years long discussion of a frame of government. No vigorous protest was made against the findings of the committee, and the acquiescence of the council.
FINAL RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION (1780)
With the detailed report before the convention, on June 15, "the several articles were then read separately, and the fol- lowing question put upon each, viz: Is it your opinion that the people have accepted of this article? Which, upon every . individual article, passed in the affirmative by a very great majority." The convention refused to take a vote by yeas and nays on the constitution "in gross," but a motion "that the People of the State of Massachusetts Bay have accepted the Constitution as it stands in the printed form, submitted to their revision by the Resolves of 2d March last," was "passed in the affirmative by a very great majority."
On June 16, a proclamation, signed by President James Bowdoin, as President of the Convention, announced the acceptance of the Constitution by more than two thirds of
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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONSTITUTION
those voting thereon, and declared that the Constitution thus established would go into effect at the first meeting of the General Court on the last Wednesday in October. Following an election on October 25, 1780, John Hancock was duly inaugurated as the first Governor under the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Thus was evolved the Constitution under which the people of Massachusetts have lived in peace for a century and a half and are still living today. It became the model upon which the Federal Constitution was later built. As John Adams wrote none too modestly: "I made a constitution for Massa- chusetts, which finally made the constitution of the United States." Adams was not the sole architect. To Parsons, Cabot, Paine, Bowdoin, Lowell, and others should go a large share of the credit. And to the people of the towns of that time we are indebted for valuable suggestions, many of which afterwards were adopted as amendments.
That the Constitution of 1780 has endured in its essential features is due to the wisdom of the framers in adopting an instrument general and flexible in its provisions. They were building not for today or tomorrow-but for posterity. They appreciated better than some of our modern constitution- makers the basic distinction between a constitution and a statute.
The Preamble to the Constitution and the Declaration of Rights are the finest specimens of political thought and contain the most complete exposition of the proper relation of gov- ernment to the individual to be found in any of the early constitutions. In only six of the original constitutions was there any bill of rights at all. The men of Massachusetts had the experience of other states (Virginia in particular) and of other nations to guide them. The principles therein expressed afford an example and serve as an inspiration to the present generation and to the generations yet unborn.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CONSTITUTION
In the Preamble the true functions of government are ex- plicitly set forth. "The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government, is to secure the existence of the body-politic; to protect it; to furnish the individuals
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THE STATE CONSTITUTION
who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquillity their natural rights, and the blessings of life." This body politic, "formed by a voluntary association of in- dividuals," is "a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the com- mon good." Here is expressed with greater elaboration the same conception of the nature of government as is found in the words of the Declaration of Independence: "Govern- ments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This doctrine is one of the foundation stones of the American political system.
The Constitution of Massachusetts "both in essence and in form stands as a type of the best workmanship and the high- est scholarship." It embodies in its Declaration of Rights the fundamental principles of English liberty and the natural and inalienable rights of all free citizens. It adopts the prin- ciple of representative government,-"the great contribution of the English-speaking race to the science of government." In its formation, for the first time, the principle of the separa- tion of powers, and the practice of framing a constitution by a special convention subject to ratification by the voters, were combined together. In these respects, and others, the Consti- tution of Massachusetts of 1780 stands in the front rank of the documents which have shaped the course of the history of the United States.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ADAMS, JOHN .- The Works of John Adams (10 vols., Boston, Little, Brown, 1850-1856)-Edited by C. F. Adams. See especially Vol. I and Vol. IV.
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY .- The Social Compact Exemplified in the Constitu- tion of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (Providence, R. I., 1842) -A lecture delivered before the Franklin Lyceum, Providence, R. I., November 25, 1842.
BULLOCK, ALEXANDER HAMILTON .- "The Centennial of the Massachusetts Constitution" (Am. Antiquarian Society, Proceedings, New Series, Vol. I, pp. 189-235, Worcester, 1882).
CUSHING, HARRY ALONZO .- "History of the Transition from Provincial to Commonwealth Government in Massachusetts" (Columbia Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, Vol. VII, no. 1, N. Y., Longmans, Green, 1896).
DEANE, CHARLES .- "Judge Lowell and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. XIII, pp. 299- 304, Boston, 1875).
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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ESSEX COUNTY, MASS. CONVENTION, IPSWICH, 1778 .- Result of the Con- vention of Delegates Holden at Ipswich in the County of Essex, Who Were Deputed to Take into Consideration the Form of Government Proposed by the State of Massachusetts-Bay (Newbury-Port, 1778) -Known as the Essex Result. Written by Theophilus Parsons.
FROTHINGHAM, LOUIS ADAMS .- A Brief History of the Constitution and Government of Massachusetts (Cambridge, Harvard Univ., 1916).
HOLCOMBE, ARTHUR NORMAN .- State Government in the United States (N. Y., Macmillan, 1926).
LORD, ARTHUR .- "The Massachusetts Constitution and the Constitutional Conventions" (Mass. Law Quarterly, 1916-1917, Vol. II, pp. 1-32).
MASSACHUSETTS. CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1779-1780 .- Journal, Sep- tember 1, 1779, to June 16, 1780 (Boston, 1832).
MASSACHUSETTS. CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, 1917-1919 .- Manual (Bos- ton, 1917).
MASSACHUSETTS. SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT .- "Loring vs. Young : decision of the Court" (Massachusetts Reports, Vol. CCXXXIX, pp. 349-377) -Holding that the Constitution of 1780 and its amendments, not the rearrangement, is the Constitution of Massachusetts today.
MOREY, WILLIAM CAREY .- "The First State Constitutions" (Am. Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, Vol. IV, pp. 201-232, Phila., 1894).
MORISON, SAMUEL ELIOT .- "The Struggle over the Adoption of the Con- stitution of Massachusetts, 1780" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceed- ings, Vol. L, pp. 350-411, Boston, 1917).
MORISON, SAMUEL ELIOT .- "The Vote of Massachusetts on Summoning a Constitutional Convention, 1776-1916" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. L, pp. 241-249, Boston, 1917).
SAVAGE, JAMES .- Constitution of Massachusetts (Boston, 1832)-Address delivered before the Massachusetts Lyceum, January 26, 1832.
STIMSON, FREDERIC JESUP .- The Law of the Federal and State Constitu- tions of the United States, with an Historical Study of their Prin- ciples, a Chronological Table of English Social Legislation, and a Comparative Digest of the Constitutions of the Forty-six States (Boston, Boston Book Co., 1908).
WASHBURN, EMORY .- "The Origin and Sources of the Bill of Rights Declared in the Constitution of Massachusetts" (Mass. Historical Society, Proceedings, Vol. VIII, pp. 294-313, Boston, 1866).
WEBSTER, WILLIAM CLARENCE .- "Comparative Study of the State Con- stitutions of the American Revolution" (Am. Academy of Political and Social Science, Annals, Vol. IX, pp. 380-420, Phila., 1897).
CHAPTER VIII
JOHN ADAMS, NATIONAL STATESMAN (1735-1826)
BY EDWIN D. MEAD Former Editor of New England Magazine
REASONS FOR INDEPENDENCE
The history of the American Revolution, John Adams well said, is not the story of the battles from Lexington to York- town, but much more that of the profound transformation of the American mind during the fifteen years before Lexing- ton. The ultimate independence of the colonies was inevit- able. Every condition of geography, communication, com- merce, race, religion, political habit and tradition, local pride, and sturdy self-reliance predicted and assured it. But with understanding and wisdom in London, it might have been profitably delayed and might have come more reasonably.
The causes of the American Revolution have been set forth in the previous volume: they will here be considered only as they are bound up with the constructive work of John Adams, who has been called, with warrant, the "Statesman of the Revolution." They were not so much political or economic as social, personal, governmental. Captain Preston of Danvers, minute-man at Concord fight, when asked many years later why he went into the battle-was it oppres- sion and the Stamp Act? replied, "Oppressions? I didn't feel them. I never saw one of those stamps. Tea tax? I never drank a drop of the stuff; the boys threw it all over- board. Young man, what we meant in going for those red- coats was this: We always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to; they didn't mean we should."
THE TWO ADAMSES
In the conflict of the Revolution in its early stages Massa- chusetts was the American center; , and the greatest Massa-
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THE ADAMS FAMILY
chusetts leaders were Samuel and John Adams. Till 1774 Samuel Adams was by far the more conspicuous and in- fluential. John Adams called him "the very soul of the Revolution." As the organized Revolution advanced to a continental stage, John Adams rapidly became the more prominent and powerful figure in Massachusetts and in Con- gress.
Between Samuel and John Adams there was a sturdy mutual confidence and an affectionate intimacy. They often called each other brother, though the real relationship was that of second cousin. Their first American ancestor was Henry Adams, who came from England and settled in Braintree in 1638. Grandsons of Henry Adams were Joseph Adams, a citizen of Braintree, and John Adams, a sea-captain. The former was grandfather of President John Adams; the latter was grandfather of Samuel Adams.
THE ENGLISH ADAMS FAMILY
Only in recent years have historians traced the origin of the various American statesmen back to the villages of Eng- land. The English cradle of the Adams family is now known to have been Barton St. David in Somersetshire.
This origin of the Adams family was first completely traced in 1927 in Bartlett's The Henry Adams Genealogy. It is established beyond question that the original emigrant, Henry Adams, was born at Barton St. David, county of Somerset, near Wells, England, about 1583, and at least three genera- tions of his ancestors have been buried there. The Barton Adamses seem to have been a race of sturdy yeomen, cultivat- ing lease-hold farms, raising sheep and cattle, and living in simple thatched stone cottages.
Henry Adams at one time was a maltster, like Samuel Adams and his father in Boston later on. He married in 1609 Edith Squire, the daughter of a husbandman and blacksmith, whose ancestor had been a rector near the parish. About 1622, Adams removed to the adjoining parish of Kingweston, where he probably continued until his emigra- tion with his family in 1638.
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JOHN ADAMS, STATESMAN
THE EMIGRATION TO MASSACHUSETTS (1638)
The county of Somerset had become a stronghold of the Puritans. John Adams two centuries later placed upon a monument to his ancestor in Quincy the statement that in 1637 his emigrant ancestor "took flight from the dragon persecution in England," a family tradition which must not be disregarded.
John Pym the militant Puritan lived not far from Barton St. David, about the time of Henry Adams's emigration. A persistent legend asserts that about the time of Pym and Hampden and Cromwell were actually embarked for New England, but were stopped by governmental authority. Pre- sumably Henry Adams also found England an uncomfortable place for his political and religious opinions.
The immediate impetus of Henry Adams's emigration came probably from the influence of that cardinal figure in New England colonization, Rev. John White of Dorches- ter, not far from Barton St. David. The Dorchester Ad- venturers, organized by him in 1623 for colonization of non-conformists in New England, had effected the success- ful settlement at Salem under Conant and Endicott. Among John White's parishioners was one Aquila Purchase, master of a Dorchester school, who married Anne Squire, sister of Henry Adams's wife. In 1632 Purchase with his wife and children emigrated to Dorchester, Massachusetts. What more natural than the succeeding emigration in 1638 of Anne's two sisters, Edith and Margaret, with their hus- bands, Henry Adams and John Shepard.
A bronze tablet, a twentieth-century memorial, has been placed on the wall of Barton St. David church bearing the following inscription: "To the glory of God, in honor of St. David, and in memory of Henry Adams, born in this parish about 1583, and a founder of New England 1638. Ances- tor of two Presidents of the United States of America, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, whose exalted serv- ices to their country evoke a testimony of respect for their ancestral home. This memorial has been erected by Ed- ward Dean Adams, A. D. 1926."
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THE PIONEER FAMILY
THE PIONEER FAMILY (1638-1750)
Arriving in Massachusetts in 1638, with his wife and nine children, Henry Adams settled at Mount Wollaston, which in 1640 was incorporated as the Town of Braintree, in that part of Braintree which in 1792 became Quincy and with which the Adams family has been conspicuously identified for three centuries. February 24, 1639-40, Henry Adams was granted by the town of Boston a lot of forty acres at Mount Wollaston for "a family of ten heads." The eldest son became the first town clerk of Braintree. The first book of Braintree town records is in his handwriting.
Henry Adams died in Braintree in 1646. The inventory of his entire property amounted to £75.13.0, including "some old books" bequeathed to his nine children. His family quickly dispersed over eastern Massachusetts. Sons are recorded in Medfield, Concord, Cambridge, and Chelms- ford; the daughter in Charlestown. Joseph Adams, the only son who remained in Braintree, was the ancestor of Samuel and John Adams. His eldest son, Joseph, was the grand- father of John Adams; his second son, John, was the grandfather of Samuel Adams.
Deacon John Adams, the father of the President, was a farmer and a cordwainer, well educated; by industry and thrift he acquired a substantial estate, and brought up and educated his children well. The house in which he and his illustrious son were born still stands. His widow, Susanna (Boylston) Adams, lived till 1797, just as her eldest son, John Adams, became President of the United States.
John Adams's ancestors in the first four generations in Braintree were thus all, as John Quincy Adams wrote, "in that humble but respectable condition of life which is favorable to the exercise of virtue, but in which they could attract little of the attention of their contemporaries." As late as when he was Vice-President, John Adams wrote that if family pride were in any way excusable, he should "think a descent from a line of virtuous, independent New England farmers for one hundred and sixty years was a better foundation for it than a descent from regular noble scoundrels ever since the flood."
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JOHN ADAMS, STATESMAN
THE STUDENT AND SCHOOLMASTER (1755 - 1758)
Born in 1735, living till 1826-John Adams's life divides itself naturally into three periods: the forty years of prep- aration for his great career, the quarter century of public life, and the quarter century of retirement.
His father gave him a college education as the best he could do for him. He was graduated at Harvard College in the class of 1755, as one of the first scholars in his class. The rank of students was then fixed according to the social condi- tion of their parents; and John Adams was fourteenth in a class of twenty-four. A graduate of Harvard College in 1755 was expected to devote himself to the profession of either divinity, law, or medicine. John Adams could not easily make his choice. Meantime he must support him- self; and he became a schoolmaster, obtaining the position of teacher of the grammar school of Worcester, where he remained three years. The selectmen had engaged a board- ing place for him, where he found Morgan's Moral Philos- ophy and learned that "deism had made considerable prog- ress" in Worcester and the surrounding towns. His next boarding place was with a physician, whose books and life interested him so much that he entertained thoughts of be- coming a physician himself.
This was a formative period of John Adams's life, in a growing and typical Massachusetts town. Worcester was then a town of about 2,500 persons. Though at the end of a year Adams laments the "narrow shpere" he moves in, and his "lonely life" and "hard fortune," he found the town "quite pleasant" and the people "sociable, generous, and hospitable." One capital influence is thus indicated : "The whole town is immersed in politics, which is made the subject of every conversation. . .. I am turned politician." . "Dr. Savil tells me that by cultivating and pruning these tender plants in the garden of Worcester, I shall make some of them plants of renown. However this be, I am certain that keeping this school any length of time would make a base weed and ignoble shrub of me." Yet a little later he wrote: "I am as yet very contented in the place of a schoolmaster. I shall not, therefore very sud- denly become a preacher."
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THE ADAMS SELF-ESTIMATE
THE ADAMS SELF-ESTIMATE
The most significant and the most attractive feature in this Worcester experience is the young schoolmaster's cor- respondence with his friends, chiefly college friends, in and about Boston. In the great days of 1776, when he was conspicuous even in a notable group of great men, he wrote to his wife from Philadelphia: "There are very few people in this world with whom I can bear to converse. This has made me a recluse and will one day make me a hermit." In the closing years of his life he often seems a lonely figure; and even earlier, although he always had many as- sociates and correspondents, we seldom think of him as the centre of a circle of friends. In later life we find him possessed often by the spirit of uncharitableness and cen- soriousness. Much has been said of his overweening van- ity, irritability, and arrogance. Humility certainly was not his forte.
After 1774 he does not seem to have looked up to any- body; he evidently thought himself as great a man as Wash- ington or Jefferson or Franklin. This vanity, such as it was, was usually harmless; he was often sanely conscious of it and once recorded : "Vanity, I am sensible, is my cardinal vice, and cardinal folly." He wishes that he could con- quer his "natural pride and self-conceit, expect no more deference than I deserve," give up his "ill-natured remarks" on the character and ways of others, and put the most favorable construction upon the weaknesses, bigotry, and errors of others." Defending John Hancock against similar charges, he once wrote: "Those little flickerings of little passions determine nothing concerning essential character."
The essential is that no self-conceit or pride of opinion ever betrayed John Adams into courses untrue to patriotism or to duty. However repellent his exterior at times, how- ever cold the loneliness to which at periods he was fated, he had a warm heart and craved fellowship. "He was throughout life," wrote his son, "a disinterested, an affec- tionate, a faithful friend." His appreciation of his fellow workers was usually generous and outspoken, as is shown by his warm tributes to his Massachusetts associates, Otis, Hancock, and Samuel Adams. Some of the young men
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