WEBVTT NOTE 29. Massachusetts Turns Conservative 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Volume 4, Chapter 29, Massachusetts Turns Conservative 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:19.000 By far the most influential rebuttal to common sense, however, came not from the fading Tories, but from a rapidly emerging right wing within the independence movement. 3 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:28.680 Until 1775, virtually the sole focus of political conflict in the colonies was the anti-British 4 00:00:28.680 --> 00:00:34.600 resistance movement, on what side to take and how fast to travel. 5 00:00:34.600 --> 00:00:42.080 But after Lexington and Concord, another great problem confronted the Americans, the structure 6 00:00:42.080 --> 00:00:50.600 of the Internal Polity Within Each Colony and as independence drew nearer the internal problem, 7 00:00:50.600 --> 00:00:58.880 the problem of who should rule at home in the famous phrase of Carl Becker came increasingly 8 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:05.520 to the fore as compared to the older problem of home rule. 9 00:01:05.520 --> 00:01:11.240 Of course this separation can be overdrawn and clearly British rule had created and propped 10 00:01:11.240 --> 00:01:37.800 In the late 19th century, a radical left-right conflict centered around the struggle with 11 00:01:37.800 --> 00:01:39.280 Great Britain. 12 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:46.580 After that point, a new set of conflicts emerged. Historians have long quarreled about the existence 13 00:01:46.580 --> 00:01:53.800 of internal conflicts and about the possible continuity of the various ideological factions 14 00:01:53.800 --> 00:02:00.740 over the years. The first thing that can be flatly asserted is that the conservatives 15 00:02:00.740 --> 00:02:08.880 on the British question became arch-conservatives on the domestic scene, believers in strong, 16 00:02:08.880 --> 00:02:18.880 Central oligarchic government from abroad also desired strong central oligarchic government at home. 17 00:02:18.880 --> 00:02:27.880 Some of the conservatives became outright Tories and thereby put themselves outside the American dialogue. 18 00:02:27.880 --> 00:02:34.880 Others, as we shall see below, opposed independence up to the last moment 19 00:02:34.880 --> 00:02:41.820 and finally opted for the rebel cause in deep resignation in order to guide it in a conservative 20 00:02:41.820 --> 00:02:49.560 direction. In short, they were more flexible and adaptable than their outright Tory brethren. 21 00:02:49.560 --> 00:02:56.800 These conservatives particularly predominated in the quasi-Tory provinces of New York and 22 00:02:56.800 --> 00:03:06.560 and Pennsylvania. Among conservatives, then, continuity prevailed before and after 1775. 23 00:03:06.560 --> 00:03:14.120 The ultra-right before was the ultra-right afterward. There were no cases of quasi-Torres 24 00:03:14.120 --> 00:03:21.720 later shifting to become radical on domestic issues. The same continuity did not apply, 25 00:03:21.720 --> 00:03:31.040 However, to the pre-1775 left, to those who had led the radical fight against Great Britain. 26 00:03:31.040 --> 00:03:37.440 Out of this increasingly victorious group, there began to emerge a cohesive faction who 27 00:03:37.440 --> 00:03:45.720 were radical on independence and yet highly conservative on domestic affairs. In one sense, 28 00:03:45.720 --> 00:03:52.240 This lack of continuity is understandable, for as the unifying British question began 29 00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:59.560 to give way to consideration of domestic matters, temporarily suspended differences among the 30 00:03:59.560 --> 00:04:07.360 radicals inevitably came to the fore. Every revolution, after all, splits as it advances 31 00:04:07.360 --> 00:04:14.700 from one stage to the next, and former advocates fail to adhere to its inner logic and go over 32 00:04:14.700 --> 00:04:20.860 were into opposition. But in this case the split was particularly poignant for those 33 00:04:20.860 --> 00:04:26.900 who remained radical on domestic questions simply wanted to fulfill at home the grand 34 00:04:26.900 --> 00:04:34.180 rhetoric of liberty and democracy which both wings had effectively employed in the fight 35 00:04:34.180 --> 00:04:40.500 for America against Great Britain. In the case of the powerful center of the Virginia 36 00:04:40.500 --> 00:04:46.940 of Oligarchy, this split was to be expected. It was clear from the beginning, for example, 37 00:04:46.940 --> 00:04:54.180 that Washington was a radical on Britain and independence, and yet a staunch conservative 38 00:04:54.180 --> 00:05:00.900 domestically. This rare centrist quality was one of the main reasons for his selection 39 00:05:00.900 --> 00:05:07.820 as Army Commander-in-Chief. But the real shocker was Massachusetts. Massachusetts had always 40 00:05:07.820 --> 00:05:13.820 has always been the home of radicalism, the spearhead and vanguard of the American left. 41 00:05:13.820 --> 00:05:21.000 Now it was Massachusetts that was to turn almost en masse to deep-dyed conservatism 42 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:27.340 on domestic issues. Certainly one great reason for this was a lack of opposition on which 43 00:05:27.340 --> 00:05:35.340 to hone one's edge. In contrast to Pennsylvania or New York, for example, where conservatism 44 00:05:35.340 --> 00:05:39.220 had always been dominant and radicalism precarious. 45 00:05:39.220 --> 00:05:44.100 Toryism had always been inherently feeble in Massachusetts. 46 00:05:44.980 --> 00:05:48.360 With little opposition on which to develop a cutting edge, 47 00:05:48.360 --> 00:05:51.580 the tendency for Massachusetts radicalism 48 00:05:51.580 --> 00:05:56.580 was to grow lax and conservative on domestic affairs. 49 00:05:56.980 --> 00:06:00.300 A second problem was a crisis of leadership. 50 00:06:00.300 --> 00:06:02.580 John Hancock, as we have seen, 51 00:06:02.580 --> 00:06:07.180 turned sharply rightward, largely out of peak. 52 00:06:07.180 --> 00:06:13.040 More serious was the collapse of the great Massachusetts leaders, the Adamses. 53 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:19.540 The brilliant young John Adams not only turned sharply rightward on domestic matters, he 54 00:06:19.540 --> 00:06:26.540 was quickly to stamp himself as the major theoretician of conservative American polity, 55 00:06:26.540 --> 00:06:32.560 a polity that would eventually end up as British rule without Great Britain. 56 00:06:32.560 --> 00:06:38.380 And Sam Adams, now that the domestic scene was inevitably growing in importance, lost 57 00:06:38.380 --> 00:06:46.520 his former marvelous sureness of step. Uncertain, adrift in unfamiliar waters, he was from then 58 00:06:46.520 --> 00:06:53.420 on to drift and veer erratically leftward and rightward, his basically radical instincts 59 00:06:53.420 --> 00:07:00.140 at war with the influence of his brilliant cousin John, and with Adams's shifting the 60 00:07:00.140 --> 00:07:05.540 The faithful followers of the Massachusetts Left shifted with them. 61 00:07:05.540 --> 00:07:12.100 The basic issue in internal affairs was simply, would the American governments remain as they 62 00:07:12.100 --> 00:07:18.980 had emerged at the outset of the revolution, spontaneous, libertarian, democratic and responsive 63 00:07:18.980 --> 00:07:25.660 to the checks of the people? Or would they revert to something very like oligarchic British 64 00:07:25.660 --> 00:07:42.660 would oligarchic power be resumed by a new set of tory lords in another guise? 65 00:07:42.660 --> 00:07:51.660 This is what the internal struggle in the years after Lexington and Concord was basically all about. 66 00:07:51.660 --> 00:07:59.500 And this is why the separation of home rule from rule at home can be highly artificial. 67 00:07:59.500 --> 00:08:05.500 For in a profound sense, those who remained radical on the domestic front were caring 68 00:08:05.500 --> 00:08:10.940 to completion the meaning of the struggle against Britain. 69 00:08:10.940 --> 00:08:17.060 After all, their objection was not only to a certain set of Tory and monarchal rulers, 70 00:08:17.060 --> 00:08:24.900 Their objection was also directed to governmental power itself, to executive oligarchy, to 71 00:08:24.900 --> 00:08:29.580 taxes and restrictions, and to big government. 72 00:08:29.580 --> 00:08:37.020 They did not propose to overthrow one set of masters in order to raise up another. 73 00:08:37.020 --> 00:08:43.460 If Tom Paine became the ideological spokesman of the New Left, John Adams was the theoretician 74 00:08:43.460 --> 00:08:45.540 of the New Right. 75 00:08:45.540 --> 00:08:52.460 This new right was, of course, of inestimable value to the conservative cause. The New York 76 00:08:52.460 --> 00:08:58.180 and Philadelphia aristocrats, for example, who had to be dragged into independence, would 77 00:08:58.180 --> 00:09:05.500 have never been accepted as leaders of a new independent America. But John Adams and the 78 00:09:05.500 --> 00:09:12.820 Massachusetts men, impeccably in the forefront of the revolution, their presence in the conservative 79 00:09:12.820 --> 00:09:20.260 of Camp could not but lend that camp the color of patriotic respectability, which it so desperately 80 00:09:20.260 --> 00:09:23.180 needed after independence. 81 00:09:23.180 --> 00:09:29.780 In contrast to most believers in independence, Adams was angered rather than exhilarated 82 00:09:29.780 --> 00:09:32.140 by common sense. 83 00:09:32.140 --> 00:09:38.640 A vain and petulant man, he was patently envious of the popular success of one whom he considered 84 00:09:38.640 --> 00:09:42.920 and a Johnny-come-lately in the independence movement. 85 00:09:42.920 --> 00:09:48.160 More than that, the democratic libertarian sentiments went against his grain. 86 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:53.360 Already, he had set forth his views on the proper government to fellow congressional 87 00:09:53.360 --> 00:09:58.080 delegates from other provinces who had sought his valued advice. 88 00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:05.200 Now, to counteract Payne's influence, Adams hastened to publish these views in his Thoughts 89 00:10:05.200 --> 00:10:11.640 on Government, a highly influential work that would prove to be a virtual political manifesto 90 00:10:11.640 --> 00:10:15.200 of American conservatism. 91 00:10:15.200 --> 00:10:22.380 Adams' aim was frankly the counter-revolutionary one of restoring as nearly as possible the 92 00:10:22.380 --> 00:10:29.520 status quo ante, the pre-revolutionary form of government, especially a powerful executive 93 00:10:29.520 --> 00:10:35.440 and Judiciary separate from the popular assembly and independent of it. 94 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:41.520 His political system, akin to that of Blackstone and Montesquieu, rested on a separation of 95 00:10:41.520 --> 00:10:48.080 powers, especially a separation from the checks of democratic procedure. 96 00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:54.100 In order to limit and overcome the democratic arm, an independent executive power, wielded 97 00:10:54.100 --> 00:11:01.980 by a New Governor and Council was to be added to the popularly elected revolutionary committees, 98 00:11:01.980 --> 00:11:08.500 this executive to have an absolute veto over the legislature. Within the legislature an 99 00:11:08.500 --> 00:11:13.880 upper house removed from the people was to be created, supposedly as an aristocratic 100 00:11:13.880 --> 00:11:20.440 element in the polity, and Adams looked forward happily to the two houses being in perpetual 101 00:11:20.440 --> 00:11:38.440 Each house was to have an absolute veto over the other, and to make sure that the executive officials were to have little dependence upon the public, he proposed that the lower house choose the upper house and that they would together select the governor. 102 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:47.440 Even this hedged in and ringed about democratic assembly was to be chosen only by property-owning voters. 103 00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:53.520 Furthermore, in contrast to the royal system of judges strictly under the control of the 104 00:11:53.520 --> 00:12:01.440 executive and the crown, Adams urged an independent judiciary holding life terms, a patent device 105 00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:06.520 to remove the judges completely from checks by the populace. 106 00:12:06.520 --> 00:12:12.520 The judiciary in America had never been, in the least, independent. 107 00:12:12.520 --> 00:12:18.680 The colonial assemblies had always had judicial functions and in the 17th century the Maryland, 108 00:12:18.680 --> 00:12:23.800 Virginia and New England assemblies were the highest courts of appeal in their respective 109 00:12:23.800 --> 00:12:30.640 colonies. By the 18th century, however, the judiciary was appointed by the Crown and became 110 00:12:30.640 --> 00:12:38.400 an organ of the executive. Life or good behavior, judicial appointments were originally advanced 111 00:12:38.400 --> 00:12:44.720 just as a means of removing judges holding their offices at the king's pleasure of curbing 112 00:12:44.720 --> 00:12:48.600 the absolute control of the crown. 113 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:55.000 But with the royal power gone, life tenure of judges would be a backward step away from 114 00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.680 popular control. 115 00:12:57.680 --> 00:13:03.520 The emergence of John Adams as the primary theoretician of domestic conservatism was 116 00:13:03.520 --> 00:13:12.520 was paralleled by a conservative course of the colony and of leaders who had formerly led the radical vanguard. 117 00:13:12.520 --> 00:13:20.520 Of all the colonies, Massachusetts in particular faced an easy political path and quickly took it. 118 00:13:20.520 --> 00:13:26.520 The British coercive acts, after all, had been directed against the Massachusetts Charter. 119 00:13:26.520 --> 00:13:35.520 What more apt and more safely conservative course than simply to reassert the charter of the status quo ante? 120 00:13:35.520 --> 00:13:46.520 And this is precisely what the Massachusetts Provincial Congress did when the Continental Congress in early June mildly advised it to do so. 121 00:13:46.520 --> 00:13:49.520 Of course, no governor could yet be found. 122 00:13:49.520 --> 00:14:04.520 But the General Court, Legislature, was reconstituted in elections, and the Council was selected, as before, by the elected House, now to take on temporarily the entire executive power. 123 00:14:04.520 --> 00:14:10.520 The General Court resumed in mid-July 1775 for a very long session. 124 00:14:10.520 --> 00:14:18.520 The leaders of Massachusetts were highly contented with their scarcely visible and conservative 125 00:14:18.520 --> 00:14:26.920 glide back to the Precoercive Act Charter, achieving Adams's frankly stated aim to contrive 126 00:14:26.920 --> 00:14:34.200 some method for the colonies to glide insensibly from under the old government into peaceable 127 00:14:34.200 --> 00:14:42.440 and contented submission to new ones. In short, veneration for persons in authority of every rank. 128 00:14:43.480 --> 00:14:50.120 The former radical, James Warren, quickly concurred. Nor were the congregational clergy, 129 00:14:50.120 --> 00:14:57.080 especially in the seaboard towns, slow to inculcate such supposed virtues in their congregations. 130 00:14:57.800 --> 00:15:02.920 In his important election sermon before the General Court in 1776, 131 00:15:02.920 --> 00:15:09.760 The Reverend Samuel West of the town of Dartmouth, a close friend of Hancock, urged everyone 132 00:15:09.760 --> 00:15:16.680 to be subject to principalities and powers, to obey magistrates. 133 00:15:16.680 --> 00:15:22.080 With the newfound veneration of power came also its perquisites, and the less scrupulous 134 00:15:22.080 --> 00:15:27.360 of the Whig leaders made full use of their new appointment powers. Thomas Cushing, for 135 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:35.280 for example, managed to obtain five important judicial posts from the council for himself. 136 00:15:35.280 --> 00:15:40.400 But not all the old radicals were content to celebrate the status quo and a relatively 137 00:15:40.400 --> 00:15:47.400 small band of new radicals emerged who fought for further libertarian changes in Massachusetts 138 00:15:47.400 --> 00:15:53.800 government. Many radicals were unhappy at the continuation of the established congregational 139 00:15:53.800 --> 00:16:00.400 of the Church in Massachusetts. Isaac Bacchus, the leading Baptist of New England, presented 140 00:16:00.400 --> 00:16:07.400 a strong plea to the General Court for disestablishment and religious liberty, but his petition was 141 00:16:07.400 --> 00:16:13.280 quietly buried. Also prominent in the vain fight in the General Court for disestablishment 142 00:16:13.280 --> 00:16:20.280 was Joseph Hawley, an eminent lawyer of Northampton and leader of the Radicals in Western Massachusetts. 143 00:16:20.280 --> 00:16:40.280 And a writer in a Boston paper denouncing such glaring instances of religious tyranny as the establishment of the Congregational Church asked if they were contending for liberty that we might have it in our power to trample on the rights of others. 144 00:16:40.280 --> 00:16:47.000 The plural office holding engaged in by Cushing and others was widely protested in the press. 145 00:16:47.000 --> 00:16:53.400 A writer in the Boston, Massachusetts, spy charged that the members of the assembly have divided 146 00:16:53.400 --> 00:16:59.480 among themselves and their particular friends all the civil and military offices in the colony. 147 00:17:00.280 --> 00:17:07.400 Another decryer of the new oligarchy warned that they might be fighting against a foreign slavery 148 00:17:07.400 --> 00:17:11.400 only to suffer a domestic one to spring up in our country. 149 00:17:11.400 --> 00:17:19.400 The center of the rapidly emerging new radical movement, however, was the farthest western county of Berkshire. 150 00:17:19.400 --> 00:17:24.400 The Berkshire towns had been radically anti-British for several years, 151 00:17:24.400 --> 00:17:31.400 led by college graduates, generally from Yale, who had entered law, politics or the ministry. 152 00:17:31.400 --> 00:17:38.400 History. Also strongly Whig in Western Massachusetts had been physicians, merchants and storekeepers. 153 00:17:39.320 --> 00:17:45.800 Most of the lawyers in the West, heavily dependent on royal patronage, had been Tory. But the 154 00:17:45.800 --> 00:17:52.300 substantial number of Whig lawyers were led by the veteran Joseph Hawley. The Congregational 155 00:17:52.300 --> 00:17:58.520 Ministry in the West had been strongly radical, led by the young Reverend Thomas Allen of 156 00:17:58.520 --> 00:18:05.160 Pitsfield in Berkshire County and the Reverend Joseph Lyman of Hatfield. 157 00:18:05.160 --> 00:18:11.400 Now that the war had begun and the focus of radicalism was shifting to internal liberty, 158 00:18:11.400 --> 00:18:14.520 Berkshire took the lead of the new left. 159 00:18:14.520 --> 00:18:18.880 There are two factors that in part account for the activity in Berkshire. 160 00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:24.360 The relative youth of the Berkshire leadership, due to its status as a newly settled frontier 161 00:18:24.360 --> 00:18:35.360 and the indefatigable leadership of the Rev. Thomas Allen, who stumped the county organizing the new opposition to the status quo. 162 00:18:35.360 --> 00:18:47.360 Allen's friend, Joseph Hawley of Northampton, much further east, would have been a natural leader of the movement, but chronic illness allowed him to be effective only sporadically. 163 00:18:47.360 --> 00:18:53.360 Having traveled throughout the West, calling for a new and more libertarian constitution, 164 00:18:53.360 --> 00:18:59.360 Allen became known as the leader of the Berkshire constitutionalist movement. 165 00:18:59.360 --> 00:19:06.360 In mid-December 1775, he called a Berkshire county convention of town committees of correspondence 166 00:19:06.360 --> 00:19:10.360 to meet at Stockbridge in the southern part of the county, 167 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:15.360 an area much less devoted to the radical cause than was the north. 168 00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:19.860 The resolves of the Stockbridge Convention were simple and straightforward. 169 00:19:19.860 --> 00:19:25.860 The people of Berkshire should at least be able to nominate men for county offices 170 00:19:25.860 --> 00:19:30.860 from which the Massachusetts Council could select its choices. 171 00:19:30.860 --> 00:19:35.860 From this simple and almost innocuous request, 172 00:19:35.860 --> 00:19:41.860 the delegates from eight towns in southern Berkshire issued an angry protest. 173 00:19:41.860 --> 00:19:57.860 The right-wing dissenters bitterly attacked the Stockbridge resolution, charging that the leaders of the convention were men whose principles would tend to dissolve all government and introduce dissension, anarchy and disorder. 174 00:19:57.860 --> 00:20:13.860 Five of the prominent conservative dissenters were, not coincidentally, recent council appointees to the very county post in contention, and hence had a vested interest in the defeat of the constitutionalist movement. 175 00:20:13.860 --> 00:20:38.860 Of these, three were understandably under particular popular suspicion. John Ashley of Stockbridge, one of the hated 17 Tory recinders of the Massachusetts circular letter of 1768, and Mark Hopkins of Sheffield and Jaleel Woodbridge of Richmond, formerly justices of the peace by royal appointment. 176 00:20:38.860 --> 00:20:44.860 Stung by the conservative dissent, Allen drew up a remonstrance of the town of Pittsfield 177 00:20:44.860 --> 00:20:51.820 to the general court, setting forth his and other constitutionalist views systematically 178 00:20:51.820 --> 00:20:54.240 and at great length. 179 00:20:54.240 --> 00:20:59.100 It turned out that the conservatives from South Berkshire had not been far wrong in 180 00:20:59.100 --> 00:21:03.880 analyzing the ultimate position of Allen and his supporters. 181 00:21:03.880 --> 00:21:09.600 For many months the towns and counties of Massachusetts had nullified the royal appointments 182 00:21:09.600 --> 00:21:12.940 and therefore closed the local courts. 183 00:21:12.940 --> 00:21:20.400 They had all been living in a state of nature, a state close to anarchy, and they enjoyed 184 00:21:20.400 --> 00:21:21.400 the experience. 185 00:21:21.400 --> 00:21:27.640 As Alan's petition strongly put it, since the suspension of government, we have lived 186 00:21:27.640 --> 00:21:34.780 in Peace, Love, Safety, Liberty and Happiness. 187 00:21:34.780 --> 00:21:39.760 The only governmental power was the local committees, and these were largely devoted 188 00:21:39.760 --> 00:21:47.160 to crushing Tories. But now the men of Pittsfield saw with dismay that assumption by the General 189 00:21:47.160 --> 00:21:53.640 Court of the old executive power to appoint county judges and officials would shortly 190 00:21:53.640 --> 00:21:57.160 and this libertarian idol. 191 00:21:57.160 --> 00:22:03.200 We find ourselves in danger of returning to our former state and of undergoing a yoke 192 00:22:03.200 --> 00:22:11.820 of oppression which we are no longer able to bear, a yoke of unlimited passive obedience 193 00:22:11.820 --> 00:22:15.940 and non-resistance to governmental power. 194 00:22:15.940 --> 00:22:20.680 For their practical demands, Allen in the town of Pittsfield insisted on the right to 195 00:22:20.680 --> 00:22:27.680 annull the central appointive power by electing or at least nominating all of their local 196 00:22:27.680 --> 00:22:29.960 county officials. 197 00:22:29.960 --> 00:22:35.320 Heedless of the radical opposition, the general court tried to establish a county court in 198 00:22:35.320 --> 00:22:36.480 Berkshire. 199 00:22:36.480 --> 00:22:41.880 The local committee of inspection forcibly prevented the court from opening and Allen 200 00:22:41.880 --> 00:22:48.640 repeatedly denounced the charter government of Massachusetts as oppressive, defective 201 00:22:48.640 --> 00:22:55.400 and Rotten to the Very Core, which ought not by any means to be submitted to. 202 00:22:55.400 --> 00:23:02.040 Significantly, he was supposed to have based his argument in part on Paine's Common Sense, 203 00:23:02.040 --> 00:23:04.140 which had just been published. 204 00:23:04.140 --> 00:23:09.560 To the east, neighboring Hampshire County, in a convention of delegates from its towns 205 00:23:09.560 --> 00:23:16.040 on March 11, decided by a narrow majority to close its county courts. 206 00:23:16.040 --> 00:23:21.360 This court closing movement was led by Joseph Hawley and by the leaders of Chesterfield 207 00:23:21.360 --> 00:23:28.240 and other towns of far western and northern Hampshire. The resolution was opposed by the 208 00:23:28.240 --> 00:23:33.920 older trading centers of the county on the Connecticut River, Springfield, Hatfield and 209 00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:36.360 Northampton. 210 00:23:36.360 --> 00:23:41.720 Allen's subversive discourses were reported in great detail to the general court by John 211 00:23:41.720 --> 00:23:48.960 Ashley and his fellow Berkshire Conservatives, and Alan was denounced as an incendiary and 212 00:23:48.960 --> 00:23:55.800 sower of anarchy. He was reputed to have declared that it was the duty of the people to oppose 213 00:23:55.800 --> 00:24:01.600 the rotten charter government, and that he would rather be without any form of government 214 00:24:01.600 --> 00:24:07.960 than to submit to this constitution. And again, the people of this province had lived in peace 215 00:24:07.960 --> 00:24:12.520 in good order for more than a year without government. 216 00:24:12.520 --> 00:24:17.560 He also trenchantly informed the people that they were not simply fighting Great Britain 217 00:24:17.560 --> 00:24:20.040 but all tyranny. 218 00:24:20.040 --> 00:24:25.680 If the Congress abused its power, it should be opposed in the same manner as the King 219 00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:27.500 and Parliament. 220 00:24:27.500 --> 00:24:31.960 He cautioned, Whilst we are fighting against oppression from the King and Parliament, we 221 00:24:31.960 --> 00:24:37.880 must not suffer usurpers rising up amongst ourselves. 222 00:24:37.880 --> 00:24:43.160 Worried by the criticism relayed to the General Court, Allen and the town of Pittsfield sent 223 00:24:43.160 --> 00:24:51.440 another remonstrance to the legislature in May 1776, elaborating and also boldlarizing 224 00:24:51.440 --> 00:24:57.640 their position. They took hasty pains to assure the General Court of their belief in the absolute 225 00:24:57.640 --> 00:25:06.360 necessity of legal government to prevent anarchy and confusion, and to deny false charges that 226 00:25:06.360 --> 00:25:12.160 They were a mere mob of debtors eager to close the courts so as to avoid payments of their 227 00:25:12.160 --> 00:25:19.120 debts. They assured the legislature of their belief that legal government is a great blessing. 228 00:25:19.120 --> 00:25:24.120 In this petition they warned of the potential of domestic tyranny rising up to replace the 229 00:25:24.120 --> 00:25:30.240 old. A particular complaint was the practice of the county judges of handing out licenses 230 00:25:30.240 --> 00:25:45.000 Alan then set forth their political theory that the people are the fountain of power, 231 00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:50.200 that since the dissolution of British power these colonies have fallen into a state of 232 00:25:50.200 --> 00:25:56.160 nature and that the first step toward the restoration of civil government would be to 233 00:25:56.160 --> 00:26:03.160 to form a fundamental constitution as the basis and groundwork of legislation, and to 234 00:26:03.160 --> 00:26:11.160 check the strong bias of human nature to tyranny and despotism by a wanton exercise of power. 235 00:26:11.160 --> 00:26:18.960 Furthermore, a new constitution being above the legislature could not be made by the legislature 236 00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:26.340 Pressure itself, it must be effected by a true compact among the majority of the people. 237 00:26:26.340 --> 00:26:32.340 The Massachusetts General Court responded to this pressure by reducing all court fees 238 00:26:32.340 --> 00:26:38.280 in the province, but this was hardly enough to satisfy the Berkshire demand, and the courts 239 00:26:38.280 --> 00:26:42.400 in Berkshire and Hampshire counties remained closed. 240 00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:50.880 The one writer cited by Allen as a most respectable authority for these views was James Berg and 241 00:26:50.880 --> 00:26:58.720 his work Political Disquisitions. Berg, an elderly Scottish schoolmaster, published The 242 00:26:58.720 --> 00:27:07.000 Disquisitions in England in 1774. It was reprinted in Philadelphia the following year and soon 243 00:27:07.000 --> 00:27:12.840 Berlin became a highly influential best-seller throughout the colonies. It was eagerly read 244 00:27:12.840 --> 00:27:19.160 by the leaders and the common people alike. Berg had turned his searchlight on the tyranny 245 00:27:19.160 --> 00:27:25.320 and corruption of the English parliament of his day. Slashing away at the tightly controlled 246 00:27:25.320 --> 00:27:32.760 oligarchy constituting parliament, the radical liberal Berg called for thoroughgoing political 247 00:27:32.760 --> 00:27:40.840 Reform, Corrected Representation, Annual Parliaments, Secret Ballots by the Public, Open Debates 248 00:27:40.840 --> 00:27:46.760 in Parliament, and Universal Manhood Suffrage, except for Men on Relief. 249 00:27:46.760 --> 00:27:53.280 Government, pensioners and placements should be abolished, he wrote, thus ending the economic 250 00:27:53.280 --> 00:27:57.040 dependence of Members of Parliament on the Crown. 251 00:27:57.040 --> 00:28:02.680 To affect these aims, he saw that mere pleas to the extant Parliament would hardly suffice. 252 00:28:02.680 --> 00:28:19.680 Instead, the people of each parish and county in the land should band together in a great association to put severe pressure upon the government and even, implicitly, serve as the potential nucleus of revolution if other means should fail. 253 00:28:19.680 --> 00:28:38.680 The failure of reform would lead the people to prefer the temporary evils of revolution to the permanent evil of tyranny, distressing and debasing the human species from generation to generation and deluging the world in a never ebbing sea of blood. 254 00:28:38.680 --> 00:28:53.680 Not only did he thereby anticipate the English association movement, but he also gave implicit backing to the burgeoning association movement in America, which fulfilled these very concepts. 255 00:28:53.680 --> 00:29:05.680 Berg also hailed Algernon Sidney's justification of rebellion, as well as the writings of Trenchard and Gordon and attacked the practice of hiring mercenary troops. 256 00:29:05.680 --> 00:29:15.680 On specifically colonial problems, Berg bitterly attacked taxation without representation and the oppressive measures against America. 257 00:29:15.680 --> 00:29:25.680 The Handlin's attempt to downgrade the radical content and influence of Berg's disquisitions is unconvincing. 258 00:29:25.680 --> 00:29:34.680 If the Reverend Thomas Allen was the political leader of the Massachusetts Left, the anonymous author of the brief pamphlet, 259 00:29:34.680 --> 00:29:47.680 The people the best governors or a plan of government founded on the just principles of natural freedom was, in a sense, its intellectual leader. 260 00:29:47.680 --> 00:29:58.680 This trenchant libertarian writer declared that the people best know their wants and necessities and therefore are best able to govern themselves. 261 00:29:58.680 --> 00:30:07.680 He attacked upper houses armed with veto power and not directly responsible to the people as engines of oppression. 262 00:30:07.680 --> 00:30:13.680 A small council chosen by the assembly might be admirable for the sake of efficiency, 263 00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:20.680 but it should merely prepare material for the assembly and have no veto power over it. 264 00:30:20.680 --> 00:30:25.680 This writer not only wanted representation proportionate to the population, 265 00:30:25.680 --> 00:30:37.680 He called boldly for universal manhood suffrage, shorn of any property qualifications, which would lead to tyranny over the poor by the rich. 266 00:30:37.680 --> 00:30:49.680 He would have a judiciary and perhaps an executive elected annually by the people, but interestingly, the executive would be denied any veto over the legislature. 267 00:30:49.680 --> 00:30:58.200 Thus, he sensibly opposed not so much a judiciary independent of the legislature as a judiciary 268 00:30:58.200 --> 00:31:00.760 independent of the people. 269 00:31:00.760 --> 00:31:05.840 He also suggested that in each colony a House of Representatives armed with some judicial 270 00:31:05.840 --> 00:31:12.280 power be the Supreme Court of Appeals in the province, especially since, as he perceived, 271 00:31:12.280 --> 00:31:18.080 judges' decisions are often a camouflaged form of legislation. 272 00:31:18.080 --> 00:31:25.240 The author of The People, The Best Governors grounded his program squarely on natural rights 273 00:31:25.240 --> 00:31:27.440 and natural law. 274 00:31:27.440 --> 00:31:34.400 God gave mankind freedom by nature, made every man equal to his neighbor, and has virtually 275 00:31:34.400 --> 00:31:40.280 enjoined them to govern themselves by their own laws. 276 00:31:40.280 --> 00:31:43.320 Everyone's right to freedom is the same. 277 00:31:43.320 --> 00:31:50.060 This identical right to freedom for all men is evidently what the author meant by equality. 278 00:31:50.060 --> 00:31:56.840 Any property qualification for voting or oligarchic organs of government would deny this natural 279 00:31:56.840 --> 00:32:04.000 equal freedom and make an inequality among the people and set up a number of lords over 280 00:32:04.000 --> 00:32:04.760 the rest.