qualified were excluded from the franchise by the constitutional requirement of a freehold worth £60 or productive of an annual income of £3, roughly translated as $200, or $10 (in American currency of 1820). Even this limitation was loosely enforced. Actual practice, if not the law, approximated universal male suffrage. Reformers were more concerned with the expediency than the justice of the requirement. A resolution to abolish it passed by a substantial margin, only then to be reversed when conservatives like Josiah Quincy held up the specter of a propertyless rabble multiplying in the new factory-towns and assailing the liberties and estates of the commonwealth. The convention quickly settled on an amendment extending the suffrage to men qualified by age and residence who also paid any tax to the state or county. This tax-paying qualification merely brought the constitution abreast of prevailing practice.
In accordance with the theory of balanced government and wishing to secure property against the masses, the framers of the Revolutionary constitution had based representation in the house on numbers, in the senate on property, or, to be strictly accurate, on the proportion of taxes paid by the senatorial districts. The select committee on this subject recommended no change. The delegates, in committee of the whole, signified their agreement. Then Henry Dearborn, in a long, impassioned speech—barely summarized in the Journal of Debates—attacked this “aristocratical principle” of property representation in the senate and offered a resolution to base that body on population by districts. Amazingly, the delegates adopted it without debate. When it was pointed out that the resolution was inconsistent with the rest of the report on the legislature branch, the delegates voted to reconsider. For the first time in the convention, the conservatives brought out their big guns against this “subversion of fundamental principle.” John Adams rose in defense of the property basis of the senate, recalling the doctrines of his elaborate Defense of the American Constitutions in 1787. The long speeches of Webster and Story made deep impressions and may, indeed, by sheer power of argument, have reversed the convention’s decision on this question. As Story pointed out, the actual difference between property and numbers was not great, and it was likely to diminish because of the rapid growth of population in the eastern cities, particularly Boston, which paid the largest share of taxes and were, therefore, favored in senatorial representation. Nevertheless, whether viewed in the light of principle or of power, the system was undemocratic. Western delegates could readily demonstrate that while it assigned six senators to Suffolk, it gave the three valley counties, twice as populous, only four. Suffolk and Essex together held one-third of the representation in the senate. The interest of a majority of the delegates clearly supported a senate based upon population, but the majority withered under the conservative counterfire. When the Dearborn resolution came to a vote in the committee of the whole on December 15, it was rejected 164 to 247. It met the same fate later in the convention.
The question of the senate was inseparable from the question of representation in the house. A meaningful balance required that the two chambers of the legislature be based upon different principles that had some logical relationship. If under the revised constitution representatives were to be paid out of the state treasury for the first time—and most delegates agreed they should be—this was further reason for basing the senate on taxes. Moreover, men had generally assumed, quite correctly, that the composition of the house in Massachusetts gave a preponderant representation to the small towns at the expense of the large; and since the report of the legislative committee looked to a continuation of this system, though on a reduced scale, it seemed unjust to expect the large towns to give up their superior position in the senate. The organization of the legislative branch in the constitution of 1780 embodied a compromise as well as a balance, and not only between property and numbers but also between the large eastern towns and the hundreds of hinterland villages. What the former had gained in the senate had to a considerable extent been off set by the latter’s gain in the house. Everyone in the convention recognized the reciprocity. Dearborn confessed, after the initial acceptance of his resolution on the senate, that he had no idea of making it popular and at the same time leaving representation in the house on a town basis. The other part of his plan, only now introduced, was to apportion representatives according to population in new electoral districts of about 13,000 inhabitants. The plan was thoroughly democratic; even Story conceded its justice. Moreover, it had the merit of skirting the critical problem of a vastly overpopulated house of representatives—five hundred members under the existing system of town representation. This was one of the problems that had brought the convention into being. It had to be solved.
Three solutions were offered. Dearborn’s, of course, simply abandoned the historic representation of the towns, deeply embedded along with the parish and the town meeting in Massachusetts tradition. And this was enough to sink the plan regardless of other considerations. The Worcester leader Levi Lincoln proposed a kind of federal system in reverse—corporate town representation in the house, the whole amounting to 334 members, and a popular senate. By mixing separate principles in the composition of the bicameral legislature, the plan allegedly met the old Whig criterion of balanced government. But the house remained too numerous and the representation grossly unequal. According to the analysis of William Prescott, 169 small towns, less than one-third the entire population, would choose a majority of the house. “Thus the liberties of the majority would be put in subjection to the minority in violation of the principle of every free government.” Obviously something was amiss when a Boston Federalist could appeal to majority rule and equal rights against a Jeffersonian outlander! Lincoln’s plan was buried in the committee of the whole, and he did not later attempt to resurrect it. The convention, by a substantial majority, gave its support to the plan of the legislative committee. Corporate towns of 1,200 inhabitants were to elect one representative, those of 3,600, two, and so on. Over one-half the towns of the state were thus deprived of annual representation; they were permitted, however, to send a delegate every other year or to join with neighboring towns similarly situated to meet the minimum population required. The new system would result in a house not exceeding 275 members. A majority of the delegates of only two counties, Plymouth and Bristol, voted against the revised plan (see Table 1.2).
Of the other issues in the convention, the one touching the independence of the judiciary stirred the most controversy. Story was a fanatic on this point; and as chairman of the judiciary committee, he reported an amendment requiring a two-thirds vote of both chambers, instead of the simple majority of the 1780 constitution, before the executive could remove a judge. The measure failed to pass. But Story gained some small additional protection for judges and single-handedly defeated a motion, reported to the convention from the great committee, empowering the legislature to reduce the salaries of judges. (Unfortunately, his speech on this question, together with the debate, which he described as the most brilliant of the convention, have not been preserved.) As in other states, the common provision of the early constitutions for an executive council to advise or act in concert with the governor gave trouble in Massachusetts. Here, however, since the governor was elective and the council had little authority, the question raised no fundamental issue of executive power and responsibility. The problem was that nine of the councillors (the tenth being the lieutenant governor) were elected from the senate on the joint ballot of the two chambers. This upset the senate; often the senators elected to this fifth wheel of the government declined to serve; and a council adhering to a party opposed to the governor caused disharmony in the executive branch. Reformers wished either to abolish the council or to make it elective of the people. It was retained, however, with a reduced complement of councillors to be elected by both chambers from the people at large. Before finishing its work, the convention wisely added a provision for popular amendment of the constitution, thereby postponing to a far distant day any repetition of their ordeal.
The convention adjourned sine die on January 9, 1821. Since its task was to revise the old constitution, not to frame a new one, the mode of presenting the amendments to the people for ratification was a difficult question. Webster saw the problem clearly, and midway in their proceedings the delegates adopted his resolution for grouping the amendments in distinct articles, so arranged “that, upon the adoption or rejection of any one or more of them, the other parts of the constitution may remain complete, and consistent with each other.” Applying this method, the convention proposed fourteen articles of amendment, which were explained in an “Address
