III. Protection of Persons and Property, IV. Protection of the Public Health, V. Regulation of Public Utilities, VI. Regulation of Banking and Insurance, IX. Development and Regulation of Highways and Waterways, X. Development and Conservation of Natural Resources, The frontispiece, which is supplied through the generosity of Hon. William THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS COMMISSION TO COMPILE INFORMATION AND DATA FOR THE USE OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION ROOM 426, STATE HOUSE BOSTON THE COMMISSION WILLIAM B. MUNRO, CHAIRMAN LAWRENCE B. EVANS, VICE CHAIRMAN ROGER SHERMAN HOAR HENRY WARD BIRD, SECRETARY HISTORY OF THE CONSTITUTION OF MASSACHUSETTS. The fundamental law of Massachusetts is rooted well back in the past. The Constitution of 1780 is still in force in its essential principles; and these principles are derived in part from the Colony charter of 1629 and the Province charter of 1691. I. THE GOVERNOR AND COMPANY OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY (COLONY CHARTER), 1629-1686. Many of the political institutions of the Massachusetts Colony were the outgrowth of the charter of a business corporation. In granting articles of incorporation to trading companies operating in sections of the Empire in which no government owing allegiance to England had been established, it was the policy of the Crown to empower such companies not only to trade but also to make settlements and exercise political authority in those districts. These trading charters are the parents of the American State constitutions. Such a company was organized in London by a number of small investors in 1628. It obtained "all that part of New England in America" lying between parallels three miles north of the Merrimac and three miles south of the Charles. The next year it secured a royal charter from Charles I, dated March 4, 1629, constituting it the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England. This charter followed the lines of other charters to joint-stock corporations. The stockholders were called freemen of the corporation. They were to elect their officials by ballot on the "last Wednesday in Easter tearme yearely," the origin of our annual elections at fixed dates. The officials consisted of a Governor, Deputy Governor, and Assistants, corresponding to the president, vice-president, and directors of a business corporation. Stockholders and officials must assemble at certain intervals in a "Greate and Generall Courte," with power "to make, ordeine, and establishe all manner of wholesome and reasonable orders, lawes, statutes," etc., and appoint all minor officials, for the governing of the plantation in Massachusetts Bay; likewise to "incounter, expulse, repell, and resist by force of armes, aswell by sea as by lande, and by all fitting waies and meanes whatsoever, all such person and persons as shall at any tyme hereafter attempt or enterprise the destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance to the said plantation or inhabitants.”1 The Governor, Deputy Governor, and Assistants constituted the directors' meeting of the corporation, known as the Court of Assistants, to meet at least once a month. The apparent liberality of this charter is explained by the fact that the Massachusetts Bay Company, like the Virginia Company and other mercantile corporations, was expected to remain in London under the royal observation, there hold its General Courts and directors' meetings, thence to send out employees to govern its plantations in Massachusetts. Thus British India was governed, as late as 1773, by the East India Company in London. At first the Massachusetts Bay Company obeyed the rules of the game. The General Court, meeting in London, sent out a company of emigrants to Salem under John Endicott, who was the company's representative. But shortly after securing the royal charter the Puritan stockholders of the company decided upon a revolutionary move. Wishing themselves to emigrate, they decided to take their government with them. Royal charter, Governor Winthrop, Deputy Governor Dudley, Assistants, and freemen were transferred from England to the soil of Massachusetts Bay by the ship "Lady Arabella" in the spring of 1630. The Court of Assistants met for the last time in England on board the emigrant ship, in Cowes Harbor, on March 23. The next entry is at Charlestown, five months later. By the single act of transfer capitalists became colonists, and the charter of a business corporation became the constitution of a semiindependent Commonwealth. 1 Cf. present Constitution, Chapter II, Section I, Article VII. |