of fraud, putting it in the power of party assessors and military officers, to make and unmake voters, together with the temptation to perjury; second, that a new agitation may be immediately commenced to obtain a further extension of suffrage, and thus the community be kept in constant excitement.

The Freemen's Convention, therefore, which formed the constitution lately rejected, wisely concluded, that when they once gave up the landed qualification, they would not stop half way. They required two years residence, only, for native American citizens. And this constitution received the hearty support of the great body of those same landholders, who have been accused of being so tyrannical and oppressive.

The question of expediency being thus waived, and the freeholders having agreed to the necessity of a change, it remains to consider the manner in which the change is to be made; and this brings us to investigate the recent attempts to effect a forcible revolution, and the reasons which have been urged in its justification.

After the Revolution, several attempts were made to have a convention called for the purpose of equalizing the representation, but they had no reference to any extension of suffrage. In April, 1782, a meeting of delegates from the several towns in Washington county, recommended to the General Assembly to call a convention for this purpose. In 1786, a bill was introduced in the House, providing that each town should have two representatives, and no more. This was referred to the people, and subsequently rejected. In 1796, a meeting at Providence, of delegates from eight towns in the counties of Providence and Bristol, recommended a constitution. At the June session of the Assembly, 1799, John Smith, of Providence, moved in the House of Representatives, to have a convention called to frame a constitution, and that there should be one delegate for every thousand inhabitants in a town. Mr. Champlin, of Newport, seconded the motion, and it prevailed by a vote of forty-four out of seventy. It was probably lost in ther Senate.*

In the year 1811, a bill was passed by the Senate, ex

*For several of these memoranda, the writer is indebted to the Hon. William R. Staples.

tending suffrage, in some degree, but never became a law. This is believed to have been altogether a political movement. In the year 1824, a constitution formed by a convention called by the legislature, remedying, in a great degree, the inequality in the representation, but retaining the old suffrage qualification, was rejected by the people. In 1834, a convention, called by the legislature for the same purpose, dissolved without doing any thing.

About this time, the whigs being out of power, some of them took up the subject of a constitution, and uniting with the friends of extension of suffrage, formed and supported a ticket of State officers, but not getting many votes, and finding it was then rather unpopular, it was dropped. But a new element was now at work in preparing the way for revolution. The then government of the United States was unpopular with a portion of the people, and the discontented, being unsuccessful in their attempts to change their rulers in a peaceable, legal, and constitutional way, were loud in their threats of forcible resistance and even of assassination. This spirit was not confined to the poor or ignorant, but was common, and encouraged among those who claimed to be the most intelligent and patriotic of the community. And, finally, in the grand hard cider Powow of 1840, instead of appealing to the understanding and sober reason of the people, the appeal was openly made to the passions and senses alone, and music and songs, processions, banners, and the machinery of stump and mass meetings, which, although common at the West, had not before got into fashion in sober New England, were made the ordinary means of electioneering, against the then national administration.

66 They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

In January, 1841, the legislature passed resolutions calling another convention to meet in November, the delegates to be elected in August, by the present freemen. This was done, partly in consequence of petitions for extension of suffrage, and partly in consequence of the memorial from the town of Smithfield, which had, for several years, been endeavoring to obtain an increase of its representation.

At the spring elections of 1840 and 1841, the whigs

elected the entire Senate, and a majority of the representatives. The democrats were now out of power, and following the example which had been set them, a portion of them took up the subject of the extension of suffrage; but the public mind had become so excited by the late severe political struggles, that it could hardly be expected but that some excesses should be committed in its support.

The new agitators, recollecting the means by which the successful party had gained the last presidential campaign, concluded to make use of the same machinery of music and processions. In consequence of the recent temperance reform, they were obliged to make one omission. But they procured their music and banners, published a songbook, and on the 17th of April, 1841, commenced more active operations by roasting an ox, a calf, and a hog, whole, upon Jefferson plains.

The

The enterprise was well planned for success. democrats, it was supposed, would join, because some of the leaders were democrats; and it was thought that the whigs had become so used to following music, flags, and processions, that they would fall in and join in the hurrah, as a matter of course, and without asking any questions.

On May 5, 1841, being the day of the inauguration of the newly-elected government and the meeting of the legislature, which always brings together a great concourse of people at Newport, the suffrage party held a mass meeting at that place, and appointed a State committee with directions "to call a convention of delegates to draft a constitution at as early a day as possible," independent of, and without consulting the Assembly, any further than to order their proceedings to be transmitted to them. This mass meeting was adjourned to meet on July 5, (4th being Sunday,) at Providence.

At the May session of the legislature, they passed an act remedying the inequality of representation of the towns in the coming convention, and fixing the number of delegates.

At the same session, a motion was made by a member, to extend the right of voting for delegates to the proposed convention. He said he had been requested to propose it in order to meet the views of a considerable portion of the people. The subject was then postponed to the June

session, when the motion was rejected. But at neither session was any petition presented or any evidence whatever, offered, that any sufficiently large portion of the people demanded any change in the suffrage.

At the adjourned mass meeting of the suffrage party, July 5, at Providence, the instructions before given were reaffirmed, and, July 20, the committee met, and issued a call to the people to elect delegates, on August 28, to attend a convention to be held at Providence, on the 1st Monday (4th) of October. The committee authorized all male American citizens, (natives and foreigners, and without distinction of color,) aged twenty-one years, and who had resided in the State one year, to vote for delegates; and they fixed the number of delegates at one to a thousand, each town to have, at least, one, and Providence to elect three for each of its six wards.

It has frequently been asserted in defence of the suffrage party, that they did not take any active measures to call a convention until after the June session, when all hope of obtaining any thing from the Assembly, was gone. The foregoing facts prove the contrary. The resolutions of May 5, were in some respects cautiously worded, as the party were not then sufficiently prepared for strong measures, and it was the policy of the leaders to draw them along gradually. But they, at that meeting, expressly directed their committee to call a convention, and that committee on June 11, drew up and adopted a long address to the people, which address was published in the New Age of the 18th, and in which they boldly avow that they have no longer any hope of obtaining their object by the ballot box, and declare their intention to adopt the measures they have since adopted, and expressly say that, "in due time, the committee to whom that duty has been entrusted, will issue the call for primary meetings, preliminary to the call of the State Convention." All this was some days before the June session of the Assembly, (June 22d) at which the

* Dr. Brown's statement to the president; and also, see comment of the Suffrage State Committee on the statement submitted to the president by Messrs. Whipple, Francis and Potter. Mr. Dorr, however, in his message to his legislature makes no such claim. It certainly cannot be said that the suffrage party continued their exertions to produce a peaceable change for any great length of time before resorting to revolution, for the Providence Suffrage Association was not formed until March, 1840.

motion for extension was to be considered. The threatening language used in the resolutions and address were not calculated to influence the General Assembly much in their favor, and were probably actually intended to have the contrary effect. The language used towards the General Assembly, in the newspaper organ of the party, had, for a long time, been very violent.

Delegates were elected to both of the conventions, and they both met at the time appointed. No opposition at all was made to these proceedings in their early stages, because it was considered by all, except the few who were in the secrets of the party, to be a mere political game designed to divide and distract the whig party, then in power. The People's Convention, so called, met in October, and adjourned to November, after preparing and publishing a draft of a constitution providing the same extension of suffrage as in the constitution they afterwards adopted.

This instance is enough, if there were no other, to show how much there is in a name. A few persons get together, and call themselves the people. And then they ask, are not the people sovereign? Have they not the right to do whatever they choose? It was certainly a lucky thought. Even according to their own statement, not more than 7000 persons, freeholders and non-freeholders, took any part in electing their delegates; and to make up this number, it has been said that spectators and people of all sorts were included.

The Landholders', or legal Convention met in November, prepared and published a draft of a constitution in which the right of suffrage was extended to personal property, and adjourned to February for the express purpose, as they declared, of obtaining the opinion of their constituents as to the expediency of a further extension.

The People's Convention met in November, the week after the other had adjourned and completed their constitution. The right of suffrage was extended to all white male American citizens, who were of twenty-one years of age, and had resided in the State one year.

This constitution was afterwards found to be very far from perfect. Mr. Dorr himself was fully capable of the task, but in amending and altering his plans, it was impossible but that some blunders should be made. A rather