LECTURE II. In the course of my remarks I have endeavored to pass in review the beginning of constitutional government in our country in 1775-76: 1. The enforced assumption of authority by'a body of remonstrants, and the creation of the Continental Congress. 2. The reasons for the writing of the Declaration of Independence, and the bold assertion therein of the rights of man and the social contract theory of government. 3. The reasons for the advice of Congress to the colonies to take up civil government of their own. 4. The formation, in consequence of this advice, of eleven written state constitutions. 5. The embodiment, in most of these constitutions, of the declaration of the rights of man as asserted in the Declaration of Independence. 6. The total disregard of the principles of the declaration of the rights of man in the body of these state constitutions, first, by limiting and restricting the franchise, the right to vote, to men who could fulfill certain religious and property qualifications, then by increasing religious and property qualifications for the holding of office. 7. The utter disregard of the people, the source of all government, by basing representa tion, not on numbers of people but on geographical areas, on taxpayers, qualified electors, or on the amount of taxable property. 8. The struggle for popular representation which took place in the conventions or meetings which formed the Articles of Confederation, the Ordinance of 1787, and the Constitution of the United States, the three great charters of government which were formed between the period of the Revolution and 1790. 9. Then we reviewed the legal status of the great unrepresented masses, and tried to show the utter disregard, in a legal and social point of view, of the rights of man, and had gone down so far as to pass in review the treatment of the criminal and what his rights were. Now, of course, to accuse the fathers of inconsistency in this course of action—that is, of say. ing one thing and doing another, would be to do them an injustice. The declarations which they made of the rights of man seemed, from their point of view, to be ideals which were to be lived up to as soon as possible, and acquired in an orderly, systematic way. This had already been started before the Revolution closed. We find that while it was still raging the first steps were taken toward the acquisition, in a broad way, of these rights of which there has been so much said; that during that period, between the surrender at Saratoga and the adoption of the Constitution, five states had abolished slavery by gradual abolition laws; that slavery had been forbidden in the western territory by the famous Sixth Article of the Ordinance, and that some reforms were even started in a social as well as in a legal way. These of course were great steps forward, but there were greater still in the next period of ten years that closed the century. Reform was the order of the day, and in the decade which followed the adoption of the Constitution, these inalienable rights of man were still further extended. During that period New Hampshire cast away the religious test once exacted of her governor and legislators, and took off poll taxes, and put the ballot in the hands of every free male of full age. Pennsylvania abolished the test oath once required of her legislators. Delaware enfranchised every free male twenty-one years old, and ceased to ask of her office-holders if they believed in the trinity and the divine inspiration of the Scriptures. South Carolina removed the religious qualification from voters, ceased to require all members of the House of Representatives to be Protestant, and greatly reduced the property qualifications for officeholding. Georgia removed the religious test for civil office, and the property qualifications for voters, gave the ballot to all free white citizens who had paid a tax, made population the basis of representation, and defined population as all white persons and three-fifths of the persons of color. The constitution of Vermont provided for man |