Constitution our fathers gave instructions to their representatives, 1661, '62, '63, '64, '65, '69, 77, '79, '81, '83, '85, 1700, '15, '18, '19, '20, '21 (twice), '22, '23, 27, '29, '31, '32, '33, '35, '36, '38, '39, '44, '55, '64, '65, '66, '67, '68, '69, '70, 72, 73 (twice), 74, 76, 77, 78, 79 and '80 (May). This long enumeration establishes the fact beyond power of disproof that our fathers were accustomed to give instructions to their representatives.

The subject-matter of these instructions covers pretty nearly the whole field of legislative activity both as to general principles and as to special topics: Education, morality, political conduct, agriculture, manufactures, trade and commerce, the fisheries, taxation, debt, military affairs, slavery and constitutional questions relating to the Mother Country and to the other colonies. The instructions of any one year varied from a single subject to a dozen, and in length often covered two pages and in one instance as many as six pages.

The character and quality of the representatives were not lowered by this giving of instructions to them by the people. In 1685 the deputies to the General Court requested such instructions. The leading men of the state were the representatives from Boston. They were men like John Hancock, who was President of Congress, 1774-1776, and was the first to sign the Declaration of Independence, President of the Convention that made our Constitution, and under it the first Governor of Massachusetts, from 1780 to 1784, and again from 1787 till his death in 1793; like Sam. Adams, James Bowdoin, James Sullivan, all of them Governors; James Otis, Oliver Wendell, John Lowell, William Phillips, and a long line of eminent men.

Committees were selected at the town meetings to prepare these instructions, which were presented at a later meeting or adjournment, and after discussion or amendment, were adopted by the voters, and many a time unanimously.

On these committees may be found such names as John Adams, Sam. Adams, Samuel Eliot, Joseph Warren, Richard Dana and Edmund Quincy.

It was not distrust of their zeal or ability which prompted these instructions. The instructions usually began with an emphatic statement of testimony as to the confidence felt by their constituents in the integrity and capacity of their representatives and sometimes even with a similar statement as to the affection felt toward them. Nor did it make any difference how eminent or long-tried in the service were their representatives. No lack of faith led the men of Boston repeatedly to pass instructions for the great champion of their cause, the leader of their town meetings, Sam. Adams, when he was reelected as their representative from 1766 to 1774, though in some of these years he was chosen unanimously. It was the freeman's deliberate exercise of a fundamental political right.

Observe what our fathers themselves thought of this right of instructions. In 1764 they state "By this choice, we, the free-holders of the town, have delegated you the power of acting in our public concerns, in general, as your prudence shall direct you; reserving to ourselves the constitutional right of expressing our minds and giving you such instructions upon important subjects as at any time we may judge proper. Two years later they state that "although it is not customary for us to give instructions to our representatives for their conduct in all cases, or upon al оссаsions, yet we hold the right of so doing, whenever we think fit, to be sacred and unalienable.

It was this sacred and unalienable right, among others, which the legislature omitted from its proposed Constitution, but which the constitutional convention chosen by the people inserted through the authorship of John Adams and thus established as a bulwark of popular liberty not to be denied while the Constitution endures.

A single instance must suffice to show that the instructions adopted under the new Constitution, which is our present existing Constitution, run in almost identically the same form as before 1780. In 1783 Sam. Adams himself was on the committee to prepare the instructions. Having been a member of the constitutional convention and of the special committee of three to draft the Bill of Rights, no, one better than he knew what that declaration in the Bill of Rights meant, as to the right of the people to instruct their representatives, and thus, under his direction, the instructions ran: "It is our unalienable right to communicate to you our sentiments, and when we shall judge it necessary or convenient, to give you our instructions on any special matter, and we expect you will hold yourselves at all times bound to attend to and to observe them." Such is the interpretation and the unanswerable statement of our existing Constitution from the mouth of Boston's greatest leader in the days of the Revolution.

The first instructions from Boston under the new Constitution were adopted in October, 1780, when among their seven representatives was Caleb Davis who was to be the Speaker of the House. Instructions followed in 1781, 1782, 1783 and in 1785, when John Hancock the leading citizen of the state was elected one of the seven representatives thus instructed.

The careful reader of the above instructions, or rather of these opening sentences, for two pages of definite instructions follow in each case, will notice that the sacred and unalienable right they claim is not only to give instructions to their representatives, but to express their minds and communicate their sentiments. There are several instances where they thus refrained from issuing instructions and contented themselves with an expression of their opinion, as in 1715, 1716, 1726, 1742 and 1760.

New significance and a larger meaning

attaches to the embodiment in our Constitution of this sacred and unalienable right of instructions when in the clear light of history we review the constant use our fathers made of that right which they regarded as so precious.

This right of instructions must not be confused with the other rights enumerated in the same Article, No. XIX., of the Bill of Rights, the right, for instance, of "Assembling, in an orderly and peaceable manner, to consult upon the common good, or the right of" "Requesting of the legislative body, by way of addresses, petitions, or remonstrances, redress of the wrongs done the people, or of the grievances they suffer." The right of instructions cannot be juggled away by any emphasis placed upon the right of petition. They are separate and independent. Both ordained by the Constitution it is not open to admit the one and deny the other.

To gain a still clearer comprehension of the views of the fathers as to the sovereign source of authority and the power of the people, the earlier Articles should be read and especially Article V., which states that all power residing originally in the people and being derived from them, the several officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and are at all times accountable to them. Obviously the Constitution presupposes that the people as principals or masters may issue their instructions at such times as they may judge proper to those whom they have selected as their agents, and yet to make assurance doubly sure, that all citizens must realize the existence of this fundamental right, the Constitution expressly states in Article XIX.

The judges of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts in an opinion rendered February 24, 1894, in reply to an inquiry from the House of Representatives, stated that the characteristic feature of the Constitution of Massachusetts was that it established "a government by the

representatives of the people, and not a government directly by the people. This was the kind of government to which the people were accustomed." Yes, undeniably, and beyond the power of presentday opponents of the constitutional provision to dispute. Our fathers were accustomed to a representative government in which and under which they were accustomed to give instructions to their representatives as an essential ingredient in that kind of government. The Supreme Court proceeds to explain that the people reserved to themselves no direct power of supervision. They provided for no appeal to themselves from any legislative, executive or judicial act. They apparently relied upon frequent elections; upon the right of meeting and consulting upon the common good; upon the right of petition and of instructing their representatives; upon impeachment; etc.

The Constitution as a whole establishes the government. All rights embodied in it together make up and constitute what is characterized as a representative government. The right of instructions which our fathers declared sacred and unalienable comes as near as any one to being the keystone of the arch. Because they possessed and relied upon the right of instructions, with others, they therefore did not provide for direct power of supervision.

The supreme faith of the fathers in the people as a whole is most strikingly exemplified in the fact that they were the first ever to submit to a Referendum vote by the people, the acceptance or rejection of a Constitution. The other Colonies had each of them before 1780 settled upon their Constitutions. Not one of them had submitted it to the people. To Massachusetts belongs the credit for this almost amazing innovation of the establishment of the fundamental Frame of Government directly upon the will of the whole people. In a letter of August, 1776, John Adams had prophetically

written "The right of the people to establish such a government as they please will ever be defended by me, whether they choose wisely or foolishly." This confidence of the fathers in the people was based on and justified by their experience and knowledge that the people both in their local communities and in the colony as a whole had exercised large powers and had displayed the highest political sagacity. Trained in the townmeeting system each voter became an important and self-respecting member of the governing body. Both the Massachusetts Bay and the Plymouth Colonies had started with every freeman entitled to take part in the "Greate and Generall Court."

In Plymouth Colony, in spite of the fact that the spreading of the settlements and the increase in the number of the towns made it very inconvenient and difficult for all the freemen to attend the regular meetings of the General Court, although a fine of three shillings was imposed for absence, it was arranged that while to the other meetings delegates from the towns should attend to carry on the regular affairs of government, yet to the meeting in June all the freemen should be ordered to come in order to elect officers, and also to enact laws or if deemed prejudicial to repeal those passed by their delegates at the other meetings of the General Court. The Plymouth Colony records state that as late as June 3, 1657, "The whole body of the freemen personally appeared and enacted sundry laws."

Imagine the surprise and indignation of the fathers who in the earliest years had this right and power and had exercised it themselves to enact laws and who had also for long years issued instructions to their representatives, if they had been told by modern wiseacres that they had neither the wisdom nor the right even to offer advice as a suggestion to their representatives as to the laws they desired.