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in those days to be an executive rather than a legislative body, and all its sessions were held with closed doors.
I have said that all legislative assemblies that ever did anything worth being done were not officially reported.
The National Assembly of the French Republic and the Cromwellian Parliament of England, when the heads of their kings were cut off, were substantially secret sessions,--that is, their proceedings were not reported.
Indeed, the celebrated declaration of Deputy Sieyes when he cast his vote, “La mort sans phrase” (Death without talk), is about all the speech-making that is remembered on that occasion of taking a royal life by a vengeful people.
Something was done by such an assembly.
The convention that framed the Constitution of the United States had no official reporters, and the details of what was done there in the matter of speeches are only from the memoranda and recollections of some of the more industrious and painstaking members.
Elliott's Debates is rather the memory of what was said than anything like a report.
And so the Congress or convention that declared the independence of the United States in 1776 had no reporter; and all agree that something was done there.
The Massachusetts Constitution, as submitted to the suffrages of the people, contained all that was valuable in the old Constitution, with many needful additional provisions and amendments.
These additions deserved to meet the approbation of the people of the State, and they did within the next three years. But this Constitution failed to be adopted at the general election in November, 1853, by the very insignificant adverse majority of less than four thousand votes.
This majority was wholly composed of the Catholic vote in Boston alone, as the rest of the State voted for the Constitution in spite of the Catholic vote in its cities and towns.
It may not be uninteresting to preserve as a matter of history the reason for the failure of this proposed Constitution.
Of course it was supported by the party of the Coalition, the Democracy and Free-Soil men, and was bitterly opposed by the Whigs and Hunkers, the Mugwumps of that day. The Democratic party of Massachusetts then embraced as now a large portion of the Catholics of the State.
During the session of the convention an article was introduced, which is now Article 18 of the “Amendments,” in which
A. M. Thayer and Co. 1892.
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