166 Chapter VIII
begin to govern themselves. This was in some ways a conservative tract. Adams
thought it best, during the war, for the new states simply to keep the forms of
government that they had. He obviously approved the arrangement under the
Massachusetts charter of 1691, by which the popular assembly elected an upper
house or council. In other ways he was not very conservative. He declared, like Jef-
ferson, that the aim of government is welfare or happiness, that republican institu-
tions must rest on “virtue,” and that the people should support a universal system
of public schools. He wanted one- year terms for governors and officials (the alter-
native would be “slavery”), and he favored rotation of office. He quite agreed that
someday the state governors and councillors might be popularly elected, as they
were in Connecticut already. He gave six reasons for having a bicameral legislature,
but in none of these six reasons did he show any fear of the people, or belief that,
with a unicameral legislature, the people would plunder property or degenerate
into anarchy. He was afraid of the one- house legislature itself. He never committed
the folly of identifying the deputies with the deputizers. He was afraid that a sin-
gle house would be arbitrary or capricious, or make itself perpetual, or “make laws
for their own interest, and adjudge all controversies in their own favor.”^9 He him-
self cited the cases of Holland and the Long Parliament. The fear of a self-
perpetuating political body, gathering privileges to itself, was certainly better
grounded in common observation than vague alarms about anarchy or pillage.
The Thoughts of 1776 were conservative in another way, if conservatism be the
word. Adams had not yet conceived the idea of a constitutional convention. He
lacked the notion of the people as constituent power. He had in mind that existing
assemblies would draft the new constitutions, when and if any were drafted.
Adams was familiar with all the high- level political theory of England and Eu-
rope. But the idea of the people as the constituent power arose locally, from the
grass roots.
The revolutionary leadership in Massachusetts, including both Adamses, was
quite satisfied to be rid of the British, and otherwise to keep the Bay State as it had
always been. They therefore “resumed” the charter of 1691. They simply undid the
Massachusetts Government Act of 1774. Some of the commonalty of Boston, and
farmers of Concord and the western towns, envisaged further changes. It is hard to
say what they wanted, except that they wanted a new constitution. Experts in
Massachusetts history contradict each other flatly; some say that debtors, poor
men, and Baptists were dissatisfied; others that all kinds of diverse people naturally
owed money anyway, that practically no one was too poor to vote, and that Baptists
were an infinitesimal splinter group in a solidly Congregationalist population. It
may be that the trouble was basically psychological; that many people of fairly low
station, even though they had long had the right to vote, had never until the Revo-
lution participated in politics, were aroused by the Revolution, the war, and excite-
ment of soldiering, and, feeling that affairs had always been managed by people
socially above them, wanted now to act politically on their own.
Demands were heard for a new constitution. It was said that the charter of 1691
was of no force, since the royal power that had issued it was no longer valid. It was
9 Work s (1851), IV, 196.