The People as Constituent Power 167
said that no one could be governed without his consent, and that no living person
had really consented to this charter. Some Berkshire towns even hinted that they
did not belong to Massachusetts at all until they shared in constituting the new
commonwealth. They talked of “setting themselves apart,” or being welcomed by a
neighboring state. Echoes of the social contract floated through the western air.
“The law to bind all must be assented to by all,” declared the farmers of Sutton.
“The Great Secret of Government is governing all by all,” said those of Spencer.^10
It began to seem that a constitution was necessary not only to secure liberty but to
establish authority not only to protect the individual but to found the state.
The house of representatives proposed that it and the council, that is, the two
houses of legislation sitting together, should be authorized by the people to draw
up a constitution. All adult males were to vote on the granting of this authoriza-
tion, not merely those possessing the customary property qualification. In a sense,
this was to recognize Rousseau’s principle that there must be “unanimity at least
once”: that everyone must consent to the law under which he was to live, even if
later, when constitutional arrangements were made, a qualification was required for
ordinary voting. The council objected to a plan whereby it would lose its identity
by merging with the house. A little dispute occurred, not unlike that in France in
1789 between “vote by head” and “vote by order.” The plan nevertheless went
through. The two houses, sitting as one, and authorized by the people, produced a
constitution in 1778. It was submitted for popular ratification. The voters repudi-
ated it. Apparently both democrats and conservatives were dissatisfied. This is pre-
cisely what happened in Holland in 1797, when the first constitution of the Dutch
revolution was rejected by a coalition of opposite- minded voters.
A special election was therefore held, in which all towns chose delegates to a
state convention, “for the sole purpose of forming a new Constitution.” John
Adams, delegate from Braintree, was put on the drafting committee. He wrote a
draft, which the convention modified only in detail. The resulting document re-
flected many influences. It is worth while to suggest a few.
There is a modern fashion for believing that Rousseau had little influence in
America, particularly on such sensible characters as John Adams. I do not think
that he had very much. Adams, however, had read the Social Contract as early as
1765, and ultimately had four copies of it in his library. I suspect that, like others,
he found much of it unintelligible or fantastic, and some of it a brilliant expression
of his own beliefs. He himself said of the Massachusetts constitution: “It is Locke,
Sidney, Rousseau, and de Mably reduced to practice.”^11
Adams wrote in the preamble: “The body politic is formed by a voluntary asso-
ciation of individuals. It is a social compact, by which the whole people covenants
with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be gov-
erned by certain laws for the common good.”^12 The thought here, and the use of
the word “covenant,” go back to the Mayflower compact. But whence comes the
10 Douglass, op.cit., 178.
11 Work s (1851), IV, 216. Adams also, in 1787, cited Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality and Con-
siderations on Poland with approval, recommending the former for its picture of the evil in civilized
men, the latter for its view that Poland was dominated exclusively by nobles. Work s, IV, 409 and 367.
12 Ibid., 219; Thorpe, op.cit., III, 1889.