A History of the American People

It is a thousand pities that Edmund Burke, the greatest statesman in Britain at that time, and
the only one fit to rank with Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Adams, and Madison, has not left
us his reflections on the Declaration. Oddly enough, on July 4, the day it was signed, he noted
that the news from America was so disturbing that I courted sleep in vain.' But Burke was at one with Jefferson, in mind and still more in spirit. His public life was devoted to essentially a single theme-the exposure and castigation of the abuse of power. He saw the conduct of the English Ascendancy in Ireland as an abuse of power; of the rapacious English nabobs in India as an abuse of power; and finally, at the end of his life, of the revolutionary ideologues who created the Terror in France as an abuse of power. Now, in 1776, he told parliament that the crown was abusing its power in America bya succession of Acts of Tyranny.' It was governing by an Army,' shutting the ports, ending the fisheries, abolishing the charters, burning the towns: so, you drove them into the declaration of independency’ because the abuse of power was more than what ought to be endured.’ Now, he scoffed, the King had ordered church services and a public fast in support of the war. In a sentence which stunned the Commons, Burke concluded: Till our churches are purified from this abominable service, I shall consider them, not as the
temples of the Almighty, but the synagogues of Satan.'' In Burke's view, because power had been
so grievously abused, America was justified in seeking independence by the sword. And that, in
essence, is exactly what the Declaration of Independence sets forth.
With Independence declared, and the crown dethroned, it was necessary for all the states to
make themselves sovereign. So state constitutions replaced the old charters and `frameworks of
government.' These were important not only for their own sake but because they helped to shape
the United States Constitution later. In many respects the colonies-henceforth to be called the
states-had been self-governing since the 17th century and had many documents and laws to
prove it. Connecticut and Rhode Island already had constitutions of a sort, and few changes were
needed to make them sovereign. Then again, many states had reacted to the imposition of
parliamentary taxation from 1763 by seizing aspects of sovereignty in reply, so that the total
gestation period of the United States Constitution should be seen as occupying nearly thirty
years, 1763-91." The first state to act, in 1775, was Massachusetts, which made its charter of
1691 the basis. Others followed its lead: New Hampshire and South Carolina in 1775, then
Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina in
1776, and Georgia early in 1777. New York was the first to adopt a reasonably strong executive.
Massachusetts decided it liked the idea, and drafted a revised constitution. The new draft was
submitted to a popular referendum in March 1777, the first in history, but rejected 9,972-2,083.
Then elections were held for a constitutional convention, which produced the final version of
1780, adopted by a two-thirds vote.
The Massachusetts constitution (as amended) was the pattern for others. All but two,
Pennsylvania and Georgia, were bicameral, and these two changed their minds, 1789-90. In all
the lower house was elected directly, and the upper house was elected directly too in all but one,
Maryland, which had an electoral college. All but one, South Carolina, had annual elections for
the lower house, and many had popularly elected executives and governors. Twelve required
electors to own property, usually 50 acres, which was nothing in America. In three you had to
prove you paid taxes. All but one required property qualifications from office-seekers. The
percentage of white adult males enfranchised varied from state to state but the average electorate
was four times larger than in Britain. All in all, they amounted to popular sovereignty and were
very radical indeed for the 1770s. They had an immediate and continuing impact all over Europe
and Latin America. One constitution, Pennsylvania's, initially went further in a radical direction.