[Massachusetts]:

$7,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

STATE OF MASSACHUSETTS-BAY. IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, MAY 5, 1777. THAT THE HAPPINESS OF MANKIND DEPENDS VERY MUCH ON THE FORM AND CONSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT THEY LIVE UNDER...WE DO RESOLVE, ... An important broadside notice calling for localities in Massachusetts to nominate delegates to the state's first constitutional convention. "In May 1777...the General Court reassured citizens that they would indeed get their chance to approve or reject the new state constitution....After both houses of the General Court...wrote the constitution, the resolve explained, the document would be 'printed in all the Boston News Papers, and also in Hand Bills,' and distributed throughout the state. Each town would hold a meeting at which the constitution would be 'duly considered' and voted on. The General Court would collect these town returns and, if it determined that 'at least two thirds of those who are free and twenty-one years of age' approved the constitution, 'the General Court shall be impowered to establish' it" - COLONISTS, CITIZENS, CONSTITUTIONS.For various reasons, the proposed 1778 constitution was rejected, and that act of rejection by the people of Massachusetts set an important standard for a nation of newly independent states: "The people of Massachusetts made an enormously valuable contribution to American constitutionalism [demonstrating that] the people really did have to consent to the fundamental laws that governed political life. And if they did not consent, n

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