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A DISCOURSE

ON THE EARLY

CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY

OF

CONNECTICUT,

DELIVERED BEFORE THE

CONNECTICUT HISTORICAL SOCIETY,

Hartford, May 17, 1843.

BY LEONARD BACON.

Pastor of the First Church in New Haven.

Published by request of the Society.

HARTFORD.

CASE, TIFFANY & BURNHAM, PRINTERS,

Pearl street, corner of Trumbull,

1843.

This discourse having been written only to be delivered in a public assembly and then to be forgotten, was prepared with less care in respect to the personal examination of records and original authorities, than if it had been designed for the press. It is not without reluctance that the publication has been consented to, for the haste with which the copy is sent to the press, forbids that accurate revision and that more extended illustration of some particulars which the author desired to make. An error which might be tolerated in an oral discourse, is not so easily forgiven when it appears in print, to be perpetuated.

DISCOURSE.

THE end for which this association exists, is to promote a knowledge of history, and especially the history of our own State. The means by which it operates are for the most part of an humble and unimposing character. It constitutes a bond of union for those who love old records, old books and documents, old customs and traditions; and by making such persons acquainted with each other, and with each others researches and discoveries, it not only encourages their zeal but collects and preserves the results of their industry. By its library, and its collection of papers, pictures and other objects connected with the past, it is accumulating the materials which will hereafter aid the labor of the historian, and guide the genius of the poet and the painter who shall make a distant posterity acquainted with their fathers and ours. At the same time, by the public exhibition of its library and collections, by its publications, and by these anniversary celebrations, it diffuses and promotes in the community at large a disposition to appreciate this kind of knowledge. And I will venture to suggest that its usefulness might be still further extended, if it would undertake to provide courses of popular lectures on the history of our State, to be repeated in all those cities and principal towns which would supply a sufficient auditory..

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Were I as much a man of leisure as many other members of the Society, I would have endeavored to make a different preparation for the service which I have been called to perform this evening. Had it been in my power to make the requisite investigations, I would have attempted to illustrate some particular event or crisis in the history of our time-honored Commonwealth; or I would have enIdeavored to exhibit the life and services of some of the illustrious men whose names adorn our annals. But I am constrained to ask your attention for the present hour to a theme which requires less of minute and original inquiry, and which may be illustrated chiefly from the most familiar documents. I propose to offer a few thoughts on the constitutional history of Connecticut, and particularly during the period before the charter.

The adventurers who, in the autumn of 1635, pierced the profound wilderness which then stretched westward from Boston, and commenced a new settlement in the far west at Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, supposed themselves at first to be within the limits of the colony of Massachusetts, as defined by the letters patent of King Charles I. The plantations on the Connecticut were considered an out-post or frontier station of Massachusetts; and at the beginning, their magistrates acted under the authority of the government at Boston. Yet, from the necessity of the case, their affairs were conducted at the very outset, in some measure, independently of the affairs of the parent Colony. The three contiguous towns, buried in the wilderness, and having the same interests and dangers, could not but be a body politic by themselves. Accordingly, two magistrates from each of the three towns

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formed a Court, which administered justice, and made whatever orders and regulations were deemed necessary for the common welfare. This Court was aided in counsel, on occasions of emergency, by committees from the towns, who appear to have acted in the capacity of representatives. Under this simple arrangement, the infant republic was governed for three years. By this Court, the simplicity of which would have provoked a smile from Jeremy Bentham or the Abbe Sieyes, war was undertaken, heavy taxes were imposed and collected; troops were levied and equipped; and the most powerful Indian nation in New England was thoroughly subdued, almost without aid from the older Colony of Massachusetts, so much more powerful, and hardly more distant from the scene of conflict.

When it was that the inhabitants of the three towns on the Connecticut ascertained that they were without the limits of Massachusetts, we are not informed. But whenever the discovery of their independence was made, they were not in a state of anarchy; they were already a distinct, organized political community, and under the forms which common sense and nature had spontaneously produced; or to speak more religiously, and therefore more truly and philosophically, under the forms which the providence of God had already given them, they continued to manage their little Commonwealth till 1639. In that year, on the 24th of January,* the first fathers of our State assembled at Hartford; not by delegation, but personally, in a full convention, and framed for themselves a written constitution or platform of civil government.

This, if I mistake not, is the first example in history of a

* January 14th, Old Style.