The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-06
STATE GOVERNM MENT.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF
 CONNECTICUT.
Thomas Hooker's Remarkable Docu-
 ment-Few Defects Pointed Out,


 The written constitutional history of
 Connecticut is the longest in the world
 The first brand-new constitution under
 which any government was actually
 put into operation was that adopted by
 the three towns of Hartford, Windsor
 and Wethersfield in the winter of 1639.
 That constitution, twenty three years
 later, in 1862, was practically sanctioned
 by charter-the one later hidden in
 the oak to keep it from Andros-grant-
 ed by Charles IT. As a charter it re-
 mained the fundamental law of Con-
 necticut until ISIS, when the present
 constitution was adopted. Owing to the
 tenacity of tradition the ISIS constitu-
 tion perpetuated the 1639 constitution
 in many of it's abuses despite explicit
 language providing for their reform
 The first constitution of Connecticut
 was a remarkable document. Its author
 was Thomas Hooker, one of the great
 men of his day, if he did not actually
 frame and phrase it. In some respects
 it inaugurated more popular form of
 government that that under which we
 of Connecticut ,are living to-day, 260
 years after it was devised. That first
 constitution, known as the 'Funda-
 mental Orders" committed the govern
 ment to Governor, six magistrates or
 assistants, and deputies representing
 the towns, all of whom when sitting in
 a single body constituted the Legisla-
 ture or General Court. The Governor
 and his assistants were elected by bal
 lot at a general gathering of the free
 in IarffnrH hpfnra Tho assembling of the Legislature. At this gathering
 the freemen counseled with the town
 deputies before they went into legis-
 lative session with the Governor and
 his assistants. It will be noted that the
 assistants, though part of the Legls- lature, represented the people much in the same way that the United States House represents the people at large.
 This idea of combining the representa- tion of population and of locality was Connecticut's contribution to the fed eral constitution, cnly it was turned around. Hooker's constitution gave the supreme power to the Legislature. It acknowledged no sovereignty of the British King and it exacted no test of church membership from the voters-in this last respect in striking contrast with the policy of the neighboring New Haven colony.
 The principal changes made by the charter were an attempt to eXalt the assistant, ignoring the town deputies, and the provision that no town should have more than two Representatives. This really stimulated what grew to be the great evil of the Connecticut sys- tenn government by Legislature. The people naturally turned toward the body which the crown sighted as their peculiar inheritance. And as the as- sistants. increased to twelve by the charter, became diminishing factor with the growth of the colony (the New Haven colony being added soon after the adoption of the charter) the result was to give undue prominence to the ' Representatives of the towns, and more than their fair share of State control. The Legislature soon became a law unto itself, largely because it was the one judicial body. It elected the judges and they were directly under it's inhu- ence. It interfered with the ordinary course of justice as it pleased. It even overrode the charter, as when it changed the system of voting from a general gathering of the freemen to the collection of ballots from the va rious towns which it first counted and whose results it first announced or as when it divided itself into two bodies making a Senate out of the assistants; or as when in the Revolutionary War period 1t promulgated of itself the charter purged of royalty, as the un- damental law of the State without ref erence to popular indor%nent. The United States Supreme Court itself Gin 179S) upheld the right of the Legisla. ture to do as it pleased claiming that in forming courts the Legislature had never parted with the power of super- 
 There were three causes that forced the movement that resulted in the convention of 1S1S One was a theologist movement, a protest against the system by which if a man did not pay taxes to support any other he must pay taxes u support Congregationalsm. The sec- ond was a. political movement, grow ing out of dissatisfaction with the ar tificial system of nominating the as sistants by which the Senate passed into the control of a Federal ina CnlQe. lne Cnlru was d movement for judicial reform by which it was hoped to make the courts independent of the Legislature, The first two re- forms were easily accomplished The third reform was explicitly provided for, by the language of the new Consti. tuition, which divided the functions of government into executive legislative and judicial and assigned each to it's own magistrates But the interpre- tive timidy of the courts and the by usage were too much for merely written constitutional provision and the Legislature continued to re- tain most of the great prerogatives it 1 had enjoyed before For example, a Connecticut case (Wheel- ar's appeal in 1S7O compared the { Legislature to the British Parliament l doctrine which had previously been declared though not so sweepingly by [ the United States Supreme Court. i
 What was the result of all this? The people of Connecticut, becoming accus- .omed to regard the Legislature as l heir representative body, have given <, small signs oI protest under all sorts f, If encroachments on local self-govern- ( nent. Our system of misrepresenta- ion, by which ancient towns still have $ wo representatives because they re- i ,eived them under the charter, is only f