The Alaska daily empire., 1920-12-22
The Maynowcr Covenant and Others
(New York Evening Post.


 Three hundred years ago the forty-one male adults the Mayfower, then anchored in Province town harbor signed their to compact for the organization of "cvil body politics. They agreed to enact such just and equal laws and to create such offices "as shall be thought most meete and convenient for ye general good of ye Colone. unto which promise all due submission and obedi- ence" There born in this simple act the world s first Constitution based upon laws popularly framed. The Pilgrims did not realize the full importance of their sep and recent historians have not failed to discover that they had petty well purposes in mind. They had to America with patent from the Virginia Company, under which they were to settle within the companys grants. They dsliked the patent, which gave them few rights but they would not have had Government permission to leave England without Reaching Cape Cod they tried to beat south to the Virginia Companys domain, but stopped by the shoals and rips still visible from the Capes elbow Turning then towards Plymouth, they knew that they were abandoning their patent and the Compact was needed partly substitute, partly of emphasizing their severance from the proft-hunting Virginia Company.
 The American people the first in modern history and have always been the foremost to in sst upon written Constitution. This has clearly been because in colonial times the English charters the all-mportant guarantee against the aggres- sion of the Crown Crown Governors, Parliament and neighboring Colonies and against internal dis sension Colonies possessing charters cherished them like jewels, and those having to obtain them or to have the English commissions to royal governors given as many characteristics of char ter possible Before the Revolution began Amer
 
 Rhode Island ideal. That because their charters made them completely self-goyerning enabling them | to elect their own Governors well legislators prime cause of the Revolution the attempt to revoke the Massachusetts charter.
 Thus it was natural for political system to grow around the idea that freedom is secure only when embodied in written documents The genera ton that established the republic believed that poti- cal safety was represented by combination of the ancient Anglo-Saxons Bills of Rights with the best sort of colonial charter All Constitutional de- velopment has grown from that beginning i The Mayfower Compact takes it's place as the hrst, though the least of those Constitutions which America has set peculiar a regard The earlier Virginia patents recognized such political rights | as the Pilgrim colonists boldly claimed. When Plymouth ceased to be self governing it was to &C., cept incorporation with Massachusetts under that ] charter of 1891 which the Adamses Hancock and Warren defended tenaciousy against George IT. A mere reading of the first Massachusetts charter or the Connecticut charter indicates the connection between them and present State and Federal constitutions There is such internal evidence in ne case of the Compact but the connection exists tts consequences may be said to extend to the constitutions of certain countries other continents md hemispheres. While much of Europe has contin- led without any fundamental law superior to mere tatutory law, we have impressed our practice upon . >atln America, China and the younger European epubcs.