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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
In New England—and later, in those States to the west that were settled primarily by New Englanders—the ‘‘township’’ system of local government was more important than the county organization, even though
counties had their functions in New England, too. New England’s town
meetings could be attended by almost anyone, although in 1763 not all
local residents were entitled to vote at these meetings. Township officers
were elected annually in those times, and that was another practice that
tended to make township government democratic. New England’s town
meetings had begun as formal gatherings of men in good standing with
the Puritan or Congregational churches. By 1763, they had become civic
institutions and there was no religious test for participation.
Both county and township were political structures inherited from
centuries of English experience. Yet in America these institutions took
on a renewed vigor or were adapted to American circumstances. By the
1830s, for example, the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville found the
system of American local government—especially the township—a major reason for the successes of the American democracy.
Earlier it was noted that representative government was Britain’s most
important contribution to America’s Constitution. The British succeeded
in conferring upon the colonies a truly representative system of provincial
and local government. This made possible the establishment of liberty,
order, and justice in the new nation. As Benjamin Franklin, John Dickinson, and a good many other leading men at the Constitutional Convention would recognize sadly even in 1787, it was a melancholy irony that
the political patrimony bequeathed to America by Britain should itself be
a major cause of Britain’s loss of her North American empire.
Civil Liberties in the Colonies
Among the civil liberties that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights of the
American Constitution, those providing for the free exercise of religion,
freedom of speech, and freedom of the press are noteworthy. It is instructive to examine the status of these freedoms in the Thirteen Colonies on
the eve of the American Revolution.
First, the free exercise of religion. In the seventeenth century, America
was a refuge for fugitives from religious persecution, including Puritans,