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America’s First Constitutions and Declarations of Rights
years. Thereafter, and at seven-year intervals, a council of censors was to
be elected to review the operation of government and inquire whether
the constitution had been violated. If the censors thought an amendment
was needed, they had the power to call a State convention. The constitution met with a storm of protest and was soon an object of ridicule and
jest among the State’s more conservative citizens. Observers from other
States shared these views and John Adams condemned the document as
a sham. A member of Congress from North Carolina wrote home ridiculing the Pennsylvania Constitution as ‘‘a beast without a head.’’ The
constitution so convulsed the State that the government was barely able
to function for more than a decade. Franklin, however, was so pleased
with the constitution that he carried a copy of it to France to show to Turgot, Condorcet, and other admirers. In 1790, the French Constituent Assembly made the disastrous decision to adopt the Pennsylvania plan for
a unicameral legislature. That same year, Pennsylvania unceremoniously
abandoned its 1776 constitution in favor of a new one modeled after the
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