Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates, Chosen to Revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, Begun and Holden at Boston, November 15, 1820, and Continued by Adjournment to January 9, 1821

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Published at the Office of the Daily Advertiser, 1853 - Constitutional amendments - 677 pages

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Page 347 - III. [As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion and morality ; and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God, and of public instructions in piety, religion and morality...
Page 369 - And every denomination of Christians, demeaning themselves peaceably, and as good subjects of the commonwealth, shall be equally under the protection of the law: and no subordination of any one sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law.
Page 163 - That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence...
Page 523 - And no subject shall be arrested, imprisoned, despoiled, or deprived of his property, immunities, or privileges, put out of the protection of the law, exiled, or deprived of his life, liberty, or estate, but by the judgment of his peers, or the law of the land.
Page 632 - Every male citizen of twenty-one years of age and upwards (excepting paupers and persons under guardianship), who shall have resided within the Commonwealth one year, and within the town or district, in which he may claim a right to vote, six calendar months next preceding any election of Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Senators, or Representatives, and who shall have paid...
Page 167 - For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight; His can't be wrong whose life is in the right...
Page 200 - Provided, notwithstanding, that the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies politic, or religious societies, shall, at all times, have the exclusive right of electing their public teachers, and of contracting with them for their support and maintenance.
Page 315 - We do not, indeed, expect all men to be philosophers, or statesmen ; but we confidently trust, and our expectation of the duration of our system of government rests on that trust, that by the diffusion of general knowledge, and good and virtuous sentiments, the political fabric may be secure, as well against open violence and overthrow, as against the slow but sure undermining of licentiousness.
Page 315 - We regard it as a wise and liberal system of police, by which property, and life, and the peace of society are secured. We seek to prevent, in some measure, the extension of the penal code, by inspiring a salutary and conservative principle of virtue and of knowledge in an early age.
Page 634 - There shall be, in the Legislature of this Commonwealth, a representation of the people, annually elected, and founded upon the principle of equality.

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