Begun and holden at Boston, November 15, 1820, and continued by Adjourn- REPORTED FOR THE BOSTON DAILY ADVERTISER. NEW EDITION, REVISED AND CORRECTED. BOSTON: PUBLISHED AT THE OFFICE OF THE DAILY ADVERTISER. 1853. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. Dutton & Wentworth, Printers, 37 Congress Street. A23 DOCUMENTS PREFACE. THE present Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention which assembled at the State House in Boston, November 15, 1820, to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, was first published, from day to day, in the Boston Daily Advertiser, during the session of the Convention, and was then issued in the form of a volume, immediately after its adjournment in 1821, the printing having been carried on during the session. A part of the edition was ordered by the Convention to be distributed among the members and other persons, and the remaining copies were immediately taken up by the public. It has been in considerable request at various times, but not to such extent as was deemed sufficient to indemnify the expense of a new edition. The recent call of a new Convention, for another revision of the Constitution, has awakened so much interest in the proceedings of that of 1820, as to induce the reprint now presented to the public. It has been considered important by the Editors that no material alterations should be made in the text. Although there are, perhaps, some portions of the volume which possess less general interest at the present time than others, and might have been omitted without detracting from its value, and although, from the haste with which the original report was prepared, there were doubtless some expressions in it which might have been improved upon a careful revision, the Editors, nevertheless, thought that the confidence of the public would be justly shaken in the accuracy of the volume, as a true record of the proceedings of the Convention, if it were not the same as that printed contemporaneously with its sittings, the errors of which, if any existed, would have then been immediately exposed. The official journal was ordered by the Convention to be deposited in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth; but there is on a file of papers relating to the Convention, a contem |