Fundamental Orders of Connecticut
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The Fundamental Orders were adopted by the Connecticut Colony council on January 24 [O.S. January 14] 1639.[1] The fundamental orders describe the government set up by the Connecticut River towns, setting its structure and powers. They wanted the government to have access to the open ocean for trading.[2]
The Orders have the features of a written
History
In the year 1634, a group of
On May 29, 1638, Ludlow wrote to
There is no record of the debates or proceedings of the drafting or enactment of the Fundamental Orders. It is postulated that the framers wished to remain anonymous because England was watchful and suspicious of this vigorous infant colony; the commission from Massachusetts had expired.[4] The orders were transcribed into the official Connecticut Colony records by the colony's secretary Thomas Welles.[5]
"The men of the three towns were a law only to themselves. It is known that they were in earnest for the establishment of a government on broad lines; and it is certain that the ministers and captains, the magistrates and men of affairs, forceful in the settlements from the beginning, were the men who took the lead, guided the discussions, and found the root of the whole matter in the first written declaration of independence in these historical orders."[6]
Individual rights of the people
The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut is a short document but contains some principles that were later applied in creating the
In one sense, the Fundamental Orders were replaced by a
Today, the individual rights in the Orders, with others added over the years, are still included as a "Declaration of Rights" in the first article of the current
Competing claims for the first Western constitution
Connecticut historian John Fiske was the first to claim that the Fundamental Orders were the first written Constitution, a claim disputed by some modern historians.[7] The Mayflower Compact has an equal claim 19 years before; however, this Order gave men more voting rights and made more men eligible to run for elected positions.[8] Karolina Adamová, a scientific member of the Institute of State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences argues that the articles of the Bohemian Confederacy adopted by the General Assembly of the evangelical estates in Prague on July 31, 1619, can be considered to be the first modern constitution and simultaneously the first federal constitution in recorded history.[9]
References
- ^ "The Columbia Encyclopedia" (Sixth ed.). ia University Press. 2005. Retrieved September 13, 2006.
- ^ "The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut". Connecticut Humanities. January 14, 2023 – via ConnecticutHistory.org.
- OCLC 27066290. Retrieved September 17, 2008.
- ^ Taylor, John Metcalf (1900). Roger Ludlow, the Colonial Lawmaker. G.P. Putman's Sons. pp. 73–74.
It is the judgment of the most learned scholars, Dr. Charles J. Hoadley and the late Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, that the men who were foremost in that great matter desired that no record of the transactions should be preserved; that they knew the Fundamental Orders would explain themselves-they needed no interpretation; that in letter and spirit they would find instant response and approval in the minds and hearts of the people; and it was so. It has been justly called a self-appointed constitution. But there were other reasons for the silence of the records. England was watchful and suspicious of this vigorous infant colony; the commission from Massachusetts had expired.
- ^ "The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut: Founding Document by a Founding Father". New England Historical Society. 2019. Retrieved November 2, 2019.
- ^ Taylor, John Metcalf (1900). Roger Ludlow, the Colonial Lawmaker. G.P. Putman's Sons. p. 74.
- State of Connecticut. Archived from the originalon September 26, 2012. Retrieved January 25, 2008.
- ISBN 0-945612-19-2.
- OCLC 437009481.[page needed]