Massachusetts Government Act
Act of Parliament | |
Other legislation | |
---|---|
Repealed by | Province of Massachusetts Bay Act 1778 (18 Geo 3 c 11) |
Relates to | Intolerable Acts |
Status: Repealed | |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
The Massachusetts Government Act (
Background
The Act is one of the
Contents
The Massachusetts Government Act abrogated the colony's charter and provided for a greater amount of royal control. Massachusetts had been unique among the colonies in its ability to elect members of its
Governor
Power was centralized in the hands of the royal governor, and historic rights to self-government were abrogated. The Act provided that local officials were no longer to be elected:
- [The] governor, to nominate and appoint... and also to remove, without the consent of the council, all judges of the inferior courts of common pleas, commissioners of Oyer and Terminer, the attorney general, provosts, marshals, justices of the peace, and other officers... and nominate and appoint the sheriffs without the consent of the council.
Most important was the provision regarding town meetings, the key instrument of local rule:
- whereas a great abuse has been made of the power of calling such meetings, and the inhabitants have, contrary to the design of their institution, been misled to treat upon matters of the most general concern, and to pass many dangerous and unwarrantable resolves: for remedy whereof, be it enacted... no meeting shall be called... without the leave of the governor, [apart from one annual election meeting].[4]
Implementation
When Governor Thomas Gage invoked the act in October 1774 to dissolve the provincial assembly, its Patriot leaders responded by setting up an alternative government that actually controlled everything outside Boston. They argued that the new act had nullified the contract between the king and the people, who ignored Gage's order for new elections and set up the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. It acted as the province's (from 1776 the state's) government until the 1780 adoption of the Massachusetts State Constitution. The governor had control only in Boston, where his soldiers were based.[5]
Parliament repealed the act in 1778 as part of attempts to reach a diplomatic end to the ongoing American Revolutionary War.
See also
Notes
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Further reading
- Raphael, Ray. The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord (2011) excerpt
- Sosin, Jack M. "The Massachusetts Acts of 1774: Coercive or Preventive?." Huntington Library Quarterly (1963): 235–252. in JSTOR
- Walett, Francis G. "The Massachusetts Council, 1766-1774: The Transformation of a Conservative Institution." William and Mary Quarterly (1949): 605–627. in JSTOR
References
- ^ Ira D. Gruber, "The American Revolution as a Conspiracy: The British View." William and Mary Quarterly (1969): 360-372. in JSTOR
- ^ "Avalon Project - Great Britain : Parliament - The Massachusetts Government Act; May 20, 1774".
- ^ Ian R. Christie and Benjamin W. Labaree, Empire or Independence, 1760–1776 (New York: Norton, 1976) p. 188.
- ^ text from Avalon project
- ^ Sosin, 1963