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the Legislature.

10. Stricken out.

11. In case of a town, place or city where having less than six hundred inhabitants.

12. The members shall be chosen biennially.

13. Qualifications for voting. 14. Every member of the house shall be chosen by ballot for two years.

15. Compensation and mileage. 16. Vacancies, how filled.

17. Impeachments to be heard and made by the Senate.

18. All money bills shall originate, where.

19. Power to adjourn for two days. 20. What constitutes a quorum. 21. Privileged from arrest.

22. The house shall choose their own speaker, etc.

23. Power of Senate, Governor and council.

24. Both houses to keep a journal. 25. The Senate shall consist of twenty-four members.

26. The State to be equally represented.

27. Election of Senators.

28. How Senators shall be chosen. 29. What disqualifies.

30. Those qualified to be considered an inhabitant.

42. Shall be chosen biennially.

43. The Governor may adjourn the Legislature in case of disagreement.

44. All bills to be signed by the Governor.

45. Every resolve to be presented to the Governor.

46. All judicial and army officers to be appointed by the Governor and council.

47. The Governor and council shall have a negative on each other. 48. Captains and subalterns to be commissioned by the Governor. 49. Whenever the chair of the Governor shall become vacant. 50. The Governor and council may prorogue the General Court. 51. The Governor to be commanderin-chief of the army of the State.

52. The Governor's power of pardoning offenses, etc.

53. Removal of commissioned officers of the militia.

54. Appointment of adjutants, etc. 55. Division of militia into brigades, regiments and companies.

56. No money to be issued out of the treasury, except by appropria

tion.

57. Certain officers to deliver an account of all goods, stores, etc., to the Governor.

Article

58. Compensation of the Governor

and council.

59. Permanent and honorable salaries for justices of the Supreme Court.

60. Election of Governor's councillors.

61. Those having a majority of the votes to be considered elected. 62. In regard to the refusal or acceptance of an office if elected. 63. The members of the council may be impeached for bribery, etc. 64. The resolutions, etc., of the council to be recorded.

65. State may be divided into five districts, each to elect a councillor.

66. Elections may be adjourned. 67. Choosing of the Secretary, Treasurer and Commissary-Gene

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73. Judicial officers to hold office during good behavior.

74. May require opinions of the justices of Superior Court.

75. Commissions of justices of the peace to expire in five years.

76. Marriage, divorce and alimony. 77. Justices of the peace, jurisdiction when damages shall not exceed one hundred dollars,

78. No person to hold office after the age of seventy.

79. No judge or justice of the peace to act as attorney, etc.

80. Judges of probate, duties of. 81. May not be counsel or act as advocate.

82. The judges of the courts shall appoint their respective clerks

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91. Privilege of habeas corpus. 92. The enacting style.

93. No Governor or judge of the Supreme Judicial Court shall hold any office or place of authority under this State, except.

94. No person shall be capable of exercising at the same time more than one of the following offices.

95. No member of the council shall have a seat in the Senate or House of Representatives.

96. Bribery, etc., debars from office. 97. In all cases where sums of money are mentioned in this Constitution, the value thereof shall be computed in silver as six shillings and eight pence

per ounce.

98. The General Court to fix the time and alterations when amendments shall take effect. 99. In regard to the revision of the Constitution.

100. A convention for revising the Constitution may be called every seven years.

101. The form of government shall be enrolled on parchment and deposited in the Secretary's office.

102. Prohibition.

PART FIRST.

Bill of Rights.

Article 1. All men are born equally free and independent; therefore all government of right originates from the people, is found in consent, and instituted for the general good.

Art. 2. All men have certain natural, essential, and inherent rights; among which are the enjoying and defending life and liberty; acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; and, in a word, of seeking and obtaining happiness.

Art. 3. When men enter into a state of society they surren der up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to insure the protection of others; and without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.

Art. 4. Among the natural rights, some are in their very nature unalienable, because no equivalent can be given or conceived for them. Of this kind are the rights of conscience.

Art. 5. Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience and reason; and no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person, liberty, or estate, for worshiping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience, or for his religious profession, sentiments, or persua sion, provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or disturb others in their religious worship.

Art. 6. As morality and piety, rightly grounded, will give the best and greatest security to government, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to due subjection, and as the knowledge of these is most likely to be propagated through a society by the institution of the public worship of the Deity and of public instruction in morality and religion, therefore, to promote these important purposes, the people of this State have a right to empower, and do hereby fully empower, the Legislature to authorize, from time to time, the religious societies within this State to make adequate provision, at their own expense, for the support and maintenance of public teachers of piety, religion, and morality. The several religious societies shall at all times have the exclusive right of electing their own public teachers, and of contracting with them for their support and maintenance. And no person of any one particular religious sect or denomination shall ever be compelled to pay toward the support of the teacher or teachers of another persuasion, sect, or

denomination. And every (religious sect or) denomination, demeaning themselves quietly and as good subjects of the State, 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.

Art. 7. The people of this State have the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State, and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every power, jurisdiction, and right pertaining thereto which is not or may not hereafter be by them expressly delegated to the United States of America in Congress assembled.

Art. 8. All power residing originally in, and being derived from, the people, all the magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents and at all times accountable to them.

Art. 9. No office or place whatsoever in government shall be hereditary, the abilities and integrity requisite in all not being transmissible to posterity or relations.

Art. 10. Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men, therefore, whenever the ends of government are perverted and public liberty manifestly endangered, and all other means of redress are ineffectual, the people may, and of right ought to, reform the old or establish a new government. The doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd, slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

Art. 11. All elections ought to be free; and every inhabitant of the State, having the proper qualifications, has equal right to elect and be elected into office.

Art. 12. Every member of the community has a right to be protected by it in the enjoyment of his life, liberty, and property. He is, therefore, bound to contribute his share in the expense of such protection, and to yield his personal service, when necessary, or an equivalent. But no part of a man's property shall be taken from him or applied to public uses without his own consent or that of the representative body of the people. Nor are the inhabitants of this State controllable by any other laws than those to which they or their representative body have given their consent.

Art. 13. No person who is conscientiously scrupulous about the lawfulness of bearing arms shall be compelled thereto, provided he will pay an equivalent.

Art. 14. Every subject of this State is entitled to a certain remedy, by having recourse to the laws, for all injuries he may receive in his person, property, or character; to obtain right and justice freely, without being obliged to purchase it; completely, and without any denial; promptly, and without any delay; conformably to the laws.

Art. 15. No subject shall be held to answer for any crime or offense until the same is fully and plainly, substantially and formally, described to him, or be compelled to accuse or furnish evidence against himself. And every subject shall have a right to produce all proofs that may be favorable to himself, to meet the witnesses against him face to face, and to be fully heard in his defense by himself and counsel. 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.

Art. 16. No subject shall be liable to be tried, after an acquittal, for the same crime or offense; nor shall the Legislature make any law that shall subject any person to a capital punishment (excepting for the government of the army and navy, and the militia in actual service) without trial by jury.

Art. 17. In criminal prosecutions, the trial of facts in the · vicinity where they happen is so essential to the security of the life, liberty, and estate of the citizen, that no crime or offense ought to be tried in any other county than that in which it is committed, except in cases of general insurrection in any particular county, when it shall appear to the judges of the Superior Court that an impartial trial cannot be had in the county where the offense may be committed, and, upon their report, the Legislature shall think proper to direct the trial in the nearest county in which an impartial trial can be obtained.

Art. 18. All penalties ought to be proportioned to the nature of the offense. No wise Legislature will affix the same punishment to the crimes of theft, forgery, and the like, which they do to those of murder and treason. Where the same undistinguishing severity is exerted against all offenses, the people are led to forget the real distinction in the crimes themselves and to com

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