As a result of the unwelcome legislation, the Republicans received the whole vote of the Methodists for the "Toleration and Reform Ticket" of 1817, which repeated the nominations of the preceding election. The Episcopalians of course favored the reëlection of Lieutenant-Governor Ingersoll. One small provocation by the Congregationalists of the First Church of New Haven—the attempt to place the odium of expulsion upon a member who became an Episcopalian—did not tend to allay feeling. The Toleration party were sure of the votes of the more feeble dissenters, whose interests they promised to regard, as well as of those of the Baptists and of such Federalists as disapproved of the high-handed policy of the Standing Order. The Tolerationists were also counting upon a steady increase of recruits from the Federal ranks as soon as the appreciation of a recent attack by the legislature upon the judiciary and its danger should become more and more realized. Many such recruits, convinced of the necessity of constitutional reform, had gathered at the general meeting of Republicans held in New Haven in October, 1816, to make up the ticket for the spring election of 1817. The campaign issue was "whether freemen shall be tolerated in the free exercise of their religious and political rights." It was met by the election of Governor Wolcott with a majority of 600 votes over ex-Governor J. Cotton Smith, and by no opposition to the reëlection of Lieutenant-Governor Ingersoll. [w] At the same election many minor Republican officials were seated, and the House went Republican by an assured majority of nearly two to one, the Senate remaining strongly Federal.
Governor Wolcott's inaugural placed before the Assembly the following subjects for consideration: (1) A new system of taxation; for, as the governor pointed out, the capitation tax was equivalent to about one-sixteenth of the laboring man's income. (2) Judges of the Superior Court should hold their office during good behavior instead of by annual appointment by the legislature. (3) There should be a complete separation of legislative and judicial powers of government. (4) Rights of conscience and the voluntary support of religion, though if necessary with "laws providing efficient remedies for enforcing the voluntary contracts for their [ministers'] support," should be considered; and (5) Freedom of suffrage. In concluding, the governor urged that "whenever the public mind appears to be considerably agitated on these subjects, prudence requires that the legislature should revise its measures, and by reasonable explanation or modifications of the law, restore public confidence and tranquillity." [x]
To consider briefly these various points: Taxes upon mills, machinery, and manufactures needed to be light in order to secure their continued existence. The necessities of war-time had created a larger market for their products, but one that could not be continued after the close of the war allowed European products to enter free of duty. Nor could the factories exist if burdened with heavy taxes before the new tariff measures of 1816 had revived these depressed industries. In agriculture, taxes upon horses, oxen, stock, dairy products, and increased areas of tillage handicapped the farmer. Again, the tax upon fire-places, rather than upon houses, weighed heavily upon the poor and the moderately well-to-do, who built small and inexpensive houses with say three fireplaces, while the rich owners of older and more pretentious dwellings were often rated for fewer. [y] Money was scarce, rich men rare. So also was great poverty. There was a scanty living for the majority. Trades were few, wages low. A farm-hand averaged three shillings a day, paid in provisions. Women of all work drudged for two shillings and sixpence per week, while a farm overseer received a salary of seventy dollars a year. The children of people in average circumstances walked barefoot to church, carrying their shoes and stockings, which they put on under the shelter of the big tree nearest to the meeting-house. Their fathers made one Sunday suit last for years. The wealthy had small incomes, though relatively great. It was whispered that Pierpont Edwards, the rich and prosperous New Haven lawyer, had an income from his law practice of two thousand dollars per year.
Points (2) and (3) in the governor's address were prompted by the widespread interest created by the action of the legislature in October, 1815, when it had set aside the conviction, by a special Superior Court at Middletown, of Peter Lung for murder, on the ground that the court was irregularly and illegally convened. The chief judge was Zephaniah Swift of Windham, author of the "System of Connecticut Laws." [z] Judge Swift appealed to the public [aa] to vindicate his judicial character from the censure implied by the Assembly's action. An ardent Federalist, who in the early days of statehood could see no need of a better constitution than he then insisted Connecticut possessed through the adoption of her ancient charter, he had long opposed the ecclesiastical establishment which that charter upheld. In his defense of the constitution he had maintained that "it ought to be deemed an inviolable maxim that when proper courts of law are constituted, the legislature are divested of all judicial authority." [2l2] But when the legislature claimed as constitutional the right to call to account any court, magistrate, or other officer for misdemeanor or mal-administration, [ab] Judge Swift admitted the lack of "a written constitution." He further argued that the one "made up of usages and customs, had always been understood to contain certain fundamental axioms which were held sacred and inviolable, and which were the basis on which rested the rights of the people." Of these self-evident principles one was that the three branches of government—the executive, legislative, and judicial—were coordinate and independent, and that the powers of one should never be exercised by the other. "It ought to be held as a fundamental axiom," the judge declared, "that the Legislature should never encroach on the jurisdiction of the Judiciary, nor assume the province of interfering in private rights, nor of overhauling the decisions of the courts of law." Otherwise, "the legislature would become one great arbitration that would engulf all the courts of law, [ac] and sovereign discretion would be 'the only rule of decision,—a state of things equally favorable to lawyers and criminals." [213]
With respect to the fifth point in the governor's address, the right of suffrage, the Republicans and their allies demanded its extension from householders haying real estate rated at $7 (40s.), or personal estate of $134 (£40), to "men who pay small taxes, work on highways, or do service in the militia."
In the fall of 1817, the reform party had forced the repeal of the obnoxious Stand-Up Law, and it demanded that other restrictive measures should be annulled. So bitter was the Federal antagonism in the Council that during all the spring session of 1817, the Tolerationists loudly complained that every reform measure proposed in the House was lost in the Federal Senate. The committees to which parts of the governor's speech had been referred for consideration did little. That on taxation made a report in the fall recommending that a careful investigation of conditions and resources should be made, because, as capital sought investment, in banks, manufacturing, and various commercial enterprises unknown to the earlier generations, [ad] the fairness of the old system of taxation was lapsing. The mixed committee, including several Tolerationists and having an Episcopal chairman, that was to report upon the religious situation, gave no encouragement to dissenters. The spring session allowed one barren act to pass, the "Act to secure equal rights, powers, and privileges to Christians of all denominations in this state." It enacted that henceforth certificates should be lodged with the town clerk, and permitted a come-outer to return to the society from which he had separated. In the following spring, when an attempt was made to pass a bill to supersede this act, it was maintained that the law of 1817 "did not effect the object or answer the desire of the aggrieved party," for it retained the certificate clause and continued to deny to dissenters the measure of religious liberty freely accorded to the Established churches.
The Tolerationists were determined to carry the elections of 1818. In the fall elections of 1817, they again had a majority of nearly two to one in the House, and consequently the struggle was for the control of the Senate. At the fall meetings, they placed in nomination their candidates for senators, and all through the winter they agitated in town meetings and in every other way the discussion of their "Constitution and Reform Ticket." Party pamphlets were scattered throughout the state. One of these, the most in favor, was "The Politics of Connecticut: by a Federal Republican" (George H. Richards of New London). At the spring elections of 1818, the Constitution and Reform Ticket carried the day, seating the reflected governor and lieutenant-governor, eight anti-Federal senators, and preserving the anti-Federal majority in the House. The political revolution was complete, and the preliminary steps towards the construction of a new constitution were at once begun. [ae]
The governor's inaugural address specified the main task before the
Assembly in the following words:—
As a portion of the people have expressed a desire that the form of civil government in this State should be revised, this highly interesting subject will probably engage your [the Assembly's] deliberations…. Considered merely as an instrument denning the powers and duties of magistrates and rulers, the Charter may justly be considered as unprovisional and imperfect. Yet it ought to be recollected that what is now its greatest defect was formerly a pre-eminent advantage, it being then highly important to the people to acquire the greatest latitude of authority with an exemption from British influence and control.
If I correctly comprehend the wishes which have been expressed by a portion of our fellow citizens, they are now desirous, as the sources of apprehension from external causes are at present happily closed, that the Legislative, Executive and Judicial authorities of their own government may be more precisely denned and limited, and the rights of the people declared and acknowledged. It is your province to dispose of this important subject in such manner as will best promote general satisfaction and tranquillity.