Since Boston and Salem so haughty have grown,
We'll make them to know we can let them alone.
Of Glasgow or Pelham we'll make a seaport,
And there we'll assemble our General Court:
Our governor, now, boys, shall turn out to work,
And live, like ourselves, on molasses and pork;
In Adams or Greenwich he'll live like a peer
On three hundred pounds, paper money, a year.
Grand jurors, and sheriffs, and lawyers we'll spurn,
As judges, we'll all take the bench in our turn,
And sit the whole term, without pension or fee,
Nor Cushing nor Sewal look graver than we.
Our wigs, though they're rusty, are decent enough;
Our aprons, though black, are of durable stuff;
Array'd in such gear, the laws we'll explain,
That poor people no more shall have cause to complain.
To Congress and impost we'll plead a release;
The French we can beat half-a-dozen apiece;
We want not their guineas, their arms, or alliance;
And as for the Dutchmen, we bid them defiance.
Then huzza, my Jo Bunkers! no taxes we'll pay;
Here's a pardon for Wheeler, Shays, Parsons and Day;
Put green boughs in your hats, and renew the old cause;
Stop the courts in each county, and bully the laws.
St. John Honeywood.
A federal convention was proposed, and in May, 1787, there assembled at Philadelphia fifty-five men appointed by the various states to devise an adequate constitution for a federal government.
THE FEDERAL CONVENTION
[May, 1787]
Concentred here th' united wisdom shines,
Of learn'd judges, and of sound divines:
Patriots, whose virtues searching time has tried,
Heroes, who fought, where brother heroes died;
Lawyers, who speak, as Tully spoke before,
Sages, deep read in philosophic lore;
Merchants, whose plans are to no realms confin'd,
Farmers—the noblest title 'mongst mankind:
Yeomen and tradesmen, pillars of the state;
On whose decision hangs Columbia's fate.
September, 1787.
George Washington was chosen president of the convention; the doors were locked, and the Herculean task of making a constitution begun. Washington himself, in a burst of noble eloquence, braced the delegates for the task before them. The problem was to devise a government which should bind all the states without impairing their sovereignty.