What A Little-Known Colonial Pamphlet Tells Us About the Constitution

The Independence Institute ^ | 11/11/11 | Rob Natelson

[Veritas_et_libertas]

Between 1764 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776 Americans produced a rich series of pamphlets and resolutions listing their grievances against the central government of the British Empire. As I have pointed out before, reading those pamphlets is very helpful in understanding what the Constitution really means. And ignorance of them contributes to common constitutional mistakes.

These pamphlets are particularly useful in comprehending the Founders’ version of federalism. This is because the constitutional balance between states and federal government partly reflected what the Founders had wanted the balance to be between colonies and imperial government.

One of the most extraordinary of these pamphlets is little-known today, but it deserves much more attention. It is “The Votes and Proceedings of the Freeholders and other Inhabitants of the Town of Boston in Town Meeting assembled According to Law.” Historians refer to it as “The Boston Pamphlet.”

[teeman8r]

john carroll of carrollton?

[Verginius Rufus]

Charles Carroll of Carrollton.

The story that he added "of Carrollton" because someone said that he was not risking his life, because the king would not know which Charles Carroll was the signer, seems to have been invented around the 1940s. In fact he normally signed his name that way because his father, Charles Carroll of Annapolis, was still alive.

John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the US, was his cousin. John Carroll was a brother of the Daniel Carroll who was a signer of the US Constitution.

[teeman8r]

thanks for that... yes charles carroll...

thanks for clearing it up for me... a perry moment.

t

[Verginius Rufus]

Today is the anniversary of Charles Carroll's death, in 1832.

I knew my great-uncle who died in 1980--he knew his grandfather who was 12 years old when Charles Carroll died.