" But he explains with perfect simplicity how his
occupation as chief justice "engaged his attention, and he applied his
intervals to reading the law." [Footnote: _Diary and Letters of Thomas
Hutchinson_, p. 66.]
The British supremacy closed with the evacuation of Boston, and the colony
then became an independent state; yet in that singularly homogeneous
community, which had always been taught to regard their royal patents as
the bulwark of their liberties, no one seems to have seriously thought it
possible to dispense with a written instrument to serve as the basis of
the social organization. Accordingly, in 1779, the legislature called a
convention to draft a Constitution; and it was the good fortune of the
lawyers, who were chosen as delegates, to have an opportunity, not only to
correct those abuses from which the administration of justice had so long
suffered, but to carry into practical operation their favorite theory, of
the limitation of legislative power by the intervention of the courts. The
course pursued was precisely what might have been predicted of the
representatives of a progressive yet sagacious people. Taking the old
charter as the foundation whereon to build, they made only such
alterations as their past experience had shown them to be necessary; they
adopted no fanciful schemes, nor did they lightly depart from a system
with which they were acquainted; and their almost servile fidelity to
their precedent, wherever it could be folio wed, is shown by the following
extracts relating to the legislative and executive departments.
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