[2] Undeterred, on May 7, 1852, the General Court passed "An Act relating to the calling a Convention of Delegates of the People, for the purpose of revising the Constitution".
[4] Historian John Mulkern described the convention as Locofocoist, combining a "progressive antimonopoly and populist spirit" with a "retrogressive anti-city bias.
[11] On the first day of the convention, Democrat Nathaniel P. Banks was elected president over Whig George N. Briggs, 250–137, with four others winning one vote each.
[16] Finally, although the legislature had abandoned this device some years previous, the convention met several times as a committee of the whole; this allowed it to circumvent some of the cumbersome rules of procedure normally used and to quickly gauge the support of a particular measure.
"[18] The debates notably saw the Whigs adopt a strategy of constitutional reform, a reversal from their historical record of conservative retrenchment.
Free Soiler Francis W. Bird remarked, "I thought I came here as one of the progressive in company with a majority of this Convention, but I find that we have all turned to the 'right-about-face.'
Despite their salience in recent elections, hours, wages, working conditions, arbitrary contracts, and exploitation of children and women were unaddressed.
The coalition push for a secret ballot, which would circumvent the political domination of workers by their managers, was the lone substantive labor issue mentioned.
Additionally, the thus-conservative General Court elected the governor if no candidate received a majority, which tended to favor the large Whig plurality.
[23] To this end, the committee on representation, chaired by Whiting Griswold of rural Franklin County, proposed a system by which less than one third of the electorate would choose a majority of Representatives.
Under the plan, the rural (but staunchly Whig) maritime communities of Cape Cod, Nantucket, and Martha's Vineyard were underrepresented relative to agrarian Western Massachusetts, which had fewer people but more small towns.
Free Soilers in particular stressed nativism, arguing that the disproportionate population of Massachusetts cities was in part due to massive waves of immigration.
[24] Coalition counter-arguments were largely resigned to cries of hypocrisy or the countercharge that, in the words of Francis W. Bird, "the district system ... would in a few years give the entire control of the State to the money power of Boston.
[26] He noted that As your delegates, we have sought for the principles of freedom in the ancient institutions of the State; but we have thought it wise also to accept the teachings and experience of nearly a century of independent existence.
It has then been our purpose to unite in one system of organic law, the principles of American republican institutions, and the experiences of other free States, all contemplated in the light derived from the history and usages of MassachusettsUp to that point, the Massachusetts Constitution had been amended 13 times, and some of those provisions had rendered parts of the document's original body inoperative.
Boutwell asserted that "Constitutional laws should be plain, that they may be impartially interpreted and faithfully executed, 'that every man may at all times find his security in them'".
[30] Boutwell closed by calling the adoption or revision of a constitution "an epoch in the history of a free people," stating that "We have no doubt that your decision will ... under Divine Providence, ... render more and more illustrious our ancient Commonwealth.
Proposition Number Seven The legislature shall not create corporations by special act, when the object of the incorporation is attainable by general laws.
The counties of Barnstable, Dukes, Essex, Hampshire, Middlesex, Nantucket, Norfolk, Plymouth, and Suffolk rejected every proposal.
"[30] On the one hand, it left the House of Representatives elected by the same method as before, and representation, since 1780 a contentious issue, "had been the real cause for the convocation of the convention.