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(Adj Tn. Mtg. - March 25, 1 975)
<br /> Article 2. Instructing Our Representative, to open Our Minds freely to You Upon
<br /> (Cont.) Matters which Appear to Us interesting to ourselves, to the Province
<br /> and Posterity, and to Strengthen & confirm You in measures which (we
<br /> trust_) you own Judgment would have Suggested as necessary and im-
<br /> portant to our Common safety & Prosperity, though we had been
<br /> Silent - - - ". Then the instructions follow at great length.
<br /> In late 1774 the Town Meeting passed a number of votes relating to
<br /> arming the community. One resolve contains the pledge "We shall be
<br /> ready to Sacrifice our Estates, and everything dear in life, Yea, &
<br /> Life itself, in support of the common cause."
<br /> The Town Meeting constantly bespoke itself of events in Boston; it
<br /> voted in 1774 to adhere to resolves of the Continental Congress. In
<br /> short, Mr. Moderator, this meeting of farmers, in a Town Meeting of acommu-
<br /> nty of about 700 people, concerned itself_ with events far beyond its
<br /> own locale. In the words of Holmes, it "shared the passion and action
<br /> of (its) time." Do I suggest this meeting now do likewise? Yes, I do,
<br /> lest, again in Holmes' words, "(it) be judged not to have lived."
<br /> When first approaching this subject, I was troubled by the license,
<br /> poetic or otherwise, that seemed necessary to equate this meeting with
<br /> that of 200 years ago. After all that was an open meeting, this a
<br /> representative one. I am troubled no longer. This meeting goes back
<br /> to the years of Cambridge North Precinct, to Cambridge Farms, beyond
<br /> the incorporation of Lexington in 1713. It has always been a represent-
<br /> ative meeting. Until 1776, the records refer to the voters as free-
<br /> holders, thereafter as freemen. This all male meeting did some
<br /> interesting things, some funny in a way, others not so funny. In 1781
<br /> William Diamond, having moved away, had to sue the town to recover his
<br /> pay for serving as drummer, a post created by the Town Meeting in 1774.
<br /> In 1793 the Town Meeting voted to buy seats for Negroes in the Meeting
<br /> House. Not until 1881 did the Town Vote, by the stirring margin of
<br /> 16 to 2, to petition the legislature for an act permitting women to
<br /> vote in town affairs and to hold office. Not until 39 years later,
<br /> when the Constitution of the United States was amended in 1920, did
<br /> women participate in Town Meeting. A bare ten years later_ the
<br /> representative type of meeting came to Lexington, then numbering nearly
<br /> 9500 people, with just over 4000 registered voters. The 1928 petition
<br /> to the legislature for authority for this structure of government
<br /> passed the Town Meeting by a vote of 120 -106, a total barely exceeding
<br /> the size of the representative town meeting which it sought. Final
<br /> approval by the Town came the next year on a vote of 497 - 234,
<br /> approximately 18% of the voters participating. At the first election
<br /> under the new plan 289 people sought 202 seats; on this occasion over
<br /> 3,000 people voted, 750 of those registered. So in a very real sense
<br /> this has been a representative meeting for many, many years. Its
<br /> members are here because they want to be here, and having been elected,
<br /> they acquire responsibilities as broad as the interests of the Town
<br /> itself. To be sure the State Constitution and the general laws bound
<br /> its authority; 'twas ever thus, even in the days of the General Court
<br /> of the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
<br /> The problems are different now. The values of Lexington and Concord
<br /> found their way into our constitutions; ours is a job of conservation
<br /> and development, not of revolution. Other values were articulated
<br /> following that unsuccessful rebellion of 1860 to 1865. We glory in
<br /> the victory of the 18th century revolutionaries and we are grateful for
<br /> the preservation of the nation through the defeat of those of the 19th
<br /> century. The values of these events we find in our constitutions, in
<br /> the Bill of Rights, in equal protection of the laws, but their nurture
<br /> is for us. I recently heard it said in this place that constitutional
<br /> considerations are not for Town Meeting, they are for the lawyers and
<br /> the courts. They are much too precious for that. For too long as a
<br /> people we have left these values to the courts, despite warnings from
<br /> thoughtful jurists that we are asking courts to carry burdens which in
<br /> the nature of things they cannot and ought not to carry. Judge Learned
<br /> Hand expressed such a view, followed by this famous passage:
<br /> "You may ask what then will become of the fundamental principles of
<br /> equity and fair play which our constitutions enshrine; and whether I
<br /> seriously believe that unsupported they will serve merely as counsels
<br /> of moderation. I do not think anyone can say what will be left of those
<br /> . _,,..... k
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