Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886. 303
of several towns which had met at Hatfiekl in April. Springfield, on
the 19th of March, had chosen as delegates to such a convention
Capt. John Morgan and Dr. Chaiuice^' Brewer. They were to re-
ceive their instructions from William Pynchon. Jr., John Hale, and
Capt. James Sikes.
In August delegates were chosen to another Hatfield convention.
These were part of a series of county conventions in this and other
portions of the State. The usual course was to first declare that
the conventions were legal bodies, then counsel peaceful modes of
agitation ; but, as was the case in Northampton, the counsel was a
mere form. We will not follow the example of some writers on the
Shays insurrection, and enter into bitter denunciations of the insur-
gents. There was not an exceptionally unruly spirit among the
^Massachusetts people of that day. They had simply become
poverty stricken and distressed. Poverty knows no law. Self-gov-
ei'ument was new, imperfect, and, in fine, ill-understood, and the
great mass of the rebels never thought of shouldering a nuisket
for the purpose of securing from others what did not belong to
them.
During the years between the departure of British soldiers in 1783
and the meeting of the Philadelphia convention of 1787, which
drafted the United States Constitution, the thought of the New World
was largely centred upon Massachusetts and New England, and
even public men on the other side of the Atlantic were beginuing to
predict the immediate collapse of the experunent of self-government.
The tory element in the States, which the stress of war had forced
into sullen silence, had come to the surface, and in Massachusetts
and in portions of Connecticut, Khode Island, and New Hampshire,
to say nothing of Pennsylvania and ^"irginia, the common people
seemed bent upon plunging into a democracy that was but one
remove from communism in both property and politics. " An aboli-
tion of debts, both public and private," writes Mr. Madison in 1786
of the Shays movement, " and a new division of property are