Constituting a New Order
This printed draft of the new Constitution or “frame of government” for the state of Pennsylvania was sent to Benjamin Franklin in 1776. That spring and summer, contentious debates over the future direction of the state raged as a constitutional convention assembled. The new Constitution was indeed “radical”: it included a unicameral legislature with sweeping powers, elected annually and, instead of a governor, a “Supreme Executive Council” to be chosen by them. Rather than property-based voting requirements, “all free men” could vote; that is, voters had only to be male taxpayers. This provision included Blacks. One particularly contentious topic was a “test act” requiring that all officials, and all voters, take a loyalty oath to the new constitution.[1]
Most scholars agree that Penn Professor James Cannon played a prominent role in the drafting of this Constitution. But some members of Paine’s radical circle like Rush, Rittenhouse, and Peale opposed many of its provisions, in particular the loyalty oath.[2]
Over the following fifteen years, debates over the new government would divide the new state. One provision that would have fateful consequences for the College of Philadelphia was section 44 (46 in this draft): “A school or schools shall be established in each county by the legislature, for the convenient instruction of youth, with such salaries to the masters paid by the public, as may enable them to instruct youth at low prices: And all useful learning shall be duly encouraged and promoted in one or more universities.”
On the Pennsylvania constitution, see Foner and Rosenfeld, Common Sense: A Political History, 158ff. ↑
Hoeveler: “This truly radical shift left some of the original patriots dumfounded and troubled. Rush had earlier in the year helped Thomas Paine get his Common Sense into print. Now a teacher at the medical college, he saw an unlearned group coming into power and a legislative tyranny in its wake. Charles Thomson concurred. He saw obscure men being elevated too rapidly and too far and grieved that ‘the affairs of this state [have been thrown] into the hands of men totally unequal to them.’” Rittenhouse and Peale’s opposition: see Pencak, “The Promise of Revolution,” 123. Pencak states that even Cannon opposed the Test Oath. Other sources on the Constitution, authorship, and controversy: Brunhouse, Counter-Revolution, 14–17; Oster, In Pursuit of Liberty, 80–81; Ryerson, The Revolution is Now Begun, 240–243; Foner, Tom Paine, 132–138. See also Selsam, The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, 162 on this printed draft. ↑