Page:Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs (Volume One).djvu/255

Rh men of Boston, and intimated that their speedy transfer to the Mount Auburn Cemetery would not be a public misfortune. Mr. Geo. S. Hillard, in reply, referred to Mr. Burlingame as the “member who represented a town he had not seen, and misrepresented one that he had seen.” Unfortunately for Mr. Hillard he lost the value of his sharp rejoinder by a statement in the same speech. Referring to Boston, where he was a practising lawyer, he said that he “would not strike the hand that fed him.”

Upon the meeting of the Convention in May, Mr. Wilson resigned his seat for Berlin, and I was unanimously elected in his place. It was my fortune also to represent a town that I had not seen.

I may mention the fact that my father received a unanimous vote for the Convention in Lunenburg, the town of his residence. There were two other cases of the election of father and son as members of the Convention. Marcus Morton and Marcus Morton, Jr.; Samuel French and Rodney French.

The two great subjects of debate and of anxious thought in the Convention were the representative system and the tenure of the judicial office. It was my earnest purpose to preserve town representation and in the debate I made two elaborate speeches. It was then and upon that subject that I encountered Mr. Choate for the first time. He was a supporter, and, of course, the leading advocate of the district system. The Convention adhered to town representation in a modified form. The proposition was defeated by the vote of Boston, which gave a majority against the new Constitution of about one thousand in excess of the negative majority of the entire State.

More serious difficulties, even, were encountered in the attempt to change the tenure of judges. No inconsiderable portion of the Convention favored an elective judiciary. To