The Essex Result

Background

Once America declared its independence from Great Britain, each state then set out to write its own constitution.  The Essex Result—written by Theophilus Parsons—grew out of the debate in Massachusetts over its state constitution.  Parsons—a future Chief Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts—was still a young lawyer in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the time.  In 1778, the Massachusetts legislature sent a proposed constitution to the state’s towns for their approval.  However, the towns rejected it.  Some opponents of the proposed constitution voted it down on the merits.  Others rejected it because it was written by the state legislature rather than a specially elected convention.  In response to the proposed constitution, members of various towns in Essex County gathered to analyze and discuss it.  The Essex Result grew out of this meeting.  One of its most powerful passages is its account of the freedom of conscience and natural rights, including Parsons’s description of the distinction between alienable and unalienable rights.

Excerpt

All men are born equally free. The rights they possess at their births are equal, and of the same kind. Some of those rights are alienable, and may be parted with for an equivalent. Others are unalienable and inherent, and of that importance, that no equivalent can be received in exchange. Sometimes we shall mention the surrendering of a power to controul our natural rights, which perhaps is speaking with more precision, than when we use the expression of parting with natural rights—but the same thing is intended. Those rights which are unalienable, and of that importance, are called the rights of conscience. We have duties, for the discharge of which we are accountable to our Creator and benefactor, which no human power can cancel. What those duties are, is determinable by right reason, which may be, and is called, a well informed conscience. What this conscience dictates as our duty, is so; and that power which assumes a controul over it, is an usurper; for no consent can be pleaded to justify the controul, as any consent in this case is void. The alienation of some rights, in themselves alienable, may be also void, if the bargain is of that nature, that no equivalent can be received. Thus, if a man surrender all his alienable rights, without reserving a controul over the supreme power, or a right to resume in certain cases, the surrender is void, for he becomes a slave; and a slave can receive no equivalent. Common equity would set aside this bargain. . . .

It has been observed, that each individual parts with the power of controuling his natural alienable rights, only when the good of the whole requires it, he therefore has remaining, after entering into political society, all his unalienable natural rights, and a part also of his alienable natural rights, provided the good of the whole does not require the sacrifice of them. Over the class of unalienable rights the supreme power hath no controul, and they ought to be clearly defined and ascertained in a BILL OF RIGHTS , previous to the ratification of any constitution. The bill of rights should also contain the equivalent every man receives, as a consideration for the rights he has surrendered. This equivalent consists principally in the security of his person and property, and is also unassailable by the supreme power: for if the equivalent is taken back, those natural rights which were parted with to purchase it, return to the original proprietor, as nothing is more true, than that Allegiance and protection are reciprocal. . . .