Massachusetts General Court Quotes
As piety cannot bee maintained without church ordinances and officers, nor justice without lawes & magistracy, no more can our safety & peace be preserved without military orders & officers
The General Court was then the legislature.
Declaration of the General Court of Massachusetts, Militia Law, 1643
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This article was published under the name of “A Lover Of Peace” but is generally attributed to Paine. He was publishing in Pennsylvania which had a large Quaker, pacifist population and Paine was urging them to consider being armed.
The term “magistrates” refers to chief executives such as Governors, Mayors, Kings, etc. and not members of a judicial branch per se. For example the President of the United States is sometimes referred to as the Chief Magistrate of the Nation.”
There is a , romantic American myth about the Militiamen in Colonial and Revolutionary America—the citizen soldiers who would leave their farms and rise to the military necessity of the day. However, not only were the militia very hard to muster to duty, but most actually didn’t own or have experience with firearms, and the prevailing opinion of knowledgeable military leaders from George Washington on down was that the militia were not very good soldiers. See {613015}, {613016}, {613022}, {613027}, {621987}, {621988}, {613030}, {613033}, & {613056}
those engaging in civil disobedience This was written in Scotland before Witherspoon emigrated to America. A major issue of political and religious debate at the time in Scotland was civil disobedience. “Reform” religious advocates argued for the moral propriety of civil disobedience where the protester’s conscience felt that the laws were immoral and unjust. The were referred to as “Moderates.” Witherspoon, early in his career, was one of the conservatives who argued then, against the Moderates, that civil disobedience should be punished very severely. The conservative rhetoric at the time sarcastically referred to protestors as having “tender consciences.” The issue was contentious then, later in America, and is so even today.
Magistrates included not only judges but mayors, governors and other Executive officials appointed by the King. The President of the United States is often referred to as the “Chief Magistrate”. At the time, Baptists taught that authorities were acting for God therefore must be obeyed.
He was not a very good agent in the sense of making accurate reports. At the time this was an unrealistically positive assessment, but it is likely that he was provided with “American propaganda”. France would only assist America if they thought that the Americans had a good chance, and the American diplomats’ propaganda efforts were successful in exaggerating the size of the army, the morale, the provisioning, and the pay.
This is one of the major reasons that the relations between police and the communities they are policing is so important. Also, the style and courtesy that the IRS tax collectors exhibit is very important.
Unfortunately, the prime minister turned out to be very accurate in his predictions. The Second World War functioned just as he said.
The Massachusetts General Court (formally styled the General Court of Massachusetts) is the state legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The name "General Court" is a hold-over from the earliest days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, when the colonial assembly, in addition to making laws, sat as a judicial court of appeals. Before the adoption of the state constitution in 1780, it was called the Great and General Court, but the official title was shortened by John Adams, author of the state constitution. It is a bicameral body. The upper house is the Massachusetts Senate which is composed of 40 members. The lower body, the Massachusetts House of Representatives, has 160 members. (Until 1978, it had 240 members.) It meets in the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill in Boston.
