ervative feeling of
the time.

It was one of the peculiarities of the call for the Convention, that
each constituency could elect a candidate from any part of the State.
That feature added immensely to the ability of the Convention. Hon.
Henry Wilson was the candidate of the coalition in the town of Natick,
but as he was not confident of an election he was a candidate also in
the town of Berlin. He was elected in both towns. Mr. Sumner was
elected in Marshfield, the home of Mr. Webster, Mr. Burlingame was
elected for Northboro, Mr. Hallett for Wilbraham, Mr. R. H. Dana, Jr.,
for Manchester, and others, not less than ten in all, were elected by
towns in which they did not live. This circumstance gave occasion for
a turn upon words that attracted much attention at the time. It came
to be known that Mr. Burlingame had never been in Northboro. Upon some
question, the nature of which I do not recall, Mr. Burlingame made an
attack upon the rich 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 t