This commentary is by Michael Duane, the town moderator for East Montpelier.
With Town Meeting approaching on Tuesday, March 5, it may be a good time to reflect on the origins and importance of this Vermont institution.
Following the December 16, 1773 Boston Tea Party revolt, the autocratic King of England decided to crack down on the unruly American colonists. The first order of business was the enactment of the King and Parliament’s four Coercive Acts, commonly known as the Intolerable Acts. These Acts closed the port of Boston, moved trials to England and allowed for British soldiers to be quartered in private homes. Most importantly, through the Government Act, they also banned Town Meeting, thereby removing the ability of Massachusetts colonists to continue to engage in limited self-rule and self-government.
Of all the onerous Intolerable Acts, it was the Government Act that caused the most outrage among the people. The British suspected that Town Meeting was used by the colonists to plan the Boston Tea Party. The Act was thus designed to take away the colonists’ democratic rights to hold Town Meeting and to elect their own local officials. It sparked outright rebellion in many rural Massachusetts towns, where 5,000 armed farmers shut down the British courts which were the royal institutions of Crown authority. By taking control of the royal courts, these farmers had, in essence, established the first popularly elected independent government in America.
In “America’s Hidden History,” Kenneth C. Davis writes that the prevailing political philosophy among early colonial leaders was a classical republican tradition. It was believed that people achieved their greatest fulfillment by participating in a self-governing republic. Personal liberty and private rights were to be achieved, and protected, by political liberty. The Town Meeting form of government was the vehicle by which that freedom was obtained. By banning the all-important Town Meeting, the British thus lit the fuse for the American Revolution.
The first Town Meeting in what is now Vermont, was held in Bennington in 1762, even before we were the Republic of Vermont. When settlers came from western Massachusetts, they brought their Town Meeting institution with them. Town Meeting was the only form of government these first settlers could rely on as New York and New Hampshire were busy arguing over who controlled the region.
As we reflect from time to time about the fragility of our precious democratic values, including the erosion of our unique tradition of the peaceful transfer of power through elections, and the rise of autocracy here and around the globe, it might be helpful to consider the history, and the need, to maintain Town Meeting.
