Citizen Advocates for Constitutional Principles

www.cacp.info – # 629 – 7-22-06 – 138 – Donald Conkey

http://www.cacp.infoPrinciple of Sound Government # 18: “The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution.” Many Americans assume that all nations had written constitutions. Not so. The Anglo-Saxon common law was unwritten. The first effort to write down the rights of a people was when the English compelled King John, with the sword, in A.D. 1215, to sign the Magna Charta. In 1620 the Pilgrims signed the Mayflower Compact but it was Thomas Hooker, and his associates in Connecticut, who actually wrote the first written constitution – the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in 1639 – using chapter one of Deuteronomy as its prototype. Rhode Island would copy it. Question: Where would America’s “unalienable rights” be today without its written Constitution, including its written Bill of Rights?