Act of Parliament | |
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Long title | An Act for the Better Regulating the Government of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England. |
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Citation | 14 Geo. 3. c. 45 |
Introduced by | The Rt. Hon. Lord North, KG, MP Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer & Leader of the House of Commons |
Territorial extent | Province of Massachusetts Bay |
Dates | |
Royal assent | 20 May 1774 |
Commencement | 1 July 1774 |
Other legislation | |
Repealed by | Province of Massachusetts Bay Act 1778 (18 Geo 3 c 11) |
Relates to | Intolerable Acts |
Status: Repealed | |
Text of statute as originally enacted |
The Massachusetts Government Act (14 Geo. 3. c. 45) was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain, receiving royal assent on 20 May 1774. The act effectively abrogated the 1691 charter of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and gave its royally-appointed governor wide-ranging powers. The colonists declared that it altered, by parliamentary fiat, the basic structure of colonial government, and vowed to block its implementation. The act was a major step on the road to the start of the American Revolution in 1775.
The Act is one of the Intolerable Acts (also known as Repressive Acts and Coercive Acts), which were designed to suppress dissent and restore order in Massachusetts. In the wake of the Boston Tea Party, the British Parliament launched a legislative offensive against Massachusetts to control its errant behavior. British officials believed that their inability to control Massachusetts was partly rooted in the highly-independent nature of its local government. On May 2, 1774, Lord North, speaking as the head of the ministry, called on Parliament to adopt the Act on the grounds that the whole colony was "in a distempered state of disturbance and opposition to the laws of the mother country." [1]
The Massachusetts Government Act abrogated the colony's charter and provided for a greater amount of royal control. Massachusetts had been unique among the colonies in its ability to elect members of its executive council. The act took away that right and instead gave the king the sole power to appoint and dismiss the council. Additionally, many civil offices that had been chosen by election were now to be appointed by the royal governor. [2] Town meetings were forbidden without consent of the governor. As Lord North explained to Parliament, the purpose of the act was "to take the executive power from the hands of the democratic part of government." [3]
Power was centralized in the hands of the royal governor, and historic rights to self-government were abrogated. The Act provided that local officials were no longer to be elected:
Most important was the provision regarding town meetings, the key instrument of local rule:
When Governor Thomas Gage invoked the act in October 1774 to dissolve the provincial assembly, its Patriot leaders responded by setting up an alternative government that actually controlled everything outside Boston. They argued that the new act had nullified the contract between the king and the people, who ignored Gage's order for new elections and set up the Massachusetts Provincial Congress. It acted as the province's (from 1776 the state's) government until the 1780 adoption of the Massachusetts State Constitution. The governor had control only in Boston, where his soldiers were based. [5]
Parliament repealed the act in 1778 as part of attempts to reach a diplomatic end to the ongoing American Revolutionary War.
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