Note 1101 — Chapter IX
Reading edition
During the debates the Boston Gazette published the following charge that bribery was being employed to get votes for the Constitution:—
BRIBERY AND CORRUPTION!!!
"The most diabolical plan is on foot to corrupt the members of the Convention, who oppose the adoption of the new Constitution. Large sums of money have been brought from a neighboring state for that purpose, contributed by the wealthy. If so, is it not probable there may be collections for the same accursed purpose nearer home? Centinel." (Elliott, ii, 51.)
The Convention appointed a committee to investigate (ib.); it found that the charge was based on extremely vague rumor. (Harding, 103.) There the matter appears to have been dropped.
More than eighty years afterward, Henry B. Dawson, the editor of the Historical Magazine, a scholar of standing, asserted, personally, in his publication: "It is very well known—indeed, the son and biographer of one of the great leaders of the Constitutionalists in New York has frankly admitted to us—that enough members of the Massachusetts Convention were bought with money from New York to secure the ratification of the new system by Massachusetts." (Hist. Mag. (2d Series), vi, 268, footnote, referring to Savage's letter to Thatcher telling of the charge in the Boston Gazette.)
Professor Harding discredits the whole story. (Harding, 101-05.) It is referred to only as showing the excited and suspicious temper of the times.