On 28 September 1776 the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention approved the most Utopian and radical of the state constitutions. Determined to erect a government that reflected America's sonCiaLequahty and incoroporating ideas contained in Thomas Paine's pamphle
Common Sense (1776), the framers rejected mixed government in favor of a unicameral, or single-house, legislature and replaced the governor with an Executive Council elected by the people every three years. Other democratic features included annual elections with no property qualifications for voters and the people's right to elect a Council of Censors every seven years to determinen whether the constitution required revisions. The anti-Constitutional, or Republican, Party, led by James Wilson and Robert Morris, was unsuccessful in attempts to restore mixed.....
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