before 1745 in Massachusetts opponents of royal authority remained preoccupied with technical constitutional issues—the right of the assembly to elect its own speaker, adjourn itself, and so on—and rarely attacked the government in the radical whig language of “corruption.”9 For that monarchical society there was something traditional and justifiable in the crown’s patronage authority that ultimately allowed it to persist as long as it did in the face of the notorious abuse of it and the continual criticism of it.
