Words Worth Remembering: No Better Than This
The long and arduous convention was finally coming to a close. The road had not been easy. Indeed, some doubted whether a new frame of government was even possible given the degree of uncertainty, disagreements, pressures, and rivalries that seemed to dominate the secretive proceedings in Philadelphia.
It was Monday, September 17, 1787—what would be the final day of the Constitutional Convention, then referred to simply as the federal convention—and 115 days had passed since the convention began on Friday, May 25. After months of drafting, debating, amending, and compromising, the time had arrived to vote on the final product.
Benjamin Franklin was the oldest member of the convention, and his words carried great weight. Next to Washington, no figure was more renowned in the New and Old Worlds. Franklin, perhaps more than most, knew well that only unity could allow American independence and American principles the opportunity to flourish.
On this final day, Franklin rose and handed a written speech to his friend and colleague, James Wilson, who read it aloud to the exhausted and embattled delegates.
“I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present,” Franklin’s words began; “but Sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For having lived long, I have experienced many Instances of being oblig’d, by better Information or fuller Consideration, to change Opinions even on important Subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.
“It is therefore that the older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others.”
As one scholar wrote, the Constitution was “born in secrecy, the child of lofty idealism and rough political bargains.” It was not the Law of God handed to Moses on Mount Sinai, perfect and holy. It was the work of human hands, of human minds, of human souls.
Thus, it was shaped by the good and the bad in its makers, as all human things are. It was the child of compromise, the prince of regional peace. The presidency, the Congress, the judiciary, slavery, federalism, voting, and more had all been forged in the crucible of political wheeling and dealing, influenced as much by private and regional interests as by the lofty idealism of revolutionary ideas.
“In these sentiments, sir,” Franklin said, “I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults.”
Franklin added, with the reasoning of a wise veteran of the political scene: “I doubt, too, whether any Convention we may obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a Number of Men to have the Advantage of their joint Wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those Men all their Prejudices, their Passions, their Errors of Opinion, their local Interests, and their selfish Views. From such an Assembly can a perfect Production be expected?
“It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this System approaching so near to Perfection as it does,” Franklin continued; “and I think it will astonish our Enemies, who are waiting with Confidence to hear that our Councils are confounded.
“Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.
“I hope therefore that for our own Sakes, as a Part of the People, and for the Sake of our Posterity, we shall act heartily & unanimously in recommending this Constitution, wherever our Influence may extend, and turn our future Thoughts and Endeavours to the Means of having it well administred.”
Concluding, Franklin asked each member to “doubt a little of his own infallibility” and “make manifest our Unanimity” by signing their names to the Constitution.
Later that day, thirty-nine delegates put their names to the revolutionary document; three who were present—George Mason, Edmund Randolph, and Elbridge Gerry—refused to sign, convinced that it was birthing, as the Anti-Federalists would soon charge, “an iron-handed despotism” designed to swallow up the rights of the states and people alike.
But to Washington (as with Franklin), the document remained a remarkable feat. It was, as he wrote to Marquis de Lafayette, was “little short of a miracle” when one considered that “delegates from so many different states” had united to form “a system of national government so little liable to well-founded objections.”
It struck him as “nearer to perfection than any government hitherto instituted among men,” containing “more checks and barriers against the introduction of tyranny… than any government” ever crafted by human hands.
As the delegates lined up to sign the Constitution, Franklin spoke to several about the sun carved onto the back of Washington’s chair. “I have often in the course of the session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting,” he said. “But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”
As he left the convention, a group of eager citizens asked him what kind of government their representatives had created for them. “A republic,” Franklin answered, “if you can keep it.”
Weeks later, in October, the much younger Alexander Hamilton would write what was in the hearts and minds of all the assenting delegates. “It seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question,” he wrote: “whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.”
The handiwork of imperfect men, the Constitution has stood the many tests of time, bringing about unparalleled stability, prosperity, and freedom to a Union of radically free, proud, independent, and ungovernable revolutionaries. “[I]t was the work done in the years 1783–89 that created a federal nation capable of enduring the storm and stress of the years 1861–65 [and beyond],” the nineteenth-century historian and philosopher John Fiske wrote. “It was in the earlier crisis that the pliant twig was bent; and as it was bent, so has it grown, until it has become indeed a goodly and a sturdy tree.”
The good and sturdy tree of the Constitution endures, and so does the charge of Franklin: “If you can keep it.”