FRANKLIN.
The Convention was graced and honored by the venerable presence of Dr.
Franklin, then President of the State of Pennsylvania, and in his
eighty-second year. He had returned from Europe only two years before,
followed by the admiration and homage of the social, literary, and
scientific circles of France; laden with honors, which he wore with a
plain and shrewd simplicity; and in the full possession of that
predominating common-sense, which had given him, through a long life, a
widely extended reputation of a peculiar character. The oldest of the
public men of America, his political life had embraced a period of more
than half a century, extending back to a time when independence had not
entered into the dreams of the boldest among the inhabitants of the
English Colonies. For more than twenty years before the Revolution
commenced, he had held a high and responsible office under the crown,
the administration of which affected the intercourse and connection of
all the Colonies;[418] and more than twenty years before the first
Continental Congress was assembled, he had projected a plan of union for
the thirteen Provinces which then embraced the whole of the British
dominions in North America.[419] Nearly as long, also, before the
Declaration of Independence, he had become the resident agent in England
of several of the Colonies, in which post he continued, with a short
interval, through all the controversies that preceded the Revolution,
and until reconciliation with the mother country had become
impossible.[420]
Returning in 1775, he was immediately appointed by the people of
Pennsylvania one of their delegates in the second Continental Congress.
In the following year, he was sent as commissioner to France, where he
remained until he was recalled, and was succeeded by Mr. Jefferson, in
1785.
With the fame of his two residences abroad--the one before and the other
after the country had severed its connection with England--the whole
land was filled. The first of them, commencing with an employment for
settling the miserable disputes between the people and the Proprietaries
of Pennsylvania, was extended to an agency for the three other Colonies
of Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, which finally led him to take
part in the affairs of all British America, and made him virtually the
representative of American interests. His brief service in Congress,
during which he signed the Declaration of Independence, was followed by
his appointment as Commissioner at the Court of Versailles, which he
made the most important sphere that has ever been filled by any American
in Europe, and in which that treaty of alliance with France was
negotiated which enabled the United States to become in fact an
independent nation.
His long career of public service; his eminence as a philosopher, a
philanthropist, and a thinker; the general reverence of the people for
his character; his peculiar power of illustrating and enforcing his
opinions by a method at once original, simple, and attractive,--made his
presence of the first importance in an assembly which was to embrace the
highest wisdom and virtue of America.
It is chiefly, however, by the countenance he gave to the effort to
frame a Constitution, that his services as a member of this body are to
be estimated. His mind was at all times ingenious, rather than large and
constructive; and his great age, while it had scarcely at all impaired
his natural powers, had confirmed him in some opinions which must
certainly be regarded as mistaken. His desire, for example, to have the
legislature of the United States consist of a single body, for the sake
of simplicity, and his idea that the chief executive magistrate ought
to receive no salary for his official services, for the sake of purity,
were both singular and unsound.
But there were points upon which he displayed extraordinary wisdom,
penetration, and forecast. When an objection to a proportionate
representation in Congress was started, upon the ground that it would
enable the larger States to swallow up the smaller, he declared that, as
the great States could propose to themselves no advantage by absorbing
their inferior neighbors, he did not believe they would attempt it. His
recollection carried him back to the early part of the century, when the
union between England and Scotland was proposed, and when the Scotch
patriots were alarmed by the idea that they should be ruined by the
superiority of England, unless they had an equal number of members in
Parliament; and yet, notwithstanding the great inferiority in their
representation as established by the act of union, he declared, that,
down to that day, he did not recollect that any thing had been done in
the Parliament of Great Britain to the prejudice of Scotland.[421]
Although he spoke but seldom in the Convention, his influence was very
great, and it was always exerted to cool the ardor of debate, and to
check the tendency of such discussions to result in irreconcilable
differences. His great age, his venerable and benignant aspect, his wide
reputation, his acute and sagacious philosophy,--which was always the
embodiment of good sense,--would have given him a controlling weight in
a much more turbulent and a far less intelligent assembly. When--after
debates in which the powerful intellects around him had exhausted the
subject, and both sides remained firm in opinions diametrically
opposed--he rose and reminded them that they were sent to consult and
not to contend, and that declarations of a fixed opinion and a
determination never to change it neither enlightened nor convinced those
who listened to them, his authority was felt by men who could have
annihilated any mere logical argument that might have proceeded from him
in his best days.
Dr. Franklin was one of those who entertained serious objections to the
Constitution, but he sacrificed them before the Convention was
dissolved. Believing a general government to be necessary for the
American States; holding that every form of government might be made a
blessing to the people by a good administration; and foreseeing that the
Constitution would be well administered for a long course of years, and
could only end in despotism when the people should have become so
corrupted as to be incapable of any other than a despotic government, he
gladly embraced a system which he was astonished to find approaching so
near to perfection.
"The opinions I have had of its errors," said he, "I sacrifice to the
public good. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall
die. If every one of us, in returning to our constituents, were to
report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partisans
in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and
thereby lose all the salutary effects and great advantages, resulting
naturally in our favor, among foreign nations as well as among
ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength
and efficiency of any government in procuring and securing happiness
to the people depends on opinion,--on the general opinion of the
goodness of the government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of
its governors. I hope, therefore, that for our own sakes as a part of
the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and
unanimously in recommending this Constitution (approved by Congress
and confirmed by the conventions) wherever our influence may extend,
and turn our future thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it
well administered."[422]
And thus, with a cheerful confidence in the future, sustaining the hopes
of all about him, and hailing every omen that foretold the rising
glories of his country,[423] this wise old man passed out from the
assembly, when its anxious labors had been brought to a close with a
nearer approach to unanimity than had ever been expected. He lived,
borne down by infirmities,
"To draw his breath in pain"
for nearly three years after the Convention was dissolved; but it was to
see the Constitution established, to witness the growing strength of the
new government, and to contemplate the opening successes and the
beneficent promise of Washington's administration. Writing to the first
President in 1789, he said: "For my own personal ease, I should have
died two years ago; but though those years have been spent in
excruciating pain, I am pleased that I have lived them, since they have
brought me to see our present situation."[424]
FOOTNOTES:
[418] In 1753, he was appointed Deputy Postmaster-General for the
British Colonies, from which place he was dismissed in 1774, while in
England, on account of the part he had taken in American affairs.
[419] In 1754. See an account of this plan, ante, p. 8.
[420] He first went to England in 1757, as agent of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to settle their difficulties with the Proprietaries, where he
remained until 1762. In 1764, he was reappointed provincial agent in
England for Pennsylvania; in 1768, he received a similar appointment
from Georgia; in 1769, he was chosen agent for New Jersey; and in 1770,
he became agent for Massachusetts. His whole residence in England, from
1757 to 1775, embraced a period of sixteen years, two years having been
passed at home. He resided in France about nine years, from 1776 to
1785.
[421] He added, with his usual quiet humor, that "whoever looks over the
lists of public officers, civil and military, of that nation, will find,
I believe, that the North Britons enjoy their full proportion of
emolument." Madison, Elliot, V. 179.
[422] Madison, Elliot, V. 554.
[423] Mr. Madison has recorded the following anecdote at the end of the
Debates, as an incident worthy of being known to posterity. "Whilst the
last members were signing, Dr. Franklin, looking towards the President's
chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted,
observed to a few members near him, that painters had often found it
difficult, in their art, to distinguish a rising from a setting sun. 'I
have,' said he, 'often and often, in the course of the session, and the
vicissitude 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; but now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a
rising, and not a setting sun.'"
[424] Sparks's Life of Franklin, 528.