plicity, 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.1

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

1 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

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."1

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, this wise old man passed out from the assembly, when its anxious

1 Madison, Elliot, V. 554.

2 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 to

labors had been brought

wards 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

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.”1

' 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.

1

999

Sparks's Life of Franklin, 528

CHAPTER XI.

Gouverneur MORRIS.

THIS brilliant, energetic, and patriotic statesman was born in the Province of New York, at Morrisania, the seat of his family for several generations,—in the year 1752. He was educated for the bar; but in 1775, at the age of three-and-twenty, he was elected a member of the Provincial Congress of New York, in which he became at once distinguished. When the recommendation of the Continental Congress to the Colonies, to organize new forms of government, was received, he took a leading place in the debates on the formation of a new constitution for the State; and when the subject of independence was brought forward, in order that the delegates of New York in the Continental Congress might be clothed with sufficient authority, he delivered a speech of great power, of which fragments only are preserved, but which evidently embraced the most comprehensive and statesmanlike views of the situation and future prospects of this country. Speaking of the capacity of America to sustain herself without a connection with Great Britain, he said: