Franklin’s speech was long, complex, and at times baffling. Were these all serious suggestions or were some of them merely theoretical discourses? Members seemed not to know. He made no motion to vote on his suggestion for adjusting borders or creating separate treasury funds, nor did any of the other delegates. More important than his specific ideas was his tone of moderation and conciliation. His speech, with its openness to new ideas and absence of one-sided advocacy, provided time for tempers to cool, and his call for creative compromises had an effect.
A few minutes later, Roger Sherman of Connecticut rose to suggest another possible approach: the House of Representatives would be apportioned by population and the Senate would have equal votes for each state. Samuel Johnson, also of that state, explained the thinking behind what would become known as the Connecticut Compromise. The new country was, in some ways, “one political society,” but in other ways it was a federation of separate states, yet these two concepts need not conflict, for they could be combined as “halves of a unique whole.” There was, however, little discussion of the plan. By a 6–5 vote, the idea was rejected, for the time being, in favor of proportional representation in both chambers.
As the days grew even hotter, so again did the dispute over representation. William Paterson of New Jersey proposed a counterplan, based on amending the Articles rather than supplanting them, that featured a single-house legislature in which each state, large or small, would have one vote. The larger states were able to defeat that idea, but the debate grew so intense that one Delaware delegate suggested that, if the large states sought to impose a national government, “the small ones will find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith, who will take them by the hand and do them justice.”
Once again it was time for Franklin to try to restore equanimity, and this time he did so in an unexpected way. In a speech on June 28, he suggested that they open each session with a prayer. With the convention “groping as it were in the dark to find political truth,” he said, “how has it happened that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings?” Then he added, in a passage destined to become famous, “The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”
Franklin was a believer, even more so as he grew older, in a rather general and at times nebulous divine providence, the principle that God had a benevolent interest in the affairs of men. But he never showed much faith in the more specific notion of special providence, which held that God would intervene directly based on personal prayer. So the question arises: Did he make his proposal for prayer out of a deep religious faith or out of a pragmatic political belief that it would encourage calm in the deliberations?
There was, as usual, probably an element of both, but perhaps a bit more of the latter. Franklin was never known to pray publicly himself, and he rarely attended church. Yet he thought it useful to remind this assembly of demigods that they were in the presence of a God far greater, and that history was watching as well. To succeed, they had to be awed by the magnitude of their task and be humbled, not assertive. Otherwise, he concluded, “we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages.”23
Hamilton warned that the sudden hiring of a chaplain might frighten the public into thinking that “embarrassments and dissensions within the convention had suggested this measure.” Franklin replied that a sense of alarm outside the hall might help rather than hurt the deliberations within. Another objection was raised: that there was no money to pay a chaplain. The idea was quietly shelved. On the bottom of his copy of his speech, Franklin appended a note of marvel: “The convention, except three or four persons, thought prayers unnecessary!”24
The time had come for Franklin to propose more earthly measures. Two days after his prayer speech—on Saturday, June 30—he helped to set in motion the process that would break the impasse and, to a large extent, shape the new nation. Others had discussed compromises, and now it was time to insist on one and to propose it.
First Franklin succinctly stated the problem: “The diversity of opinions turns on two points. If a proportional representation takes place, the small States contend that their liberties will be in danger. If an equality of votes is to be put in its place, the large States say their money will be in danger.”
Then he gently emphasized, in a homespun analogy that drew on his affection for craftsmen and construction, the importance of compromise: “When a broad table is to be made, and the edges of planks do not fit, the artist takes a little from both, and makes a good joint. In like manner here, both sides must part with some of their demands.”
Finally, he incorporated a workable compromise into a specific motion. Representatives to the lower House would be popularly elected and apportioned by population, but in the Senate “the Legislatures of the several States shall choose and send an equal number of Delegates.” The House would have primary authority over taxes and spending, the Senate over the confirmation of executive officers and matters of state sovereignty.25
The convention proceeded to appoint a committee, which included Franklin, to draw up the details of this compromise, and by a close vote it was finally adopted, in much the form Franklin had proposed, on July 16. “This was Franklin’s great victory in the Convention,” declares Van Doren, “that he was the author of the compromise which held the delegates together.”
That, perhaps, gives him a bit too much credit. He was not the author of the idea, nor the first to suggest it. It grew from proposals by Sherman of Connecticut and others. Franklin’s role, nonetheless, was crucial. He embodied the spirit and issued the call for compromise, he selected the most palatable option available and refined it, and he wrote the motion and picked the right moment to offer it. His prestige, his neutrality, and his eminence made it easier for all to swallow. The artisan had taken a little from all sides and made a joint good enough to hold together a nation for centuries.
A few days after he offered his compromise, Franklin hosted some of the delegates for tea in his garden, including Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, a leading skeptic of unfettered democracy. But Franklin’s shaded garden was a place where controversies could be cooled. Gerry invited along a Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler, a portly and congenial character who was in town pushing the territorial schemes of the Ohio Company, which he had helped found. In his journal Cutler noted that “my knees smote together” at the prospect of meeting the celebrated sage, but he was immediately put at ease by Franklin’s unassuming style. “I was highly delighted with the extensive knowledge he appeared to have of every subject, the brightness of his memory, and clearness and vivacity of all his mental faculties, notwithstanding his age,” Cutler recorded. “His manners are perfectly easy, and every thing about him seems to diffuse an unrestrained freedom and happiness. He has an incessant vein of humor, accompanied with an uncommon vivacity, which seems as natural and involuntary as his breathing.”
Discovering that Cutler was an avid botanist, Franklin produced a curiosity he had just received, a ten-inch snake with two perfectly formed heads preserved in a vial. Imagine what would happen, Franklin speculated with amusement, if one head of the snake attempted to go to the left of a twig and the other head went to the right and they could not agree. He was about to compare this to an issue that had just been debated at the convention, but some of the other delegates stopped him. “He seemed to forget that everything in the convention was to be kept a profound secret,” Cutler noted. “But the secrecy of convention matters was suggested to him, which stopped him, and deprived me of the story he was going to tell.”
The point Franklin was about to make, no doubt, was the same one he had made in the Pennsylvania state convention in 1776, when h
e argued against a two-chamber legislature because it might fall prey to the fate of the fabled two-headed snake that died of thirst when its heads could not agree on which way to pass a twig. Indeed, in a paper he wrote in 1789 extolling Pennsylvania’s unicameral legislature, he again referred to what he called “the famous political fable of the snake with two heads.” He had come to accept, however, that in forging the compromise needed to create a national Congress, two heads could be better than one.26
On other issues as well, Franklin was usually on the side favoring fewer fetters on direct democracy. He opposed, for example, giving the president a veto over acts of Congress, which he saw as the repository of the people’s will. Colonial governors, he reminded the delegates, had used that power to extort more influence and money whenever the legislature wanted a measure approved. When Hamilton favored making the president a near-monarch to be chosen for life, Franklin noted that he provided living proof that a person’s life sometimes lasted longer than his mental and physical prime. Instead, it would be more democratic to relegate the president to the role of average citizen after his term. The argument that “returning to the mass of the people was degrading,” he said, “was contrary to republican principles. In free Governments the rulers are the servants, and the people their superiors and sovereigns. For the former therefore to return among the latter was not to degrade but to promote them.”
Likewise, he argued that Congress should have the power to impeach the president. In the past, when impeachment was not possible, the only method people had for removing a corrupt ruler was through assassination, “in which he was not only deprived of his life but of the opportunity of vindicating his character.” Franklin also felt that it would be more democratic for executive power to reside with a small council, as it did in Pennsylvania, rather than one man. This was a hard debate to have with Washington sitting in the chair, as it was widely assumed that he would be the first president. So Franklin noted diplomatically that the first man to take the office would likely be benevolent, but the person who came next (perhaps he had a sense that it could be John Adams) might harbor more autocratic tendencies. On this issue Franklin lost, but the convention did decide to institutionalize the role of the Cabinet.
He also advocated, unsuccessfully, the direct election of federal judges, instead of permitting the president or Congress to select them. As usual, he made his argument by telling a tale. It was the practice in Scotland for judges to be nominated by that country’s lawyers, who always selected the ablest of the profession in order to get rid of him and share his practice among themselves. In America, it would be in the best interest of voters “to make the best choice,” which was the way it should be.27
Many of the delegates believed strongly that only those who owned substantial property should be eligible for office, as was the case in most states other than Pennsylvania. Young Charles Pinckney of South Carolina went so far as to propose that the wealth requirement for president should be $100,000, until it was pointed out that this might exclude Washington. Franklin rose and, in Madison’s words, “expressed his dislike of everything that tended to debase the spirit of the common people.” His democratic sensibilities were offended by any suggestion that the Constitution “should betray a great partiality to the rich.” On the contrary, he said, “some of the greatest rogues I was ever acquainted with, were the richest rogues.” Likewise, he spoke out against any property requirements on the right to vote. “We should not depress the virtue and public spirit of our common people.” On these issues he was successful.28
On only one issue did Franklin take what could be considered the less democratic position, though he did not recognize it as such. Federal officials, he argued, should serve without pay. In The Radicalism of the American Revolution, historian Gordon Wood contends that Franklin’s proposal reflected the “classical sentiments of aristocratic leadership.” Even John Adams, generally less democratic in his outlook, wrote from London that under such a policy “all offices would be monopolized by the rich, the poor and middling ranks would be excluded and an aristocratic despotism would immediately follow.”
Franklin, I think, did not intend for his proposal to be elitist or exclusionary, but instead saw it as a way to limit corrupting influences. In his many letters on the subject, he never considered, though he should have, that his plan might limit the jobs to those who could afford to work for free. Indeed, he seemed quite oblivious to this argument. Instead, he based his position on his faith in citizen volunteers and his long-standing belief that a pursuit of profit had corrupted English government. It was a case he had made in an exchange of letters with William Strahan three years earlier, and he used almost the exact same language on the floor of the convention:
There are two passions which have a powerful influence in the affairs of men. These are ambition and avarice; the love of power and the love of money. Separately, each of these has great force in prompting men to action; but, when united in view of the same object, they have in many minds the most violent effects…And of what kind are the men that will strive for this profitable preeminence, through all the bustle of cabal, the heat of contention, the infinite mutual abuse of parties, tearing to pieces the best of characters? It will not be the wise and moderate, the lovers of peace and good order, the men fittest for the trust. It will be the bold and the violent, the men of strong passions and indefatigable activity in their selfish pursuits.
On this issue he found almost no support, and the idea was put aside with no debate. “It was treated with great respect,” Madison recorded, “but rather for the author of it than from any conviction of its expediency or practicability.”29
There were, through the long and hot summer, some occasions for humor. Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania, who wrote with a taut and serious pen but at times acted as the congressional jester, was dared by Hamilton, for the price of a dinner, to slap the austere and intimidating Washington on the shoulder and say, “My dear general, how happy I am to see you look so well!” Morris did, but after weathering the look from Washington’s face declared that he would not do so again for a thousand dinners. Elbridge Gerry, arguing against a large standing army, lasciviously compared it to a standing penis: “An excellent assurance of domestic tranquility, but a dangerous temptation to foreign adventure.”30
When it was all over, many compromises had been made, including on the issue of slavery. Some members were distressed because they felt that the final result usurped too much state sovereignty, others because they thought it did not create a strong enough national government. The cantankerous Luther Martin of Maryland sneered contemptuously that they had concocted a “perfect medley,” and left before the final vote.
He was right, except for his contemptuous sneer. The medley was, indeed, as close to perfect as mortals could have achieved. From its profound first three words, “We the people,” to the carefully calibrated compromises and balances that followed, it created an ingenious system in which the power of the national government as well as that of the states derived directly from the citizenry. And thus it fulfilled the motto on the nation’s great seal, suggested by Franklin in 1776, of E Pluribus Unum, out of many one.
With the wisdom of a patient chess player and the practicality of a scientist, Franklin realized that they had succeeded not because they were self-assured, but because they were willing to concede that they might be fallible. “We are making experiments in politics,” he wrote la Rochefoucauld. To Du Pont de Nemours he confessed, “We must not expect that a new government may be formed as a game of chess may be played, by a skillful hand, without a fault.”31
Franklin’s final triumph was to express these sentiments with a wry but powerful charm in a remarkable closing address to the convention. The speech was a testament to the virtue of intellectual tolerance and to the evil of presumed infallibility, and it proclaimed for the ages the enlightened creed that became central to America’s freedom. They were the most eloquent words Franklin ever wrote�
�and perhaps the best ever written by anyone about the magic of the American system and the spirit of compromise that created it:
I confess that I do not entirely approve this Constitution at present; but sir, I am not sure I shall never approve it: For, having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, 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 pay more respect to the judgment of others.
Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them, it is so far error. Steele, a Protestant, in a dedication, tells the Pope that the only difference between our two churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrine is, the Romish Church is infallible, and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But, though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain French lady, who, in a little dispute with her sister said: “I don’t know how it happens, sister, but I meet with nobody but myself that is always in the right.”
In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults—if they are such—because I think a general government necessary for us…I doubt, too, whether any other convention we can 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?
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life Page 53