Understanding the Constitution #22: Some Advice from Benjamin Franklin

Ask Americans what’s wrong with democracy and you’ll get a mouthful. It’s always been that way. Even as the Constitution was about to be adopted in Convention in 1787, some delegates had serious reservations about the new form of government; three refused to sign it.  Concerns were widespread in the raucous ratification debates that followed in the states. Rhode Island, which had refused even to send delegates to the Convention, did not ratify it until 1790.  Such skepticism is healthy up to a point.  It fosters dialogue and debate and can lead to important changes, such as the first ten amendments in 1791.

Yet sometimes criticism of government becomes more a tool to foster division and seek power than to find compromise.  So it’s worth going back to the speech Benjamin Franklin gave on the Convention’s last day, September 17th , before the vote on the Constitution was taken.  The oldest delegate at 81, Franklin was so frail that he handed his speech to James Wilson, a fellow Pennsylvania delegate, who read it for him.  It was the Convention’s last speech and Franklin’s observations about our government and ourselves are just as relevant today as they were then.

·       Humility is essential in those who would govern – and the rest of us.  Franklin said “that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present” but that he could be wrong. “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.”  “[T]he older I grow the more apt I am to doubt my own Judgment and to pay more Respect to the Judgment of others.”  Listening and being open to one’s own mistakes in thinking and judgment are essential, yet Franklin cautioned: “Most Men . . . think themselves in Possession of all Truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far Error.”

·       Be judicious with public criticism.  It can undermine good government.  “The Opinions I have had of its Errors,” he said, “I sacrifice to the Public Good. I have never whisper’d a Syllable of them abroad. Within these Walls they were born, & here they shall die. If every one of us 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.”  “Much of the Strength and Efficiency of any Government, in procuring & securing Happiness to the People depends on Opinion, on the general Opinion of the Goodness of that Government as well as of the Wisdom & Integrity of its Governors.”

·       Don’t expect government to always get it right.   Franklin said he consented to the Constitution “because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.”  He urged the delegates to accept that “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.”  The Preamble to the Constitution, after all, said it was “in Order to form a more Perfect union,” not a perfect one.

·       The Constitution and the republic will only survive if the people have sufficient virtue.  “[T]here is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered . . . and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government.”  Free, self-government depends on moral behavior among governors and governed.

Franklin died in April 1790, but saw the Constitution ratified and George Washington sworn in as president. Franklin was no Pollyanna. He knew the dangers lurking in an unreasonable public and poor government administration.  Near the end of his life he campaigned for the abolition of slavery, the glaring contradiction in a Constitution anchored in the belief in human freedom.  But at heart he was optimistic about our experiment in self-government.  As delegates were signing the document that September day, he commented on the convention president’s chair.  Often during the convention he had wondered if the painters had fashioned a rising or a setting sun on it.  “But now at length,” he said, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting sun.”

Still, as he ventured outside, a woman is said to have asked him what the Convention produced.  “A republic, if you can keep it,” he is reported to have remarked.  Keeping it will depend in no small measure on our faithfulness to the sentiments in his last speech.

Photo Credit: 1785 Portrait by Joseph Siffred Duplessis, National Portrait Gallery