The True Benjamin Franklin

by Sydney George Fisher

Franklin was in favor of only one House of Congress, with the representation in it proportioned to population, and he made a most ingenious and fallacious argument to show that there was more danger of the smaller States absorbing the larger than of the larger swallowing the smaller. But, in the hope of conciliating Dickinson and his followers, he suggested several compromises, the first one of which was very cumbersome and impracticable and need not be mentioned here. It seemed to take for granted that there was to be only one House of Congress.

Afterwards, when it was definitely decided to have two Houses, the question as to the position of the smaller States was again raised in deciding how the Senate was to be composed. Some were for making its representation proportional to population, like that of the lower House, and this the small States resisted. Franklin said that the trouble seemed to be that with proportional representation in the Senate the small States thought their liberties in danger, and if each State had an equal vote in the Senate the large States thought their money was in danger. He would, therefore, try to unite the two factions. Let each State have an equal number of delegates in the Senate, but when any question of appropriating money arose, let these delegates “have suffrage in proportion to the sums which their respective States do actually contribute to the treasury.” This was not very practical, but it proved to be a step which led him in the right direction.

A few days afterwards, in a committee appointed to consider the question, he altered his suggestion so that in the lower House the representation should be in proportion to population, but in the Senate each State should have an equal vote, and that money bills should originate only in the lower House. The committee reported in favor of his plan, and it was substantially adopted in the Constitution. The lower House was given proportional representatives, and the Senate was composed of two Senators from each State, which gave absolute equality of representation in that body to all the States. Money bills were allowed to originate only in the lower House, but the Senate could propose or concur with amendments as on other bills.

Thus the great question was settled by one of those strokes of Franklin’s sublime luck or genius. He disapproved of the whole idea of a double-headed Congress, and thought the fears of the small States ridiculous; but, for the sake of conciliation and compromise with John Dickinson and his earnest followers, his masterful intellect worked out an arrangement which satisfied everybody and is one of the most important fundamental principles of our Constitution. Without it there would be no federal union. We would be a mere collection of warring, revolutionary communities like those of South America. It has never been changed and in all human probability never will be so long as we retain even the semblance of a republic.

FRANKLIN’S GRAVE IN CHRIST CHURCH GRAVEYARD, PHILADELPHIA

This was Franklin’s greatest and most permanent service to his country, more valuable than his work in England or France, and a fitting close to his long life. The most active period of his life, as he has told us, was between his seventieth and eighty-second years. How much can be done in eighty vigorous years, and what labors had he performed and what pleasures and vast experiences enjoyed in that time! Few men do their best work at such a great age. Moses, however, we are told, was eighty years old before he began his life’s greatest work of leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. But it would be difficult to find any other instances in history except Franklin.

After the Constitution as prepared by the convention had been engrossed and read, it became a question whether all the members of the convention could be persuaded to sign it, and Franklin handed one of his happy speeches to Mr. Wilson to be read. He admitted that the Constitution did not satisfy him; it was not as he would have had it prepared; but still he would sign it. With all its faults it was better than none. A new convention would not make a better one, for it would merely bring together a new set of prejudices and passions. He was old enough, he said, to doubt somewhat the infallibility of his own judgment. He was willing to believe that others might be right as well as he; and he amused the members with his humor and the witty story of the French lady who, in a 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.”

“It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded, like those of the builders of Babel, and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats....

“On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish, that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”