At the close of the reading of his speech Franklin moved that the Constitution be signed, and offered as a convenient form,—
“Done in Convention by the unanimous consent of the States present the 17th day of September, etc. In witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names.”
Madison explains that this form, with the words “consent of the States,” had been drawn up by Gouverneur Morris to gain the doubtful States’ rights party. It was given to Franklin, he says, “that it might have the better chance of success.”
“Whilst the last members were signing,” says Madison, “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 found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. ‘I have,’ said he, ‘often and often in the course of the session and the vicissitudes 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.’”
So Franklin, from whose life picturesqueness and charm were seldom absent, gave, in his easy manner, to the close of the dry details of the convention a touch of beautiful and true sentiment which can never be dissociated from the history of the republic he had helped to create.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] Pp. 218, 231-236.