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Show Old Ben Franklin TURNING from modern politicians and their jealousies and quarrels; there is a little comfort com-fort in reading the inner lives of the sages from whom our form of government and our constitution took form. A careful reading will make clear that old Ben Franklin was about the biggest one in that august company. He seemed to have about the levelest head; he seemed to have less of jealousy and envy and uncharitableness than any other; he made shrewder suggestions than any other man. It was he who suggested that the House should represent the people according to the number of inhabitants in each state, but that each state should have like representation in the Senate. When the constitution was finally finished, then the trouble was to get all the members to sign it. Franklin made the argument that accomplished that. The burden of the speech was that the constitution consti-tution did not satisfy him; it was not as he would have prepared it, 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 pre-judices and passions. And then he was old enough to doubt somewhat some-what the infallability of his own judgment. He was willing to believe that others might be right as well as he; that he was not quite like the Fiench 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 right." He concluded with these Words: "It therefore there-fore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching ap-proaching so near perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting wait-ing 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 separtion, only to meet, hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another's throat. "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 mo on this occasion doubt a little of hip own infallability, infal-lability, and, to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument." The speech did the work. A great old chap was he. All France was hypnotized by him, men and women alike, during the years he served his country there, and he was a welcome guest everywhere. every-where. The secret Wcis first his graciousness, and next he had a little more sense than anybody elBe and not one of the darker passions which attached at-tached to the brightest of his associates. Above all he was dead square in every way. |