A Cry from the Far Middle

its faults, if they are such; [and, given the “three fifths of all other Persons” clause of Article I, Section 2, they were such, as Franklin, an ex–slave owner who had become an abolitionist, well knew] because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years [twenty-five years to be exact, until the stupid War of 1812], 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, being incapable of any other. [One shudders to think what Franklin’s opinion of the election of 2020 would be.] 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. [Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.] From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? [Irony is not a twenty-first-century invention.] 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. [Which we would do in 1861.]

Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity.

Much of the strength and efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion [MSNBC? Fox News?] of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors [except in Illinois, where they’ll all go to jail]. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administered.

On the whole, Sir, I can not 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.

The speech worked. Only three delegates refused to sign—Edmund Randolph and George Mason of Virginia and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts. Call them our “Founding Stepfathers,” and note that their names are not invoked in the same way as those of, for example, Washington or Jefferson. No person or policy is ever deemed “Randolphian,” “Masonian,” or “Gerrytonian.”

George Washington’s “Farewell Address” was not an address in the sense of a speech that he gave. It was a “goodbye and good luck” letter to the public published in pamphlet form and in newspapers across the United States in 1796 when Washington had served two terms as president and was adamantly refusing the offer of a third.

Washington was no great prose stylist and knew it. The address was mostly written by Alexander Hamilton (who favored electing a president-for-life). But ghostwriter notwithstanding, the words have a measured, stern, and august tone that is wholly Washingtonian.

The document, at more than six thousand words, is too stately an exercise in eighteenth-century declamation to escape being condensed. What follows is the part most pertinent to current events: Washington’s unsparing condemnation of “the spirit of party.”

The complete “Farewell Address” contains equally timely warnings against reckless government borrowing, loose interpretations of the Constitution, erosion of the separation of powers, and the kind of nasty regionalism that results in certain Americans being labeled a “basket of deplorables” by someone who not only wasn’t offered three terms as president but couldn’t even get elected to one.

There is also Washington’s often—perhaps too often—cited warning against “foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues.” He was cautioning a new, small, and militarily insignificant nation against involvement in the seemingly never-ending conflict between Britain and France (which started in 1066 and may break out again with Brexit). This is not to say that Washington would have shrugged off the attack on Pearl Harbor or looked askance on NATO membership.

The Father of our Country was not perfectly prescient. But he had a sad and accurate foresight about political faction and all its lies and all its empty promises.

George Washington

Let me now . . . warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension . . . has perpetrated the most horrid enormities [and] is itself a frightful despotism.

But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later