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fear of aristocracy. Lafayette wrote to Washington from Paris:

"Most of the Americans here are virulent against an Association. Wadsworth must be excepted, and Dr. Franklin said little; but Jay, Adams, and all the others, warmly blame the army. You easily guess I am not remiss in opposing them. However, if it is found that the heredity endangers the true principles of democracy, I am as ready as any man to renounce it. You will be my compass, my dear General."

Washington advised the total abolition of hereditary membership and many objectionable secondary features, and the clamor subsided. How he finally escaped altogether, with his usual adroitness, from an unpleasant position he thus related to Madison:

"On the one hand, I might be charged with dereliction of the officers, who had nobly supported me, and had even treated me with uncommon attention and attachment; on the other, with supporting a measure incompatible with republican principles. I thought it best, therefore, without assigning this (the principal) reason, to decline the presidency and to excuse my attendance on the ground, which is firm and just, of necessity of attending to my private concerns, and in conformity to my determination of spending the remainder of my days in a state of retirement; and to indisposition occasioned by rheumatic complaints with which at times I am a good deal afflicted."

Thus Washington, living at Mount Vernon, the first citizen, divided his time between farming

and thinking. The time was approaching when the Rubicon must be crossed. A convention was

about to be held, to draw up a constitution for the United States. Should it be left to other men, while he looked on from beneath his fig-tree? His friends, like his own feelings, pulled him in opposite directions. General Knox, wishing him to stand for mankind and for no party, advised him to have nothing to do with any political operations in which the opinions of men were divided. Citizens of a different stamp, like Jay, filled his mind with their convictions, whetting his appetite, and, more important than anybody else, Alexander Hamilton, in a masterly series of letters, eagerly kept Washington informed of all the political and financial principles that were being discussed. The fighting men won. Washington naturally, and through his own long and bitter experience, believed in a strong central government; and his ablest acquaintances wrote stirringly to him about the dangers of weakness. In order, therefore, to throw his influence in the scale for union, well knowing the possibility that he might return no longer a free man, but again the servant of his country, he decided to leave his home and to attend the Constitutional Convention.

CHAPTER XVI

FIRST IN PEACE

"Since the thing is established, I would wish it not to be altered during the life of our great leader, whose executive talents are superior to those, I believe, of any man in the world." -- JEFFERSON.

"A man was needed who possessed a commanding power over the popular passions, but over whom those passions had no power. That man was Washington." - FISHER AMES.

THERE was but one man, besides Washington, whose rank as a citizen would permit for a moment the consideration of him for the presidency of the Convention, and even that man's eminence hardly made the question doubtful. Inventor, diplomat, philosopher, patriarch that he was, devoting the latest years of his long life to inestimable services to his country, Franklin was nevertheless the second and not the first citizen of America. When, therefore, Franklin's own state, Pennsylvania, nominated Washington, there could be no opposition, and the general presided over the deliberations which ended in the Constitution, a victory, on the whole, for the party which had most of his sympathies. He himself took small part always in public debates. One

of his reported observations, during this convention, in answer to a member who proposed a clause limiting a standing army to five thousand, sounds too witty to be authentic. Washington replied that he should be satisfied with that, provided there were a provision that no enemy should presume to invade the United States with more than three thousand. Franklin also said little, and a witness of the proceedings remarked that although he was the greatest philosopher of the age he did not shine much in debate. Hamilton was present, already celebrated for scholarship and ability, and he came to the fray "with the searchings of philosophy," "charged with interesting matter," now penetrating, now light, small, lean, stiff, vain, and profoundly interesting, the intellectual leader of the predominant party. The agreeable and industrious Madison, fair minded and well informed, took a leading place in the debates, and has left to posterity the best account of them. In those debates is recorded the only instance in which Washington, as presiding officer, ventured into argument.

"When the President rose, for the purpose of putting the question (on representation), he said, that although his situation had hitherto restrained him from offering his sentiments on questions depending in the House, and, it might be thought, ought now to impose silence on him, yet he could not forbear expressing his wish

that the change proposed might take place. It was much to be desired that the objections to the plan recommended might be made as few as possible. The smallness of the proportion of Representatives had been considered by many members of the Convention an insufficient security for the rights and interests of the people. He acknowledged that it had always appeared to himself among the exceptional parts of the plan; and late as the present moment was for admitting admendments, he thought this of so much consequence, that it would give him much satisfaction to see it adopted."

With Washington's practice in political gatherings coincides an opinion contained in one of his letters:

"The only advice I will offer to you on the occasion (if you have a mind to command the attention of the House), is to speak seldom, but to important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents; and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject. Never exceed a decent warmth, and submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial stile, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust."

Both Gouverneur and Robert Morris were in the brilliant group which determined the form of government for our country, and possibly it is not beneath the dignity of biography to pause for a moment, amid these serious concerns, over an incident, recorded by Martin Van Buren, in which the two Morrises and Hamilton learned some

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