“Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world, nothing is certain but death and taxes.”
– Benjamin Franklin, 1789
If that oft-quoted assessment suggests that Dr. Franklin’s estimable mind harbored doubts about the long-term viability of American government, and the document it’s built on, well … he did.
Some of his doubts – to gauge by the cases we grapple with here at Alliance Defending Freedom – don’t seem that different from what spurs many of today’s activists and agitators to seriously question constitutional principles like freedom of speech, of religion, of conscience.
The difference, ironically, is that Franklin’s questions actually nourished his faith in the constitution, and in those who wrote it.
“When you assemble a number of men, to have the advantage of their joint wisdom,” he said at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1789, “you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?
“It therefore astonishes me,” he said, “to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does … I consent to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.
Historical revisionists often question whether anything good could come from the minds of wealthy white slave owners. Yet it was that fallibility, Franklin said, that convinced him of the Constitution’s enduring value.
If flawed men (including himself) could somehow produce such an extraordinary structure for government, he decided, perhaps other flawed people could find a way to make that government work in the crucible of day-by-day reality. A republic, he knew, would never succeed unless every citizen could put a little faith in the imperfect wisdom of those around him.
“The older I grow,” Franklin said, “the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others.” That might seem easier for someone looking around the convention hall at the likes of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Dickinson, and George Washington, but in fact none of those involved (except Washington) enjoyed the universal trust and admiration of the others. At some point, each of those political geniuses had to submit his own favorite insight to the consensus of the others.
A republic, Franklin knew, wouldn’t work without humility, either.
So, despite all the mutual suspicions, Franklin expressed his wish that “every member of the convention, who may still have objections to [this constitution], would with me on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility … [and] put his name to this instrument.”
And, somehow, they did – setting aside their doubts, and trusting to something bigger than their own egos and preferences. They gambled, as did the colonies that soon after ratified it, that this constitution – and the motivations of those who wrote it – might be a little better than they were inclined to believe.
Gambled, too (as Franklin had earlier suggested), that God Himself might have had some hand in what these fallible men had come up with.
Faith and humility, though, can be slippery virtues, and Franklin had no illusions about what could go wrong.
“Much of the strength and efficiency of any government in procuring and securing happiness to the people,” he said, “depends on … the general opinion of the goodness of that government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its governors.”
A government like ours, in other words, only works so long as people trust their elected officials – which, if the polls are to be believed, many Americans today do not. We seem to see so little, among our mostly estranged leaders, of that mutual faith and crucial humility.
Still, it’s interesting to note that the words at the start of our constitution don’t say, “We, the Elected Representatives of the United States …” The words are, “We, the People …”
Could it be that the great work of this nation – securing the blessings of liberty, building a more perfect Union – depends, in the end, on us? On our willingness to preserve and carry through on the constitutional freedoms that are our great legacy as Americans? To vote. To lobby our leaders. To speak out, to protest, to make use of the courts and the law. To pray.
It takes considerable effort. How long, in this volatile age, will each of us be willing to make that effort? About that, too, Franklin had his doubts.
“Well, Doctor,” a woman asked, as she saw him leaving the Constitutional Convention, “what have we got – a republic or a monarchy?”
“A republic,” he said. “If you can keep it.”
This Constitution Day offers quiet evidence that, against all odds, we’ve kept it a little bit longer.
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