WEBVTT NOTE The Constitution Revisited 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.000 Background to the Constitution. 2 00:00:03.000 --> 00:00:13.000 The Constitution of the United States is one of the written instruments that bears heavily upon our life and our times. 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:17.000 It is, as we know, the basic instrument of government in this country, 4 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:26.000 and it is one that should take a certain amount of our attention so that we know what it says and what it does not say. 5 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:33.360 There are many misconceptions about the Constitution, but before we consider the instrument itself, 6 00:00:33.360 --> 00:00:39.460 perhaps a brief review of the events leading up to its formation and adoption would be 7 00:00:39.460 --> 00:00:47.640 in order. Let's go back in time and recall that we were engaged in a war with Great Britain, 8 00:00:47.640 --> 00:00:54.600 which war is generally admitted to have begun in 1775 with the battles of Lexington and 9 00:00:54.600 --> 00:01:04.160 and Conquered. It ran through until 1782 when the last battle was fought. In that period 10 00:01:04.160 --> 00:01:12.720 of the war, the first thing that happened was that during the process of the war, the 11 00:01:12.720 --> 00:01:18.900 various colonies or the colonial governments that had been established by the British Crown 12 00:01:18.900 --> 00:01:26.020 were converted into separate states. This occurred all the way through the war and actually 13 00:01:26.020 --> 00:01:32.000 one or two had converted prior to the actual opening of hostilities. That is to say the 14 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:38.660 local colonists drove out the British governor and simply picked up the reins of government 15 00:01:38.660 --> 00:01:45.940 as they had been established originally by Britain and converted the state or the colony 16 00:01:45.940 --> 00:01:53.860 into a state by setting up representative houses such as the House of Burgesses in Virginia 17 00:01:53.860 --> 00:02:02.340 and so on. And thus, throughout the war period, 13 separate states were ultimately organized. 18 00:02:02.340 --> 00:02:07.540 At the time the war began, that was not the case, but by the time it ended, that had become the 19 00:02:07.540 --> 00:02:16.100 in the case. In fact, the states had all come into existence by 1781, at which time the 20 00:02:16.100 --> 00:02:22.380 Articles of Confederation were put together with the idea of binding the states into something 21 00:02:22.380 --> 00:02:28.620 of a union so that they would stay together for the duration of the war. It is instructive, 22 00:02:28.620 --> 00:02:34.100 I think, to note that under the Articles of Confederation, which were set up as a permanent 23 00:02:34.100 --> 00:02:40.420 Union, and from which it was presumed no one could ever see seed, and this is the articles 24 00:02:40.420 --> 00:02:46.540 I'm speaking of, in fact it was to have permanent existence, and the fact that it doesn't exist 25 00:02:46.540 --> 00:02:52.140 now indicates how impermanent some things that are intended to be permanent are. 26 00:02:52.140 --> 00:03:00.180 In this instrument there was no power to tax, no power to conscript, it had the effect of 27 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:09.540 of a Treaty binding together the 13 separate states. That was drawn up in 1781. In 1782 28 00:03:09.540 --> 00:03:15.380 we had the final battle of the war, the Battle of Yorktown, and then the war ended, but it 29 00:03:15.380 --> 00:03:21.540 took us a year to say so officially, because we had no central government. True, we had 30 00:03:21.540 --> 00:03:28.100 the 13 separate states, and the 13 separate states tried to arrange for some kind of a 31 00:03:28.100 --> 00:03:29.860 of a Treaty. 32 00:03:29.860 --> 00:03:35.700 But Great Britain recognized that she had not been engaged in a war with states. 33 00:03:35.700 --> 00:03:42.340 She had been engaged with the entire colonial area, and hence in order to obtain a treaty, 34 00:03:42.340 --> 00:03:48.380 what finally occurred was that the French, who were the Americans' primary and really 35 00:03:48.380 --> 00:03:55.380 only ally, put their bid in, and the result was that the delegates to create the treaty 36 00:03:55.380 --> 00:04:00.660 had to travel to Paris, and the treaty that ensued that brought American independence 37 00:04:00.660 --> 00:04:09.700 is the Treaty of Paris. Now, that finally came into existence in 1783. We still had no central 38 00:04:09.700 --> 00:04:17.540 government. During the war we had come up with an instrument, the Declaration of Independence, 39 00:04:17.540 --> 00:04:27.300 which had been drafted by 56 men in Philadelphia in 1776. The Declaration of Independence had no 40 00:04:27.300 --> 00:04:35.540 legal standing at all. It says on the head of the instrument, that is the Declaration, it says in 41 00:04:35.540 --> 00:04:42.500 Congress, and it is generally stated in the history books that this was an enactment by the 42 00:04:42.500 --> 00:04:50.200 The Second Continental Congress as though there was, in fact, then in existence, a general 43 00:04:50.200 --> 00:04:58.420 legal body. But this is not true. The word Congress was being used as a synonym for convention. 44 00:04:58.420 --> 00:05:04.080 And what it was, was the Second Continental Convention that had met in Philadelphia on 45 00:05:04.080 --> 00:05:12.460 July 1st of 1776 that provided the Declaration of Independence. But the Declaration had no 46 00:05:12.460 --> 00:05:41.980 in the next two years, that is from 1783 to 1785, and nothing ensued. We operated under 47 00:05:41.980 --> 00:05:47.900 Under the separate governments, the separate states, and everyone seemed to be content. 48 00:05:47.900 --> 00:05:57.940 But by 1785, a movement began to get underway calling for the creation of an amendment to 49 00:05:57.940 --> 00:06:03.460 the Articles of Confederation, so that it would continue with a little more force and 50 00:06:03.460 --> 00:06:05.220 power than it had. 51 00:06:05.220 --> 00:06:11.280 Actually, there was little power in it, and now there were those who began to champion 52 00:06:11.280 --> 00:06:17.080 and the idea that the articles ought to be revised so that it would become more than 53 00:06:17.080 --> 00:06:22.780 a de facto treaty binding the colonies together, or rather the states, but it would become 54 00:06:22.780 --> 00:06:29.400 an instrument of government per se. There was not very much enthusiasm for this. The 55 00:06:29.400 --> 00:06:36.480 prime movers for this type of thing were in Pennsylvania and New York, but many of the 56 00:06:36.480 --> 00:06:41.320 of the Colonies were indifferent to this idea, and the population at large in general took 57 00:06:41.320 --> 00:06:45.600 the view that they had just gotten rid of their government and they really didn't need 58 00:06:45.600 --> 00:06:50.120 another one. They weren't thinking of the states as being governments so much as they 59 00:06:50.120 --> 00:06:56.920 were thinking of them as being representative bodies, more or less like politically endowed 60 00:06:56.920 --> 00:07:03.800 chambers of commerce that would take care of the public sector in their various areas, 61 00:07:03.800 --> 00:07:11.720 would not be a restrictive or binding type of thing. However, the movement from 1785 62 00:07:11.720 --> 00:07:22.000 to 1787, leading toward a central government, began to gain strength. And by 1787, the various 63 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:28.760 legislatures in the separate states decided that at least the matter could be considered. 64 00:07:28.760 --> 00:07:34.620 The consequence was that delegates were appointed from each of the thirteen states who were 65 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:41.060 charged with the responsibility of going to Philadelphia for a convention, there to study 66 00:07:41.060 --> 00:07:47.000 the Articles of Confederation to see whether or not the Articles could be strengthened 67 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:52.560 without interfering with the sovereignty of the separate states. And then, having worked 68 00:07:52.560 --> 00:07:58.540 on that instrument as a study group, the various delegates were charged with the responsibility 69 00:07:58.540 --> 00:08:05.020 of returning to the legislatures that had sent them and reporting back in. Then the 70 00:08:05.020 --> 00:08:10.220 legislatures were to take whatever action they wished, whether they would accept or 71 00:08:10.220 --> 00:08:17.460 reject the findings of the group in Philadelphia. It becomes a matter, I suppose, of some consternation 72 00:08:17.460 --> 00:08:24.580 to Americans who have not necessarily studied their own history in depth. When I tell them 73 00:08:24.580 --> 00:08:31.840 that it is a melancholy fact of history that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention 74 00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:39.200 in Philadelphia in 1787 have not reported back yet. They never did return, and as a 75 00:08:39.200 --> 00:08:43.940 matter of fact, they never did consider the Articles of Confederation, which was the only 76 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:48.640 thing they were authorized to consider. As a matter of fact, and a little footnote to 77 00:08:48.640 --> 00:08:53.860 American history, some of the delegates when they arrived at Philadelphia were completely 78 00:08:53.860 --> 00:08:59.940 Nonplus to discover that the convention was already in the hands of a group of people, 79 00:08:59.940 --> 00:09:07.140 calling themselves Federalists or Constitutionalists, and these people had already decided that 80 00:09:07.140 --> 00:09:12.160 the Articles of Confederation were not even going to be considered. Instead, they had 81 00:09:12.160 --> 00:09:18.660 already prepared the rough draft of what was to be an entirely new government. This was 82 00:09:18.660 --> 00:09:23.580 not what they had been authorized to consider, and the consequence is that a number of the 83 00:09:23.580 --> 00:09:28.500 of the Delegates, finding that they could not even consider the instrument that they 84 00:09:28.500 --> 00:09:32.740 had been sent to consider, simply got on their horses and rode away. 85 00:09:32.740 --> 00:09:37.560 This included the entire delegation from Rhode Island, a major portion of the delegation 86 00:09:37.560 --> 00:09:41.060 from New York, and here and there a few other delegates. 87 00:09:41.060 --> 00:09:46.060 So those people never did participate in the Constitutional Convention. 88 00:09:46.060 --> 00:09:51.720 And if you examine one of the memorial copies of the Constitution to come from the Convention, 89 00:09:51.720 --> 00:09:57.320 We will note the fact that no one from Rhode Island was there, and that the delegation 90 00:09:57.320 --> 00:10:05.600 from New York is particularly sparse. In any case, the Constitution itself was put together 91 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:15.720 during this convention of 1787. Now, it contains within itself a method of ratification which 92 00:10:15.720 --> 00:10:21.840 which would make it unnecessary to turn the Constitution over to the people so that the 93 00:10:21.840 --> 00:10:27.720 people would examine it and decide voluntarily of their own free act and deed whether or 94 00:10:27.720 --> 00:10:30.640 not they wanted to be bound under the instrument. 95 00:10:30.640 --> 00:10:37.440 Additionally, it avoids the necessity of going to the state legislatures, which did comprise 96 00:10:37.440 --> 00:10:42.920 the then existing government, and if there had been any legality to the process, certainly 97 00:10:42.920 --> 00:10:47.720 at least the elected representatives of the people should have been given the opportunity 98 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:53.960 of examining the Constitution. This too was bypassed because it was recognized by the 99 00:10:53.960 --> 00:10:59.880 Federalists at the Constitutional Convention that the state representatives would never 100 00:10:59.880 --> 00:11:05.680 approve of the instrument that they had drafted. And so they devised a different way of getting 101 00:11:05.680 --> 00:11:12.800 over this or around this particular obstacle by writing Article 7 to the Constitution, 102 00:11:12.800 --> 00:11:19.760 which specifies that the Constitution is to be ratified not by the people at large and not by 103 00:11:19.760 --> 00:11:25.440 the elected representatives of the people, but by state conventions that are to be held. 104 00:11:26.000 --> 00:11:32.960 And this gave the Federalists an opportunity to have a constitutional convention in the 105 00:11:32.960 --> 00:11:40.000 and the Separate States under their own management. Thus it worked out, with the passing of time, 106 00:11:40.000 --> 00:11:47.240 that the various states only convened a convention for purposes of considering the Constitution 107 00:11:47.240 --> 00:11:51.320 when the Federalists who were in charge in the movement had been fairly certain that 108 00:11:51.320 --> 00:11:57.760 they had packed it in favor of the decision that they wanted. Thus, as Forrest MacDonald, 109 00:11:57.760 --> 00:12:06.320 who has written a definitive work on the subject entitled We the People expresses it, the whole 110 00:12:06.320 --> 00:12:12.400 affair was a stacked deck and the Constitution was simply railroaded through without the 111 00:12:12.400 --> 00:12:17.320 legislative representatives of the people or the people themselves being called upon 112 00:12:17.320 --> 00:12:22.400 to examine it or even to have anything to do with it. 113 00:12:22.400 --> 00:12:27.440 One of the interesting things about the Constitution, and it is important that I make this point, 114 00:12:27.440 --> 00:12:39.440 is that we have been led to believe in this country that the Constitution is such a magnificent instrument of government that it is virtually on a level with holy writ. 115 00:12:39.440 --> 00:12:51.440 It is, according to some people who have praised it out of hand, an instrument or the best instrument ever struck off by the hand of man at a given instant in time. 116 00:12:51.440 --> 00:13:06.440 And this kind of praise has tended to wrap the Constitution in an impenetrable wall of sanctity, which more or less shunts away the inquiring mind. 117 00:13:06.440 --> 00:13:12.960 Find. We simply take the Constitution as being what the publicity concerning it said 118 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:18.960 that it was and very few of us take the time to examine it and to examine it in a penetrating 119 00:13:18.960 --> 00:13:25.160 way so we can find out what it says. There are in fact a number of illusions that we have 120 00:13:25.160 --> 00:13:32.920 concerning the instrument. For example, I was told when I was in school that it was 121 00:13:32.920 --> 00:13:35.920 is an instrument of limited powers. 122 00:13:35.920 --> 00:13:42.040 Now, that's an interesting phrase, and we should examine it to see whether or not that 123 00:13:42.040 --> 00:13:43.040 is true. 124 00:13:43.040 --> 00:13:48.400 Also, we have been told repeatedly that it is an instrument of checks and balances, and 125 00:13:48.400 --> 00:13:54.120 there is an assumption, I think, in the minds of most people that it is an instrument that 126 00:13:54.120 --> 00:13:59.100 protects their rights, that sets forth the proposition that they are innocent unless 127 00:14:59.100 --> 00:15:04.620 at the time. I not only read it, but I was called upon to memorize the preamble, and 128 00:15:04.620 --> 00:15:11.220 I did. And the interesting thing is that from that time on, if anybody asked me, even after 129 00:15:11.220 --> 00:15:16.820 I had reached adulthood, had I ever read the Constitution, I responded truthfully that 130 00:15:16.820 --> 00:15:22.540 I had indeed read it. And I would submit for your consideration that a child in the fourth 131 00:15:22.540 --> 00:15:27.740 grade who may very well have read the Constitution because it was demanded of him, doesn't know 132 00:15:27.740 --> 00:15:29.740 The Theory of Money and State The Theory of Money and State 133 00:15:57.740 --> 00:16:03.500 to take a good look at the instrument itself. It is not a suppressed document. You can readily 134 00:16:03.500 --> 00:16:10.220 obtain a copy, and I would suggest that the instrument itself is its own best evidence. 135 00:16:11.180 --> 00:16:18.380 The thing that caused me to first take a look at the Constitution with something in the nature of 136 00:16:18.380 --> 00:16:26.540 an arched eyebrow was the discovery that the names that appeared on the bottom of the Constitution 137 00:16:26.540 --> 00:16:33.820 were unfamiliar to me. Now, I have been something of a buff relating early American history. I'm very 138 00:16:33.820 --> 00:16:41.300 fond of reading about the marvelous exploits of the American patriots who broke with England and 139 00:16:41.300 --> 00:16:49.060 declared for human rights and for human liberty and ultimately won the victory. That has a kind 140 00:17:19.060 --> 00:17:25.060 I discovered that the only six names appear on both the Consulate and the Federal Reserve. 141 00:17:25.060 --> 00:17:42.500 I was a little bit nonplussed, so I went back over it to find out where I had made the error, 142 00:17:42.500 --> 00:17:50.980 When I discovered that the only six names appear on both the Constitution and the Declaration 143 00:17:50.980 --> 00:17:56.900 of Independence, and that's a very interesting thing, because you see, when I was in school, 144 00:17:56.900 --> 00:18:02.340 I had been told that we had a group of men in this country who were called the Founding 145 00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:08.620 Fathers, and I had usually thought of them in connection with the Declaration of Independence. 146 00:18:08.620 --> 00:18:15.340 I had simply assumed that these same men would have their names attached to the Constitution, 147 00:18:15.340 --> 00:18:18.780 but I didn't find them, excepting in six cases. 148 00:18:18.780 --> 00:18:25.140 So then I made a comparison to find out what the facts were, and finding only six that 149 00:18:25.140 --> 00:18:32.440 repeated, I had to check into it still further to what happened to the other 50 whose names 150 00:18:32.440 --> 00:18:36.700 do appear on the Declaration, but do not appear on the Constitution. 151 00:18:36.700 --> 00:18:41.740 Well, three of them were dead, and obviously they had no choice in the matter. 152 00:18:41.740 --> 00:18:47.780 And another twelve had been banished from the country or had left it one way or another 153 00:18:47.780 --> 00:18:49.520 during the revolution. 154 00:18:49.520 --> 00:18:54.900 And so that accounts for fifteen, and six are accounted for by virtue of the fact that 155 00:18:54.900 --> 00:18:56.760 their names do appear. 156 00:18:56.760 --> 00:19:05.140 That leaves thirty-five of the original signers of the Declaration who could have participated 157 00:19:05.140 --> 00:19:11.620 in the Constitution, but who did not. And I was reluctantly led to the conclusion that 158 00:19:11.620 --> 00:19:18.140 in this country we had a case of double paternity. We had two sets of founding fathers, one group 159 00:19:18.140 --> 00:19:24.820 that brought about the separation from England, and who indeed were the people who came up 160 00:19:24.820 --> 00:19:30.740 with the concept of rights, and then almost entirely another group of men who gave us 161 00:19:30.740 --> 00:19:37.600 This is the Constitution, with, as I've pointed out, six exceptions. Well, I went over the 162 00:19:37.600 --> 00:19:44.200 names of the people that were the most meaningful to me as Founding Fathers. Who were they? 163 00:19:44.200 --> 00:19:51.500 Well, the people like John Hancock, Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Patrick 164 00:19:51.500 --> 00:19:58.320 Henry, people like that. Those names have, I suppose, a familiar ring to you and to me. 165 00:19:58.320 --> 00:20:03.760 What were those men doing? Those names, none of those, appear on the Constitution. What 166 00:20:03.760 --> 00:20:08.920 were they doing when the Constitutional Convention was going on? Well, they weren't delegates 167 00:20:08.920 --> 00:20:14.520 to it. Well, what were they doing at the time the Constitution was to be ratified in the 168 00:20:14.520 --> 00:20:18.880 separate state conventions? Well, they were doing all they could to keep it from being 169 00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:24.480 ratified. In other words, the very people who had given us the Declaration of Independence 170 00:20:24.480 --> 00:20:31.120 were almost up in arms in opposition to the Constitution. And this is a point that is usually 171 00:20:31.120 --> 00:20:38.400 overlooked in your histories when you read about it, you get the impression that there is just 172 00:20:38.400 --> 00:20:43.440 one group of people and they put through the Declaration and they put through the Constitution, 173 00:20:43.440 --> 00:20:47.920 and here we have just this same wonderful thing going right straight through, and indeed we do 174 00:20:47.920 --> 00:20:53.680 not. One group gave us the Declaration and almost an entirely different body gave us the 175 00:20:53.680 --> 00:20:54.680 the Constitution. 176 00:20:54.680 --> 00:21:00.840 Well, I began to cast about to find out what the opinions of these people were that caused 177 00:21:00.840 --> 00:21:08.400 them to be either inactive insofar as the Constitution was concerned or actually opposed. 178 00:21:08.400 --> 00:21:13.640 And I began to run across statements made by a number of people who had examined the 179 00:21:13.640 --> 00:21:17.240 Constitution and had not praised it out of hand. 180 00:21:17.240 --> 00:21:24.920 I'm thinking, for instance, of Lord Macaulay, one of Britain's great historians, who, in 181 00:21:24.920 --> 00:21:30.520 the midst of the 19th century, was sent a copy of the Constitution, and it was expected 182 00:21:30.520 --> 00:21:37.240 by the party who sent it to him that he would respond in a real flowery bit of praise of 183 00:21:37.240 --> 00:21:41.880 this magnificent piece of legal ledger domain. 184 00:21:41.880 --> 00:21:50.880 And instead McCauley responded, I confess, sir, to be unimpressed with your Constitution. 185 00:21:50.880 --> 00:21:54.520 It is all sale and no anchor. 186 00:21:54.520 --> 00:21:59.220 Now that is something of a forbidding conclusion. 187 00:21:59.220 --> 00:22:07.800 So I did a little examination of Alexis de Tocqueville's great work, Democracy in America, 188 00:22:07.800 --> 00:22:13.540 a two-volume study, which I believe has no parallel. It's one of the great studies in 189 00:22:13.540 --> 00:22:20.040 political science extant today and still hailed by many people as one of the finest works 190 00:22:20.040 --> 00:22:23.080 written in this field. 191 00:22:23.080 --> 00:22:29.260 de Tocqueville came to America in the 1840s very, very much enthused about the general 192 00:22:29.260 --> 00:22:37.760 idea of democracy. He had been very much opposed to the unbridled license and power of king 193 00:22:37.760 --> 00:22:38.760 James. 194 00:22:38.760 --> 00:22:45.240 And it seemed to him that the idea that men should elect their own governors and that the 195 00:22:45.240 --> 00:22:50.200 government should be representative of their wishes was a magnificent breakthrough that 196 00:22:50.200 --> 00:22:54.880 was going to lead into all kinds of good things for people. 197 00:22:54.880 --> 00:23:00.800 And after arriving on these shores, de Tocqueville did express himself very favorably in respect 198 00:23:00.800 --> 00:23:03.680 to the people that he saw and what they were doing. 199 00:23:03.680 --> 00:23:10.380 He found it much superior to what he was familiar with in France and in the rest of Europe. 200 00:23:10.380 --> 00:23:14.200 But then someone handed him a copy of the Constitution. 201 00:23:14.200 --> 00:23:19.560 And after looking at it he said, I will give the people under this instrument two hundred 202 00:23:19.560 --> 00:23:26.400 years from the date of its ratification until they descend under a complete despotism. 203 00:23:26.400 --> 00:23:33.920 Now there is a very foreboding prophecy, and made by a man who was not really a mental 204 00:23:33.920 --> 00:23:41.760 midget, a man who is obviously well-informed and who said what he did with real thought 205 00:23:41.760 --> 00:23:49.360 behind it. Then he went on, in his work Democracy in America, to describe what he now detected 206 00:23:49.360 --> 00:23:56.320 as the great weaknesses of democracy which he thought would lead into a kind of tyranny 207 00:23:56.320 --> 00:24:01.480 that was new, but nonetheless a kind of tyranny. 208 00:24:01.480 --> 00:24:04.680 So that was the reaction of de Tocqueville. 209 00:24:04.680 --> 00:24:09.660 I was particularly interested in the comments of Benjamin Franklin. 210 00:24:09.660 --> 00:24:12.680 Franklin is one of the names that appears on both instruments. 211 00:24:12.680 --> 00:24:19.400 He signed the Declaration of Independence and he also was counted as being present at the 212 00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:22.520 Constitutional Convention. 213 00:24:22.520 --> 00:24:29.200 Curiously what had happened was this, it's a real cute little thing, Jefferson's opposition 214 00:24:29.200 --> 00:24:35.600 to the Constitution or to the whole idea of any Constitution was so well known and so 215 00:24:35.600 --> 00:24:42.380 deep that the Federalists, despaired of even having a Constitutional Convention as long 216 00:24:42.380 --> 00:25:12.380 and so they contrived to get him sent to France, as our ambassador to France, before they would schedule the meeting in Philadelphia, and this they did, but in so doing they didn't relieve Franklin, who was at that time our ambassador to France, and so Thomas Jefferson walked into his ambassadorial offices, anticipating that Franklin would have long since left, and Franklin wasn't even aware 217 00:25:12.380 --> 00:25:14.380 The Theory of Money and Credit 218 00:25:42.380 --> 00:25:43.380 is Home. 219 00:25:43.380 --> 00:25:45.940 And this gave him the opportunity. 220 00:25:45.940 --> 00:25:50.260 So nothing was said, and he simply packed up and returned to America. 221 00:25:50.260 --> 00:25:54.500 When he got to Philadelphia, the convention was already in progress. 222 00:25:54.500 --> 00:25:57.820 So he went down to see what was going on. 223 00:25:57.820 --> 00:26:00.700 The meeting was being chaired by George Washington. 224 00:26:00.700 --> 00:26:05.800 But the moment Franklin came through the door into the assembly, the meeting stopped. 225 00:26:05.800 --> 00:26:10.380 Everyone stood up and gave him a standing ovation because, as you well know, Franklin 226 00:26:10.380 --> 00:26:24.340 Washington offered Franklin the opportunity of chairing the meeting, and Franklin accepted 227 00:26:24.340 --> 00:26:30.660 it as an honor, and then asked for a copy of the Constitution, which he read. 228 00:26:30.660 --> 00:26:35.220 Having read the Constitution, he then interrupted the proceedings and announced to the delegates 229 00:26:35.220 --> 00:26:38.020 that he would recommend three changes. 230 00:26:38.020 --> 00:26:45.380 He said that there was three places in the Constitution where unbridled power had been 231 00:26:45.380 --> 00:26:50.900 granted, and these places were one in the executive branch, two in the legislative branch, 232 00:26:50.900 --> 00:26:56.940 and three in the judicial branch. But he lost on all counts. Every suggestion that he made 233 00:26:56.940 --> 00:27:03.220 was simply swept aside, and they went ahead and approved the Constitution as it had existed. 234 00:27:03.220 --> 00:27:08.340 His own foreboding at the end of the meeting was prophetic. He said at the end, 235 00:27:08.340 --> 00:27:13.160 Well, gentlemen, you have a constitution. It is not as good as we could have hoped, 236 00:27:13.160 --> 00:27:17.980 but it is good as we are going to get, and it will serve us all right for a while. But 237 00:27:17.980 --> 00:27:23.700 it will end in tyranny, because there is nothing within it to prevent it.