: History of the Origin Formation and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States Vol. 1 With Notices of Its Principle Framers by Curtis George Ticknor - Constitutional history United States

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hile in England, on account of the part he had taken in American affairs.

In 1754. See an account of this plan, ante, p. 8.

He first went to England in 1757, as agent of the Pennsylvania Assembly to settle their difficulties with the Proprietaries, where he remained until 1762. In 1764, he was reappointed provincial agent in England for Pennsylvania; in 1768, he received a similar appointment from Georgia; in 1769, he was chosen agent for New Jersey; and in 1770, he became agent for Massachusetts. His whole residence in England, from 1757 to 1775, embraced a period of sixteen years, two years having been passed at home. He resided in France about nine years, from 1776 to 1785.

Mr. Madison has recorded the following anecdote at the end of the Debates, as an incident worthy of being known to posterity. "Whilst the last members were signing, Dr. Franklin, looking towards the President's chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had often found it difficult, in their art, to distinguish a rising from a setting sun. 'I have,' said he, 'often and often, in the course of the session, and the vicissitude of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President, without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting; but now, at length, I have the happiness to know that it is a rising, and not a setting sun.'"

Sparks's Life of Franklin, 528.

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.

This brilliant, energetic, and patriotic statesman was born in the Province of New York, at Morrisania,--the seat of his family for several generations,--in the year 1752. He was educated for the bar; but in 1775, at the age of three-and-twenty, he was elected a member of the Provincial Congress of New York, in which he became at once distinguished. When the recommendation of the Continental Congress to the Colonies, to organize new forms of government, was received, he took a leading place in the debates on the formation of a new constitution for the State; and when the subject of independence was brought forward, in order that the delegates of New York in the Continental Congress might be clothed with sufficient authority, he delivered a speech of great power, of which fragments only are preserved, but which evidently embraced the most comprehensive and statesmanlike views of the situation and future prospects of this country. Speaking of the capacity of America to sustain herself without a connection with Great Britain, he said:--

"Thus, Sir, by means of that great gulf which rolls its waves between Europe and America; by the situation of these Colonies, always adapted to hinder or interrupt all communication between the two; by the productions of our soil, which the Almighty has filled with every necessary to make us a great maritime people; by the extent of our coasts and those immense rivers, which serve at once to open a communication with our interior country, and to teach us the arts of navigation; by those vast fisheries, which, affording an inexhaustible mine of wealth and a cradle of industry, breed hardy mariners, inured to danger and fatigue; finally, by the unconquerable spirit of freemen, deeply interested in the preservation of a government which secures to them the blessings of liberty and exalts the dignity of mankind;--by all these, I expect a full and lasting defence against any and every part of the earth; while the great advantages to be derived from a friendly intercourse with this country almost render the means of defence unnecessary, from the great improbability of being attacked. So far, peace seems to smile upon our future independence. But that this fair goddess will equally crown our union with Great Britain, my fondest hopes cannot lead me to suppose. Every war in which she is engaged must necessarily involve us in its detestable consequences; whilst, weak and unarmed, we have no shield of defence, unless such as she may please to afford, or else the pity of her enemies and the insignificance of slaves beneath the attention of a generous foe."

In 1778, Mr. Morris was chosen a delegate to the Continental Congress from the State of New York. His reputation for talent, zeal, activity, and singular capacity for business, had preceded him. On the very day when he presented his credentials, he was placed upon a committee to proceed to Valley Forge, to confer with General Washington on the measures necessary for a reorganization of the army. He remained in Congress for two years, discharging, with great ability and high patriotism, the most important functions, and subjected all the while to the most unjust popular suspicions of his fidelity to the cause of the country. Few of all the prominent men of the Revolution sacrificed or suffered more than Gouverneur Morris. The fact that all the other members of his family adhered to the royalist side, and an ineffectual effort which he once made to visit his mother, at his ancestral home, then within the British lines, gave his enemies the means of inflicting upon him a deep injury in the popular estimation. He was not re-elected to Congress; but short as his career in that body was, it was filled with services inferior to those of none of his associates.

Before he left Congress, in February, 1779, he made--as chairman of a committee to whom certain communications from the French minister in the United States were referred--a report which became the basis of the peace that afterwards followed; and when the principles on which the peace was to be negotiated had been settled, he drew the instructions to the commissioners, and they were unanimously adopted without change.

On leaving Congress, Mr. Morris took up his residence in Philadelphia, and resumed the practice of the law. His remarkable talent for business, however, and his intimate knowledge of financial subjects, led to his appointment as Assistant Financier with Robert Morris. In this capacity, he suggested the idea of the decimal notation, which was afterwards made the basis of the coinage of the United States.

The character of Gouverneur Morris was balanced by many admirable qualities. His self-possession was so complete in all circumstances, that he is said to have declared, that he never knew the sensation of fear, inferiority, or embarrassment, in his intercourse with men. Undoubtedly, his self-confidence amounted sometimes to boldness and presumption; but we have it on no less an authority than Mr. Madison's, that he added to it a candid surrender of his opinions, when the lights of discussion satisfied him that they had been too hastily formed. He was a man of genius, fond of society and pleasure, but capable of prodigious exertion and industry, and possessed of great powers of eloquence.

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