employment; otherwise not.”  This idea of inefficiency and failure in the convention had long been present to his mind, and he had already said that, if their powers were insufficient, the convention should go boldly over and beyond them and make a government with the means of coercion, and able to enforce obedience, without which it would be, in his opinion, quite worthless.  Thus he pondered on the difficulties, and held back his acceptance of the post; but when the hour of action drew near, the rheumatism and the misgivings alike disappeared before the inevitable, and Washington arrived in Philadelphia, punctual as usual, on May 13, the day before the opening of the convention.

The other members were by no means equally prompt, and a week elapsed before a bare quorum was obtained and the convention enabled to organize.  In this interval of waiting there appears to have been some informal discussion among the members present, between those who favored an entirely new Constitution and those who timidly desired only half-way measures.  On one of these occasions Washington is reported by Gouverneur Morris, in a eulogy delivered twelve years later, to have said:  “It is too probable that no plan we propose will be adopted.  Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained.  If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work?  Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair.  The event is in the hand of God.”  The language is no doubt that of Morris, speaking from memory and in a highly rhetorical vein, but we may readily believe that the quotation accurately embodied Washington’s opinion, and that he took this high ground at the outset, and strove from the beginning to inculcate upon his fellow-members the absolute need of bold and decisive action.  The words savor of the orator who quoted them, but the noble and courageous sentiment which they express is thoroughly characteristic of the man to whom they were attributed.[1]

[Footnote 1:  It is necessary to say a few words in regard to this quotation of Washington’s words made by Morris, because both Mr. Bancroft (History of the Constitution, ii. 8) and Mr. John Fiske (The Critical Period of American History, p. 232) quote them as if they were absolutely and verbally authentic.  It is perfectly certain that from May 25 to September 17 Washington spoke but once; that is, he spoke but once in the convention after it became such by organization.  This point is determined by Madison’s statement (Notes, in. 1600), that when Washington took the floor in behalf of Gorham’s amendment, “it was the only occasion on which the president entered at all into the discussions of the convention.” (The italics are mine.) I have examined the manuscript at the State Department, and these words are written in Madison’s own hand in the body of the text and inclosed in brackets.  Madison was the most accurate of men.  His notes are only abstracts of what was said, but he was never absent from the convention, and there can be no question that if Washington had uttered the words attributed to him by Morris, a speech so important would have been given as fully as possible, and Madison would not have said distinctly that the Gorham amendment was the only occasion when the president entered into the discussions of the convention.