necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be
a blessing to the people, if well administered, and I believe
further that this is likely to be well administered for a course of
years, and can only end in despotism as other forms have done before
it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic
government, being incapable of any other. I doubt, too, whether any
other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better
Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the
advantage of their joint wisdom 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, sir, to find this system approaching so near to
perfection as it does.... Thus, I consent, sir, to this Constitution
because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not
the best. The opinions I have had of its errors I sacrifice to the
public good, I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad.
Within these walls they were born and here they shall die. If every
one of us in returning to our constituents were to report the
objections he has had to it and endeavour to gain partisans in
support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and
thereby lost all the salutary effects and great advantages resulting
naturally in our favour among foreign nations as well as among
ourselves from our real or apparent unanimity.

"On the whole, sir, I cannot help expressing a wish that every
member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would
with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own
infallibility--and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to
this instrument."