personal influence which made that movement a success, and when
the convention to form a constitution met at Philadelphia, he
presided over its deliberations, and it was his commanding will
which, more than anything else, brought a constitution through
difficulties and conflicting interests which more than once made
any result seem well-nigh hopeless. When the Constitution formed
at Philadelphia had been ratified by the States, all men turned
to Washington to stand at the head of the new government. As he
had borne the burden of the Revolution, so he now took up the
task of bringing the government of the Constitution into
existence. For eight years he served as president. He came into
office with a paper constitution, the heir of a bankrupt,
broken-down confederation. He left the United States, when he
went out of office, an effective and vigorous government. When he
was inaugurated, we had nothing but the clauses of the
Constitution as agreed to by the Convention. When he laid down
the presidency, we had an organized government, an established
revenue, a funded debt, a high credit, an efficient system of
banking, a strong judiciary, and an army. We had a vigorous and
well-defined foreign policy; we had recovered the western posts,
which, in the hands of the British, had fettered our march to the
west; and we had proved our power to maintain order at home, to
repress insurrection, to collect the national taxes, and to
enforce the laws made by Congress. Thus Washington had shown that
rare combination of the leader who could first destroy by
revolution, and who, having led his country through a great civil
war, was then able to build up a new and lasting fabric upon the
ruins of a system which had been overthrown. At the close of his
official service he returned again to Mount Vernon, and, after a
few years of quiet retirement, died just as the century in which