I Confess

It was a speech that ran all of 723 words.

If you ran it through a spell and a grammar check, you'd probably rewrite half of it, omitting all of the passive sentences.

Fortunately Microsoft Word hadn't been invented yet.

After the obligatory, "Mr. President," it started with two simple words: "I confess." Mainly because the man who wrote it had a load to confess to.

Some of it you could read in the lines themselves. Some you had to read between the lines. He was too weak to read the speech himself, but the words were his - every single one of them. It was left to James Wilson to utter this simple masterpiece to a Constitutional Convention, in 1787, filled with rancor.

"I confess, that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others..."

Plain fact was he sought, early on, to cultivate his character by a plan of 13 virtues, which he had trouble living up to.

In 1757, he was sent to England as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, where he began to see himself as a loyal Englishman. It was easy to understand; he lived in serene comfort, the conversation was stimulating and he was the center of attention - the University of St. Andrews awarded him an honorary Doctor of Laws Degree; Oxford followed suit with an honorary doctorate for scientific achievement.

Could he be impartial?

He wrestled with his conscience. Sometimes his conscience took a beating. 

"...Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. ... but though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said, "I don't know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that's always in the right ..."

No, he had not always been right. Or prophetic.

He certainly was slow to react to the Stamp Act; some, in the states, thought he was complicit in its creation.

The "Hutchinson Affair" eventually brought him home, while his illegitimate son, William, remained in England, firmly entrenched on the British side.

"...In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because ...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...thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution, because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best...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..."

Thanks to his Constitution speech, which you can read exactly as James Wilson of Pennsylvania read it, the delegates agreed that the sum was greater than the parts.

It was by no means a perfect document, and neither was the man who wrote the "confession" that was the driving force behind ultimately ratifying it.

But when his country needed him, Benjamin Franklin was perfect enough.

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