From the Maxwell children: Elder Maxwell had a background in political science, and he read extensively about the United States Constitution, the Constitutional Convention, and the lives of some of those who were present at the Convention. He loved the Constitution and regularly spoke of it and of the Lord’s counsel in the Doctrine and Covenants that we should seek out “honest, wise, and good” men and women to govern us (Doctrine and Covenants 98:10).
Elder Neal A. Maxwell was a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when he delivered this devotional address at Ricks College on September 15, 1987.
You’ve had your opening assembly; we’re going to talk today about another opening assembly and the events, that are remarkable in all of human history, of the Constitutional Convention.
I congratulate you on the time that you will spend focusing on this. You’ll be privileged to hear from Judge Wallace[1] and others.
This is a special time. I’m not sure it’s fair to you who are young beneficiaries of the work done two hundred years ago that you should be expected to appreciate all of it. I should like to try to weigh in on the scales for your consideration. Some of the reasons of that is in fact a very, very special blessing.
What happened in Philadelphia, with the signatories affixing their names to that document two hundred years ago this Thursday, was a miracle. Catherine Drinker Bowen’s book Miracle at Philadelphia is aptly titled. In that book, she said, “Miracles do not occur at random, nor was it the author of this book, who said there was a miracle at Philadelphia in the year 1787. George Washington said it and James Madison. They used the word in writing to their friends, Washington to Lafayette, and Madison to Thomas Jefferson.”[2]
My context, both intellectual and spiritual, out of which I will speak to you today, is that what happened there in that long hot summer and early fall of 1787 was, in fact, a miracle.
My text today is called “The Constitution: The Wisest Ever Yet Presented to Men.” It comes from Thomas Jefferson who gave his approval of the Constitution only after careful and skeptical analysis, and then he wrote, “The Constitution is unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to mankind.”[3]
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, America had the blueprint for establishing a republic, and then a second miracle followed in the ratification of that document, and a third miracle followed, and that is the implementation of this republic.
One historian has said of that special moment in human history these words: “Two thousand years of political theorizing and practical experience crystallized in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 in the most brilliantly sustained intellectual and oratorical achievement of [human] history.”[4] I realize these words of praise may sound generous to you; they are not wide of the mark.
Today, you and I must do our part to keep the Constitution a viable force in this nation because political liberty is not automatically self-renewing. John Stuart Mill, who has written exceedingly well about liberty, said many years ago—and I ask you, as I read these words, let your mind play upon contemporary nations that have come and gone that have lost their liberty—Mill said, “A people may prefer a free government, but if, from indolence, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, they are unequal to the exertion necessary for preserving it; . . . And though it may be for their good to have had it even for a short time, they are unlikely long to enjoy it.”[5]
Two centuries are worth celebrating. There is no parallel in human history for that which we celebrate in this bicentennial year, so far as governments are concerned. One of the things we fail to do sometimes in the Church is to distinguish between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The Declaration of Independence (the bicentennial of which we celebrated eleven years ago) and the Constitution are both very important documents. The speaker from whom you will hear later, Judge Wallace, said,
In contrast to the . . . eloquence of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution may seem dry and even dull. This difference in style . . . reflects the very different functions of the two documents. The Declaration of Independence is an indictment of the reign of King George III. In a flamboyant tone, it is brilliantly crafted to persuade the world of the justice of our fight for independence. The Constitution, by contrast, establishes the basic set of rules for the nation. Its genius lies deeper, in its skillful design of a government structure that would best ensure liberty and democracy.[6]
How did it all happen? Seventy-four men were named by their state legislatures to go to Philadelphia. Twenty-one of them had fought in the Revolutionary War. Only fifty-five of them actually showed up at Philadelphia. Some didn’t even come. Seldom did more than thirty participate at once, and the real work of the Constitutional Convention was performed by about a dozen men. Ratification, of which I will speak shortly, involved a small percentage of the citizenry, given the limitations on the comparative number who could vote to elect delegates to the ratifying state assemblies. By the way, most of the delegates who assembled in Philadelphia came from states having religious tests for those who were to hold office, yet those founders rose above that limitation and forbade religious tests in our Constitution.
Historian Barbara Tuchman has noted how our Founding Fathers had been called the most remarkable generation of public men in the history of the United States or of any other nation. She further observed, “It would be invaluable if we could know what produced this burst of talent from a base of only two and a half million inhabitants.”[7] Latter-day Saints know where that burst of talent came from.
In the 101st section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord says, “For this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up to this very purpose” (Doctrine and Covenants 101:80).
We haven’t had that kind of talent since. We are not likely to have it again. And the Lord grouped those wise men in that Philadelphia setting to perform the miracle at Philadelphia. Of course, they were imperfect men. They came with their biases. They represented different constituencies, but unlike politics in America today—at least in some respects, unlike politics in America today—they came not as single-issue candidates. They rose above any of their provincial preoccupations. And they were presided over by somebody who only spoke once, George Washington. He was there, and of this we read: “Through four months, Washington was to sit silent in the convention Only on the last day, September seventeenth, did Washington rise to take part in the debates.”[8]
Silence in public debates was, it seems, natural to him. Washington showed himself to be firm, courteous, and flexible. In his silence lay his strength. His presence kept the federal convention together. He kept it going just as his presence had kept a straggling, ill-conditioned army together throughout the terrible years of the war. (You might, parenthetically, be able to count on two hands, maybe even one, public servants today who are capable of silence.)
The framers were especially concerned with the abuse of power because they had suffered so much from the abuse of political power. Therefore, in the Constitution they deliberately dispersed power and then put it under constraints of checks and balances, and then divided it as between federal and state power.
Why did they do this? Because they had a realistic reading of human nature. They understood that power is difficult for most everyone to handle. A revelation given to Joseph Smith in 1839, the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenants, came to the Prophet Joseph Smith, ironically, while he was in Liberty Jail, deprived of his constitutional rights. And Joseph was counseled, “It is the nature and disposition” of almost all individuals to abuse power and authority (Doctrine and Covenants 121:39). Not 51 percent. Not quite a few. Almost all. The framers of the American Constitution felt much the same way. They, too, had learned from their sad experiences.
Again, turning to Barbara Tuchman, she writes about political power with these very penetrating words: “Chief among the forces affecting political folly is the lust for power, named by Tacitus as ‘the most flagrant of all the passions.’ Because it can only be satisfied by power over others, government is its favorite field of exercise.”[9]
Our framers understood the risks of political power, and hence, treated it with much care and attention. We cannot overestimate, as I’ve already indicated, brothers and sisters, the significance of Washington’s character and reputation. They were so pivotal, not only at the Constitutional Convention but in the war for independence. Washington’s prize-winning biographer, Flexner, writes these words—and as I read them, think about what I just read to you from the 121st section—“In all history, few men who possessed unassailable power have used that power so gently and self-effacingly for what their best instincts told them was the welfare of their neighbors and all mankind.”[10] George Washington didn’t know about the 121st section. It had not been given then, but he practiced it, and we were blessed to have at the head of the war for independence and in Philadelphia, as our first president, a man who was not hooked on power.
His presence there was not an accident. But the leaders of this nation then and now can’t do it all. Virtue has to reside in the American people in sufficient proportion to make the system work. John Adams said of our Constitution: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[11] Morality brings about that self-discipline which maintains the balance in the tug of war between the need for liberty on the one hand and the need for order on the other. And without sufficient personal discipline, without sufficient morality, that tug of war will not strike the balance that we need.
In fact, brothers and sisters, our whole system depends upon what someone has called “obedience to the unenforceable.” We obey. We are good citizens regarding things that could not possibly be enforced, and if the critical mass of American people reaches a point where that can no longer obtain, then we are in deep, deep trouble.
We exist and have existed because, by and large, there has been shared respect and shared power. But once selfishness, for instance, begins to take over, you can’t share respect. You can’t share power. We have in America today an apostate form of individualism in which people think that selfishness is individualism. That’s not how this nation began, and it cannot continue unless there is that capacity to discipline ourselves and to be obedient to the unenforceable.
A significant unraveling, for instance, of the moral fiber of the American people would imperil the Constitution. You and I are fond, I think, in our conversations, of assuming that when the Constitution hangs by a thread, that this will be an especially dramatic legal crisis. It might be. But the fabric of this society can become so dangerously frayed that the Constitution can be imperiled subtly, but very directly, and with catastrophic consequences. So it is that individual decency and constitutional viability are irrevocably intertwined.
For instance, when people lose their self-discipline, the inner controls, so to speak, this brings more outer controls and less liberty. It is as simple as that. Thus, we get revelations, which not only endorsed the American Constitution through the Prophet Joseph Smith, but we’re told in the 98th section that we are to seek out individuals who are wise, good, and honest to lead us (see Doctrine and Covenants 98:10).
How many times in American history have we elected someone who may have been clever but not good? How many times in American history have we elected somebody who is personally honest but is not necessarily wise? Thus it is that, for Latter-day Saints, the continuing obligation rests upon us to seek out those who are wise, good, and honest, and our responsibility is both electoral and scriptural. And “seek out” doesn’t mean simply to vote. It means to nurture, bring along, encourage those who can provide that kind of leadership, whether it’s local government, state government, or national government.
So you and I, if we’re not careful as we celebrate this great bicentennial, can, if we’re not wise, become so excited, so enraptured about how marvelous it is—Gladstone called it “the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man”[12]— that we’ll forget what William Penn said: “Governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments.”[13]
The miracle at Philadelphia, as I’ve already indicated, was soon followed by a second miracle, the miracle of ratification. This is a miracle we and the Church have yet to come to fully appreciate.
Most, not all, but most of the same individuals whom the Lord raised up to write the Constitution also helped to secure its ratification. The struggle for ratification ensued for months against heavy opposition. Prestigious and influential individuals like Sam Adams, James Winthrop, George Mason, James Monroe (he was later the fifth president), and Patrick Henry were among those who were arrayed against the ratification of the Constitution, and they fought it vigorously and effectively. In Pennsylvania, for instance, the anti-federalists, those who opposed the ratification of the Constitution, stayed away from the Assembly in sufficient numbers that they could not form a quorum so that they could legally ratify it.
Finally, two of the recalcitrant anti-federalist assemblymen were dragged in and held physically in their seats until the business was concluded. In December, after Pennsylvania ratified the Constitution, a mob attacked and beat severely James Wilson, one of the most distinguished Founding Fathers. Rhode Island didn’t even ratify until after the new government was functioning.
In Massachusetts, a farmer named Jonathan Smith seemed to represent—at least he does for me—the way common people have of wisely perceiving the time in human affairs when something must be done. When he rose to his feet with 355 delegates to the Massachusetts assembly, he said, “There is a time to sow and a time to reap. We sowed our seed when we sent the men to the Federal Convention in Philadelphia. Now is the harvest. Now is the time to reap the fruit of our labor. And if we don’t do it now, I’m afraid we shall never have another opportunity.”[14]
Throughout the drama of ratification, there were men like Smith who spoke plainly and in sufficient numbers that it was ratified. But notice the margin. New Hampshire narrowly approved by a vote of 57 to 46. Virginia approved by a margin of only 10 out of 168. With such men as Patrick Henry speaking against ratification, New York approved by the narrowest of margins: 30 to 27.
In Virginia, Edmund Randolph, who in Philadelphia had withheld his signature from the Constitution, was chided by Patrick Henry, a friend, for later favoring ratification. Randolph replied with passion to Patrick Henry’s charges, an indication of how deep the feelings were, even among old friends. Randolph said to Patrick Henry and that assembly, “If our friendship must fall, let it fall like Lucifer, never to rise again. . . . [Patrick Henry] has accused me of inconsistency. . . . Sir, if I do not stand on the bottom of integrity, and pure love for Virginia, as much as those who can be most clamorous, I wish to resign my existence.”[15]
Tremendous passions flowing in the ratification process and the narrowest, the narrowest of margins—it wasn’t simply a case of their signing the document and leaving Philadelphia and saying, “Well, that takes care of that.” They had to go and finish the job. It’s all quite marvelous, those two miracles and the subsequent miracle of launching this nation.
Prophet Joseph Smith observed, “I am the greatest advocate of the Constitution of the United States there is on Earth. The only fault I find of the Constitution is it is not broad enough to cover the whole ground.”[16] What did he mean? He went on to observe: “Although it provides that all men shall enjoy religious freedom, yet it does not provide the manner by which that freedom can be preserved, nor for the punishment of government officers who refuse to protect the people in their religious rights, or punish those mobs, states, or communities who interfere with the rights of people on account of their religion. [The Constitution’s] sentiments are good, but it provides no means of enforcing them. It has but this one fault.”[17]
As you know, subsequently there came the Fourteeth Amendment: equal protection. That clause is seen by many as having remedied the concern expressed by the Prophet Joseph Smith. It’s interesting to note how bold an advocate he was of the Constitution and of the freedoms that it sets forth. That he would do this even in the midst of his own deprivation and suffering tells us something about that man. It also tells us something about how precious this Constitution is.
As you and I ponder the Constitution in this bicentennial time, I hope we pay attention to its major provisions and understand better the implications of our commitments to this document. One of the dominant features of the Constitution is its separation of powers, of which former Solicitor General Rex Lee has written, “The separation of powers involved more than just a division of labor among the branches of government. Its primary purpose is to prevent the concentration of power in any single person or group, thereby assuring that law will be both general and prospective. Laws should be general in that they apply equally to all citizens, and prospective in that they do not punish acts that were innocent when committed.”[18] You inherit a Constitution that has separation of powers, but events in the world are likely to place great pressures upon the American constitutional system. That could be one of the pressure points that could cause grave difficulty.
I wonder, today, brothers and sisters, if you and I could behave with the same loyal patience and devotion to the Constitution that the Prophet Joseph displayed: veneration in the midst of deprivation. Suppose some future Caesar asks too much; will we be as wise as the Prophet Joseph?
One wonders, too, about whether or not our nation’s citizenry looks sufficiently beyond the needs of today to the well-being of our posterity. Of all the things that the Founding Fathers did that impresses me the most, they took themselves out of the provincialism and looked ahead to a nation and to people yet unborn. It’s one of the hallmarks of a great people that they can discipline themselves today in order to provide a better tomorrow for their posterity. One of the reasons America is in some trouble is precisely because of our inability to do that today.
I wonder, too, about the First Amendment—in fact the first number of amendments which, as you know, came hard on the heels of ratification, about two years later. I, myself, wonder—speaking only for myself—if the glorious First Amendment could flourish in a climate of serious degeneration. It may be true, for instance, that the people of Sodom and Gomorrah had absolute free speech. It’s probably also true they had nothing worth saying. Can the First Amendment survive in a climate of degeneration? It’s true that people who are surfeited in sensualism produce sounds but not necessarily the speech John Stuart Mill and our Founding Fathers had in mind.
God has surely blessed America. He did it two hundred years ago. He has since; he will again. Now that document that begins with the bold script, “We the people”—you are they, and you must now be equal to your days in the history of this Republic by sustaining the principles of the Constitution and being worthy of God’s further blessings, which surely will be sorely needed.
I praise Heavenly Father for all that He has done to give us that glorious Constitution, for the management of human affairs that brought it about. What remains for you to do as I prepare to close?
First, you must be wisely involved as individual citizens in your community, states, and nations. You may only be one, but you are one, and that obligation, as I indicated to you earlier, is not only electoral, it is scriptural so far as the Latter-day Saints are concerned.
Second, live righteously, so as to contribute to the critical mass of decent citizens of all races and creeds, upon whom this nation so much depends. A wise man has said, “A candle is not lighted for itself; neither is a man [or a woman].”[19] You are to be illuminated individuals who point the way, who warm the way, and that can be done by righteous behavior.
Third, seek out and support as indicated—this is more than voting—wise, good, and honest individuals for political and other public offices. It doesn’t matter whether it’s for a Senate or a school board. That obligation rests upon us, and it matters who is serving.
Is there anyone here, for instance, who would like to have seen the United States go through a Civil War without Abraham Lincoln at the helm? Are there any citizens of the British nation, indeed our own, who would have liked to have seen England go through its darkest days without Winston Churchill? Underground in London, in the war cabinet rooms that were prepared for their safety during the worst days of the blitz, having been there, I noted among the things that struck me most, a little plaque on the wall that said, “We do not speak of depression in this house. We do not speak of defeat here. It is not a possibility.” Individual men and women do matter, and it may be a county commission, school board, the state senate, or the United States senate, or the American presidency. It matters.
Now we sang—I thought you sang beautifully and with much gusto—about America the beautiful, and “crown thy good with brotherhood.”[20] You have all the regular reasons for regarding other men and women as brothers and sisters. And in addition, you have theological reasons for so regarding them. The very nature of the gospel of Jesus Christ that tells us who we are puts us in a different position with regard to mankind than any other people. And you must help to bring about that kind of brotherhood.
We sang of pleading to God to mend America’s every flaw. There are plenty of flaws to be mended, chores for you to do. If you can come to your tasks as idealists without illusions, out of a gospel framework, you can help to mend some of those flaws.
And then we sang to have our souls confirmed in self-control. If we cannot govern ourselves, we cannot govern a nation or a community or a state. If you are spiritually intact, your chances of making a lasting contribution are enormously improved.
And then the celebrated close about the patriot dream, that sees beyond the years. That’s what our Founding Fathers did. They saw beyond the years. That’s what the gospel of Jesus Christ does. It teaches us of things as they really are and as they really will be. They see beyond the years. Again, we are such a privileged people. We should be able to see beyond the years as we deal with eternity.
And as cradled in human history as this great nation is, with all of our imperfections and all of our flaws, we were blessed with this Constitution and have been able to sustain it by and large for two hundred years.
Now you become “We the people,” and in the words of a Book of Mormon prophet, “These are [your] days” (Helaman 7:9). And I say to you, you must make of them days never to be forgotten in the quiet service you will render as citizens of communities, states, and this nation. God bless you to be equal to your moment in history as those remarkable individuals were in their time, at great pain, at great sacrifice, because they saw beyond the years and cared about you.
I give you my witness that this nation is especially blessed, that its founding was attended to, not only in the Constitutional Convention, but to see us through the Civil War. I give you my witness that this nation is to be the host nation for the kingdom of God in the last days, to permit us to have sufficient religious freedom, to permit us to have economic adequacy by means of which we can share that which we have with our brothers and sisters throughout the world.
All of this was a part of divine design. It should be a source of quiet pride, but at the same time, it should be a source of a sense of tremendous obligation for the blessings that have come to us in this good land. Of which I gladly testify and ask Heavenly Father to bless you in the years ahead, that if you should wish to become indifferent that he will prick your conscience. That if you should wish to become too preoccupied with whatever the chores of the day are, that you might have echo within you that sense of history that calls you to the colors of public service. And to bless you, if you are discouraged as things seem to come apart in the world, to know that this nation, founded as it was, can and will be preserved if there are sufficient men and women like you. And may you be blessed to teach your children and your grandchildren of this tremendous, powerful legacy which the people of the world, if they can vote with their feet, would declare themselves so many of them free men and women by coming here.
How blessed we are. How thankful we should be. Of which I testify in the holy name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] Judge J. Clifford Wallace (b. 1928) sat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (San Francisco) when he spoke at a Ricks College forum assembly in September 1987. (Eds.)
[2] Catherine Drinker Bowen, preface to Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), xi. (Eds.)
[3] Thomas Jefferson to David Humphreys, March 18, 1789, in the Thomas Jefferson papers at the Library of Congress, 4, http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mss/mtj.mtjbib001597. (Eds.)
[4] Page Smith, ed., The Shaping of America: A People’s History of the Young Republic, vol. 3 (New York: McGraw Hill, 1980), xvi. (Eds.)
[5] John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1867), 14, 15. (Eds.)
[6] J. Clifford Wallace, “Whose Constitution? An Inquiry into the Limits of Constitutional Interpretation,” Imprimis 16, no. 3 (March 1987). (Eds.)
[7] Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Knopf, 1984), 18. (Eds.)
[8] Bowen, Miracle at Philadelphia, 29. (Eds.)
[9] Tuchman, March of Folly, 381. (Eds.)
[10] James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), xvi. (Eds.)
[11] John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798. (Eds.)
[12] Thomas W. Handford, William Ewart Gladstone: Life and Public Services (Chicago: Dominion, 1899), 323. (Eds.)
[13] William Penn, preface to Frame of Government of Pennsylvania (1682). (Eds.)
[14] Jonathan Smith, speech to the Massachusetts convention, 1788. (Eds.)
[15] “Journal Notes of the Virginia Ratification Convention Proceedings,” June 9, 1788. (Eds.)
[16] Joseph Smith, in History of the Church, 6:56–57. Compare Journal, December 1842–June 1844; Book 3, 15 July 1843–29 February 1844, 128, The Joseph Smith Papers. (Eds.)
[17] Smith, in History of the Church, 6:57. Compare History, 1838–1856, volume E-1 [July 1,1843–30 April 1844], 1754, The Joseph Smith Papers. (Eds.)
[18] Rex E. Lee, A Lawyer Looks at the Constitution (Provo, UT: BYU Press, 1981),33. Lee was Solicitor General of the United States from 1981–1985. He also served as president of Brigham Young University from 1989–1995. (Eds.)
[19] George MacDonald, The Hope of the Gospel (New York: D. Appleton, 1892), 176. (Eds.)
[20] Katharine Lee Bates, “America the Beautiful,” Hymns (1985), no. 338. (Eds.)