The business being thus closed, the members adjourned to the City
Tavern, dined together, and took a cordial leave of each other.
After which I returned to my lodgings, did some business with,
and received the papers from the Secretary of the Convention, and
retired to meditate on the momentous wk. which had been executed,
after not less than five, for a large part of the time six and
sometimes 7 hours sitting every day, [except] Sundays & the ten
days adjournment to give a Comee. [Committee] opportunity & time
to arrange the business for more than four months.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, XI, 155.]

One likes to think of Washington presiding over that Convention for
more than four months, seeing one suggestion after another brought
forward and debated until finally disposed of, he saying little except
to enforce the rules of parliamentary debate. No doubt his asides (and
part of his conversation) frankly gave his opinion as to each measure,
because he never disguised his thoughts and he seems to have voted
when the ballots were taken--a practice unusual to modern presiding
officers except in case of a tie. His summing-up of the Constitution,
which he wrote on the day after the adjournment in a hurried letter to
Lafayette, is given briefly in these lines:

It is the result of four months' deliberation. It is now a child
of fortune, to be fostered by some and buffeted by others. What
will be the general opinion, or the reception of it, is not for me
to decide; nor shall I say anything for or against it. If it be
good, I suppose it will work its way; if bad, it will recoil on
the framers.

A month later, in the seclusion of Mount Vernon, he spread the same
news before his friend General Knox:

... The Constitution is now before the judgment-seat. It has,
as was expected, its adversaries and supporters. Which will
preponderate is yet to be decided. The former more than probably
will be most active, as the major part of them will, it is to be
feared, be governed by sinister and self-important motives, to
which everything in their breasts must yield....

The other class, he said, would probably ask itself whether the
Constitution now submitted was not better than the inadequate and
precarious government under which they had been living. If there
were defects, as doubtless there were, did it not provide means for
amending them? Then he conclud