Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality, are necessary to make us a great and happy people.
Happily, the present posture of affairs, and the prevailing disposition of my countrymen, promise to co-operate in establishing those four great and essential pillars of public felicity." [Illustration: The Room in Which the First Constitutional Convention Met in Philadelphia _Delegates from twelve of the thirteen States (Rhode Island alone being unrepresented) assembled at Philadelphia, where the opening sessions of the first Constitutional Convention were held in this room in Independence Hall, May 14, 1787.

George Washington presided during the four months taken to draft the Constitution of the United States.
When it was completed on September 17th, it is said that many of the delegates seemed awe-struck and that Washington himself sat with his head bowed in deep meditation.

As the Convention adjourned, Franklin, who was then over eighty-one years of age, arose and pointing to the President's quaint armchair on the back of which was emblazoned a half sun, brilliant with gilded rays, observed: "As I have been sitting here all these weeks, I have often wondered whether yonder sun is rising or setting, but now I know that it is a rising sun."_] [Sidenote: He is unanimously elected president.] After the elections had taken place, a general persuasion prevailed that the public will, respecting the chief magistrate of the union, had been too unequivocally manifested not to be certainly obeyed; and several applications were made to General Washington for those offices in the respective states, which would be in the gift of the president of the United States.
As marking the frame of mind with which he came into the government, the following extract is given from one of the many letters written to persons whose pretensions he was disposed to favour.

"Should it become absolutely necessary for me to occupy the station in which your letter presupposes me, I have determined to go into it, perfectly free from all engagements of every nature whatsoever .-- A conduct in conformity to this resolution, would enable me, in balancing the various pretensions of different candidates for appointments, to act with a sole reference to justice and the public good.

This is, in substance, the answer that I have given to all applications (and they are not few) which have already been made.