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By Root 2480 0

that preceded them – even now Britain has no bill of rights, but then it has no written constitution either – but it is worth bearing in mind that the framers often meant something quite different by them. Consider the wording of the first Amendment: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble ...’ *15 Note in particular those first five words: ‘Congress shall make no law...’ The founders were not trying to free America from such restrictions, but merely endeavouring to ensure that matters of censorship and personal liberty were left to the states.25 And at the risk of exciting correspondence from the National Rifle Association, the much vaunted right of the people to keep and bear arms was never intended as a carte blanche, semi-divine injunction to invest in a private arsenal for purposes of sport and personal defence, as the full sentence makes clear: ‘A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.’ The framers had in mind only the necessity of raising a defence force at short notice. If they did favour the idea of keeping guns for shooting animals and household intruders, they never said so,

Astonishingly, at the time of its adoption almost no one saw the Constitution as a great document. Most of the delegates left Philadelphia feeling that they had created an agreement so riddled with compromise as to be valueless – ‘a weak and worthless fabric’, as Alexander Hamilton dispiritedly described it. Samuel Adams, John Hancock and Patrick Henry were all opposed. Fifteen of the convention delegates refused to sign it, among them George Mason, Elbridge Gerry and even two of the five men who had written it, Edmund Randolph and Oliver Elsworth. (Randolph soon showed an even more breathtaking measure of hypocrisy by accepting the post as the nation’s first attorney general, thus becoming the man most directly in charge of upholding the document he had lately disowned.) Even its heartiest proponents hoped for no more than that the Constitution might somehow hold the fragile nation together for a few years until something better could be devised.26

None the less, the document was duly ratified, Washington was selected as the first President, and 4 March 1789 was chosen as the day to begin the new government. Unfortunately, only eight senators and thirteen representatives troubled to show up on the first day. Another twenty-six days would have to pass before the House of Representatives could muster a quorum and even longer before the Senate could find enough willing participants to begin productive work.27

One of the first orders of business was what to call the new Chief Executive. The Constitution had referred to ‘the President of the United States’, but such had been the pomp and costly splendour of Washington’s inauguration and so stately the demeanour of the new office-holder as to encourage Congress to consider a title with a grander ring to it. Among the suggestions were His Highness, His Mightiness, His Magistracy, His Supremacy, and His Highness the President of the United States and Protector of their Liberties. This last was the title very nearly chosen before the Congressmen returned to their senses, and the original wording of the Constitution, and settled for the respectful but republican President of the United States. Even so, Martha was often referred to as ‘Lady Washington’.

The Vice-Presidency seems to have caused no such difficulty, though some among the droller elements of Congress joked that the first incumbent, the portly John Adams, should be referred to as ‘His Rotundity’.

Washington was a firm believer in the dignity of his office. Visitors were expected to remain standing in his presence and even his closest associates found him aloof and disquietingly kingly in his deportment (leading one to wonder if America had exchanged George III