The
words given by Morris, if uttered at all, must have been spoken
informally in the way of conversation before there was any convention,
strictly speaking, and of course before Washington was chosen
president. Mr. Fiske, who devotes a page to these sentences from the
eulogy, describes Washington as rising from his president's chair and
addressing the convention with great solemnity. There is no authority
whatever to show that he rose from the chair to address the other
delegates, and, if he used the words quoted by Morris, he was
certainly not president of the convention when he did so. The latter
blunder, however, is Morris's own, and in making it he contradicts
himself. These are his words: "He is their president. It is a question
previous to their first meeting what course shall be pursued." In
other words, he was their president before they had met and chosen a
president. This is a fair illustration of the loose and rhetorical
character of the passage in which Washington's admonition is quoted.
The entire paragraph, with its mixture of tenses arising from the use
of the historical present which Morris's classical fancies led him to
employ, is, in fact, purely rhetorical, and has only the authority
due to performances of that character. It seems to me impossible,
therefore, to fairly suppose that the words quoted by Morris were
anything more than his own presentation of a sentiment which he, no
doubt, heard Washington urge frequently and forcibly.
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