<P> I confess that There are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them...I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution...It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies...</P> <P> Rhode Island never sent delegates, and two of New York's three delegates did not stay at the Convention for long . Therefore, as George Washington stated, the document was executed by "eleven states, and Colonel Hamilton ." Washington signed the document first, and then moving by state delegation from north to south, as had been the custom throughout the Convention, the delegates filed to the front of the room to sign their names . </P> <P> At the time the document was signed, Franklin gave a persuasive speech involving an anecdote on a sun that was painted on the back of Washington's Chippendale chair . As recounted in Madison's notes: </P> <P> Whilst the last members were signing it Doctor . Franklin looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun . I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun . </P>

All of the delegates to the constitutional convention generally agreed that