A scene from “Reunion”

Benjamin Franklin: There is talk of a convention in Philadelphia. They are to discuss a binding constitution. I hope to attend if only to have an effect on the style of its prose.

Thomas Jefferson: I expect that any constitutional document that emerges from Philadelphia will be as compromised as our Declaration of Independency. I am increasingly persuaded that the Earth belongs exclusively to the living and that one generation has no more right to bind another to its laws and judgments than one independent nation has the right to command another.

John Adams: But surely the Constitution, as it did with the ones we wrote for our own states, is meant to establish the stability and the long-term legality essential to the continuation of a civilized society.

Thomas Jefferson: Yes, possibly. But I fear it could prove a breach in the integrity of our revolutionary ideals through which will pour the forces of reaction.

John Adams: [to Franklin] Doctor, Mr. Jefferson's pet topic is not the artful arrangement of political power but the cordoning off of a space in which no power exists at all. [to Jefferson] You, sir, you are a walking contradiction.

Benjamin Franklin: We're all contradictions, Mr. Adams.

John Adams: Indeed yes. And what is government ultimately but the putting into effect of the lessons which we have learned in dealing with the contradictions in our own characters?