"On August 6, the Committee of Detail reported and furnished every member with a printed copy of the proposed Constitution. Again the work of consideration began, and went on as before, section by section, line by line. Vexed questions were referred to committees representing every State,--"grand committees" they were called,--amendments were offered, changes were made, the Committee of Detail incorporated new and additional matters in their draught, until, on September 8, the work of construction stopped. But not even then did the labors of the Convention cease. On that day a committee was appointed, "by ballot, to revise the style of, and arrange, the articles which had been agreed to." This committee was afterward known as the Committee of Style. It reported on the 12th of September, and the work of revision again went on until Saturday, the 15th. On Monday, the 17th, the end was reached, and the members of the Convention signed the Constitution. Well might Franklin exclaim in his farewell words to the Convention: 'It astonishes me, sir, to find the system approaching so near to perfection as it does!' He had been overruled more than once in the Convention; provisions which he had proposed had been rejected; provisions which he had opposed had been retained; but he was a great man and saw that a great work had been accomplished." The Immutability of the Constitution. Encyclopædia Americana. * * * * * The second germinal stage began July 26th with the appointment of a committee--the Committee of Detail "for the purpose of reporting a Constitution," and continued until August 6th when "Mr. Rutledge delivered in the report of the Committee of Detail--a printed copy being at the same time furnished to each member." The Committee had retired from the Convention with instructions couched in the 23 resolutions, and they returned to it with more than half of the Constitution, arranged in the form of articles and sections substantially as we have them in the Constitution. The number of provisions contained in the draught greatly exceeded the number of specific instructions set forth in the resolutions, but the excess was not wholly an excess of authority for it had been resolved: "That the national legislature ought to possess the legislative rights vested in Congress by the Confederation: and moreover to legislate in all the cases for the general interests of the Union, and also in those to which the States are separately incompetent or in which the harmony of the United States may be interrupted by the exercise of individual legislation."