39 Article V of the main body of the Constitution provides that when nine States should ratify the Constitution, it should be established as the frame of government. The first State to ratify was Delaware, December 7, 1787; the ninth State was New Hampshire, June 21, 1788; and the last State was Rhode Island, May 29, 1790. 40 George Washington expressed the vast importance of this thought when he said: “_The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make or alter their constitution of government._” “The Constitution is itself in every rational sense and to every useful purpose a bill of rights.”—Alexander Hamilton. “Much of the strength and efficiency of any government in procuring and securing happiness to the people depends on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its governors. I hope, therefore, for our own sakes, as a part of the people and for the sake of our posterity, that we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts and endeavors to the means of having it well administered.”—Benjamin Franklin. “In the fullness of time a Republic rose up in the wilderness of America. Thousands of years had passed away before this child of the ages could be born. From whatever there was of good in the systems of former centuries, she drew her nourishment; the wrecks of the past were her warnings. The wisdom which had passed from India through Greece, with what Greece had added of her own, the jurisprudence of Rome, the mediaeval municipalities, the Teutonic method of representation, the political experience of England, the benignant wisdom of the expositors of the law of nature and of nations in France and Holland, all shed on her their selectest influence. Out of all the discoveries of statesmen and sages, out of all the experience of past human life, she compiled a perennial political philosophy, the primordial principles of national ethics—she sought the vital elements of social forms and blended them harmoniously in the free commonwealth which comes nearest to the illustration of the natural equality of all men. She entrusted the guardianship of established rights to law; the movement of reform to the spirit of the people and drew her force from the happy reconciliation of both.”—George Bancroft.