I found the Convention notes more informative and interesting than the Federalist or the Ratification Debates. Heck, what tells us more about the Constitution, what people had to say about it later on, or the people who actually wrote it? The Convention delegates did not play to an audience, unlike many of the State Ratification Debate delegates, nor in newspapers as with the Federalist. Convention delegates were spared the flowery oratory BS and just got down to business.
As for Franklin, well, we can't say we weren't warned. He was a money man through and through and knew man's weakness to it. He preferred an unpaid President, and later on, an unpaid Senate. Real men of talent don't enter senior level politics to make money; that is for the demagogues. Bill and Hillary were pipsqueak lawyers before cashing in during their terms in the White House. Hussein and his disgusting wife will be wealthy for the rest of their days for their four year residence. Think of Biden, Schumer . . . and Franklin was right.
Just as important, Franklin posited what such men would do in office. They would reward their supporters with taxpayer money who in turn would support them.
I think Franklin was also prescient when he borrowed from Aristotle when he said, “The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partizans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure.” Last year, every school system employee in my county got an extra $2,000 from Obamas’s stimulus via Gov Charlie Crist. Didn't Obama and the democrat Congress greatly enlarge the federal workforce and give them pay raises?
Also, Franklin so much as predicted a king in our future. It took a long time, but Hussein and his recent rat predecessor view the other branches of government and States as bodies to be consulted only when they can be relied upon to rubber stamp their diktats.
As a sidebar, the word at the time was that if George Washington refused, or could not attend the Convention, Ben Franklin would have presided over the proceedings. He was that well respected.
This is too good, not to ping the list. Do it, would you?
I think our government can only work if it stays small - by gross number of employees, dollar amount, and reach.
Franklin is correct in that corruption seeks corruption. In a way, bad people drive out good.