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to a mystery which has given all subsequent Starrs considerable embarrassment. During the entire hundred and sixteen days of the sessions, and some of the debate was so vigor- ous that it became almost violent, Simon Starr uttered not one word. He attended every session,
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    following the swing of debate with close attention and discussed the nuances at night in the Indian Queen, but in the hall itself he said nothing. As I sought to know him, over the centuries, I thought: How could an honour graduate from Princeton, a man with his own considerable library, participate at the heart of a world- shattering debate and make no contribution? He himself wondered:
    There were eight of us delegates who said noth- ing or little. William Blount of North Carolina, Nicholas Gilman of New Hampshire, Richard Bassett of Delaware, William Few of Georgia, John Blair of Virginia, Thomas Mifflin and Robert Morris of Pennsylvania, and me. We kept silent, I think, because we were in the pres- ence of our betters, men who had either wide experience like Dr Franklin or profound intel- lectual insights like Madison and Wilson. We felt no urge to parade our ignorance.
    We left the podium open for polished debaters like Gouverneur Morris and Roger Sherman of Connecticut, who spoke upwards of a hundred and forty times each. Careful students of his- tory and politics like Madison and Wilson invariably had something cogent to say on every subject. We eight didn't. On the matter of speaking, Simon left one para- graph which has astounded later generations., especially those of us who have gone through pub- lic flagellations such as Watergate and the pre- sent Iranian arms scandal:
    One of the first decisions agreed upon when we finally assembled was that our deliberatiom
    would be conducted in secrecy. News journals would be allowed no entry to our hall and all members promised to disclose nothing of our debate. So for one hundred and sixteen days, fifty-five men who were among the leaders of our nation met and argued and retired to our inns to continue the debate, and we dealt with the most profound topics that men can deal with, the problems of self-government, and not a single clue as to what we were discussing or how we were dividing was revealed to the out- side world. Thus, delegates were freed from posturing for public acclaim; more important, they were free to change their minds and to retreat from weak positions hastily taken. I once heard Gouverneur Morris argue heatedly on five different sides of a question in four successive days, coming down finally on the correct side.
    So much for the chitchat. It is valuable in that it throws a warm, illuminating light on the delegates and the soul-shattering work they were engaged in, but it is more important that we see how these powerful men grappled with the great problems of their day, and in the Starr family we have always been proud of our ancestor's secret role in the Constitution's greatest victory - ashamed of his part in its most disgraceful defeat. I said there were fifty-five delegates to the Con-
    vention; there were actually two additional invis- ible 'members' who cast their silent votes in almost every deliberation. They were Daniel Shays, the Massachusetts revolutionary, and Cudjoe, the unknown black slave from the African coast. Whenever the argument between the three
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    big states, who felt entitled to more voice in government, and the several small ones, who demanded protection of their rights, became so heated that compromise became impossible, someone would mention Dan Shays, and the pos- sibility of similar rebellion throughout the states became real. Then tempers subsided, debate con- tinued in a lower key, and men began seriously to reconsider how they could resolve this dilemma of how to allow the big states to exercise the power which they unquestionably had and to which they were entitled without engulfing the small. So Dan Shays, invisible, played a vital role. One June