CCCLXXXV. James Madison on the Pinckney Plan.[1]
The length of the Document laid before the Convention, and other circumstances having prevented the taking of a copy at the time, that which is here inserted[2] was taken from the paper furnished to the Secretary of State, and contained in the Journal of the Convention published in 1819 which it being taken for granted was a true copy was not then examined. The coincidence in several instances between that and the Constitution as adopted, having attracted the notice of others was at length suggested to mine. On comparing the paper with the Constitution in its final form, or in some of its Stages; and with the propositions, and speeches of Mr. Pinckney in the Convention, it would seem[3] that considerable errour must have[4] crept into the paper; occasioned possibly by the loss of the Document laid before the Convention, (neither that nor the Resolutions offered by Mr Patterson being among the preserved papers) and by a consequent resort for a copy to the rough draught, in which erasures and interlineations following what passed in the Convention, might be confounded in part at least with the original text, and after a lapse of more than thirty years, confounded also in the memory of the Author.
There is in the paper a similarity in some cases, and an identity in others, with details, expressions, and definitions, the results of critical discussions and modifications in the Convention that can not be ascribed to accident or anticipation.[5]
Examples may be noticed in Article VIII of the paper; which is remarkable also for the circumstance, that whilst it specifies the functions of the President, no provision is contained in the paper for the election of such an officer, nor indeed for the appointment of any Executive Magistracy: notwithstanding the evident purpose of the Author to provide an entire plan of a Federal Government.
Again, in several instances where the paper corresponds with the Constitution, it is at variance with the ideas of Mr. Pinckney, as decidedly expressed in his propositions, and in his arguments, the former in the Journal of the Convention, the latter in the report of its debates: Thus in Art: VIII of the paper, provision is made for removing the President by impeachment; when it appears that
- ↑ Documentary History of the Constitution, V, 417–432. This document was evidently intended as a note to the proceedings of May 29 in Madison’s Debates. It was probably written before 1835, but as the “Editorial note” which is attached to it is the more important of the two, it is inserted here.
- ↑ Interlined “inserted in the debates”.
- ↑ Interlined “it was apparent”.
- ↑ Interlined “had”.
- ↑ Interlined “could not have been anticipated”.
