hardly a scrap of paper on the subject of the Convention, and I shall consequently have very little to say of that matter.
… I doubt whether any clear light can be gained till Pinckney’s original draft shall be found, which is probably among the papers of one of the committee. It seems to me that your secretary of the Convention was a very stupid secretary, not to take care of those things better, and to make a better journal than the dry bones which now go by that name.
CCCLXXXVII. James Madison to Jared Sparks.[1]
Montpellier, November 25, 1831.
I have received your favor of the 14th instant. The simple question is, whether the draught sent by Mr. Pinckney to Mr. Adams, and printed in the Journal of the Convention, could be the same with that presented by him to the Convention on the 29th day of May, 1787; and I regret to say that the evidence that that was not the case is irresistible. Take, as a sufficient example, the important article constituting the House of Representatives, which, in the draught sent to Mr. Adams, besides being too minute in its details to be a possible anticipation of the result of the discussion, &c., of the Convention on that subject, makes the House of Representatives the choice of the people. Now, the known opinion of Mr. Pinckney was, that that branch of Congress ought to be chosen by the State Legislatures, and not immediately by the people. Accordingly, on the 6th day of June, not many days after presenting his draught, Mr. Pinckney, agreeably to previous notice, moved that, as an amendment to the Resolution of Mr. Randolph, the term “people” should be struck out and the word “Legislatures” inserted; so as to read, “Resolved, That the members of the first branch of the National Legislature ought to be elected by the Legislatures of the several States.” But what decides the point is the following extract from him to me, dated March 28, 1789:
“Are you not, to use a full expression, abundantly convinced that the theoretic nonsense of an election of the members of Congress by the people, in the first instance, is clearly and practically wrong; that it will, in the end, be the means of bringing our Councils into contempt, and that the Legislatures are the only proper judges of who ought to be elected?”
Other proofs against the identity of the two draughts may be found in Article VIII of the Draught, which, whilst it specifies the functions of the President, contains no provision for the election
- ↑ Letters and other Writings of James Madison, IV, 201–203.
