tempted it had I not always understood Mr Madison intended it—he alone I believed possessed & retained more numerous & particular notes of their proceedings than myself—I will thank you sir to do me the honour to send me or to get the President to direct a copy of the Journal of the Convention to be sent me as also of the Secret Journals of Congress should it be considered not improper in me to make the request——
I have already informed you I have several rough draughts of the Constitution I proposed & that they are all substantially the same differing only in words & the arrangement of the Articles—at the distance of nearly thirty two Years it is impossible for me now to say which of the 4 or 5 draughts I have was the one but enclosed I send you the one I believe was it—I repeat however that they are substantially the same differing only in form & unessentials—— It may be necessary to remark that very soon after the Convention met I changed & avowed candidly the change of my opinion on giving the power to Congress to revise the State Laws in certain cases & in giving the exclusive Power to the Senate to declare War thinking it safer to refuse the first altogether & to vest the latter in Congress—
[Endorsed:] Pinckney Charles, December 30. 1818.
Recd January 6 1819.
with a Copy of the Dft of his Constitutions proposed in the federal Convention.
ⅭⅭⅭⅩⅩⅦ. Rufus King in the Senate of the United States.[1]
By the articles of confederation the common treasury was to be supplied by the several states, according to the value of the lands, with the houses and improvements thereon, within the respective states. From the difficulty in making this valuation, the old congress were unable to apportion the requisitions for the supply of the general treasury, and were obliged to propose to the states an alteration of the articles of confederation, by which the whole number of free persons, with three-fifths of the slaves contained in the respective states, should become the rule of such apportionment of the taxes. A majority of the states approved of this alteration, but some of them disagreed to the same; and for want of a practicable rule of apportionment, the whole of the requisitions of taxes made by congress during the revolutionary war, and afterwards, up to the establishment of the constitution of the United States, were merely provisional, and subject to the revision and correction
- ↑ C.R. King, Life and Correspondence of Rufus King, Ⅵ, 697–700. No date is attached to this document, but it is probably a speech of March, 1819.
