trate and of the members of the Senate should be during good behavior, which of course, in ordinary cases, is a tenure for life, It seems Hamilton did not formally propose this as a plan for discussion, but read it as part of a speech. I wrote this evening to Mr. Madison and enquired on what debate, and when, the speech was delivered, with a view to printing the paper immediately after the journal of the day.[1] …
[June] 2d.After the journal of yesterday, I resumed the arrangement and preparation of the Convention journals for the press. It is truly ‘in tenui labor’—the longer I brood upon it the more protracted and unprofitable the toil becomes. The journals and papers were very loosely and imperfectly kept. They were no better than the daily minutes from which the regular journal ought to have been, but never was, made out. I find, on close inspection, a great number of questions, some of them important, entered on the loose sheets of yeas and nays, and not entered at all in the journal. I intend to have them all inserted at their respective places on the journal. There was one loose page of yeas and nays of which I had been able to make nothing until this morning, when I found it must have been the Secretary’s first expedient for taking down the yeas and nays. The page is divided into thirteen columns, with the initials of the names of the States, from New Hampshire to Georgia, numbered from 1 to 13, at the head of the page; but no space is left on the page either to enter the question upon which the yeas and nays were taken, or the sum of the votes on either side. There are five successive sets of the yeas and nays taken, not summed up, and with nothing to indicate upon what questions they were taken. After these, the New Hampshire column is divided into two, upon which the sum of the yeas and nays on each question is entered, to the bottom of the page; and in eight instances, at intervals, the question upon which the question was taken is crowded into the square of the Rhode Island column. New Hampshire and Rhode Island were the two States not then represented, and their columns of course remained in blank after the yeas and nays were taken and entered. There are twenty-eight questions, the result of which appears upon this page; on the other side of which is the name of Mr. Gorham, with seven strokes of the pen, and that of Mr. Rutledge, with one, by their side. This is obviously the noting down of the vote by ballot for a Chairman to the committee of the whole. The vote for Rutledge was probably Gorham’s. He was at that time President of the old Congress. Before Jackson, the Secretary, had
