larger and smaller States in relation to the representation in the Senate) occurred, as the journal will show, during the period noted as the cool and patient one. After the compromise which allowed an equality of votes in the Senate, that consideration, with the smaller number and longer tenure of its members, will account for the abridgment of its powers by associating the Executive in the exercise of them.
Among the instances in which the memory of Mr. Pinckney failed him is the remark in his letter that, very soon after the Convention met, he had avowed a change of opinion in giving Congress a power to revise the state laws, thinking it safer to refuse the power altogether. It appears from the journal that as late as the 23rd. of August the proposition was renewed, with a change only, requiring two thirds instead of a majority of each house. The journal does not name the mover, but satisfactory information exists that it was Mr. Pinckney.
Mr. Adams was probably restrained from printing the letter of Mr. Pinckney by the vague charges in it against the Convention, and a scruple of publishing a part only.
I have been suffering for some time a severe attack of rheumatism, and I offer this brief compliance with your request of my view of Mr. Pinckney’s letter under an unabated continuance of it. This alone would be a reason for desiring that nothing in the communication should be referred to as resting upon my authority. But there are others, drawn from my relation to the subject and the relation which subsisted between Mr. Pinckney and myself, which must always require that I should not be a party to an exposure of the strange incongruities into which he has fallen, without a fuller view of the proofs, and the obligation not to withhold them, than the present occasion would permit.
CCCLXXXIV. James Madison to J.K. Paulding.[1]
June 27, 1831.
With your favor of the 20th instant I received the volume of pamphlets containing that of Mr. Charles Pinckney, for which I am indebted to your obliging researches. The volume shall be duly returned, and in the meantime duly taken care of. I have not sufficiently examined the pamphlet in question, but have no doubt that it throws light on the object to which it has relation.
- ↑ Letters and other Writings of James Madison, IV, 182–183.
