preme and inferior tribunals the same arguments apply as have been adduced above in the criticism of text A, but with additional force from the fact that if the distinction had not been made in the first clause of the article it is unlikely that we should find it appearing in the last. Text C is printed only in the Documentary History." It is derived from a manuscript which came to the Department of State from Gen. Joseph Bloomfield, executor of David Brearley, member of the Convention from New Jersey." It can not correctly represent the original for the following reasons: In Article 4 it provides that the term of the members of the first branch of the national legislature shall be three years, yet the journal of the Committee of the Whole for June 12 shows the committee on that day for the first time inserting the words "three years" into a blank previously existing at this point. Article 5 provides that the members of the second branch shall be "elected by the individual legislatures," which was not agreed to (as a substitute for election by the first branch) until June 7. Thirdly, in Article 6 the provision respecting treaties, already commented upon, is included. Fourthly, the beginning of Article 7 reads: Resolved, That a national executive be instituted, to consist of a single person, with powers to carry into execution the national laws, and to appoint to offices in cases not otherwise provided for, to be chosen by the national legislature for the term of seven years, to receive punctually, etc. But the journal of the Committee of the Whole, June 1, shows exactly what must have been the reading of the original at this point, namely: “Resolved, That a national executive be instituted, to be chosen by the national legislature for the term of years, to receive punctually," etc.; and it shows the stages by which this became modified into the form presented by text C. Fifthly, Article 9 of the latter begins: "Resolved, That a national judiciary be established, to consist of one supreme tribunal, to hold their offices during," etc.; yet recognizes in its clause respecting jurisdiction the same distinction of supreme and inferior which is made in text B, and in the same words. Finally, Article 13 declares that the assent of the national legislature "ought to be required" to proposed amendments to the articles of union, whereas the a Documentary History, I, 329–332. dIbid., I, 202, 215. quotation of this resolution in the journal of the Committee of the Whole "supports the reading "ought not to be required," which is given in the other texts, and must obviously be correct in any case. The fact apparently is that text C represents the original, plus most of the modifications made up to about June 11 or 12. Incorrect as it is, it may not improbably be the source from which Secretary Adams derived the more correct text (B) which he printed in the official journal in 1819; for, the manuscript journal not containing these resolutions, it is difficult to see what other text than Brearley's could have been accessible to him. Text D is not in print, but is found among the manuscripts of William Paterson, member of the Convention from New Jersey. In the form in which it now exists, it is not a first rough copy on separate sheets (the form in which we may assume that the members' copies of the Virginia resolutions were first taken), but is copied neatly into a little book, which also contains Judge Paterson's copies of several other fundamental documents of the Convention. This text omits from the fourth resolution the words, "to be incapable of reelection for the space of after the expiration of their term of service;" but this may be a mere slip, due to the verbal similarity of this phrase to that which in the other texts precedesit. Like B and C and Gilpin's version of A, it inserts in the sixth resolution the provision respecting treaties. It fills the blank in the number of years of the Executive's term of office (seventh resolution) with the word "seven," which the Committee of the Whole did not do till June 1. In the ninth resolution, while the reading is otherwise like that of text A, there is a blank before the word "inferior," so that the phrase reads: "Of one or more supreme tribunals, and of inferior tribunals." Although, for reasons already given, these words can not be considered to have been a part of the original document, it may be that the form in which they here appear represents, more correctly than that presented by Madison, the intentions of the Committee of the Whole on June a Documentary History, I, 219. b Lent to the writer by the kindness of Miss Emily K. Paterson, of Perth Amboy. There is a copy among the Bancroft MSS. at the Lenox Library. The report of the Committee of the Whole House, Judge Paterson's own resolves, and Colonel Hamilton's plan. d Documentary History, I, 205. 66 4 and June 5. The committee then voted, first, to add the words "to consist of one supreme tribunal and of one or more inferior tribunals," and then to strike out the words one or more. It may have been intended to leave a blank in the place of the latter. However this may be, arguments already stated suffice to show that text D has no more claim than the others to represent the exact form of the Virginia resolutions, laid before the Convention on May 29 by Edmund Randolph. The exact form of those resolutions can be recovered only by inference, and in one or two particulars remains uncertain. V. THE TEXT OF THE PINCKNEY PLAN. On May 29, immediately after the Virginia resolutions had been referred to a Committee of the Whole House, "Mr. Charles Pinckney, one of the deputies of South Carolina, laid before the House for their consideration the draft of a Federal Government" which he had prepared, and it also was referred to that committee. There is no evidence of any debate upon it beyond the author's remark, that he "confessed that it was grounded on the same principle as of the above resolutions," meaning those offered by Governor Randolph. Nor does it appear to have been separately considered at any subsequent time. On July 24 the Committee of the Whole was discharged from further consideration of it, and it was referred to the Committee of Detail, along with the resolutions reported from the Committee of the Whole and those offered by Paterson, of New Jersey. No mention of it in the Convention by anyone but its author seems to have come down to us. There is something noteworthy in this silence. It is not impossible that the other members thought their youngest colleague somewhat presumptuous in offering his lucubration at the very outset and laying it complacently alongside the mature conclusions of the grave and experienced Virginia Delegates. @ Documentary History, I, 210, 211. Ibid., 1, 55. e Yates, ed. 1821, p. 97; Elliot, I, 391; Documentary History, III, 14, 34. d Documentary History, I, 109; III, 423, 443. € O'Neall, Bench and Bar of South Carolina, II, 140, tells us that Pinckney always said in after life that he had never risen to address the Convention without feelings of deep diffidence and solemnity; so, also, ** W. S. E." in De Bow's Review, XXXIV, 64. But the letters printed by the present writer in the American Historical Review, IV, 113-129, reveal a character marked by much vanity and self-assertion. See, also, Jefferson's Writings, ed Ford, VIII, 289. Moreover, in 1818, when the Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, was preparing the journal of the Convention for publication, no copy of the Pinckney draft was found either among its original papers or among those which had been added by General Bloomfield. In the hope of repairing the omission, Adams, after applying in vain to Madison, who had no copy," wrote to Pinckney, then still living in South Carolina, and asked him for a copy of his proposals.' Pinckney replied, in a letter which has been printed, saying that he had among his papers four or five rough drafts of his plan, and could not be absolutely sure which was the one actually presented; but that they differed in no essentials, only in some words and the arrangement of the articles, and that he sent the one which he believed to be the proper document. Adams printed the document in the Journal," with a footnote saying that the paper had been furnished by Pinckney. From that day (1819) to this it has figured in many books as the "Pinckney plan." It is printed, in identical text, in Yates, in Elliot, in Gilpin, in the Documentary History, and even in Justice Miller's Lectures on the Constitution and Hunt's Writings of James Madison. The paper which Pinckney sent to Adams is still in the custody of the Department of State. Mr. Hunt, who gives a facsimile of a portion of it and of a part of the letter in which it was inclosed, declares that the plan is written upon paper of the same size as the letter, and with the same ink; that it is undoubtedly contemporaneous with the letter, and that both are written on paper bearing the water-mark of the year 1797. That the so-called "Pinckney plan" is not authentic has See his letter in the appendix to J. C. Hamilton's History of the Republic, third edition, III, iii. See Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, IV, 365. Letter of December 30, 1818, printed by Mr. Worthingten C. Ford in the Nation of May 23, 1895, LX, 397, 398; and by Mr. Gaillard Hunt in his Writings of James Madison, III, 22-24. An extract was printed in 1870 by Rives, in his Life and Times of James Madison, II, 354. Mr. Hunt is in error in saying, III, 25 n., that the letter is printed in the Documentary History. Pp. 71-81. e Ed. 1821, pp. 212-221. The source is the Journal printed two years before; see the note to p. 207. SI, 145-149. 9 Pp. 735-746. Je I, 309-318. ¡ Pp. 732 ss. JIII, 23-36. Writings of James Madison, III, xvii and 24. been so publicly and so successfully demonstrated that a writer who does not like to spend his time in slaying the slain might be excused if he took this for granted and passed on to cast what new light he could upon the problem of the real Pinckney plan. But in reality the two inquiries are closely connected; and, moreover, the legendary version has such vitality that it is no harm to cast one more stone upon its funeral cairn as one passes by. In 1859 a South Carolina writer assures us that, in view of the remarkably close agreement between Pinckney's proposals and the finished Constitution, "he has always been considered as entitled to the high and honorable designation of the Father of the Constitution." This was before much of the pertinent evidence to the contrary had been made public. But such was not the case when, in 1894, in the income-tax decision, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States quoted the "Pinckney plan" as if it had authority." It may be that— "Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers;" but, if we are speaking of historical error, he manifestly takes his time about it. The supposed plan might instantly be put out of court on the ground that it is "too good to be true." A novice in historical criticism, provided he had read the story of the long and shifting and sometimes bitter disputes by which the Convention had hammered into shape a Constitution for the United States, would say at once that it was glaringly improbablein fact, impossible-that as the result of this process they should come around to the acceptance, to the extent of fivesixths, of a document offered to them at the outset in full detail; or, to put it in another way, that their youngest member should succeed beforehand in framing a constitution so good that they could hardly improve it, yet that "the wisest council in the world" should not be able to perceive this fact till they had wrangled over the document (without expressly mentioning it) for more than three months. a J. B. O'Neall, Bench and Bar of South Carolina, II, 139. So, also, "W. S. E. of S. C.," in his sketch of Pinckney in De Bow's Review, XXXIV, 63. **W.S. E." was William Sinker Elliott, grandson of Pinckney. b Pollock v. Farmers' Loan and Trust Co., 157 U. S. Reports, 562. H. Doc. 461, pt 1-8 |