alteration. That is to say it contains no alteration of substance—nothing which indicates on the part of the writer an intent to change or add to the substance of what he has written—there is no additional provision interlined, no obscure expression amplified, no omitted thought supplied—the corrections are one and all clerical. The document, therefore upon its face does not appear to be a "rough draught."

When the Secretary of State had written to Pinckney "I now take the liberty of addressing you, to inquire if you have a copy of the Draught proposed by you, and if you can without inconvenience furnish me at an early day, with a copy of it" and Pinckney replied that among his notes and papers he had "found several rough draughts of the Constitution" and that "I send you the one I believe was it," and with the letter sent a document which obviously was not a rough draught, the fair and reasonable interpretation of his language (apart from an intent to defraud) is that he was sending what the Secretary of State had asked for, viz., "a copy" of the "copy of the draught proposed by you" to the Convention; and that what he meant to say was, "I send you 'a fair copy made by myself of the one I believe was it.'"

What a rough draught is may be seen by referring to the literal reprint of the Journal of Madison in the Documentary History of the Constitution by the Department of State. It is something which requires an editor to put the author's changes and amendments in their proper places. A constructive piece of work as long as the Pinckney draught, must have been cut, transposed, changed, added to over and over again. To be intelligible it would require editing, and the Secretary had informed Pinckney that he wanted the "copy" for publication, and that he wanted it "at an early day": and no man would have parted with such an important paper and confided the editing of it to some unknown clerk in an executive department. In a word Pinckney did what any man similarly circumstanced would have done, he kept the original paper in his possession, and sent to the Secretary of State what he had asked for, "a copy of it."

If we turn now to the printed copy of the draught and note the extent of article 6, containing the enumeration of the powers of Congress, and the extent of the second paragraph of article 8, setting forth the powers and duties of the President, and if we remember that all this matter is to be found in the Constitution, it becomes instantly apparent that absorption of all these provisions by interlineation as suggested by Madison was absolutely impossible. In a word the bridge which Madison built breaks down. Therefore we must face the inexorable alternative: either Pinckney gave to the Convention a draught substantially like that in the State Department or he fraudulently fabricated that draught after the Secretary of State had called upon him for a copy.

CHAPTER III

OF THE ISSUE OF FRAUD

On this issue of fraud we must first look at the circumstances as they existed in December, 1818.

Pinckney had been a Senator of the United States, Governor of South Carolina, Minister to Spain and had just been elected to the important Congress which was to grapple with the National questions involved in the Missouri Compromise. He may have been a vain man as Madison thought him—(most men of great ability and prominence are egotistical; it is egotism ordinarily which impels them to the front) but no one has intimated that Pinckney could have been guilty of an act which from moral and historical points of view was little better than a crime. Some one contributed the many provisions which are to be found in the Constitution, and it would have been infamous to filch the honor from the real author. The most felicitous sentence in the Constitution, "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States," if it was Pinckney's, passed through the Committee of Detail, the Committee of Style and the Convention without the change of a single word. It was one of those rare sentences of which everybody approved; and it is not lightly to be assumed that in 1818 Pinckney would steal such a conspicuous sentence from the Constitution and place it at the head of one of his own articles.

Moreover if the draught was a tissue of fraud detection was always possible; and detection would have blasted the life of Pinckney nowhere with greater severity than in his own State. In 1818 sixteen other members of the Convention were still living, and three of them had been members of the Committee of Style, and two of them (Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and Pierce Butler), had been delegates from South Carolina. Letters too from members might disclose the fatal truth. A son of some member might come forward with his father's draught of some of these provisions. Autobiographies, diaries and personal reminiscences of members might exist. Detection was possible, and in the ordinary course of human events, certain. Conversely it is proper here to note the fact that in all these years not a line of writing has been found to thrown a shade of discredit upon the Pinckney draught.

The temptation, too, was relatively small. The Constitution was not then in the estimation of the American people what it is now. No one then had proclaimed it to be "the greatest work ever thrown off by the brain and purpose of man." In 1818 the first work on the Constitution (Rawle's) had not yet been written. Monroe was President, and the country was just emerging from the poverty which followed the war of 1812-15. Pennsylvania and Georgia had defied the federal power and the latter had passed a statute making it a crime punishable with death to enforce the process of the Supreme Court of the United States. State feeling was always stronger in the South than in the North and out of State feeling had grown the doctrine of State rights. The South at that time could cherish no warm regard for the man who had first written "all acts made by the legislature of the United States, pursuant to this Constitution, and all treaties made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land."

It must also be noted that Pinckney was not a volunteer in this matter—that he did not thrust his draught upon the Secretary of State—that he never came before the public claiming to have contributed this or anything to the Constitution. The subject was introduced by Mr. Adams and not by Pinckney; and the draught was produced in response to Mr. Adams' inquiries concerning it. Pinckney showed no great solicitude about it then. His letter is slovenly and careless and manifestly not written for posterity, and it contains no indication of his regarding it as any thing more than a personal explanation. It was due to Mr. Adams to tell him that this draught which he inclosed was not a literal duplicate of the one which he had placed before the Convention; and it was due to himself to say that it contained provisions of which he had subsequently disapproved and which he had opposed in the Convention. Pinckney certainly did not suppose that he was writing history or biography when he wrote that letter.

The letter demonstrates how inadequately Pinckney estimated the greatness of the Constitution and overestimated his own part in the work, and how poorly the Constitution was then esteemed. At the beginning it had been but an experiment and in the opinion of many men an experiment that would fail. Under the moulding