1787, may it not be best to say nothing of this delicate topic relating to Mr. Pinckney, on which you cannot use all the lights that exist and that may be added?"

On the 6th of January, 1834, he wrote to Thomas S. Grimke:

"There are a number of other points in the published draught, some conforming most literally to the adopted Constitution, which, it is ascertainable, could not have been the same in the draught laid before the Convention. The conformity, and even identity of the draught in the Journal, with the adopted Constitution, on points and details the results of conflicts and compromises of opinion apparent in the Journal, have excited an embarrassing curiosity often expressed to myself or in my presence. The subject is in several respects a delicate one; and it is my wish that what is now said of it may be understood as yielded to your earnest request, and as entirely confined to yourself. I knew Mr. Pinckney well, and was always on a footing of friendship with him. But this consideration ought not to weigh against justice to others, as well as against truth on a subject like that of the Constitution of the United States."

And on the 5th of June, 1835, he wrote to William A. Duer:

"I have marked this letter 'confidential,' and wish it to be considered for yourself only. In my present condition enfeebled by age and crippled by disease, I may well be excused for wishing not to be in any way brought to public view on subjects involving considerations of a delicate nature."

Madison wrote with characteristic caution and courtesy but there is something very suggestive in the way he uses the word "delicate." Neither Mr. Paulding nor Mr. Sparks nor Mr. Grimke nor Judge Duer could have doubted that there was something wrong in the draught—something so wrong that Madison did not wish to speak of it.

It is manifest that when Madison first read the draught in the State Department, he was surprised. He does not say so, and is very guarded in what he does say; yet it is perfectly plain that the magnitude of this contribution to the Constitution was something absolutely new to him. He better than any other man was supposed to know, the work and workings of the Convention, and lo, here was a document of more importance than any given in his journal, or found among the records of the Convention, and of its contents he had been ignorant until the document was laid before the world by the State Department!

Between 1818 and 1836, the magnitude of this and its importance as an historical document was forced upon Madison's attention from time to time by younger men who took a warmer interest in the Constitution and its history and its framers than their fathers had taken; and it is apparent that he was astounded at the historical importance of the document. Marshall was then drawing near to the end of his majestic judicial reign, and though assailed and thwarted by the cavilings and dissents of lesser men, had placed his imperishable impress upon the Constitution and revealed to his countrymen its greatness and consistency and power of nationality. The growing interest in the great instrument would not be quieted. Madison would fain have kept silent, as he advised his two most trusted correspondents to do. But he could not! He was the greatest of authorities, living or dead, in all that pertained to the making of the Constitution; the last living member of the Convention; the sole chronicler of its secret history. It is as plain now as it was then that he must speak. What could he say?

Madison was not able to say, "I read the Pinckney draught when it was before the Convention, I studied it, I knew the contents well; the paper in the State Department is not a substantial duplicate of that paper." There remained then but this alternative; he must confess that he knew no more about the Pinckney draught than did the men who were interrogating him or he must do precisely what he did do, he must attack it on documentary evidence as an advocate, and must remain silent as a witness. If he had testified as a witness; if he had said of his own knowledge that the paper which Pinckney placed in the State Department was not a copy of the paper which he had laid before the Convention and was not a substantial duplicate worthy of consideration, that would have been the end of the matter. Certainly I should never have felt called upon to make the present investigation. But Madison did not so testify. Under the pressure of steadily increasing interest in the Constitution, inquirer after inquirer came to him to explain how a man whom they did not regard as a wise statesman could have contributed so much to the Constitution, which they had regarded as the composite work of a number of great men. They did not come to him for reasons or advice or references to documentary evidence, but because he was the one survivor of the men who could have testified, the only chronicler of what had happened in the Convention from first to last, and they sought his personal knowledge. They asked him to tell them what he knew concerning the Pinckney draught, the original draught, the one which was before the Convention; and he answered not a word! We must reject Madison as a witness because he rejected himself.

CHAPTER V

MADISON AS AN ADVOCATE

At this day Madison is regarded as one of the chief statesmen in the group of leading framers of the Constitution; but his best appreciated work was his keeping the only record which we have of that august assembly. He, who dealt with the great questions of the hour, may not have been aware how much good work the Pinckney draught was doing in an unnoticed way. Madison spared no effort to make his journal complete, and no little time in doing so. He copied and inserted in it the Virginia resolutions and the New Jersey resolutions; and he also inserted Pinckney's long speech of the 25th of June; and yet he did not procure and apparently did not even read and certainly did not insert in his journal Pinckney's plan or draught. He seems to have felt sadly a certain self-conviction of this, and to have realized the fact that the omission of the Pinckney draught from his record was an irretrievable error. To a man holding the author of the draught in contempt, it must have seemed preposterous in 1831 for the shade of Pinckney to stalk upon the historic stage and say, I formulated the Constitution. It was my hand that sketched its outline, leaving it to the members of the Convention, myself among the number, to change its provisions and modify its terms. My draught was changed and modified, and the conflicting views of the framers were welded together by notable compromises and persuasive arguments, but nevertheless I contributed more of form and substance, more of detail and language to the instrument known as the Constitution of the United States than any other man.

Accordingly, Madison, while he closed his lips as a witness, rallied his failing forces as an advocate and proceeded to give from time to time first to one correspondent and then to another and finally to the people of the United States, in a "Note" to accompany his Journal when published, all the reasons he could marshal from the written record of the case why the draught in the State Department was an impossible verity.

At what time the Pinckney draught was first brought to Madison's attention I have not been able to discover; but on the 5th of May, 1830, Mr. Jared Sparks had been spoken or written to on the subject, for he then replied to Madison, writing from Washington, "Since my