But there remains the documentary evidence which Madison adduced and the specification of plagiarism which he filed; and apart from Madison and apart from Pinckney there remains the ultimate question which every student of the Constitution must desire to have examined, and if possible, answered, "What provisions of the Constitution were contributed by Pinckney"?
CHAPTER VI
THE POSITION TAKEN BY MADISON
The position taken by Madison in private letters to individuals, he had a right to modify, abandon or withdraw; and it would not be treating him fairly to hold him to words hastily written and perhaps inspired by an impulse of the moment. But the "Note of Mr. Madison to the Plan of Charles Pinckney" (Elliot Vol. 5, 578) deliberately prepared by him for future publication, and intended by him to accompany the draught of the State Department in future publications so that it should destroy the supposed verity of the copy, must be taken as the final expression of his judgment.
"Note of Mr. Madison to the Plan of Charles Pinckney, May 29, 1787."
"The length of the Document laid before the Convention, and other circumstances, having prevented the taking of a copy at the time, that which is ["here inserted" stricken out] inserted in the Debates was taken from the paper furnished to the Secretary of State, and contained in the Journal of the Convention, published in 1819 which it being taken for granted was a true copy was not then examined. The coincidence in several instances between that and the Constitution as adopted, having attracted the notice of others was at length suggested to mine. On comparing the paper with the Constitution in its final form, or in some of its Stages; and with the propositions, and speeches of Mr. Pinckney in the Convention, it was apparent that considerable errour had crept into the paper; occasioned ["probably" stricken out] possibly by the loss of the Document laid before the Convention, (neither that nor the Resolutions offered by Mr. Patterson, being among the preserved papers), and by a consequent resort for a copy to the rough draught, in which erasures and interlineations following what passed in the Convention, might be confounded in part at least with the original text, and after a lapse of more than thirty years, confounded also in the memory of the Author.
"There is in the paper a similarity in some cases, and an identity in others, with details, expressions, and definitions, the results of critical discussions and modifications in the Convention, that ["cannot be ascribed to accident or anticipation" omitted] could not have been anticipated.