The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught

by Charles C. Nott

CHAPTER VIII.

THE IMPROBABILITIES

The most incisive reason given by Madison against the authenticity of the draught in the Department of State, the reason which he most reiterated, if not the one upon which he most relied, was that the draught was presented to the Convention on the 29th May and a week later, June 6th, Pinckney moved "that the first branch of the national legislature be elected by the State legislatures and not by the people." This objection is not only plausible but it rests on two incontrovertible facts each of which is a matter of record—that the draught was presented to the Convention on the 29th of May; that his inconsistent motion was made on the 6th of June. But the conclusiveness of these facts disappears when the circumstances and changed conditions of the case appear.

In the first place Pinckney had forestalled the point made by Madison by declaring in his letter to the Secretary of State that there were provisions in the draught which on further reflection he had opposed in the Convention. This declaration, it must be remembered, was made before the publication of Madison's Journal, before it was known that it would be published, before Pinckney knew or could have known what the Journal would show. In other words it was he himself who first revealed his own inconsistency in having presented a plan for one thing in May and in having contended for another thing in June. The explanation is not an afterthought or a defence, but an avowal made in due time.

In the second place the draught was presented on the 29th of May, but it was not written then. It must have been written weeks before this in Pinckney's study in Charleston. When he wrote it he had before him, as every American of that day had, the Constitution of Great Britain, the constitution under which he had grown up, the merits and virtues and wisdom and excellencies of which he had read and re-read in Blackstone. It was a matter of course for him, when dealing with the legislative power, to have his Congress consist of two houses. As to this there would not be a doubt or a thought. The next thing would be to have the members of the first house, like the members of the House of Commons, elected by the people. So far he had no reason to pause and reflect. But when he came to the second house, he had no nobility at hand of which it might be composed. Here his invention began, and he avowedly so contrived his Senate that it should in fact though not in form, represent not nobility but wealth. It is probable that when he was draughting his constitution, it never entered his head that the lower house of the American parliament could be chosen by any other means than the means by which the House of Commons was chosen and the lower house of every American State.

In the third place between the 29th of May and the 6th of June the subject had come before the Convention and had been discussed and South Carolina had taken a position against it.

Gerry of Massachusetts said that "the evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy"; and that "he did not like the election by the people." Butler, of South Carolina, "thought an election by the people an impracticable mode." Rutledge, the strongest man in the State, seconded the motion to have the first branch elected by the State legislatures. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, the most esteemed citizen of the State and Pinckney's kinsman, brought South Carolina before the Convention as an illustration and even went so far as to say "an election of either branch by the people, scattered as they are in many States, particularly in South Carolina, is totally impracticable."

Pinckney was the youngest member of the delegation—much the youngest. He was not yet 30; and, with the exception of Dayton and Mercer was the youngest member of the Convention. It would have been natural for him as a Southerner "to go with his State"—and as a young man to defer to his seniors. And after hearing the debate on the 31st of May and the reasons of his fellow delegates from South Carolina, it was proper for him to change his mind and advocate election by the State legislatures as a better mode. It would have been a matter of wonder if he had not!