CHAPTER X
THE SILENCE OF MADISON
Up to this point the draught in the State Department has been considered precisely as Madison desired it should be considered; that is to say upon his objections. The inquiry moreover has been confined to the final indictment which he drew up, to-wit, the "Note of Mr. Madison to the Plan of Charles Pinckney," and to the evidence which he adduced to sustain it, to-wit Pinckney's Observations and letter and Madison's Journal of the Convention. But there is another chapter which must be considered, a chapter of facts and circumstances forming an unseen part of the strategy which his cautious policy supplied.
In his letters to Sparks and the others as in the final "Note," there is a studious comparison instituted between the draught in the State Department and the Constitution itself. There is also an argument implied that the draught in the Department cannot possibly be identical with the draught presented to the Convention because it contains some provisions which Pinckney opposed in the Convention. A student whose inquiries were limited to early editions of Madison's Writings might draw from them two extenuating inferences, the first of which would be that the weakened memory of age and infirmity had failed to bring before Madison the proper instrument for comparison, the draught of the Committee of Detail; the second that he had never heard of Pinckney's letter to the Secretary of State and knew not that Pinckney had notified the Secretary that the copy which he sent was not a literal reproduction of the lost draught and that it, like the original, contained provisions which on further reflection he had opposed in the Convention.
In the spring of 1830 Mr. Jared Sparks passed a week with Madison at Montpelier and on his return to Washington sent to him the following letter:
"Washington, May 5th, 1830.
"Since my return I have conversed with Mr. Adams concerning Charles Pinckney's draught of a constitution. He says it was furnished by Mr. Pinckney, and that he has never been able to hear of another copy. It was accompanied by a long letter (written in 1819) now in the Department of State, in which Mr. Pinckney claims to himself great merit for the part he took in framing the constitution. A copy of this letter may doubtless be procured from Mr. Brent, should you desire to see it. Mr. Adams mentioned the draught once to Mr. Rufus King, who said he remembered such a draught, but that it went to a committee with other papers, and was never heard of afterwards. Mr. King's views of the subject, as far as I could collect them from Mr. Adams, were precisely such as you expressed."
Here it may be noted that what Mr. Adams heard from Mr. King is recorded in his Memoirs, May 4, 1830, Vol. VIII, p. 225. It is only what Sparks reported to Madison. Mr. King had not seen the draught, and had not heard any one narrate what its provisions were. Indeed his doubts and suspicions seem to have been founded on no other fact than that he did not hear it talked about. Like Madison, he was a witness who could testify to nothing, not even to hearsay.