If we now turn to the draught of the Committee we shall find that these lines are the first lines of section 3, and that the two draughts are here identical. They contain the same provisions, arranged in the same sequence, expressed in the same terms. These lines therefore form the substitute which appears to have displaced the first part of Randolph's section. The two things fit together with precision.
The significant fact to be noted here is that the Pinckney draught contains the provisions and words which form the apparent substitute in the Committee's draught, but contains nothing more. In a word not one of the provisions which we now know were prepared by Randolph and Rutledge are in the Pinckney draught.
Four then of the grants of jurisdiction in article XI section 3 of the Committee's draught apparently were taken from the Pinckney draught and the remaining four unquestionably were taken from the Randolph draught. The section therefore is composite.
Wilson's draught here comes into the case enabling us to understand how this combination was brought about.
Wilson was in effect rewriting the Pinckney draught. Finding the first four subjects of jurisdiction precisely what he wanted, he retained them as they were without change or amendment. But they were insufficient. Randolph, Wilson and Rutledge were lawyers in practice who could foresee controversies in the future dual system which Pinckney had not foreseen. Accordingly Wilson took four additional subjects of jurisdiction from Randolph's draught having Rutledge's amendments and with some revising thus brought eight subjects of jurisdiction into his draught which subsequently appeared in the Committee's.
To say that Pinckney was fraudulently plagiarising from the Committee's draught 31 years afterward and that while so doing he chanced to take one-half of the Committee's subjects of jurisdiction but not the other half, and that the half which he chanced to take might very well be his own, and that the half which he did not take chanced, as we now know, to be Randolph's is to state an absurdity. There are too many things here to be ascribed to chance; and each and all of them must have chanced to take place to make out a case of plagiarism against Pinckney.
The third piece of information which Randolph's draught gives us is in the nature of positive evidence and establishes directly the fact that the Committee recognized Pinckney's draught and used it.
Under the heading, "The following are the legislative [powers] with certain exceptions and under certain restrictions," Randolph set forth the powers of Congress, for the most part taken from the Articles of Confederation, "To raise money by taxation"; "To make war," etc., etc. After investing the general government with these powers he turned, not illogically, to restrictions which would prevent the States from usurping or denying the powers so granted and placed in his draught the following provision:
"All laws of a particular State repugnant hereto shall be void; and in the decision thereon, which shall be vested in the supreme judiciary, all incidents without which the general principle cannot be satisfied shall be considered as involved in the general principle."