"Monday, 17th.
"Met in Convention when the Constitution received the unanimous assent of 11 States and Coln Hamilton's, from New York (the only delegate from thence in Convention) and was subscribed to by every Member present except Govr Randolph and Coln Mason from Virginia—& Mr. Gerry from Massachusetts. The business being thus closed, the Members adjourned to the City Tavern, dined together and took a cordial leave of each other.—after which I returned to my lodgings—did some business with, and received the papers from the secretary of the Convention, and retired to meditate upon the momentous wk which had been executed, after not less than five, for a large part of the time six, and sometimes 7 hours sitting every day, sundays & the ten days' adjournment to give a Comee opportunity & time to arrange the business, for more than four months." Washington's Diary.
The Secretary of the Convention has generally been censured as incompetent and negligent. Nevertheless the papers which he transferred to Washington witness for him that he did preserve and keep whatever papers came within his official custody. The Secretary of State certified, March 19th, 1796, that in addition to the Journals then received from Washington "were seven other papers of no consequence in relation to the proceedings of the Convention." One of these is a "draught of the letter from the Convention to Congress to accompany the Constitution"; one is an order from "the directors of the Library company of Philadelphia" to the Librarian directing him to "furnish the gentlemen who compose the Convention now sitting with such books as they may desire during their continuance at Philadelphia, taking receipts for the same"; one is a letter from "one of the people called Jews" setting forth that by the Constitution of Pennsylvania "a Jew is deprived of holding any publick office or place of Government." The others are even of less consequence. They make plain by their unimportance the important fact that Major Jackson scrupulously kept every paper which Rutledge "delivered in at the Secretary's table" on the 6th of August. That is to say, it is made plain that on the 6th of August, Rutledge did not deliver in at the Secretary's table either a written report of the committee or the Pinckney draught.
Judging in the light of all the facts which the case discloses we must conclude that the only thing which would have justified the Committee of Detail in not returning the Pinckney draught to the Secretary of the Convention was that it had been destroyed; the only thing which would have justified the Committee in destroying it, was that they were compelled to use it as printer's copy.
The Committee did well to use it. And yet if there was one thing in the world which justified Pinckney in publishing the Observations, it was that the Committee of Detail had destroyed his draught.