Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/282

 possible authority. I appeal to those very journals, which ought to have been published, and which we are informed are placed in the possession of our late Honourable President. But why, Sir, should I appeal to these journals, or to any other authority? Let the Landholder turn to his eighth number, addressed to the Honourable Mr. Gerry; let him blush, unless incapable of that sensation, while he reads the following passage: ‘Almost the whole time during the sitting of the Convention, and until the Constitution had received its present form, no man was more plausible and conciliating on every subject than Mr. Gerry,’ &c. Thus stood Mr. Gerry, till towards the close of the business he introduced a motion respecting the redemption of paper money. The whole time of the sitting of the Convention was not almost past. The Constitution had not received its present form, nor was the business drawing towards a close, until long after I took my seat in Convention. It is therefore proved by the Landholder himself that Mr. Gerry did not make this motion at any time before the ninth day of June. Nay more, in the paper now before me he acknowledges that in his eighth number he meant (and surely no one ought to know his meaning better than himself) to fix Mr. Gerry’s apostacy to a period within the last thirteen days. Why then all this misrepresentation of my absence at Baltimore and New York? Why the attempt to induce a belief that the Convention had been engaged in business from the fourteenth of May, and the insinuation that it might have happened in those periods? And why the charge that in not stating those facts I had withheld from the public information necessary to its forming a right judgment of the credit which ought to be given to my evidence. But, Sir, I am really at a loss which most to admire—the depravity of this writer’s heart, or the weakness of his head. Is it possible he should not perceive that the moment he fixes the time of Mr. Gerry’s motion to the last thirteen days of the Convention, he proves incontestably the falsehood and malice of his charges against that gentleman—for he has expressly stated that this motion and the rejection it received was the cause, and the sole cause, of his apostacy; that ‘before, there was nothing in the system, as it now stands, to which he had any objection, but that afterwards he was inspired with the utmost rage and intemperate opposition to the whole system he had formerly praised;’ whereas I have shown to the clearest demonstration, that a considerable time before the last thirteen days, Mr. Gerry had given the most decided opposition to the system. I have shown this by recital of facts, which if credited, incontestibly prove it—facts which, I again repeat, will never be contradicted by any member of the Convention. I ground this