Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/283

 assertion upon the fullest conviction that it is impossible to find a single person in that number so wicked, as publicly and deliberately to prostitute his name in support of falsehood, and at the same time so weak as to do this when he must be sure of detection. But the Landholder is willing to have it supposed that Mr. Gerry might have made the motion in a ‘committee’, and that there it might have happened without my knowledge; to such wretched subterfuges is he driven. This evasion, however, will be equally unavailing. The business of the committees were not of a secret nnture, nor were they conducted in a secret manner; I mean as to the members of the Convention. I am satisfied that there was no committee while I was there, of whose proceedings I was not at least ‘so minutely informed’, that an attempt of so extraordinary a nature as that attributed to Mr. Gerry, and attended with such an immediate and remarkable revolution in his conduct, could not have taken place without my having heard something concerning it. The nonadoption of a measure by a committee did not preclude its being proposed to the Convention, and being there adopted. Can it be presumed that a question in which Mr. Gerry is represented to have been so deeply interested, and by the fate of which his conduct was entirely influenced, would for want of success in a committee have been totally relinquished by him, without a single effort to carry it in Convention! If any other proof is wanting, I appeal again to the Landholder himself. In his eighth number he states that the motion was rejected ‘by the Convention.’ Let it be remembered also, as I have before observed, in the paper now before me, he declares it was his intention in that number to fix Mr. Gerry’s apostacy to a period within the last thirteen days; and in the same number he observes that Mr. Gerry’s resentment could only embarrass and delay the completion of the business for a few days; all which equally militate against every idea of the motion being made before he left Philadelphia, whether in Committee or in Convention. The Landholder hath also asserted, that I have ‘put into Mr. Gerry’s mouth, objections different from any thing his lette to the legislature of his State contains, so that if my representation is true, his must be false.’ In this charge he is just as well founded as in those I have already noticed. Mr. Gerry has more than once published to the world, under the sanction of his name, that he opposed the system from a firm persuasion that it would endanger the liberties of America, and destroy the freedom of the States and their citizens. Every word which I have stated as coming from his mouth, so far from being inconsistent with those declarations, are perfectly correspondent thereto and direct proofs of their truth. When the