Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/438

 got half down this page, he found the want of spaces to enter the questions upon which the votes were taken, and the sums of the yeas, nays, and divided votes. The sheets that he afterwards used were divided accordingly; but he entered upon them only a part of the questions that he had already taken down on the first experimental page. He began with the question of a “Single Executive,” which is the seventeenth on the experimental page. He entered it the first, on his book of yeas and nays, and then resorted again to loose sheets, after filling two of which he returned to his book, leaving blank pages apparently to have the contents of the loose sheets copied upon them. The single Executive question, being the first entered upon the book, was the first with which I found the corresponding question in the journal of the committee of the whole; and from that time I traced the questions in the journals and collated them with the questions on the sheets of yeas and nays. This left, however, a number of questions on the journal of the committee of the whole, taken before that of the single Executive, but not noted either on the book or on the loose sheets of yeas and nays, and the yeas and nays upon which I had hitherto been unable to trace. This morning I first noticed the coincidence of the “Single Executive” question, the first entered upon the book and the seventeenth upon the experimental page; and immediately inferred that the sixteen preceding votes entered upon the page must have been upon the questions taken in the committee of the whole before that upon the single Executive. But to which question each set of the yeas and nays applied was yet to be traced out, the ninth and fifteenth of the questions being the only two entered upon the Rhode Island square. I traced the questions on the journal to the first taken in the committee of the whole, apparently by yeas and nays, and was collating it with the first vote on the experimental page of yeas and nays, when the consumption of time in this petty research brought it to past noon, and I was obliged to break it off and go to my office.

ⅭⅭⅭⅩⅩⅨ.

Montpellier June 7, 1819.

I have duly received your letter of the 1st: instant. On recurring to my papers for the information it requests, I find that the speech of Col: Hamilton in the Convention of 1787, in the course of which he read a sketch of a plan of Government for the U. States, was delivered on the 18th of June; the subject of debate being a