Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/486

  draft of the Constitution itself, and as if that which was finally adopted was Pinckney’s plan, with a very few slight alterations. I told Mr. Sparks that Rufus King had spoken to me of C. Pinckney’s paper precisely in the same manner as he says Mr. Madison now does; that it was a paper to which no sort of attention was paid by the Convention, except that of referring it to the committee, but when I compiled the Journal of the Convention, Charles Pinckney himself sent me the plan now in the book, as the paper which he had presented to the Convention; and with it he wrote me a letter, which obviously held the pretension that the whole plan of Constitution was his, and that the Convention had done nothing more than to deteriorate his work by altering some of his favorite provisions. Sparks said Mr. Madison added that this plan now in the book contained several things which could not possibly have been in Pinckney’s paper, but which rose out of the debates upon the plan of Constitution reported by the committee. He conjectured that Mr. Pinckney’s memory failed him, and that, instead of a copy of the paper which he did present, he had found a copy of the plan reported by the committee with interlined amendments, perhaps proposed by him, and, at a distance of more than thirty years, had imagined it was his own plan.

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Washington, May 5th. 1830

Since my return I have conversed with Mr Adams concerning Charles Pinckney’s draft of a constitution. He says it was furnished by Mr. Pinckney, and that he has never been able to hear of another copy. It was accompanied by a long letter (written in 1819) now in the Department of State, in which Mr Pinckney claims to himself great merit for the part he took in framing the constitution. A copy of this letter may doubtless be procured from Mr Brent, should you desire to see it. Mr Adams mentioned the draft once to Mr Rufus King, who said he remembered such a draft, but that it went to a committee with other papers, and was never heard of afterwards. Mr King’s views of the subject, as far as I could collect them from Mr Adams, were precisely such as you expressed.

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Montpellier, May, 1830.

And if I am to answer your appeal to me as a witness, I must say