Page:The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 Volume 3.djvu/509

 in the Convention, July 20. he was opposed to any impeachability of the Executive Magistrate: In Art: III, it is required that all money-bills shall originate in the first Branch of the Legislature; which he strenuously opposed Aug: 8 and again Aug: 11: In Art: V members of each House are made ineligible to, as well as incapable of holding, any office under the Union &c, as was the case at one Stage of the Constitution; a disqualification highly disapproved and opposed by him Aug: 14.

A still more conclusive evidence of errour in the paper is seen in Art: III, which provides, as the Constitution does, that the first Branch of the Legislature shall be chosen by the people of the several States; whilst it appears, that on the 6th. of June, according to previous notice too, a few days only, after the Draft was laid before the Convention, its Author opposed that mode of choice, urging & proposing in place of it, an election by the Legislatures of the several States.

The remarks here made, tho’ not material in themselves, were due to the authenticity and accuracy aimed at, in this Record of the proceedings of a Publick Body, so much an object, sometimes, of curious research, as at all times, of profound interest

As an Editorial note to the paper in the hand writing of Mr. M. beginning “The length &c.-”

Striking discrepancies will be found on a comparison of his plan, as furnished to Mr. Adams, and the view given of that which was laid before the Convention, in a pamphlet published by Francis Childs at New York shortly after the close of the Convention. The title of the pamphlet is “Observations on the plan of Government submitted to the Federal Convention on the 28th. of May 1787 by Charles Pinckney &ca.”

But what conclusively proves that the choice of the H. of Reps. by the people could not have been the choice in the lost paper is a letter from Mr. Pinkney to J. M. of ''March 28. 1789, now on his files, in which he emphatically [shows] adherence to a choice by the State Legres.'' The following is an extract—“Are you not, to use a full expression, abundantly convinced that the theoretical nonsense of an election of the members of Congress by the people in the first instance, is clearly and practically wrong.—that it will in the end be the means of bringing our Councils into contempt and that the Legislatures (of the States) are the only proper judges of who ought to be elected.”——