To comprehend and appreciate the significance of the disappearance of these two papers, it is necessary that we understand the conditions of the case--the circumstances which tended toward their destruction, and those which should have secured their preservation.
The first of these conditions was secrecy. The Convention early determined "That nothing spoken in the House be printed or otherwise published or communicated without leave." No reporter was present at the sittings of the Convention; no stenographer, typewriter or amanuensis served the members; no clerical force aided the Committee of Detail. The secrets of the Convention were in the custody of the members, and from the 29th of May to the 17th of September not one was revealed to the expectant, inquisitive, anxious American world.
As the work of the Convention drew toward its close, it was determined that the obligation of secrecy should be continued into the indefinite future. The records were to be placed under seal and the custodian was to be Washington himself. Washington asked what should be done with the records; and the Convention answered that "he retain the Journal and other papers subject to the orders of Congress, if ever formed under the Constitution." For thirty years and more the seals remained unbroken; and for thirty years and more no member of the Convention spoke.
Let the reader imagine, if he can, what would be the public feeling now, if a convention should be sitting from the 29th of May to the 17th of September to frame a new constitution for the United States which should sit with closed doors, and whose members should disclose no act, speak no word, drop no hint from the beginning to the end; and who, when the end was reached, should say absolutely nothing of what had been said and done in the secret proceedings of the Convention. We owe much to the framers of the Constitution; they were not common men.
The first and highest instance of this sense of obligation is where we should expect to find it, in the personal journal of Washington.
"Attending in Convention--_and nothing being suffered to transpire no minute of the proceedings has been, or will be inserted in this diary_."
And for this reason, no member of the Committee wrote. The unfortunate Observations of Pinckney were the only publication that gave a glimmer of what had been done, or might have been done in the Convention--of what had been said or might have been said. The Journal of Madison was not published until after Congress had released the secrets of the Convention. The members had taken no solemn oath, nor clasped hands nor pledged their honor to each other, but they kept silence.