Let us now consider a second illustrative case:
As we have seen in a previous chapter (Chap. XI) the 3d of the 23 resolutions declared that the members of the House of Representatives "ought" to receive an adequate compensation for their services; and the 4th resolution, that the members of the Senate "ought" "to receive a compensation for the devotion of their time to the public service." The term "adequate" implied and required the exercise of some discretionary power, which must necessarily be national. For if Senators and Representatives were to be paid by the States which sent them to Congress, the members of Congress could not well turn around and dictate to the States what they should be paid. This was understood at the time. For on the 22d and 26th of June when the Convention refused to retain the words "to be paid out of the National Treasury" in the 3d resolution, "Massachusetts concurred" as Madison says, "not because they thought the State Treasury ought to be substituted; but because they thought nothing should be said on the subject, in which case it wd. silently devolve on the Nat. Treasury to support the National Legislature."
Furthermore this thing was not done in a corner and the consideration of it was not confined to an hour. On the 12th of June the Committee of the Whole had resolved that the Representatives in Congress "ought to be paid out of the National Treasury," and again on the same day that Senators "ought" "to be paid out of the National Treasury"; and on the 13th of June the committee had voted to report these resolutions to the Convention; and on the 22d of June the Convention had refused to change this to payment by the States. Moreover the proposition that members be paid by the States had been condemned by the strongest men in the Convention. "Those who pay are the masters of those who are paid," Hamilton had said; and Gorham, Randolph, King, Wilson, and Madison had said as much.
Nevertheless the Committee of Detail reported a provision that the members should be paid by the States; and, not only this, but also, that the compensation should be "ascertained" "by the State in which they shall be chosen."
The only reason for or explanation of the Committee's act so far as we know is that working hurriedly, they overlooked one of the details of the 3d and 4th resolution, and, using Pinckney's draught as their copy, inadvertently allowed this provision of his to stand unchanged.
