"Wednesday, June 6, 1787 "Mr. Gorham in the Chair.
"It was moved by Mr. Pinckney, seconded by Mr. Rutledge to strike the word 'people' out of the 4th resolution submitted by Mr. Randolph, and to insert in its place the word
'Legislatures' so as to read 'resolved that the Members of the first branch of the national legislature ought to be elected by the Legislatures of the several States'
"and on the question to strike out "it passed in the negative.""
If Pinckney's article 3 had really provided that members of the first house should be chosen _by the legislatures_ of the several States, certainly his article 5 would not have provided that "each State shall prescribe the time and manner of holding elections by _the people_." Article 3 laid down the basic principle that representatives were to be chosen by the people, and article 5 provided for the time and manner when and whereby the people should elect their representatives; and article 4 provided that Senators should be chosen, not by the people or the legislatures of the several States, but by the House of Delegates. In all these provisions we again see that the draught in the State Department is consistent with itself.
It is possible that the person who gave the "copied draught" to Mr. Read was Pinckney himself; and it is probable that by the 20th of May he had changed his mind concerning the election of delegates by the people and had determined to make his draught conform to the views of his fellow delegates from South Carolina. We know, as will hereafter appear, that he contemplated making many amendments to his draught before presenting it to the Convention; and that he hastily and prematurely presented it on the 29th of May so that it should go with the Virginia resolutions to the Committee of the Whole. The change we are considering may not have been made in the written instrument which he laid upon the Secretary's desk, though he made the change in his own mind. But be that as it may, it is as certain as existing knowledge goes that no man saw the original draught with the words "by the people" twice stricken out and the words "by the legislatures of the several States" twice written in; and until this change in the original draught is shown by positive testimony, unequivocal in terms and above suspicion in character, the circumstantial evidence that the draught went to the Convention with the words "the people" in the 3d and 5th articles is overwhelming.