The Observations, therefore (written before the Convention and published afterwards), sustain the draught in the State Department.
The words "the people" appear directly and necessarily in article 3 of the draught: "The Members of the House of Delegates shall be chosen every ---- year by the people of the several States; and the qualifications of the electors shall be the same as those of the electors in the several States for their Legislatures." They reappear casually and needlessly in article 5: "Each State shall prescribe the time and manner of holding elections _by the people_ for the House of Delegates." The draught therefore in these provisions is consistent with itself.
In the draught of the Committee of Detail the words of Pinckney's article 3 again appear with some amplification, but in the same order with the same context and with the same intent. Such agreements come not by chance.
And if such agreements come not by chance, could Pinckney while he was copying the committee's draught for his own article 3 have written these two troublesome words "the people" without taking heed of their significance, without realizing what he was doing, without remembering that his own draught had said "the _legislatures_ of the several States." He could not! For there is another provision in the draught in the State Department which was not taken from the committee's draught--which did not exist in the committee's draught--which must have been deliberately framed by Pinckney--the provision before quoted from article 5, "Each State shall prescribe the time and manner of holding elections _by the people_ for the House of Delegates." That is to say if Pinckney unintentionally abstracted his article 3 from the committee's draught in 1818, he, nevertheless, must have fabricated designedly his article 5 at the same time; for there is nothing in the committee's draught to suggest it.
Then the question immediately arises, What motive could Pinckney have had for falsifying his draught and making this change from the election of delegates by State legislatures to their election by the people of the several States. The answer of the superficial of course will be, "So that the world should believe that he had always been in favor of the election of representatives by the people." No other reason can well be assigned; yet there could not have been such a motive. Pinckney knew that his draught was to be soon published and that with it would be published the official Journal of the Convention and that the publication would disclose to the world this record:
