This letter is very far from being conclusive. In the first place it does not appear that Mr. Read had seen the original of this "copied draught" or that Pinckney had given him the copy or had told him what his plan was or that any person who had seen the original draught had told him what it contained. In the second place the existence of an unauthenticated copy on the 20th of May does not conclusively prove that a different version of the same draught was not presented to the Convention on the 29th of May. Still this letter undoubtedly refers to Pinckney's draught and compels a more searching examination of the question raised than would otherwise be necessary.
In a paper which will be called, briefly, "the Observations" written by Pinckney before he left Charleston he sets forth at length a description of his plan of government. In the opening paragraph of this paper he says that he will "give each article" of his draught "that either materially varies" from the present government "or is new." He then goes on to say that "the first important alteration is that of the principle of representation." "Representation is a sign of the reality. Upon this principle, however abused, the Parliament of Great Britain is formed, and it has been universally adopted by the States in the formation of their legislatures." This is all which Pinckney, writing before the Convention began its work, had to say concerning the lower house of Congress. His Senate was new and concerning it he had much more to say, and he described it. But of the lower house, the popular body, he had nothing to say save that there would be such a house, and that it would rest upon the principle of representation "universally adopted by the States in the formation of their legislatures." The Virginia resolutions undoubtedly expressed the opinion of substantially all Americans when they said, "Resolved that the members of the first branch of the national legislature ought to be elected by the people of the several States." Assuredly if the draught which Pinckney was then describing had contained the extraordinary and novel proposition that the popular branch of the national legislature, the body which should represent the people, was not to be chosen by the people he would have had something "new" to lay before the Convention--something which did not exist in the government of any English speaking people in the world--something which "materially varied" from the belief and usage and history and traditions of the people who were to ordain this Constitution. Knowing Pinckney as we do--his general views, his adherence to the general principles of the British constitution, his attentive study of State constitutions, his outspokenness, his belief in his own devices, we know that if his draught had then contained so radical a departure from all existing constitutions as that which he subsequently proposed in the Convention, and if he had worked himself into a belief at the time when he wrote the Observations that the election of their representatives by the people was "theoretical nonsense", he could not have refrained from saying so. What is said in the Observations harmonized with the constitutions of every State in the Confederation and with the Virginia resolutions and with the views of every member of the Convention excepting the five great land owners from South Carolina.