"A still more conclusive evidence of errour in the paper is seen in Art: III., which provides, as the Constitution does, that the first Branch of the Legislature shall be chosen by the people of the several States; whilst it appears, that on the 6th of June, according to previous notice, too, a few days only, after the Draft was laid before the Convention, its Author opposed that mode of choice, urging & proposing, in place of it, an election by the Legislatures of the several States.
"The remarks here made, tho' not material in themselves, were due to the authenticity and accuracy aimed at, in this Record of the proceedings of a Publick Body, so much an object, sometimes, of curious research, as at all times, of profound interest."
"As an Editorial note to the paper in the hand writing of Mr. M. beginning 'The length, &c.'"
"*Striking discrepancies will be found on a comparison of his plan, as furnished to Mr. Adams, and the view given of that which was laid before the Convention, in a pamphlet published by Francis Childs at New York shortly after the close of the Convention. The title of the pamphlet is 'Observations on the plan of Government submitted to the Federal Convention on the 28th of May, 1787, by Charles Pinckney, &c.'
"But what conclusively proves that the choice of the H. of Reps. _by the people_ could not have been the choice in the lost paper is a letter from Mr. Pinckney to J. M. of _March 28, 1789_, now on his files, in which he emphatically adheres to a choice by the _State Legrs._ The following is an extract--'Are you not, to use a full expression, abundantly convinced that the theoretical nonsense of an election of the members of Congress by the people in the first instance, is clearly and practically wrong--that it will in the end be the means of bringing our Councils into contempt and that the Legislatures (of the States) are the only proper judges of who ought to be elected?'"
It is plain that Madison intended that the last two paragraphs of the foregoing, beginning with an asterisk, should take the form of an editorial note, and he so prepared the paper even to the placing of the asterisk at the beginning. As long before this as 1821 he had determined in his own mind that the publication of the Journal should be as he termed it, "a posthumous one" (letter to Thomas Ritchie September 15, 1821), and he carried out the intention by so providing in his will made in 1835. The expected editor was Mrs. Madison; and she, he knew, would scrupulously and intelligently carry into effect his slightest wish. She was not able to perform the editorial task.