There are some extrinsic facts which hitherto unknown should be noted.
In the first place this letter of Pinckney anticipates one of Madison's criticisms and explains away his strongest point.
"It may be necessary to remark," he says, "that very soon after the Convention met I changed and avowed candidly the change of my opinion on giving the power to Congress to revise the State laws in certain cases, and in giving the exclusive power to the Senate to declare war, thinking it safest to refuse the first altogether and to vest the latter in Congress." Hunt's Madison, III, p. 22.
As to one of these things concerning which Pinckney says he changed his mind after the Convention met, the power of Congress to revise the laws of the States, the assertion is not sustained by Madison's record of the proceedings. He undoubtedly did change his mind but not until after the adjournment of the Convention. There was however another provision in his draught to which his assertion would apply. Concerning it he did change his mind and "avowed candidly the change of his opinion" and did so "very soon after the Convention met." This is the provision which declares that members of the lower house shall be chosen by the _people_ of the several States. Article 3. As early as the 6th of June he proposed that they should be chosen by the _legislatures_ of the several States. Writing 32 years after the event and when the record had faded in his memory, the two things, to use Madison's words, "were not separated by his recollection."
The letter is a contemporaneous declaration, given at the moment when he produced the document and placed it on file in the Department of State, that the copy, like the original, contained provisions which he opposed in the Convention. With this contemporaneous notice to the Secretary of State one of Madison's objections which at first seemed insuperable, if it does not fall to the ground, at least becomes susceptible of explanation; and the retention in the copy of the draught of these apparently inconsistent things, accompanied at the time, as they were, by Pinckney's declaration, not only removes the objection of Madison but tells strongly in favor of the draught being what Pinckney represented it to be.