I have received your favor of the 14th instant. The simple question is, whether the draught sent by Mr. Pinckney to Mr. Adams, and printed in the Journal of the Convention, could be the same with that presented by him to the Convention on the 29th day of May, 1787; and I regret to say that the evidence that that was not the case is irresistible.
Take, as a sufficient example, the important article constituting the House of Representatives, which, in the draught sent to Mr. Adams, besides being too minute in its details to be a possible anticipation of the result of the discussion, &c., of the Convention on that subject, makes the House of Representatives
the choice of the people. Now, the known opinion of Mr. Pinckney was, that that branch of Congress ought to be chosen by the
State Legislatures, and not immediately by the people.
1 Accordingly, on the 6th day of June, not many days after presenting his draught, Mr. Pinckney, agreeably to previous notice, moved that, as an amendment to the Resolution of Mr. Randolph, the term "people" should be struck out and the word "Legislatures" inserted; 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." But what decides the point is the following extract from him to me, dated March 28, 1789: