“cautioned certain members to be on their guard against his wiles, for that he and Mr. Mason held private meetings, where the plans were concerted to aggrandize, at the expence of the small States, old Massachusetts and the ancient dominion.” I need only state facts to refute the assertion. Some time in the month of August, a number of members who considered the system, as then under consideration and likely to be adopted, extremely exceptionable, and of a tendency to destroy the rights and liberties of the United States, thought it advisable to meet together in the evenings, in order to have a communication of sentiments, and to concert a plan of conventional opposition to, and amendment of that system, so as, if possible, to render it less dangerous. Mr. Gerry was the first who proposed this measure to me, and that before any meeting had taken place, and wished we might assemble at my lodgings, but not having a room convenient, we fixed upon another place. There Mr. Gerry and Mr. Mason did hold meetings, but with them also met the Delegates from New Jersey and Connecticut, a part of the Delegation from Delaware, an honorable member from South Carolina, one other from Georgia, and myself. These were the only “private meetings” that ever I knew or heard to be held by Mr. Gerry and Mr. Mason, meetings at which I myself attended until I left the Convention, and of which the sole object was not to aggrandize the great at the expense of the small, but to protect and preserve, if possible, the existence and essential rights of all the states, and the liberty and freedom of their citizens. Thus, my fellow citizens, I am obliged, unless I could accept the compliment at an expence of truth equal to the Landholder’s, to give up all claim to being “placed beyond the reach of ordinary panegyrick,” and to that “magnanimity” which he was so solicitous to bestow upon me, that he has wandered [into] the regions of falsehood to seek the occasion. When we find such disregard of truth, even in the introduction, while only on the threshold, we may form judgment what respect is to be paid to the information he shall give us of what passed in the Convention when he “draws aside the veil,” a veil which was interposed between our proceedings and the Public, in my opinion, for the most dangerous of purposes, and which was never designed by the advocates of the system to be drawn aside, or if it was, not till it should be too late for any beneficial purpose, which as far as it is done, or pretended to be done, on the present occasion, is only for the purpose of deception and misrepresentation. It was on Saturday that I first took my seat. I obtained that day a copy of the propositions that had been laid before the Convention, and which were then the subject of discussion in a committee of the whole. The Secretary was so polite as, at my request, to wait upon me at the State House the next day (being Sunday), and there gave me an