offer to the committee of the whole; these he trusted would now be referred to the select committee, and thus the matter would proceed there without interruption to the other business of the House. The proposition for a select committee was not more fortunate or acceptable than its predecessor. It was opposed from the same quarters, and several who had evinced no favor toward the motion to go into committee of the whole now said that, if the subject was to be taken up at all, that would have been, but for its withdrawal, the preferable mode. Mr. Madison declared himself, as he said, "unfortunate in not satisfying gentlemen with respect to the mode of introducing the business; he had thought, from the dignity and peculiarity of the subject, that it ought to be referred to a committee of the whole; he had accordingly made that motion first, but finding himself not likely to succeed in that way, he had changed his ground. Fearing again to be discomfited on his motion for a select committee, he would change his mode, and move the propositions he had stated before directly to the House, and it might then do what it thought proper with them. He accordingly moved the propositions by way of Resolutions to be adopted by the House." This course was also objected to on several grounds; but the majority saw that if the game of staving off the subject was not broken up by Mr. Madison's third proposition, it had at least been so far exposed as to require time to put it in some new form, and with that view Mr. Lawrence, who, as already said, was not in favor of amendments, moved that the subject be referred to a committee of the whole,--the proposition first submitted by Mr. Madison,--which was done. This occurred on the 8th of June. On the 21st of July thereafter Mr. Madison "begged the House to indulge him in the further consideration of the subject of amendments to the Constitution, and as there appeared, in some degree, a moment of leisure, he would move to go into a committee of the whole upon the subject, conformably to the order of the 8th of last month."