When Pinckney, foreseeing that a national Convention would be held and that if it failed to frame a constitution which would give to the waning Confederation the character and authority of nationality, the nationality of the Confederated States might disappear, he resolutely assigned to himself the task of framing one in which nationality should be secure and a national government above and independent of the States be the result. While yet a member of Congress he saw plainly these things--that the government of the Confederated States was drifting toward insolvency, for New York and Massachusetts alone had paid in full their quota of the Federal expenses; that it was drifting towards war; for at least one of the States was flagrantly violating the treaty of peace with Great Britain; that the Congress could neither raise money nor maintain a treaty; for the only power which it practically possessed was to beseech the States to pay their respective shares of the Federal expenses, and to pass as recently as March 21, 1787, resolutions urging on the States a repeal of all laws contravening the treaty of peace with Great Britain. Pinckney was then in the full flush of youthful egoism, but the oldest member of the Convention, even Franklin, could not have chosen his method of construction more wisely. Wherever constitutional material existed, Pinckney found it, and preferred it to his own. A single paragraph will give an effective object lesson of his careful composite work: "The United States shall not grant any title of nobility" (Art. Confederation VI). "The Legislature of the United States shall pass no law on the subject of religion" (Constitution of New York); "nor touching or abridging the liberty of the press" (Constitution Massachusetts); "nor shall the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus ever be suspended except in case of rebellion or invasion" (Constitution Mass.). The resolution of March 21, 1787 is as follows: "WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 1787. "Resolved, That the legislatures of the several states cannot of right pass any act or acts, for interpreting, explaining, or construing a national treaty or any part or clause of it; nor for restraining, limiting or in any manner impeding, retarding or counteracting the operation and execution of the same, for that on being constitutionally made, ratified and published, they become in virtue of the confederation, part of the law of the land, and are not only independent of the will and power of such legislatures, but also binding and obligatory on them." This becomes in the draught: "All acts made by the Legislature of the United States, pursuant to this Constitution, and all Treaties made under the authority of the United States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and all Judges shall be bound to consider them as such in their decisions."