The Mystery of the Pinckney DraughtNott, Charles C.
History
The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught
Nott, Charles C.
Constitutional history -- United States; Pinckney, Charles, 1757-1824
Pinckney's plan of government was precisely what we might expect it to
be. He was an able but not a sagacious statesman; that is he saw clearly
what he wanted, but he did not see what other men wanted. Neither did he
anticipate as a sagacious statesman would, the ignorance, the adverse
interests and the prejudices of those who ultimately would have the
power to reject or ordain the work of the Convention. Therefore he
originated none of the compromises which reconciled antagonistic views
and made the Constitution possible. The great and difficult problems
which confronted the Convention were not solved by the Draught. Pinckney
in it provided for two legislative houses and based representation on
population, neglecting to place the small States on an equal footing
with the large States in the Senate. He provided for one Executive head
as did every government in the world, but he devised no means for
uniting harmoniously the large and small States in choosing the
Executive. The Draught was an admirable instrument for its purpose--an
admirable model for the workmen of the Convention to correct, alter and
enlarge. It was crude and unfinished but it was in well chosen words and
simple sentences, eschewing particulars and presenting in a masterly way
great declaratory principles of government. Pinckney had a few fanciful
provisions in his plan and yet he was a practical and not a fanciful
constitution-maker, not above taking the best material he could find
wherever he could find it, resorting to himself last; and not above
throwing aside his own work and beginning again and again until he had
patiently wrought out the best that his ability could do. But when in
estimating the Constitutional value of the draught, we have given credit
for the admirable construction of the plan of government and for the
clear declaratory style of the instrument, and for the preamble, and
when we have discarded his original schemes, not adopted by the
Convention, such as the plan for the Senate, we find that the remainder
of the draught is made up for the most part of details suggested by his
experience in the Congress of the Confederated States, details which
were culled by him with extraordinary care from the constitutions of New
York and Massachusetts and the Articles of Confederation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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