Time which destroys, also discloses; and time may bring to light some record which will change the conclusions of to-day. But as the case now stands it must be said that the Pinckney Draught in the Department of State is (with the exceptions before noted), all that Pinckney represented it to be. CHAPTER XVI OF PINCKNEY PERSONALLY Pinckney was in the fourth generation of a family which had been distinguished for more than one hundred years for its public services. He had been elected to the provincial legislature of South Carolina before he had come of age; and he had made himself before the sitting of the Convention a prominent member of the Congress of the Confederated States. He had a clearer apprehension of the actual needs of American nationality than any other member of the Convention. This may be seen in his Observations and in his speech of the 25th of June. There is a passage in that speech in which anticipating the Farewell Address of Washington and the peace policy of Jefferson he looks forward through the ensuing century of the Constitution and depicts the practical blessings which it was to bring to the American people with a clearness and accuracy that is extraordinary: "Our true situation appears to me to be this--a new, extensive country, containing within itself the materials for forming a government capable of extending to its citizens all the blessings of civil and religious liberty--capable of making them happy at home. This is the great end of republican establishments. We mistake the object of our government, if we hope or wish that it is to make us respectable abroad. Conquests or superiority among other powers is not, or ought not ever to be, the object of republican systems. If they are sufficiently active and energetic to rescue us from contempt, and preserve our domestic happiness and security, it is all we can expect from them--it is more than almost any other government insures to its citizens." Pinckney's experience in the Congress of the Confederation made him despise the existing Federal Government and undervalue the local authority of the States. He came into the Convention its most extreme Federalist--more so even than Hamilton. As he said in the Observations: "In the federal councils, each State ought to have a weight in proportion to its importance; and no State is justly entitled to greater." "The Senatorial districts into which the Union is to be divided [in his plan] will be so apportioned as to give to each its due weight, and the Senate calculated in this as it ought to be in every government, to represent the wealth of the nation." "The next provision [in his draught] is intended to give the United States in Congress, not only a revision of the legislative acts of each State, but a negative upon all such as shall appear to them improper."