On the 21st of June, 1831, he wrote to Jared Sparks: "May I ask you to let me know the result of your correspondence with Charleston on the subject of Mr. Pinckney's draught of a Constitution for the United States as soon as it is ascertained?" On the 27th of June, he again wrote to Mr. Paulding saying that he has "received the volume of pamphlets containing that of Mr. Charles Pinckney." On the 25th of November, 1831, he again wrote to Mr. Sparks: "The simple question is whether the draught sent by Mr. Pinckney to Mr. Adams and printed in the Journal of the Convention could be the same with that presented by him to the Convention on the 29th May, 1787, and I regret to say that _the evidence that that was not the case is irresistible_." He instances the election of members of Congress by the people, and the debate of June 6 as "a sufficient example." "But what decides the point" is a letter "from him to me" dated March 28, 1789--a letter quoted by Gilpin of which I shall hereafter speak. Madison is guarded in all he says, but it is perfectly plain that while he wished to impress upon Paulding and Sparks the idea that the draught which Pinckney placed in the State Department was not the draught which he presented to the Convention, he at the same time shrank from bringing on a controversy and from irritating the friends of Pinckney and forcing them into an investigation of the matter. It was, he evidently thought, a case of "least said, soonest mended." Madison was a sagacious and an experienced statesman who thoroughly understood his countrymen; Paulding and Sparks were his friends and followers; what he wished to have said passed into Gilpin's edition of the Journal and Elliot's Debates, and gave the unquestioning world what he wished it to know and nothing more. The bridge which he built was safely passed over by the friends of Pinckney and his method of destroying the good name of the draught without needlessly smirching the good name of Pinckney, and without inciting a controversy on the subject has been so successful that for seventy years the draught has remained silently condemned, and no man has even thought that an investigation could possibly reverse the accepted judgment.