It was 48 years since Madison had served as the most laborious member of the Convention. It was 28 years since he had seen the Navy disgraced by the surrender of the Chesapeake after firing only a single gun--a disgrace caused by the shameful negligence and incapacity of administrative officers at Washington while he was a member of Jefferson's Cabinet. It was 21 years since he had seen the Army disgraced by the negligence of his own Secretary of War and the incapacity of a general of his own choosing, and his Capitol burnt and himself and his Cabinet fugitives, and his heroic wife, her friends and the military guard of "a hundred men all gone," resolutely refusing to leave the Executive Mansion until she had taken "the precious portrait" of Washington from its frame to save it from the ignominy of capture by a British Army. The Pinckney draught was but a leaf blown aside in the tumults of his troubled life. But there remains the documentary evidence which Madison adduced and the specification of plagiarism which he filed; and apart from Madison and apart from Pinckney there remains the ultimate question which every student of the Constitution must desire to have examined, and if possible, answered, "What provisions of the Constitution were contributed by Pinckney"? CHAPTER VI THE POSITION TAKEN BY MADISON The position taken by Madison in private letters to individuals, he had a right to modify, abandon or withdraw; and it would not be treating him fairly to hold him to words hastily written and perhaps inspired by an impulse of the moment. But the "Note of Mr. Madison to the Plan of Charles Pinckney" (Elliot Vol. 5, 578) deliberately prepared by him for future publication, and intended by him to accompany the draught of the State Department in future publications so that it should destroy the supposed verity of the copy, must be taken as the final expression of his judgment. "Note of Mr. Madison to the Plan of Charles Pinckney, May 29, 1787."