In the second place Pinckney speaks of having "several rough draughts of the Constitution" ("4 or 5 draughts" he says) and he adds "that they are all substantially the same, differing only in words and the arrangement of the articles." Pinckney had preserved them certainly until the end of the year 1818, and "numerous notes and papers which he had retained relating to the Federal Convention." He also says that "with the aid of the journal of the Convention and the numerous notes and memorandums I have preserved, it would now be in my power to give a view of the almost insuperable difficulties the Convention had to encounter, and of the conflicting opinions of the members; and I believe I should have attempted it had I not always understood Mr. Madison intended it. He alone possessed and retained more numerous and particular notes of their proceedings than myself." These "numerous notes and memorandums, more numerous and particular" than those preserved by any other person, Madison "alone" excepted, and with them the "several rough draughts," which he found with the other papers on his return to Charleston in 1818, existed when Pinckney wrote his letter and placed his copy of the draught in the State Department. They existed both to refresh his memory and to refute him if he was not acting in good faith. He acknowledged Madison to be his superior in "notes and memorandums" and a particular knowledge of the proceedings of the Convention; and Madison was still living, and Pinckney by placing his copy of the draught in the State Department invited Madison and all the world to examine it. That was the time when Madison should have spoken. It is most unfortunate that he waited fourteen years, and until after Pinckney's death and the death of every other member of the Convention, before he spoke. Like many another young lawyer I came upon Pinckney's draught in Elliot's Debates and was astounded by finding so large a part of the Constitution apparently written by the hand of a man whom I had never heard extolled as a framer of the Constitution; and like many another young lawyer, I accepted the reasons of Madison and the silence of Story as conclusive. But the discovery and publication of Pinckney's letter in 1895 threw new light upon the subject and made it plain that Madison's objections should not be taken as final and that his premises needed corroboration. I therefore prepared the following inquiries in the hope that I could persuade some historical scholar to take up this work of Constitutional investigation. 1. Does the draught in the State Department upon its face appear to be an author's draught--a, "rough draught," as Pinckney called it--with his corrections, erasures, interlineations and alterations or does it appear to be a duplicate or a fair copy of an original or "rough" draught? It is in the handwriting of Pinckney; does it appear to be his original piece of work, or an engrossed copy made by him of another paper?