Upon this question of fact there are two witnesses, Madison and Yates. The evidence which they have left to us is negative and positive, the one showing inferentially, what could not have occurred in the Convention on the 29th of May 1787 and the other stating positively what did occur; the one absolutely silent as to any speech by Pinckney; the other telling us that "_Mr. Pinckney a member from South Carolina then added that he had reduced his ideas of a new government to a system which he then read_." Madison has written for us an account of the manner in which he took his notes and wrote out his Journal--a most interesting account, showing us the method he pursued, the efforts which he made, and reminding us how much we owe him for his fidelity to his self-imposed task. "The curiosity I had felt during my researches into the history of the most distinguished confederacies, particularly those of antiquity, and the deficiency I found in the means of satisfying it, more especially in what related to the process, the principles, the reasons, and the anticipations, which prevailed in the formation of them, determined me to preserve, as far as I could, an exact account of what might pass in the Convention whilst executing its trust; with the magnitude of which I was duly impressed, as I was by the gratification promised to future curiosity by an authentic exhibition of the objects, the opinions, and the reasonings from which the new system of government was to receive its peculiar structure and organization. Nor was I unaware of the value of such a contribution to the fund of materials to the history of a Constitution on which would be staked the happiness of a people great even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the world. "In pursuance of the task I had assumed, I chose a seat in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right and left hands. In this favorable position, for hearing all that passed, I noted in terms legible, and in abbreviations and marks intelligible to myself, what was read from the chair or spoken by the members; and losing not a moment unnecessarily between the adjournment and reassembling of the Convention, I was enabled to write out my daily notes during the session, or within a few finishing days after its close, in the extent and form preserved, in my own hand, on my files. "In the labor and correctness of this, I was not a little aided by practice, and by a familiarity with the style and the train of observation and reasoning which characterized the principal speakers. It happened, also, that I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that _I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one_."