The Mystery of the Pinckney DraughtNott, Charles C.
History
The Mystery of the Pinckney Draught
Nott, Charles C.
Constitutional history -- United States; Pinckney, Charles, 1757-1824
There are three important articles in Wilson's draught which are not
Wilson's. These appear on the margin in the handwriting of Rutledge and
answer to article XIV, XV and XVI of the Committee's draught. As they
are in almost the precise language of Pinckney's articles 12 and 13 the
much repeated question again arises, did Rutledge take them from the
Pinckney draught; were they then in the Pinckney draught to be taken; or
did Pinckney abstract them from the Committee's draught? The question is
easily and decisively answered: _these articles are described in the
Observations; Pinckney's title to them cannot be questioned; Wilson and
Rutledge had his draught before them, and used it, when Rutledge wrote
these articles upon the margin_.
The veto power was cast by the Convention in their resolutions with
those of the Executive. Pinckney had placed it in his draught among the
legislative, though he is careful to say in the Observations that the
Executive "is not a branch of the Legislature farther than as a part of
the council of revision." Nevertheless he placed the veto at the end of
his article 5--an article relating to the choosing of members of the
lower house; to the privileges of Representatives and Senators; to the
business proceedings of both houses. Wilson more clearly perceived that
the American veto would lack the finality of the _Le roy, avisera_ of
the Crown, and that it would be neither a legislative nor an executive
power though having the properties of both; and he properly made of the
veto power an entire and independent article, article 7 of his draught.
There were members of the Convention who regarded the veto power as a
bulwark against the encroachments of the legislative power; and Wilson
himself had said that, "the Executive ought to have an absolute
negative"; that "without such a self-defence the Legislature can at any
moment sink it into non-existence." Unquestionably the veto provision
ought to have been placed in the Committee's draught as Wilson placed it
in his own. But it was not. On the contrary it appears there as it
appears in Pinckney's, as an incongruous paragraph at the end of an
article which deals with the House of Representatives, with the business
of both Houses and with the privileges of the members of each. The one
thing certain here is absolutely certain--that the Committee in this did
not follow Wilson's draught though it was correct and did follow some
other draught though it was incorrect.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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