And there was another paper, which should have been found but was not. This was the report of the Committee of Detail, containing, or accompanying, their draught of a Constitution. The absence of any other paper that should have been placed in the package might be strange, yet not significant. But these two papers, if there were two, related to the same subject, contained more or less the same provisions, had been used for the same most important purpose by the same men, and were on the 6th of August, 1787, if they then existed, in the possession and official custody of the Committee of Detail. When Rutledge on the morning of that day "delivered in" the most important report ever laid before the Convention he should have laid upon the Secretary's desk those two papers, if there were such to lay there. Yet neither Pinckney's draught of the Constitution, nor the Committee's draught of the Constitution, was found in the sealed package; nothing was found but one printed copy of the Committee's draught. The draught of the Committee of Detail was the most important of all the papers of the Convention, for the reason that it was the embodiment of all that had been done during the first period of the Convention's work, the abstract stage, and was to be the foundation of all that was yet to be done in bringing the Constitution to its concrete and final form. For purposes of construction and interpretation the draught is the most valuable paper that exists or that ever did exist, inasmuch as it sets forth in a tangible, practical, unmistakable form the results so far attained and the views which a majority of the members held, and the conclusions which a majority of the States had reached when the work of abstract consideration ceased, and the work of changing their abstract ideas into the concrete provisions of the Constitution began. There was no other report, draught or document which should have been so watchfully guarded and carefully kept as the report of the Committee of Detail, if there were indeed such a document to preserve. To comprehend and appreciate the significance of the disappearance of these two papers, it is necessary that we understand the conditions of the case--the circumstances which tended toward their destruction, and those which should have secured their preservation. The first of these conditions was secrecy. The Convention early determined "That nothing spoken in the House be printed or otherwise published or communicated without leave." No reporter was present at the sittings of the Convention; no stenographer, typewriter or amanuensis served the members; no clerical force aided the Committee of Detail. The secrets of the Convention were in the custody of the members, and from the 29th of May to the 17th of September not one was revealed to the expectant, inquisitive, anxious American world.