The members of the convention, as such, were the mere scriveners of the constitution; and their individual purposes, opinions or expressions, then uttered in secret cabal, though now revealed, can no more be evidence of the intentions of the people who adopted the constitution, than the secret opinions or expressions of the scriveners of any other contract can be offered to prove the intentions of the true parties to such contract. As framers of the constitution, the members of the convention gave to it no validity, meaning, or legal force. They simply drafted it, and offered it, such as it legally might be, to the people for their adoption or rejection. The people, therefore, in adopting it, had no reference whatever to the opinions of the convention. They had no authentic evidence of what those opinions were. They looked simply at the instrument. And they adopted even its legal meaning by a bare majority. If the instrument had contained any tangible sanction of slavery, the people would sooner have had it burned by the hands of the common hangman, than they would have adopted it, and thus sold themselves as pimps to slavery, covered as they were with the scars they had received in fighting the battles of freedom. And the members of the convention knew that such was the feeling of a large portion of the people; and for that reason, if for no other, they dared insert in the instrument no legal sanction of slavery. They chose rather to trust to their craft and influence to corrupt the government, (of which they themselves expected to be important members,) after the constitution should have been adopted, rather than ask the necessary authority directly from the people. And the success they have had in corrupting the government, proves that they judged rightly in presuming that the government would be more flexible than the people.