copies was exactly the same. But the proof was complete that, in the only passage at which the punctuation could affect the sense, the copy made at the office and sent to Boston to be printed agreed precisely with the original printed paper of Mr. Brearley.
After a long and pertinacious examination of all the papers, which were taken for the purpose from my chamber into that of Mr. Brent, Smyth declared himself satisfied that he had been mistaken in his suspicions, and that the error of punctuation in the volume of the journal of the Convention, consisting in the substitution of a colon for a semicolon—: instead of;—and a capital T instead of a small t, was not a deliberate and wilful forgery of mine to falsify the Constitution and vest absolute and arbitrary powers in Congress, but a mere error of the press. He took, however, a certified copy from Mr. Brent of the passage as printed in Brearley’s paper, with the punctuation, obliteration, and manuscript interlineations.
ⅭⅭⅭⅩⅬⅤ. James Madison to George Hay.[1]
I have recd. your letter of the 11th with the Newspapers containing your remarks on the present mode of electing a President, and your proposed remedy for its defects. I am glad to find you have not abandoned your attention to great Constitutional topics.
The difficulty of finding an unexceptionable process for appointing the Executive Organ of a Government such as that of the U.S., was deeply felt by the Convention; and as the final arrangement of it took place in the latter stage of the Session, it was not exempt from a degree of the hurrying influence produced by fatigue and impatience in all such Bodies: tho’ the degree was much less than usually prevails in them.
The part of the arrangement which casts the eventual appointment on the House of Reps. voting by States, was, as you presume, an accomodation to the anxiety of the smaller States for their sovereign equality, and to the jealousy of the larger towards the cumulative functions of the Senate. The Agency of the H. of Reps. was thought safer also than that of the Senate, on account of the greater number of its members. It might indeed happen that the event would turn on one or two States having one or two Reps. only; but even in that case, the Representations of most of the States being numerous, the House would present greater obstacles to corruption than the Senate with its paucity of Members. It may be observed
- ↑ Documentary History of the Constitution, Ⅴ, 315–317.
