The difficulty of the hour was not in draughting a constitution, but in draughting one which would not arouse the jealous antagonism of the several States. That difficulty did not trouble Pinckney. His plan contemplated having the people of each State fairly, _i. e._, proportionately represented in his House of Delegates, and in making the several States as States unequivocally submissive to the new national authority.
Pinckney had been for two years immediately before the sitting of the Convention, a delegate in the Congress of the Confederation. He had been the representative of South Carolina in the "grand committee" appointed to consider the alteration of the Articles of Confederation. He had been chairman of the subcommittee which draughted the committee's report of August, 1786; and (as Professor McLaughlin has pointed out) "the introducing phrases, as appears by reference to the manuscript papers of the old Congress, were written in Pinckney's own hand." In witnessing the inherent weakness and increasing degradation of the Congress, he had learned to appreciate the incapacity of the confederate system, and the necessity of a National government. No member of the Convention better appreciated those two things, or was better equipped for the task which he undertook; and there was no man in the country, except Madison, who had been through such a preparatory course and had such a combination of resources at his command. He was young, talented, experienced, ambitious, wealthy, unemployed and a ceaseless worker. The index of Madison's Journal witnesses to the immense amount of work which Pinckney did irrespective of the draught. If we discard the draught--the original draught, the disputed draught, and the draught described in the Observations, the fact will remain that Pinckney was an important contributor to the work of framing the Constitution.
Pinckney's plan of government was precisely what we might expect it to be. He was an able but not a sagacious statesman; that is he saw clearly what he wanted, but he did not see what other men wanted. Neither did he anticipate as a sagacious statesman would, the ignorance, the adverse interests and the prejudices of those who ultimately would have the power to reject or ordain the work of the Convention. Therefore he originated none of the compromises which reconciled antagonistic views and made the Constitution possible. The great and difficult problems which confronted the Convention were not solved by the Draught. Pinckney in it provided for two legislative houses and based representation on population, neglecting to place the small States on an equal footing with the large States in the Senate. He provided for one Executive head as did every government in the world, but he devised no means for uniting harmoniously the large and small States in choosing the Executive. The Draught was an admirable instrument for its purpose--an admirable model for the workmen of the Convention to correct, alter and enlarge. It was crude and unfinished but it was in well chosen words and simple sentences, eschewing particulars and presenting in a masterly way great declaratory principles of government. Pinckney had a few fanciful provisions in his plan and yet he was a practical and not a fanciful constitution-maker, not above taking the best material he could find wherever he could find it, resorting to himself last; and not above throwing aside his own work and beginning again and again until he had patiently wrought out the best that his ability could do. But when in estimating the Constitutional value of the draught, we have given credit for the admirable construction of the plan of government and for the clear declaratory style of the instrument, and for the preamble, and when we have discarded his original schemes, not adopted by the Convention, such as the plan for the Senate, we find that the remainder of the draught is made up for the most part of details suggested by his experience in the Congress of the Confederated States, details which were culled by him with extraordinary care from the constitutions of New York and Massachusetts and the Articles of Confederation.