Yet the Committee of Detail did not think so and they did not report such a provision. Here again it is possible that Wilson took his provision from Pinckney's draught, but it is not possible that Pinckney took his from Wilson's.
The draught of Randolph discloses three important pieces of information which tend positively to sustain the Pinckney draught. The first is (in the words of Mr. Meigs) "that it was drawn up after the Convention had agreed upon the resolutions that were referred to the Committee of Detail on July 26th; and in numerous instances its language is modeled upon them with even verbal accuracy." (Growth of the Constitution, p. 318.) Manifestly this draught was not written--was not even begun, until after Randolph had become a member of the Committee. The writing of it, the revising of it, its numerous alterations and corrections, the submission of it to Rutledge, his examination of it and his changes and additions must have taken time. Almost every sentence in it is checked as if it had been compared with some other paper. In a word it indicates that some days must have passed after the 26th of July before Randolph and Rutledge could have written it, and revised it, and left it in its present form; and it witnesses the important fact that only five or six days before the finished draught of the Committee of Detail was put in the hands of the printer at least two members of the committee were no nearer completion of the work than this disheveled draught.
The great improbability against the Pinckney draught is that one man alone and unassisted should have prepared so much of the Constitution. But it is a hundred times more improbable that this Committee unassisted by Pinckney's draught should have prepared and completed their own with all its well selected details, with language carefully taken from many sources, and with provisions far in excess of their instructions, than that Pinckney should have completed his in his own time (making as he did, four or five versions of it), thoroughly versed, as he was, in the needs and weaknesses of the existing general government and the constitutions of the several States, and able to confer, as he did, with the ablest statesmen in the country.