Two things must now be noted. The first is that every word in Pinckney's preamble, save one, was taken from the preamble of the constitution of Massachusetts; the second, that Pinckney's draught adheres to the unrestricted "posterity" of the constitution, and does not follow the restricted "posterity" of the Wilson draught. The charge that Pinckney's preamble was "necessarily" derived from the Committee's draught is therefore doubly refuted. There was a source to which Pinckney could go for his preamble, the constitution of Massachusetts, and he went there; there was a deviation from the constitution of Massachusetts in the Wilson draught, and Pinckney did not follow it.
Wilson probably inserted the word "our," in his preamble for a rhetorical reason; for he was one of the signers of an instrument which rang with its own concluding words "OUR LIVES, OUR FORTUNES AND OUR SACRED HONOR."
The insertion of one word (our) in one of these preambles is a slender strand of circumstantial evidence. But circumstantial evidence is made up generally of slender strands; and circumstantial evidence is least suspicious when the strands are severally insignificant. With the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation and eleven of the State constitutions containing preambles, it is inconceivable that Pinckney would have framed his draught without a preamble; and if Pinckney framed the preamble, as he must have done, it is inconceivable that he would have thrown it aside in 1818 and substituted another man's, for he was never ashamed of his own work. And it must be taken as a fixed fact that Pinckney had a preamble, for the structure of the draught required it; the first article would be meaningless without one, "The stile of _this government_"--the government announced in the preamble. Therefore having the necessity of a preamble, and the production of one in 1818, and the strict adherence in words and intent to the constitution of Massachusetts and Pinckney's familiarity with that constitution, the severally slender strands become a cord of circumstantial evidence which must satisfy an unprejudiced mind that Pinckney was the author of the preamble in his draught. There are too many clews here to be disregarded, and they all lead one way. The unquestionable sketches of a preamble in Wilson's and Randolph's handwriting show only three attempts and three failures.