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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: History
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

CCCXIV.: Gouverneur Morris to Timothy Pickering. 1 - Max Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, vol. 3 [1911]

Edition used:

The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, ed. Max Farrand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911). Vol. 3.

Part of: The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 3 vols.

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CCCXIV.

Gouverneur Morris to Timothy Pickering.1

Morrisania, December 22d, 1814.

While I sat in the Convention, my mind was too much occupied by the interests of our country to keep notes of what we had done. Some gentlemen, I was told, passed their evenings in transcribing speeches from shorthand minutes of the day. They can speak positively on matters, of which I have little recollection. My faculties were on the stretch to further our business, remove impediments, obviate objections, and conciliate jarring opinions. All which I can now do is to ask myself what I should do were questions stated anew; for, in all probability, what I should now do would be what I then did, my sentiments and opinions having undergone no essential change in forty years.

Propositions to countenance the issue of paper money, and the consequent violation of contracts, must have met with all the opposition I could make. But, my dear Sir, what can a history of the Constitution avail towards interpreting its provisions. This must be done by comparing the plain import of the words, with the general tenor and object of the instrument. That instrument was written by the fingers, which write this letter. Having rejected redundant and equivocal terms, I believed it to be as clear as our language would permit; excepting, nevertheless, a part of what relates to the judiciary. On that subject, conflicting opinions had been maintained with so much professional astuteness, that it became necessary to select phrases, which expressing my own notions would not alarm others, nor shock their selflove, and to the best of my recollection, this was the only part which passed without cavil.

[1 ]Jared Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris, III, 322-323.