TO TRACE THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF EACH SEPARATE CLAUSE THE FORM FINALLY APPROVED CONTAINING ALSO A FAC-SIMILE OF A HERETOFORE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT OF COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WILLIAM M. MEIGS. ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A. PREFACE. I HAVE on more than one occasion wanted to know accurately the history and development of some particular clause of the United States Constitution in the Convention of 1787, but have always found it very difficult to succeed in tracing the matter out to my satisfaction. Even with the aid of the index and crossreferences contained in Volume V. of Elliot's "Debates," it is a very wearying process to follow a particular portion of the instrument through the whole Convention; and, indeed, no matter how carefully this is done, one is sure to miss a good many ideas which were thrown out at times when entirely different portions of the instrument were under consideration. In an instance some two years ago, when I thought a recent writer was in error, I again wanted to know the exact origin of a particular clause, and again had all the usual difficulty and the unsatisfactory result. Thinking over the matter at that time led me to wonder whether it would not be possible and worth while to go through all the proceedings of the Convention and write a history of each separate clause. The following book is an outgrowth of that idea. Taking the matter up from the beginning, I went through the debates with the view of referring each separate discussion to its appropriate portion of the final instrument in this many difficulties came up, and they seemed at times to be almost insuperable, but gradually they disappeared, 1 |