one of the capital articles of the system. Col. Lee proposes, that the President should choose a council of eleven, and, with their advice, have the appointment of all officers. Col. Mason's proposition is, that a council of six should be appointed by the Congress. What degree of power he would confide to it, I do not know. The idea of the governor is, that there should be a plurality of coequal heads, distinguished probably by other peculiarities in the organization. It is pretty certain that some others, who make a common cause with them in the general attempt to bring about alterations, differ still more from them than they do from each other; and that they themselves differ as much on some other great points as on the constitution of the executive.
You did not judge amiss of Mr. Jay. The paragraph affirming a change in his opinion of the plan of the Convention, was an arrant forgery. He has contradicted it in a letter to Mr. J. Vaughan, which has been printed in the Philadelphia gazettes. Tricks of this sort are not uncommon with the enemies of the new Constitution. Col. Mason's objections were, as I am told, published in Boston, mutilated of that which pointed at the regulation of commerce. Dr. Franklin's concluding speech, which you will meet with in one of the papers herewith enclosed, is both mutilated and adulterated, so as to change both the form and spirit of it.
The Philadelphia papers will have informed you of the result of the convention of that state. New Jersey is now in convention, and has probably by this time adopted the Constitution. Gen. Irvine, of the Pennsylvania delegation, who is just arrived here, and who conversed with some of the members at Trenton, tells me that great unanimity reigns in the convention.
Connecticut, it is pretty certain, will decide also in the affirmative by a large majority. So, it is presumed, will New Hampshire; though her convention will be a little later than could be wished. There are not enough of the returns in Massachusetts known for a final judgment of the probable event in that state. As far as the returns are known, they are extremely favorable; but as they are chiefly from the maritime parts of the state, they are a precarious index of the public sentiment. I have good reason to believe that if you are in correspondence with any gentleman in that quarter, and a proper occasion should offer for an explicit communication of your good wishes for the plan, so as barely to warrant an explicit assertion of the fact, that it would be attended with valuable effects. I barely drop the idea. The circumstances on which the propriety of it depends are best known to you, as they will be best judged of by yourself. The information from North Carolina gave me great pleasure. We have nothing from the states south of it.271
TO EDMUND RANDOLPH.
New York, January 10, 1788.
