This article features two documents which can serve as a starting point for a lesson on public service while students debate the amount of pay that public servants should receive. These are: (1) the printed draft of the Constitution showing George Washington's handwritten corrections that eliminated state payments and included the phrase "to be paid out of the Treasury of the United States"; and (2) the Schedule of the Compensation of the Senate of the United States, dated March 4, 1791, which was the result of painstaking debates by the first Congress as to the amount of congressional pay. These documents reveal the importance that delegates to the Constitutional Convention and representatives to the first Federal Congress attached to matters relating to public service and federalism. When discussing congressional pay, both issues rose to the forefront. (Contains 8 notes.)