Posted on 04/16/2011 4:30:48 AM PDT by Jacquerie
Madison sought a government with powers commensurate with its objects.
The people, not the states must form the basis of the new government.
Confer to this government the powers given to Congress in the Articles of Confederation, plus regulatory powers over commerce and taxation of exports and imports.
Veto power over all state legislation. (Under the Articles, states could render the laws of Congress null)
Thirteen Judiciaries and Legislatures superior to Congress was no way to promote republican freedom.
Popular government would be limited to the first House of the Legislature. Too much democracy is deadly. The executive should be appointed.
Neither Madison nor any other Framer posited a popularly elected Legislature as we have had for almost 100 years.
Several ideas, including multiple executives were floated at the Convention before a single President emerged.
The likes of Shays’ and possible slave rebellions must be addressed.
Either the general government must have a veto over state laws, or troops must be authorized to collect taxes from the states.
The people are sovereign. Let their representatives decide the issue.
Under the Articles, the states could and did ignore Treaty terms.
After Shays Rebellion, Madison expected MA to go off the deep end of democracy. The Convention could not happen soon enough.
Constitution ping!
Amen, save
Would that we had people as wise and good as at our beginnings.
... and 200 years later they instead elevated white trash bootleggers to some quasi-aristocracy and I'm still not quite sure they're over it yet.
West Virginia has the same problem, but at least their "aristocracy" has some legitimate historical basis.
A great source of info documents from 500 BC to 1800. Many of the links are dead but most can be found with a little further searching.
http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/primarysources.html
Agree. I shudder at the thought of another Constitutional Convention. It was moment in time never to be repeated. It may have been the last time a committee turned out a great product.
If the Framers were here today and we were sitting in a room with them, they would ask us only one question.
“130 years from today there will be a leader of a nation and he will say the following: “”all leaders of the Constitutional Democratic Party, a party filled with enemies of the people, are hereby to be considered outlaws, and are to be arrested immediately and brought before the revolutionary court.””
Do you know why we put the Second Amendment in the Constitution?
That leader was V.I. Lenin. Sounds like what the Democrats have been saying about the Tea Party.
Geeez...we’re sunk. The Constitutional Convention is EXACLTY the remedy we need and it’s, oddly enough actually in the Constitution (Article 5). Please don’t tell me you believe the R’s are going to ride in on their white horses and “save the day!” Remember Medicare Part D...where exactly is the Article 1. Section 8. authority for that.
Bring on the Constitutional Convention and don’t reply about the mystical “runaway” convention. That’s what’s kept us from actually having one for nearly a generation.
Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcileable with their aggregate sovereignty; and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for some middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.
Referring to the states as "subordinately useful" shows the kind of disdain for the state governments that we usually ascribe only to Hamilton.
Great post!
ML/NJ
Posting drunk?
Nope...don’t drink!
The States will continue to invade the national jurisdiction, to violate treaties and the law of nations & to harrass each other with rival and spiteful measures dictated by mistaken views of interest.
So let me get this straight Mr Madison:
IF the central government denies protection, which you hereby declare is its responsibility, of any subject State from invasion across the national border, then that State is "spiteful" and "mistaken" in defending its "views of interest?"
This thought sounds to me like a totally subjective reaction to the issues and events of the moment (various dissension among the colonies), hardly infinite wisdom for all time.
Our forefathers were admirable men, but hardly all-knowing.
Johnny Suntrade
Madison’s view,like Hamilton’s, was that states could be subordinately useful. You couldn’t get rid of them outright, but at least you could subjugate them in a way that was politically expedient. He says so right in this letter. In fact, that’s what “federalism” is—a national government with the phony pretense of a confederacy.
Nonsense. Lincoln preserved what the Constitution created. Washington marched troops into PA (personally rode with them, as did Hamilton) to put down a little rebellion against a whiskey tax. They’d have subjugated the rebel states just as Lincoln did.
As for protection . . . what you are talking about?
His ideas, like those of other Founders/Framers, continued to evolve over the decades since before the revolution. His proposals were far from spur of the moment.
No one walked out of the convention with the document he expected at the beginning.
Any attribution of "all knowing" is your construct, not theirs nor mine.
Jacquerie
“subordinately useful”
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That seems such an insulting phrase.
Hamilton and Madison both apparently had a shared desire to build a massive powerful federal government; the state’s be damned.
Yeah, Madison was one of the grownups who saved the US from dissolution.
At one end of the spectrum was William Patterson and Alexander Hamilton was at the other. The end product was, as Madison hoped, in the middle.
If you think the states were universally admired at the time, you are mistaken. They violated property rights, instituted paper money, imposed tariffs on each other, and ensured we would be in a constant state of cold war with Britain in the west. The states were so ill regarded, the Convention came fairly close to acing out the states altogether from the legislature. It was only the threat of a walkout from small states that brought state appointed Senators. Under the Articles, the states were only second to the framework of the Articles as problems that had to be corrected.
Hamilton, Madison, and so many others worked together to ratify the Constitution.
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