As of this Saturday in mid-July, the familiar enumeration of specific powers in Article I § 8 and prohibitions in Sections 9 & 10 didn’t exist. Delegates had agreed to a single executive, a judiciary, a House of Representatives proportioned by population, and little else. From Madison’s notes it appears that most delegates assumed the new government would act only on the people, and not the states. Without knowing if the new government was to act on just the people (a national government) or the people plus the states (mixed national and federal), today’s proceedings were somewhat murky and confusing...