Revisiting the Constitutional Convention

I recently had the occasion to refresh my knowledge of the 1787 Constitutional Convention while reading a 1971 biography of James Madison by noted historian Ralph Ketcham.

The framers certainly got a lot right as one looks back two hundred and twenty five years:  checks and balances, separation of powers and a recognition of the need for a strong chief executive.  Underpinning these policies was a generally cynical view of human nature.  Building a government on projected good intentions was, James Madison and the founders knew from history, to guarantee failure.

Yet, surprisingly, Madison – the Father of the Constitution – believed naively, at the time, in the value of language to limit the reach of the Federal Government.

The Constitutional Convention, with Madison’s concurrence, rejected a Bill of Rights as being superfluous.  After all, to quote Madison, “in a constitution of limited powers, it was not necessary [because] the Federal Government had no reason to interfere with rights since none was granted to it.”  And, indeed, Article I Section 8 does enumerate eighteen categories in which Congress shall have the power to make laws. 

In The Federalist Papers (number 84), Alexander Hamilton added another argument against the inclusion of a bill of rights.  He contended that doing so “would even be dangerous… for why declare that things shall not be done when there is no power to do so?”

In fact, several states refused to ratify the proposed constitution absent promises by proponents to incorporate a Bill of Rights via the amendment process.  Promises were made and kept.  Thus, the first ten amendments were approved in 1790.

Yet, within that decade, Congress passed, and President John Adams signed, the Alien and Sedition Act which blatantly violated the First Amendment regarding free speech.  So much for James Madison’s and Alexander Hamilton’s assurances on the limitation of governmental authority.

The intervening two centuries have repeatedly shown the need for vigilance by those favoring limited government.  People in power are driven by the human impulse to expand their authority.  Our nation’s founders are hardly unique in having underestimated that trait of human nature.