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Madison’s Notes at the Convention

Madison’s Notes at the Convention, James Madison, 1787

Building Context: At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison kept a prolific set of notes on the proceedings, discussions, and debates of all the delegates. Published only after his death, these notes display some of the Founding principles that animated the Convention as it worked to establish a new form of government.

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Notes
Popular Sovereignty/Republicanism  
George Mason: “Argued strongly for an election of the larger branch by the people. It was to be the grand depository of the democratic principle of the Government….It ought to know & sympathize with ever part of the community; and ought therefore to be taken not only from the different parts of the whole republic, but also from different districts of the larger members of it….We ought to attend to the rights of every class of the people.”  
James Madison: “Considered the popular election of one branch of the National Legislature as essential to every plan of free Government. He observed that in some of the States one branch of the Legislature was composed of men already removed from the people by an intervening body of electors.”  
James Wilson: “He wished for vigor in the Government, but he wished that vigorous authority to flow immediately from the legitimate source of all authority. The Government ought to possess not only, first, the force, but, secondly, the mind or sense of the people at large.”  
Limited Government  
James Madison: “Said that he had brought with him into the Convention a strong bias in favor of an enumeration and definition of the powers necessary to be exercised by the national Legislature…he would shrink from noting which should be found essential to such a form of Government which should be found essential to happiness of the community. This being the end of all our deliberations.”  
Representation  
George Mason:  “Under the existing Confederacy, Congress represent the States not the people of the States: their acts operate on the States, not on the individuals. The case will be changed in the new plan of Government. The people will be represented; they ought therefore to chose the Representatives. The requisites in actual representation are that the Representatives should sympathize with their constituents; should think as they think, & feel as they feel; and that for these purposes should even be residents among them.”  

 

Primary Source by James Madison (1787)