istration of the Government. These peculiarities were thought to be safeguards due to minorities having peculiar interests or institutions at stake, against majorities who might be tempted by interest or other motives to invade them.…
The result of this investigation is, that the terms “common defence and general welfare” owed their induction into the text of the Constitution to their connexion in the “Articles of Confederation,” from which they were copied, with the debts contracted by the old Congress, and to be provided for by the new Congress; and are used in the one instrument as in the other, as general terms, limited and explained by the particular clauses subjoined to the clause containing them; that in this light they were viewed throughout the recorded proceedings of the Convention which framed the Constitution; that the same was the light in which they were viewed by the State Conventions which ratified the Constitution, as is shown by the records of their proceedings; and that such was the case also in the first Congress under the Constitution, according to the evidence of their journals, when digesting the amendments afterward made to the Constitution.
ⅭⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅢ. James Madison to J.K. Teft.[1]
In the year 1828 I received from J.V. Bevan sundry numbers of the “Savannah Georgian,” containing continuations of the notes of Major Pierce in the Federal Convention of 1787. They were probably sent on account of a marginal suggestion of inconsistency between language held by me in the Convention with regard to the Executive veto, and the use made of the power by myself, when in the Executive Administration.[2] The inconsistency is done away by the distinction, not adverted to, between an absolute veto, to which the language was applied, and the qualified veto which was exercised.
ⅭⅭⅭⅬⅩⅩⅣ. James Madison to Reynolds Chapman.[3]
Perhaps I ought not to omit the remark, that although I concur in the defect of powers in Congress on the subject of internal improvements, my abstract opinion has been, that, in the case of canals particularly, the power would have been properly vested in Con-
- ↑ Letters and other Writings of James Madison, Ⅳ, 139–140.
- ↑ The marginal note in the Savannah Georgian reads: “This same Mr. Madison did so when President. Eds. Geo.” (American Historical Review, Ⅲ, p. 322 note 4).
- ↑ Letters and other Writings of James Madison, Ⅳ, 149.
