ABSTRACT
Any epitaph written for Madison would probably recall him as the principal author of the Constitution of 1787, of The Federalist, and of the constitutional amendments we know as the Bill of Rights. On balance, however, Madison's prior and subsisting doubts about the value of bills of rights seem far more interesting than his expedient reasons for proposing the amendments of 1789. Madison's initial discontent centered more on general questions of public policy than on matters of rights, and more on the failings of legislators than on the shortcomings of their constituents. Madison's new understanding of rights was also clearly based on his growing fear that fundamental rights of property were becoming increasingly vulnerable to abuse by legislators spurred on by the factious majorities they represented. Madison's resistance to the enumeration of rights was thus merely the opposite side of his fear that legislative power could never be confined.
