t "Madison's republic is all about comfortable preservation -- life, liberty, and property -- protecting the safety and happiness of the people." Professor Marion explained that for Madison, it was important to protect people's property rights which were a result of the "diversity in the faculties of men." People all have different abilities, special talents, and things that make us distinctive. We can't get rid of factions by giving everybody the same opinions, passions, and interests. But we can make it more probable that our new republic would succeed if we encouraged these diverse interests and protected people's property. Professor Marion said that "property is the fruit of people's labors." By protecting people's property, you are encouraging them to use their faculties to effect their safety and happiness. Hence, when you protect property, you end up getting a safer, happier republic.
Madison was generally pleased with the Constitution that came out of the Convention, even though it didn't match his original vision. For example, one design element he originally wanted was a "Council of Revision" made up of the President and the Supreme Court who would have the power to review Congress's work before it became law. Now, the Supreme Court can only declare a law unconstitutional if a case is brought before the Court challenging the constitutionality of the law. The Supreme Court currently only has the power to determine if a law is constitutional. Madison would have given the Council of Revision the power to decide whether a law was wise. Professor Marion said, "This tells us what he [Madison] was shooting for -- what he wants to call into being to get us a certain way of life." He wanted a government that passed "wise" laws.
The rest of Professor Marion's lecture dealt with the addition of the Bill of Rights. I'll try to compress what he explained into a short paragraph or two. The Anti-federalists were opposed to the ratification of the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights. They argued that in order for people's rights to truly be protected, these protections had to be explicitly stated in writing. Founders such as James Wilson lead the charge in defending the Constitution minus a Bill of Rights. Wilson explained that the national government was only given specific, enumerated powers in the Constitution, and that these powers were delegated to the people. Hence, the national government did not have the power to limit people's rights because it only had those powers specified in the Constitution. Furthermore, he explained that a Bill of Rights can actually be dangerous if it leaves anything out -- if it misses protecting a specific right then the government could then violate that right.
Madison was never against a Bill of Rights, and he later played a significant role in getting it passed. He took the lead so there wouldn't be the "wrong" kinds of amendements. He also took charge because it was important to get the last four states -- Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island to ratify the Constitution -- these states contained 40% of the population. However, Madison believed the design of the government system was more important than a Bill of Rights. If we didn't have the right system -- a large republic and a representative system -- then you could have all the statements you wanted in a Bill of Rights but these would only be "parchment barriers." You had to design a system that would give the national government the powers it didn't have under the Articles of Confederation and this would allow it to protect people's liberties.
Madison actually had wanted the amendments to be inserted into different provisions within the Constitution, rather than added at the end (or put at the beginning, like in Pennsylvania's Constitution). The reason he wanted this was that he wanted the amendments to be placed in their proper context so that when people looked at them later, their meaning would be correctly construed. Roger Sherman and others argued against weaving them in because they believed this