[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 20, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H2740-H2741]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TRIBUTE TO JAMES MADISON

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kagen). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to the longevity 
and the genius of our Nation's Constitution and to one of the principal 
framers of this incredible document, James Madison.
  As a member of the Constitutional Caucus, I want to do my part in 
sharing with people each week here items about the Constitution that we 
think, in the caucus, are very important.
  Madison understood the almost insurmountable task that drafting a 
Constitution presented to the Constitutional Convention. After the 
Constitution was completed, Madison looked back at the ideals that were 
contained in it and marveled that that body as diverse as the 
Constitutional Convention could have produced a document that did so 
much to preserve liberty and provide for a form of government that 
would stand the test of time.
  He wrote in Federalist Paper No. 37 that ``among the difficulties 
encountered by the Convention, a very important one must have lain, in 
combining the requisite stability and energy in government with the 
inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form. Without 
substantially this part of their undertaking they would have very 
imperfectly fulfilled the object of their appointment or the 
expectation of the public.''
  This founding member of our government knew that there would be a 
tension between granting maximum liberty to the people and ensuring 
that the government was given the capacity to execute its critical 
duties. The greatness of the preamble to the Constitution rests in part 
in how eloquently and succinctly it enumerates these duties to 
``establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for

[[Page H2741]]

the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the 
blessings of liberty.''
  Madison wrote: ``The genius of republican liberty seems to demand, on 
one side, not only that all powers should be derived from the people, 
but that those entrusted with it should be kept in dependence by the 
people by a short duration of their appointments; and that even during 
this short period the trust should be placed not in a few but in a 
number of hands. Stability, on the contrary, requires that the hands in 
which the power is lodged shall continue for a length of time the same. 
A frequent change of men will result from a frequent return of 
electors, and the frequent change of measures from a frequent change of 
men. Whilst energy in government requires not only a certain duration 
of power, but the execution of it by a single hand.''
  He knew what we take for granted today, one, that liberty is an 
essential ingredient for stability and prosperity; and, two, that if 
government does not see its foremost task is to preserve liberty for 
the people it serves, then it will soon fail.
  In discussing the preamble we should pause to take note of the fact 
that our Constitution was the result, not of monarchial fiat or one 
man's scheme to craft a new government, but of a Constitutional 
Convention, a body overflowing with competing philosophies and 
conflicting viewpoints. But these founders found common ground in our 
Constitution. Madison was in awe of this reality. ``The real wonder,'' 
he wrote, ``is that so many difficulties should have been surmounted 
and surmounted with a unanimity almost as unprecedented as it must have 
been unexpected. It is impossible for any man of candor to reflect on 
this circumstance without partaking of the astonishment. It is 
impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a 
finger of that almighty hand which had been so frequently and signally 
extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.''
  Madison notes that the Convention's end product, our Nation's 
Constitution, would not have been possible under the normal conditions 
that prevail in most political bodies. It makes me wonder if such an 
achievement could ever be possible in today's fractious climate. But 
Madison chalks this achievement up to two dynamics. He writes: ``The 
first is that the Convention must have enjoyed in a very singular 
degree an exemption from the pestilential influence of party 
animosities, the diseases most incident to deliberative bodies and most 
apt to contaminate their proceedings. The second conclusion is that all 
the deputations composing the conventions were either satisfactorily 
accommodated by the final act or were induced to accede to it by deep 
conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial 
interest to the public good and by despair of seeing this necessity 
diminished by delays or by new experiments.''
  His observations on the crafting of this great document which 
establishes our framework for government and secures the blessings of 
liberties to ourselves and our posterity should serve to remind us of 
how careful we must be to adhere to the boundaries it creates for the 
Federal Government. His insight into the process behind the framing of 
our Constitution might also remind the Members of this body of our duty 
to serve the people and to maintain, as Madison said, ``a deep 
conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial 
interests to the public good.''

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