Leader in Mount Kisco

James Madison didn’t originate the idea of checks and balances for limiting government power, but he helped push it farther than anyone else before or since. Previous political thinkers, citing British experience, had talked about checks and balances with a monarch in the mix, but Madison helped apply the principle to a republic. Contrary to such respected thinkers as Baron de Montesquieu, Madison insisted checks and balances could help protect liberty in a large republic.

Madison didn’t have a grand vision of liberty like Jefferson, but he acquired practical insights about how to protect liberty. Madison, recalled William Pierce, a Georgia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who, “blends together the profound politician, with the Scholar. In the management of every great question he evidently took the lead in the Convention, and tho’ he cannot be called an Orator, he is a most agreeable, eloquent, and convincing Speaker. From a spirit of industry and application, which he possesses in a most imminent degree, he always comes forward the best informed Man of any point in debate . . . a Gentleman of great modesty,—with a remarkably sweet temper.”