We find Madison, by many credited with the most logical mind of his remarkable generation, carefully planning, _long before_ the meeting of the Convention, a quite detailed conception of the startling proposal of Randolph. In a letter from Madison to Randolph, dated April 8, 1787 (5 _Ell. Deb._ 107), he speaks of “the business of May next,” and of the fact “that some leading propositions at least would be expected from Virginia,” and says, “I will just hint the ideas that have occurred, leaving explanations for our interview.” When we remember the remarkable manner, entirely novel in the history of political science, in which our Constitution creates a new nation and its supreme national government and yet keeps alive the former independent nations and their federation, the next sentence of that letter is of absorbing interest. It reads, “I think, with you, that it will be well to retain as much as possible of the old Confederation, though I doubt whether it may not be best to work the valuable articles into the new system, instead of engrafting the latter on the former.” When we read the detailed story of the Philadelphia Convention and study its product, our Constitution, there worded and later made by the people, we realize that Madison’s idea, expressed in the quoted sentence, was accurately carried out largely through his own efforts. Turning now to a later paragraph in that same April letter, we marvel at the foresight, the logical mind and the effective ability of the writer in later securing almost the exact execution of his idea by the entire people of a continent, even though that idea was the destruction of the independence of their respective nations and of their existing respective governments. That paragraph reads: “I hold it for a fundamental point, that an individual independence of the states is utterly irreconcilable with the idea of an aggregate sovereignty. I think, at the same time, that a consolidation of the states into one simple republic is not less unattainable than it would be inexpedient. Let it be tried, then, whether any middle ground can be taken, which will at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and leave in force the local authorities so far as they can be subordinately useful.”