Did Mr. Madison, when he took his oath of office, as president of the United States, swear to support these scraps of debate, which he had filed away among his private papers?--Or did he swear to support that written instrument, which the people of the country had agreed to, and which was known to them, and to all the world, as the constitution of the United States.[29] But even if the unexpressed intentions, which these notes of debate ascribe to certain members, had been participated in by the whole convention, we should have had no right to hold the people of the country at large responsible for them. _This convention sat with closed doors_, and it was not until near fifty years after the people had adopted the constitution itself, that these private intentions of the framers authentically transpired. And even now all the evidence disclosed implicates, _directly and absolutely_, but few of the members--not even all from the slaveholding states. The intentions of all the rest, we have a right to presume, concurred with their votes and the words of the instrument; and they had therefore no occasion to express contrary ones in debate. But suppose that _all_ the members of the convention had participated in these intentions--what then? Any forty or fifty men, like those who framed the constitution, may now secretly concoct another, that is honest in its terms, and yet in secret conclave confess to each other the criminal objects they intend to accomplish by it, if its honest character should enable them to secure for it the adoption of the people.--But if the people should adopt such constitution, would they thereby adopt any of the criminal and secret purposes of its authors? Or if the guilty confessions of these conspirators should be revealed fifty years afterwards, would judicial tribunals look to them as giving the government any authority for violating the legal meaning of the words of such constitution, and for so construing them as to subserve the criminal and shameless purposes of its originators?