did the original constitution have a bill of rights
On September 12, George Mason of Virginia suggested the addition of a Bill of Rights to the Constitution modeled on previous state declarations, and Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts made it a formal motion. However, the motion was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations after only a brief discussion. Madison, then an opponent of a Bill of Rights, later explained the vote by calling the state bills of rights ``parchment barriers'' that offered only an illusion of protection against tyranny. Another delegate, James Wilson of Pennsylvania, later argued that the act of enumerating the rights of the people would have been dangerous, because it would imply that rights not explicitly mentioned did not exist; Hamilton echoed this point in Federalist No. 84. Because Mason and Gerry had emerged as opponents of the proposed new Constitution, their motion--introduced five days before the end of the convention--may also have been seen by other delegates as a delaying tactic. The quick rejection of this motion, however, later endangered the entire ratification process. Author David O. Stewart characterizes the omission of a Bill of Rights in the original Constitution as ``a political blunder of the first magnitude'' while historian Jack N. Rakove calls it ``the one serious miscalculation the framers made as they looked ahead to the struggle over ratification''.
United States Bill of Rights