In this discussion of checks and balances, Witherspoon may have planted the seeds of the all-important tenth of Madison’s Federalist Papers, written nearly two decades later, in which Madison explains how interests can balance each other in a government expressly designed to curb excessive power in any one person or branch. At the same time, Madison appears to have disregarded or discarded Witherspoon’s view that “the Roman Empire fell of its own weight,” a warning against nations growing too large.
