Madison's proposition would therefore invest him with a legal title to property which really belonged to others.

But this and other evidence of the real effect of Madison's proposal failed to move him, further than to cause him to declare that "all that he wished was that the claims of the original holders, not less than those of the actual holders, should be fairly examined and justly decided," Finally Benson of New York gave him a shrewd home thrust that plainly embarrassed him.

He put the question whether, if he had purchased a certificate from Madison, and the Treasury withheld part of the amount for Madison as the original holder, Madison would keep the money?
"I ask," said Benson, "whether he would take advantage of the law against me, and refuse to give me authority to take it up in his name ?" Madison evaded the query by saying that everything would depend upon the circumstances of any particular case, and that circumstances were conceivable in which the most tender conscience need not refrain from taking the benefit of what the government had determined.
The debate on Madison's discrimination amendment lasted from the eleventh to the twenty-second day of February--Washington's birthday.

The House did honor to the day when it rejected Madison's motion by the crushing vote of 36 to 13.

With that, his pretensions to the leadership of the House quite disappeared.
The assumption of state debts was the subject of a debate in committee of the whole which lasted from the twenty-third of February to the second of March.