In the March 13, 1791, note Jefferson sent Madison asking him to join him for “a wade in the country,” he also invited Madison to stay at his larger and more comfortable residence in Philadelphia. Jefferson had transported a large shipment of books to Philadelphia and was renovating space in his new lodgings to house them. His library would soon be open, he told Madison, and “you will often find a convenience in being close at hand to it.” Madison declined Jefferson's offer, having just settled into his “harness for compleating the little task” he had allotted himself. “My papers and books are all assorted, around me,” he said. “A change of position would necessarily give some interruption – & some trouble on my side whatever it might do on yours.” Clearly, Madison had chatted earlier with his friend about his planned undertaking. Jefferson understood that it was a fairly extensive research project and that Madison would need to consult some volumes from his collection. I believe Madison's “little task” was not the correction of the Convention Notes, as has generally been assumed – which would not require access to Jefferson's library or, in fact, the use of any books at all – but the much broader scholarly task he undertook in the “Notes on Government.”

Madison's inquiry in the “Notes on Government” led him on a journey far afield from Philadelphia and America, to the world of the classics as depicted in the great books of Western civilization.