Americans venerate the Bill of Rights today, but what did the
Founders think about the ideas that made up the first ten amendments to
the Constitution?

Those who crafted the document didn’t even broach the subject until
the fifth month of the Constitutional Convention, and the delegates
rejected the idea of a declaration or Bill of Rights. That’s despite
the fact that the idea originated with well-respected Virginian George
Mason.

The states’ unanimous rejection of a Bill of Rights in the original
1787 Constitution is a decision Barton College associate professor Jeff
Broadwater calls a “blunder of historic proportions.”

Broadwater shared his thoughts during a Headliner speech in Raleigh.
He focused on Mason, James Madison, and the developing concept of
judicial review.

The origins of judicial review draw special attention (video):

How do we explain this at least modest burst of judicial
activism? It may have been the logical result of having a written
Constitution (that was one difference between the American system and
the English system), but I don’t think it was the inevitable result.
France had a written Constitution, but the French never developed this
tradition of judicial review. The Americans, on the other hand, had
developed a habit before the American Revolution of arguing that their
colonial charters limited the power of the British Parliament. And the
idea that a higher law could bind the legislature had become a useful
tool to the patriots, and so that sort of way of thinking about things
established itself  by the 1780s. But that raised the question:
Should this higher law be enforced by the courts? Particularly in the
American system, when the courts would be frustrating the will of the
legislature that had been elected by the people? There were skeptics
who often asked — and particularly during the debate over the
Constitution — why a Bill of Rights was necessary in America? Well,
the Anti-Federalists who, of course, opposed the Constitution, had an
answer. It was necessary to prevent the abuse of individual or minority
rights. And once Americans began to think of individual rights or
minority rights, the idea of judicial review had a certain attraction.
And if laws were overturned because they conflicted with a Constitution
that the people had approved, well, how undemocratic was judicial
review, really? Could the people really complain?