James Madison didn’t originate the idea of checks and balances for limiting government power, but he helped push it farther than anyone else. Previous political thinkers, citing British experience, had talked about checks and balances with a monarch in the mix, but Madison helped apply the principle to a republic. Contrary to such respected thinkers as Baron de Montesquieu, Madison insisted checks and balances could help protect liberty in a large republic.
If one must endure a central government, it seems hard to improve on the checks and balances provided in the U.S. Constitution which reflects a good deal of Madison’s handiwork. Stalwart republican Thomas Jefferson embraced it. He told Madison, his best friend: “I like much the general idea of framing a government which should go on of itself peaceably, without needing continual recurrence to the state legislatures. I like the organization of the government into Legislative, Judiciary and Executive. I like the power given the Legislature to levy taxes; and for that reason solely approve of the greater house being chosen by the people directly…preserving inviolate the fundamental principle that the people are not to be taxed but by representatives chosen immediately by themselves. I am captivated by the compromise of the opposite claims of the great and little states, of the latter to equal, and the former to proportional influence…I like the negative given to the Executive with a third of either house…”
Madison didn’t have a grand vision of liberty like Jefferson, but he acquired practical insights about how to protect liberty. Madison, recalled William Pierce, a Georgia delegate to the Constitutional Convention, “blends together the profound politician, with the Scholar. In the management of every great question he evidently took the lead in the Convention, and tho’ he cannot be called an Orator, he is a most agreeable [sic] eloquent, and convincing Speaker. From a spirit of industry and application, which he possesses in a most imminent degree, he always comes forward the best informed Man of any point in debate…a Gentleman of great modesty,—with a remarkably sweet temper.”
Like his compatriots from Virginia, Madison’s record was stained by slavery, an inheritance he could never escape. He tried several business ventures aimed at generating adequate income without slaves, but none worked. Ultimately, he didn’t even liberate his slaves upon his death, as George Washington had done.
Madison, a shy man, was perhaps the least imposing Founder. He stood less than five feet, six inches tall. He had a sharp nose and receding hairline. He suffered a variety of chronic ailments including fevers, diarrhea and seizures. “I am too dull and infirm now,” he wrote at 21, “to look out for any extraordinary things in this world for I think my sensations for many months past have intimated to me not to expect a long or healthy life.” The most distracting ailment, Madison recalled much later, was “a constitutional liability to sudden attacks, somewhat resembling Epilepsy, and suspending the intellectual functions.”
But he blossomed when, at 43, he met the 26‑year-old black-haired, blue‑eyed widow Dolley Payne Todd. One of her friends reported: “At Night he Dreams of you & Starts in his Sleep a Calling on you to relieve his Flame for he Burns to such an excess that he will be shortly consumed…” They got married September 15, 1794 and for the next four decades were the “first couple” of republican politics, keepers of the Jeffersonian flame.
James Madison was born March 16, 1751 at his step-grandfather’s plantation on the Rappahannock River, King George County, Virginia. He was the eldest child of Nelly Conway, a tobacco merchant’s daughter. His father, James Madison Sr., was a tobacco farmer.
Biographer Ralph Ketcham described Madison as “a sandy-haired, bright‑eyed, rather mischievous youth.” He had private tutors who taught Latin, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, history and literature. Although most Virginians considering college would have chosen William and Mary, it had a reputation as a “drinking school,” and in 1769, Madison left home for the College of New Jersey which later became Princeton University. Its library was well stocked with books by Scottish Enlightenment authors like Adam Smith and Adam Ferguson, as well as influential works on natural rights by John Locke and Cato’s Letters co-authors John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon. Madison graduated in September 1771.
He was drawn to current affairs. He devoured newspapers. He read more books about liberty, such as Josiah Tucker’s Tracts, Philip Furneaux’s Essay on Toleration, Joseph Priestley’s First Principles on Government and Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense.
On April 25, 1776, 25-year-old Madison was elected a legislator to help draft a state constitution for Virginia. His first contribution to liberty: a measure which affirmed that “all men are equally entitled to enjoy the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate, Unless the preservation of equal liberty and the existence of the State are manifestly endangered.”
Madison worked with Thomas Jefferson who shared his passion for religious liberty. The two men began meeting frequently after Jefferson was elected governor of Virginia. They both loved books, ideas and liberty, and they became best friends for a half‑century.
In 1784, Madison persuaded the Virginia legislature to enact Jefferson’s “Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom.” He defeated Patrick Henry’s proposal that the state subsidize the Anglican church. Christianity, Madison noted, “flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition to them…” During these debates on religious freedom, Madison got a key idea for protecting individual rights: “freedom arises from that multiplicity of sects which pervades America, and which is the best and only security for religious liberty in any society.”
Meanwhile, in December 1779, Madison had been appointed to the Continental Congress which, meeting in Philadelphia, performed legislative, executive and judicial functions during the Revolutionary War. The government was broke and financed the war effort with vast issues of paper money known as “continentals,” which triggered ruinous runaway inflation. Madison became the most articulate advocate of an alliance with France, and he supported Benjamin Franklin who was lobbying King Louis XVI for help.
Madison served in Congress under the Articles of Confederation, ratified March 1, 1781. It was an association of states. Congress depended on voluntary contributions, not taxes. If people in a particular state didn’t approve what Congress was doing, they kept their money, and that was that. Although states squabbled with each other, they were bit players in world politics, unlikely to become entangled with foreign wars. Amending the Articles required unanimous consent—the general rules people lived by couldn’t be upset easily. Voluntary cooperation worked well enough that the states defeated Britain, the world’s mightiest naval power, and they negotiated tremendous territorial concessions.
Madison, however, was frustrated at what he considered the irresponsible behavior of states. He objected to their trade wars and continued paper money inflation—a result of Revolutionary War costs. Devious New Englanders tried to arrange a monopoly on codfish sales to Spain in exchange for giving up American rights on the Mississippi River, which would have devastated people in the Kentucky territory. Madison believed things would be better if Congress could function as a central government. Just 12 days after ratification of the Articles, he conceived the dubious doctrine of implied power: if a government agency were assigned a particular responsibility, it could assume power it considered necessary to fulfill that responsibility even if the power wasn’t enumerated in a constitution.
On February 21, 1787, Madison and Alexander Hamilton, Washington’s former assistant who believed passionately in a powerful central government, persuaded Congress to name delegates who would revise the Articles of Confederation. Madison persuaded George Washington to attend the National Convention, and he served as presiding officer. This meant serious business would be done, convincing distinguished citizens that they, too, should attend. Benjamin Franklin would be present as well, lending his international prestige to the gathering.
Madison arrived in Philadelphia May 3, 1787. He was to be among 55 delegates from 12 states (Rhode Island refused to send delegates). The delegates included attorneys, merchants, physicians and plantation owners. Thirty-nine delegates had served in the Continental Congress, and they were inclined to seek more power than permitted by the Articles of Confederation.
A quorum of seven states was present by May 25th. Proceedings began on the first floor of the Pennsylvania State House. During the next four months, delegates met six days a week from late morning till early evening. Details of what went on were kept secret at the time. “I chose a seat in front of the presiding member, with the other members on my right & left,” Madison recalled. “In this favorable position for hearing all that passed…I was not absent a single day, nor more than a casual fraction of an hour in any day, so that I could not have lost a single speech, unless a very short one.” Madison was a major influence, rising to speak 161 times through the Convention.
Defying explicit instructions to revise the Articles of Confederation, Madison launched the debates by helping to draft the “Virginia Plan” which called for a brand new constitution. It described a two-branch national legislature. The House would be elected directly by the people, the Senate by the House. Seats would be proportionate to population. There would be a national executive and a national judiciary, both chosen by the legislature. Madison insisted the proposed national government must be the supreme power with a “negative” over state legislatures. Large states supported this plan. Small states rallied to the “New Jersey Plan” which aimed to revise the Articles of Confederation with a single legislative body where each state had equal representation. The “New Jersey Plan” accepted the principle that all acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the respective States.” There was a “Great Compromise”: each state would have equal representation in the Senate, the House would be apportioned by population, and money bills would originate in the House.
As for the executive, Madison hadn’t worked out his ideas before the Convention. The Committee on Detail recommended an executive who would be called “President,” be elected by the legislature, serve a single seven-year term and function as commander-in-chief of armed forces. Once delegates decided that each state would have an equal number of Senators, Madison became convinced that the executive should be elected independently of the legislature. He helped draft the final proposal to have the president selected by electors whom the people choose—the “electoral college.”
Madison’s collaborator Alexander Hamilton was the most outspoken critic of democracy at the Convention. His proposal: “Let one branch of the Legislature hold their places for life or at least during good behavior. Let the Executive also be for life.”
Slavery was an explosive issue. If the Constitution had prohibited it, Southern states would have surely bolted the Convention. Madison successfully pressed for a clause calling for the slave trade to end in 20 years (1808), and he kept direct support for slavery out of the Constitution. The Constitution provided that the census count slaves (“other persons”) as three-fifths of a person, thereby reducing Southern representation in the House.
The final draft of the Constitution, about 5,000 words, was signed by 38 delegates on September 17, 1787. Sixteen delegates had quit the Convention or refused to sign it at the end. It was sent to Congress which, in turn, referred it to states for ratification by conventions of elected delegates. The Constitution would be adopted upon ratification in nine states.
By eliminating state tariffs, the Constitution created a large free trade area, eventually the world’s largest, which helped make possible America’s phenomenal peacetime prosperity. Entrepreneurs could travel freely without the myriad tolls, tariffs and other obstacles which plagued business enterprise in Europe.
Madison conceived a limited government. “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government,” he explained, “are few and defined. Those…will be exercised principally on external aspects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce…”
The Constitution did attempt to limit the power of central government through a separation of powers: those who make laws, enforce laws and interpret laws should be substantially independent and capable of limiting each other’s power. The two houses of Congress provide a check on each other. The President can veto legislation, but he can be over-ruled by a two-thirds majority in both houses. Judges can strike down laws considered unconstitutional. Proposed amendments become part of the Constitution when approved by two-thirds of Congress and by legislatures in three-quarters of the states.
Yet, the Constitution established unprecedented government power in America. The Constitution authorized federal taxes which never existed before. It gave the federal government power to over-rule elected state and local officials who were closer to the people. Control over larger territory increased the temptation for U.S. presidents to become entangled in foreign wars, which had the consequence of further expanding federal power. There’s some irony here, since many people supported the Constitution because of dissatisfaction with high inflation, high taxes and other economic consequences of the Revolutionary War.
Madison accepted Alexander Hamilton’s invitation to help promote ratification in New York State. Between October 1787 and March 1788, Madison wrote 29 essays which, together with 56 more essays by Hamilton and lawyer John Jay, appeared in New York newspapers. The essays became known as The Federalist Papers. All were signed “Publius” after the Roman lawmaker Publius Valerius Publicola who helped defend the Roman republic. In July 1788, the essays were published as a two‑volume book. Madison seems to have recognized that by setting up a central government, the Constitution conflicted with ideals of liberty. Not until August 1788 did he finally tell Jefferson about his collaboration: “Col. Carrington tells me he has sent you the first volume of the federalist, and adds the 2nd. by this conveyance. I believe I never have yet mentioned to you that publication.”
Because the Constitution proposed to expand government power, there was substantial opposition, spearheaded by the so-called “Antifederalists.” They included New York governor George Clinton, Revolutionary War organizer Samuel Adams, Virginians George Mason and Patrick Henry. Respected pro-Constitution historians Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele Commager and William E. Leuchtenburg acknowledged, “There is little doubt that the Antifederalists would have won a Gallup poll.”
The Antifederalists presented a wide range of views about the Constitution. Most important: the lack of a Bill of Rights. Madison considered bills of rights to be mere “parchment barriers” which an oppressive majority could easily ignore. He was convinced that liberty would be best protected in a large republic with a many competing interests, where it would be difficult for a single one to oppress the others.
Jefferson stood with the Antifederalists as far as a bill rights was concerned. On December 20, 1787, he told Madison he objected to “the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury…” Jefferson added: a Bill of Rights is “what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”
The Constitution was ratified in Delaware (December 7, 1787), Pennsylvania (December 12th), New Jersey (December 18th), Georgia (January 2, 1788), Connecticut (January 9th), Massachusetts (February 7th), Maryland (April 28th), South Carolina (May 23rd), New Hampshire (June 21st), Virginia (June 25th) and New York (July 26th), but the Antifederalists threatened to campaign for a second constitutional convention which Madison didn’t want. He realized to gain needed support, the Constitution had to have a bill of rights.
After his election to the House, Madison did more than anyone else to maneuver a bill of rights through Congress. The House voted for what became the Bill of Rights on September 24, 1789, and the Senate followed the next day. State legislatures ratified the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791.
Madison was shocked at how fast the Federalists, led by President Washington’s Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, expanded central government power beyond the limits he helped set up. As early as November 1789, Madison opposed Hamilton’s recommendation that the self-interest of wealthy investors should be linked to the central government by issuing bonds—running up a big national debt. Hamilton convinced President Washington to approve the establishment of a central bank as a convenience for the government, and Madison opposed it because such a bank meant exceeding powers enumerated in the Constitution. Indeed, the Constitutional Convention had specifically rejected a proposal that the federal government charter corporations such as a bank. Madison rejected the doctrine of implied powers which he had previously advocated during his campaign for central government. Implied powers, he realized, would undermine constitutional restraints on government power.
Madison became nearly as libertarian as Jefferson. Both men praised Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1791), a clarion call for liberty which alarmed the Federalists. Hamilton unleashed nasty attacks against Jefferson in Philadelphia newspapers, and Madison together with James Monroe wrote counter-attacks. Madison denounced Hamilton’s view that the President should have vast discretionary power to conduct foreign policy. In 1793, Madison spoke out against the military build‑up sought by the Federalists. Three years later, Federalists wanted to suppress American societies sympathetic to the French Revolution, but Madison insisted they were innocent until proven guilty of some crime. Federalists warned that aliens posed grave dangers, while Madison introduced a bill which made it easier for aliens to become American citizens. Madison resisted Federalist demands for higher taxes. He denounced the Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) which empowered the government to silence, even deport critics. His was a crucial, courageous voice during the Federalist assault on liberty.
Jefferson won the 1800 presidential election, turning the Federalists out, and Madison became Secretary of State for two terms. Then Madison won the presidency twice himself. These years were marked by frustration as he was unable to stop the warring British and French from seizing American merchant ships. He stumbled into the War of 1812, and the British torched Washington, D.C. Demands of wartime finance spurred Madison to ask for higher taxes and advocate a central bank which he had once opposed. Madison was vindicated on one point, though: he relied on volunteers, not conscripts, and it was American privateers who ravaged the British coastline, forcing the British government to negotiate peace. London merchants couldn’t even get maritime insurance between Britain and Ireland.
Despite his inconsistencies, Madison outlived all the other Founders and continued expressing the ideals of republican liberty. As Jefferson wrote in his most poignant letter, February 17, 1826: “The friendship which has subsisted between us, now half a century, and the harmony of our political principles and pursuits, have been sources of constant happiness to me…It has also been a great solace to me, to believe that you are engaged in vindicating to posterity the course we have pursued for preserving to them, in all their purity, the blessings of self-government…To myself you have been a pillar of support through life. Take care of me when dead, and be assured that I shall leave with you my last affections.”
Madison’s time came a decade later when, in early 1836, he began suffering from chronic fevers, fatigue and shortness of breath. On June 27th, he wrote his final words, about his friendship with Jefferson. During breakfast the next day, he suddenly slumped over and died. He was buried in the family plot a half-mile south of his house. For all their flaws, constitutional checks and balances endure as the most effective means ever devised for limiting government—a tribute to the insight, industry and devotion of James Madison.
Essay from 1787
The Federalist No. 10
In this most famous of the Federalist Papers, Madison discusses how a republican government over a large territory would actually have the advantage of being more immune to the effects of factions and special interests than governments of smaller communities.
AMONG the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction. The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice. He will not fail, therefore, to set a due value on any plan which, without violating the principles to which he is attached, provides a proper cure for it. The instability, injustice, and confusion introduced into the public councils, have, in truth, been the mortal diseases under which popular governments have everywhere perished; as they continue to be the favorite and fruitful topics from which the adversaries to liberty derive their most specious declamations. The valuable improvements made by the American constitutions on the popular models, both ancient and modern, cannot certainly be too much admired; but it would be an unwarrantable partiality, to contend that they have as effectually obviated the danger on this side, as was wished and expected. Complaints are everywhere heard from our most considerate and virtuous citizens, equally the friends of public and private faith, and of public and personal liberty, that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. However anxiously we may wish that these complaints had no foundation, the evidence, of known facts will not permit us to deny that they are in some degree true. It will be found, indeed, on a candid review of our situation, that some of the distresses under which we labor have been erroneously charged on the operation of our governments; but it will be found, at the same time, that other causes will not alone account for many of our heaviest misfortunes; and, particularly, for that prevailing and increasing distrust of public engagements, and alarm for private rights, which are echoed from one end of the continent to the other. These must be chiefly, if not wholly, effects of the unsteadiness and injustice with which a factious spirit has tainted our public administrations.
By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.
There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.
There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.
It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.
The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties.
The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.
No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.
It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.
The inference to which we are brought is, that the causes of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects.
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind.
By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful.
From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.
A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union.
The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.
The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations:
In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence, the number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice.
In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters.
It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures.
The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary.
Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic, — is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will not be denied that the representation of the Union will be most likely to possess these requisite endowments. Does it consist in the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties, against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest? In an equal degree does the increased variety of parties comprised within the Union, increase this security. Does it, in fine, consist in the greater obstacles opposed to the concert and accomplishment of the secret wishes of an unjust and interested majority? Here, again, the extent of the Union gives it the most palpable advantage.
The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.
In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government. And according to the degree of pleasure and pride we feel in being republicans, ought to be our zeal in cherishing the spirit and supporting the character of Federalists.
Source: www.libertarianism.org
