The Same Subject Continued: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection

James Madison

Friday, November 23, 1787

Federalist No. 10 goes a long way in describing the underlying considerations for the proposed Constitutional construct of the Federal government over the Union of all thirteen States. Madison opens Federalist No. 10 with: 

“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.”

This opening statement lays the foundational argument for the proposed Republic, for which Madison offers supporting evidence throughout. Initially, however, Madison offers some agreement with anti-Federalist claims that the colonial, "governments [were] to unstable, that public good [was] disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures [were] 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." For Madison, however, most of the failings of the government constructs of the time could be traced to, "a factious spirit [that had] tainted … public administrations."

Madison defined factions as, "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." Madison understood men have, "a zeal for different opinions," regarding religion, government, and most all other topics of interest. Madison was concerned that men, seeking to further implement or see the implementation of their opinions, would latch on to different leaders, whose nature would divide and inflame mutual animosities. Under these conditions opposition groups would be far more likely, "to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for the common good."

Madison saw two remedies to, "curing the mischiefs of faction," by either removing the cause or by controlling the effects. 

Madison quickly dismissed the first remedy. Removing the cause was, "worse than the disease." Madison offered an analogy to help understand this point.

"Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an ailment 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."

Faction is a derivative of liberty. When men are free, when they have self-determination, and their rights are unabridged, they will think for themselves. Each will reach conclusions on religion, governance, and a mirid of other social, political, and economic issues. Madison put it this way, "As long as the reason of man continues to be fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed." Men who are likeminded will form into groups, some groups will be necessarily in opposition to one another. The very existences of these groups is not inherently dangerous, but when these groups take action, or elect representatives that take actions that negatively impact the rights of their opposition, a faction is born.

For Madison, the first objective of government was to protect liberty, so removing the cause of factions, which is liberty, would be antithetical to the purpose government. Thus, the remedy for factions would need to be the control of the effects of factions.

Controlling the effects of a faction, in democracy works in only one direction. The power of the majority to defeat minority factions by majority rule. When minority factions seek to infringe upon the rights of the majority, in a democracy, the majority can preserve its rights through the regular vote, stamping out the aggression of the minority. But democracy fails in the prevention of a factious majority. When the majority seeks to infringe upon the rights of the minority, the regular vote approves the unjust act and lends the legitimacy government to the oppression.

Madison said it this way.

“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.”

How, then, can the oppression of the majority be managed in a system that secures the sovereignty and liberty of the individual? For Madison, the answer was a Republic. 

“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.”

The Republic held two key attributes that made it superior to a democracy: the delegation of the government  to a small number of elected representatives and the greater size a Republic could attain.

Elected representatives were meant to be filters. Effectively, having elected representatives made it possible, "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."

For elected representatives, their views are supposed be influenced by the constituents they serve, and not by their own personal interests. This means that the views of the constituency are gathered, distilled, and refined into an almost uniform set of policy goals that are given life through the person they have elected to represent them. This part of the process should distill out some portion of the factious opinions within the constituency. From there, the representative becomes but one vote in the Congress, where policy debate should continue to smooth out the rough edges of any remaining factious views that may be infecting the body.  

Editorial Note from the Author: Elected representatives are only as good as the demographic and ideological differences of their constituency. Where likeminded people congregate in great numbers, such that minority opinion has no voice, we tend back toward democracy and away from the Republic. The factious nature of homogenous bodies tend toward the election of representatives that share those factious views. Without meaningful diversity of thought in the communities from which representatives are elected, there can be no smoothing of factious edges. These more radical ideas are then the starting point from which Federal policy debate begin. Each faction more intolerantly tied to their starting positions, each more opposed to relenting from the factious views of their constituents who have given them power. And from there we rock back and forth with each election cycle, with a majority of Republicans or a majority of Democrats pushing their own factious agendas. The smoothing out of factious views, the comprehension and adherence to the public good, the concern for the rights of all citizens no longer appears to be at the heart of Federal Governance.