The Federalist and the "Experience" of Small Republics

Abstract

THE FEDERALIST PAPERS, written as contributions to the debates over ratification of the Federal Constitution, have long been considered the standard exegesis of that constitution. No other work in the history of American political thought has received so thorough a review from so many different sources as has this series of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay under the nom de plume, Publius. Within the body of literature which has grown up around the papers the greatest attention has been given to Madison's famous argument regarding faction contained in essay number ten. The general thrust of Madison's reasoning is well known even to the most casual students of American political traditions. As supplemented by the almost equally famous essay number fifty-one, it is taken as the standard defense of the United States Constitution against the pessimism of classical political philosophy regarding the viability of republican institutions. For Madison factions have always destroyed good government; human differences cause faction, and liberty promotes human differences; hence the problem is not to destroy faction, but to control its effects. This can be accomplished through a system of checks and balances in an extended, confederated republic. These are the ideas which have preoccupied most modern critics, and they have been discussed primarily on a theoretical/ philosophical level.' While most of the critics have duly noted that Publius was, after all, writing a series of political pamphlets in an