The Federalist Papers (5 page)

In words that would gain a life of their own in the American polity, “Federalist No. 10” argued that “diversity” had to be celebrated instead of squelched. Factional differences were inevitable as a practical matter, and recognition of their constant presence brought a moral component, toleration, to bear on how a citizenry should deal with the nature of conflict. There was room and opportunity in America for all to get along. Admonitions for every age followed. Madison warned that “those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” Class warfare was always possible because of “the unequal distribution of property” and “interfering interests.” Likewise, enlightened statesmen would “not always be at the helm” to manage affairs. Madison’s answer to factionalism and conflict, like Hamilton’s but with deeper philosophical perception, turned on the proper structure and accepted routine of governmental operations.

Neither Madison nor Hamilton had been completely happy with the Federal Constitution that emerged from the Convention, and both saw problems in its makeup. But they had been delegates together in Philadelphia, and the refining processes of debate and disagreement there had turned them into realists concerning what was possible. The experience had taught them how to reinforce each other’s arguments through separate and not always compatible lines of inquiry. They knew enough not to get in each other’s way. Here was the heart of the collaboration. Both men accepted the same larger predicament to be solved. How, in Madison’s words in “Federalist No. 37,” could one combine “the requisite stability and energy in government with the inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form” (p. 196)? Wouldn’t citizens always disagree about where that line should be drawn?

The two major collaborators had different approaches, but Madison would answer these questions for both of them in the very next paper. He observed in “Federalist No. 38” that the legendary Greek lawgiver Solon “had not given to his countrymen the government best suited to their happiness, but most tolerable to their prejudices” (p. 202). Citizens could recognize their interests only through the customary forms available to them. The real question was whether those forms could be rearranged to serve the nation better. Expertise and artifice were needed. In “Federalist No. 51,” Madison would build the conflict of interests that he saw into the very structure of government by providing the separate branches of government “the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others.”

Hamilton and Madison were always ahead of their opponents in the ideological battle over ratification, and they had schooled themselves in the moderating theory of human nature that all good government requires. “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” Madison opined in “Federalist No. 51.” That nature was fallen, but not without possibilities. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison reasoned. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” Alas, there were no angels, and human participants could not be expected to act like them anyway. A tougher, more realistic arrangement of “opposite and rival interests,” had to supply “the defect of better motives.” The “great difficulty” in this balancing process was also clear to both writers: “You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself” (p. 288).

How was this program of control to be managed? Technique would replace temperament. The guarded blend of pessimism and optimism in “Federalist No. 51” is one of the most endearing traits of Publius throughout the collaboration. Consider the qualifiers in his reply to the problem just stated: “Happily for the republican cause, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the
federal principle
” (p. 292). What was necessarily and crucially “practicable” in the design of government had to be ”judicious” and carried to a limited but “great extent” through “modification” and “mixture.” The passage is awash in misgivings paired to a contrasting confidence that will thwart danger through “the federal principle.” Anxiety answered by expertise struggle with each other throughout the collection, and part of the fun for a reader is watching Publius win out over difficulties that are psychological as well as political.

The Federalist could succeed because it was itself “a judicious modification and mixture” of collaborators who understood and used each other effectively. Hamilton’s bulldog intensity and inclusive drive, Jay’s international flavor and aplomb, and Madison’s learned approach to political theory came together in common language that all three could accept under the one name of Publius. Belief in the moment cemented their alliance. All of them wrote as Jay did in “Federalist No. 2,” that rejection of the Constitution “would put the continuance of the union in the utmost jeopardy” (p. 17). There was work to be done, and Publius held the keys to communal greatness in his hands! This urgency held the three writers together; it made them greater than the sum of their parts. Hamilton, often impatient in relations, deserves special credit in his choice of colleagues. An overlooked attribute of genius consists in knowing when to call upon others to raise the level of achievement.

How did
The Federalist
transcend time and place to become a touchstone in republican theory as well as a guide for the United States? Three aspects of the pamphlet series turn this thoroughly American book into a universal text. First, the collected essays succeed as a comprehensive interpretation of the Federal Constitution. Second, they define republicanism effectively, culling examples from history to refine the concept. Third, they wrestle courageously with the riddle at the base of all government: namely, where must authority control and where should authority give way to the independent impulses of the controlled? Modern readers should study these three facets for themselves. At its best,
The Federalist
is a treatise on what political science can do and mean for any society. If calling it a treatise makes the book sound dry, the designation changes dramatically depending on where readers stand within their own situation. For some, the book has obvious panegyric or congratulatory significance; for others, it is a monody, a lament over lost or unattainable opportunities. Either way, Publius writes out important aspirations in human understanding.

The comprehensiveness for which Hamilton is largely responsible serves a number of ends that have been useful to later generations. The thorough, even dogged, reach of
The Federalist
to all parts of the Constitution provides a check on misinterpretation of specific provisions in it. To the extent that
The Federalist
posits a seamless fabric to be mastered, it reminds everyone of the strategic scale required for constitutional interpretation. Inclusiveness simultaneously illustrates the structural relation of interdependent parts, a reminder of the complexity of assigned tasks in the federal government. Then, too,
The Federalist
provides a language of celebration as it explains the Constitution. Publius naturally wallows in confirmative prose as part of his quest for ratification, and later supporters have not hesitated to crib from him. Each of these holistic traits aids judicial interpretation as well as general legal scrutiny of national problems.

The American judiciary looks to Publius’s lofty tones to bolster its own rhetoric, and it relies on his specific words in “Federalist No. 78” for the doctrine of judicial review. There we are told that the courts have the duty and obligation “to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void” (p. 429). The Constitution itself is silent on the question of judicial review; not so Publius, who thinks of this power as the ultimate guarantee of limited government. The Constitution leaves many aspects of governance to implication; Publius offers fulsome explanation. Others interpret the Constitution, but extensive commentary in The
Federalist
by two writers who attended the Constitutional Convention as framers provides unique authority. Hamilton made absolutely sure that everyone would see the scope of his project immediately. In ”Federalist No. 1” he pledges “to give a satisfactory answer to all the objections which shall have made their appearance.” He promises to include
everything
“that may seem to have any claim to your attention” (p. 12). Constitutional theory prides itself on seeing the whole picture. Often enough, its proponents find their controlling image of that picture in the pages of
The Federalist.

The second aspect of enduring success in
The Federalist,
its definition of republicanism, serves a wide range of political theory and debate. In “Federalist No. 9” Hamilton expresses his “horror and disgust” over republicanism in its ancient forms, “the petty republics of Greece and Italy.” Fortunately, modern knowledge in “the science of politics” has made possible a “more perfect structure” in current republics. The institutional innovations of eighteenth-century republicanism—innovations ”not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients“—include distribution of power into distinct departments, legislative checks and balances, an independent judiciary holding office during good behavior, and representation of the people in legislatures by deputies of their own election. More succinctly in “Federalist No. 39,” after dismissing
all
previous theories on the subject, Madison defines a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people; and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behaviour” (p. 210). But if the ideals of Greek and Roman republics were corrupt in practice, what did the definitions of Hamilton and Madison mean for actual practice by a republic in the modern world?

Publius was not always sure, but his need for the definition flowed from a further assumption. Only a “strictly republican” form of government would tally with “the genius of the people of America.” Madison would take up in earnest the deeper problem in “Federalist No. 39.” His task here was to convince Americans that a government with both federal and national components could still be termed “strictly republican” because the new Constitution left supreme authority in the people. Other so-called republics—including Holland, Poland, and England—had fallen short in this regard. Madison was quite insistent on the point and its extent. “It is
essential
to such a government,” he wrote, “that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favoured class of it” (p. 210). But this definition raised an unresolved worry in
The Federalist.
What, after all, was to be the proper role of the people in the performance of government, and would they accept necessary limitations on their authority? Publius hesitates over the questions, and his squeamishness leads into the third universal claim of
The Federalist
on modern sensibilities. What was the connection between the authority of government and the liberty of the people? How should deference and democracy come together?

Not very long after ratification, Madison would reveal just how troubled the framers’ invocations of the people had been in 1787. How could their proposal for a much stronger government also produce a freer people? Why wasn’t this a contradiction in terms, as many anti-federalists would claim? “Every word of [the Constitution],” Madison revealed in 1792, “decides a question between power and liberty.”
⁷
Every
word? The claim could be true only in the knowledge of a
complete
structure that kept everything in place and only if power and liberty were to be held in eternal tension with each other. Publius would wrestle with the role of the people more than any other problem of government. Hamilton, always in favor of stronger authority, openly feared emphasis on the people’s rights as early as “Federalist No. 1.” The people’s “zeal for liberty” was “more ardent than enlightened,” he would write again in “Federalist No. 26” (p. 140). What was wanted from the people—and Hamilton would put it in capital letters in ”Federalist No. 22”—was their “CONSENT” (p. 124). Their role was to receive. They agreed to be governed in the right way. Hamilton would hope against hope in “Federalist No. 35” that the lower orders in society would simply defer to the upper class in government as their “natural patron and friend.”

More thoughtful, Madison pinned his own hopes of control on the structured dispersal of representation and the check that a detached Senate of worthies would exercise over the more popular House of Representatives, but he was just as worried. He acknowledged in “Federalist No. 49” that the people were given to passions more quickly than reason and that those passions “ought to be controlled and regulated by the government” (p. 283). Yet he was just as convinced in ”Federalist No. 37” that there could be no justice in society without liberty. The greatest problem in the Convention and, hence for Publius, involved “combining the requisite stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to liberty, and to the republican form” (p. 196). If there was acrimony over these combinations, it was because people would diverge over “the difficulty of mingling them together in their due proportions.” Popular government could be consensual only if power was placed in “a number of hands” and if the powerful were “kept in dependence on the people.”

The interesting questions for modern readers revolve around these variables in defining and maintaining a truly republican government. Have the due proportions between power and liberty been maintained in the modern nation state? Are the far more powerful and isolated leaders of today kept in dependence on the people? Has the evolution of the American empire, a phrase used often by both Hamilton and Madison, changed the meaning and definition of republicanism itself? The delineations of republicanism, power, and liberty in
The Federalist
are tools for testing the health of any government. A reason for reading with care lies here. If Publius can insist that “mingling” power and liberty is a balance difficult to achieve, the modern reader should join him in searching the fragile dynamics in that difficulty. Balances are susceptible to the unfolding of circumstance. One of many admonitions from Publius would come over this issue of maintenance. In “Federalist No. 48,” he warns all future citizens that “a mere demarkation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands” (p. 279).