The great desideratum in Government is such a modification of the Sovereignty as will render it sufficiently neutral between the different interests and factions, to controul one part of the Society from invading the rights of another, and at the same time sufficiently controuled itself, from setting up an interest adverse to that of the whole Society.10
This is arguably the most succinct statement of the republican problem ever delivered up to that point in history. Madison’s ability to perceive and articulate this fundamental question of government is one reason he has been remembered as one of the most acute political thinkers this nation has ever produced. Unfortunately, this desideratum (or need) is easier described than fulfilled, and nearly five years after the Americans defeated the British, they only knew of solutions that had not worked.
Unsurprisingly, the delegates who arrived at the Constitutional Convention in the spring of 1787 had very different views on how to solve the problems that plagued America. The most extreme alternative to the Confederation was supplied by thirty-one-year-old Colonel Hamilton, a former chief of staff to General Washington, whose prodigious intellectual talents combined with a natural sociability and cosmopolitan worldview to make him stand out in an era chock full of formidable men.11 As even his soon-to-be adversary Jefferson would admit years later, Hamilton was “a singular character. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in society, and duly valuing virtue in private life.”12 The energetic young colonel possessed a very sour view of the capacity of the people to manage their affairs directly, and his alternative was reminiscent of the British Constitution. In Hamilton’s proposal, a lower chamber of Congress would be elected by the people, but both the Senate and the presidential office would be filled by appointment, with those positions being life-tenured. So far out of the mainstream of thinking at the Constitutional Convention was Hamilton that his fellow delegates never took up his proposal for a vote—yet, as we shall see, Hamilton’s views of government would become much more relevant during Washington’s administration.13
On the other end of the spectrum were delegates like Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, George Mason of Virginia, and William Paterson of New Jersey, whose plan allowed Congress to collect taxes and created a new executive committee, but offered little else in terms of centralization. This proposal attracted the support of small state delegates, as well as some who would ultimately oppose the final draft produced by the Constitutional Convention.
Madison’s solution was embodied in the Virginia Plan, proposed by Governor Edmund Randolph but really the junior statesman’s brainchild. This plan effectively occupied a middle ground between Hamilton and Paterson. It differed substantially from the final version of the Constitution in many respects (e.g., by imagining a much more nationalized array of institutions that wielded much greater powers), but it nevertheless dominated the agenda of the Constitutional Convention and, in the end, served as the framework for the eventual Constitution. As a consequence, both exhibit key features of Madison’s thinking at the time, and represent his attempts to solve the republican puzzle he had succinctly described in his Vices.
Both the Virginia Plan and the Constitution retained the radical innovation of the Declaration; there would be no established, mixed estates within the new nation. How then did the young Virginian address the problems of factionalism that this had presented? Madison would discard another dominant theme of previous republican philosophy: that of a small, reasonably homogenous polity. It was Aristotle who had originally argued that a true polity had to be of limited territory, population, and diversity, so that citizens could communicate with one another, share knowledge of their circumstances, and know who could be trusted to run the government.14 The Anti-Federalists would come to argue fervently for this principle, believing that in anything but a small republic (as embodied by the states), the people’s voice would be lost to the desires of the elites.15 Madison had developed an opposite view. The experience of the state governments had disproved for him the idea that small states could embody the republican ideal.16 Diversity was inevitable due to the natural divisions between men; even a state as small as Rhode Island was rent in two by the dispute over debts. What was key, in Madison’s opinion, was how the government managed those factions, and the larger the sphere the more manageable the factions would become.17 In Vices, Madison asserts:
Place three individuals in a situation wherein the interest of each depends on the voice of the others, and give to two of them an interest opposed to the rights of the third? Will the latter be secure? The prudence of every man would shun the danger. . . . Will two thousand in a like situation be less likely to encroach on the rights of one thousand? The contrary is witnessed by the notorious factions & oppressions which take place in corporate towns limited as the opportunities are, and in little republics when uncontrouled by apprehensions of external danger. If an enlargement of the sphere is found to lessen the insecurity of private rights, it is not because the impulse of a common interest or passion is less predominant in this case with the majority; but because a common interest or passion is less apt to be felt and the requisite combinations less easy to be formed by a great than by a small number.18
Having abandoned this core principle of classical republicanism, Madison went on to modify another. An institution like the House of Lords had served the purpose of guaranteeing the rights of some sort of aristocratic estate, and indeed the general view of theorists was that a bicameral legislature should protect the “better” class of people. Madison turned that notion on its head: the purpose of a Senate would not be to carve out protections for the wealthy minority, but rather to create purely artificial distinctions within the government among the whole populace, so as to facilitate the combat of interests. This is not to say that Madison had no expectations for the role of a natural aristocracy; instead, he hoped that a better sort of leader would emerge in the national government, in particular the Senate.19 The point, however, is that all power would flow from the people, and only the people, but it would flow in different ways in different intervals to different points of concentration, thus facilitating what Madison anticipated would be a grand clash of interests and factions. As he argues in Federalist #51:
Whilst all authority in (the government) will be derived from, and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority.20
Thus, Madison believes that a “well-constructed union” covering a large geographical sphere could “break and control the violence of faction.”21 In fact, the two pieces fit together: as long as the government is designed appropriately, a proliferation of factions would actually be beneficial. The structure of government would channel their fights properly, and a multiplicity of groups would ensure that nobody gains the upper hand for long.
The implications of these innovations are profound, for Madison premises republican government not on virtue—a common theme dating back more than a millennium—but on a decided lack thereof.22 That is not to say that Madison expects men to be the villainous brigands that Thomas Hobbes envisions in the state of nature, but rather that civic virtue—generally defined by theorists as the capacity to put the good of the community ahead of one’s selfish interests—is an unreliable safeguard. Writing at the end of the 1780s—a decade when state after state, faction after faction, and person after person put their own interests ahead of the common good—this was less an assumption than a sad acknowledgement of reality.23 But Madison brushes this aside: let there be a congeries of competing, parochial interests; the more the merrier, in fact. Madison’s separation of powers—or, rather, the separation of powers that emerged in the Constitution after all the compromises had been made—would balance these interests, ensuring that the final product would advance the public good and respect private rights.24
Madison was not completely satisfied with the final draft of the Constitution, but considered