“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.”
In his Federalist Essay No. 10, James Madison writes of the necessity for a government designed by the people to help the people. In this quote, Madison is describing how a government begins to fail in its role. In short, he is saying that when a government begins to deny or fight against liberty, it is “diseased” for it has begun to cease of being any benefit to the people whatsoever. Madison writes this not to attack other governments, but to state the necessary avoidance of these issues by the government of the United States. This is a list of how destruction to a country will come about, and by avoiding these plagues, a government will continue to function and benefit the people.
“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.”
Madison makes it extremely clear in his Essay No. 10 that a republic type of government is far superior than that of a democratic type. He argues that through a republic, weak and corrupt leaders are far more likely to be avoided than compared to a democracy. A republic offers a type of safety net that can protect against the flaws of a democracy. While his idea is taken and morphed with that of democracy, it is for these reasons that a government in the form of democracy alone was not chosen.
“We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other -- that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights.”
In a successful attempt to display his ideas on government to the world, James Madison wrote in his Federalist Essay No. 51 that a government must have a separation of powers within it. A relatively new idea for government pioneered by Baron de Montesquieu, a separation of powers within a government allows for a series of checks; i.e. each branch restricts the power of the other two. Madison fundamentally believed that a government needed a separation of powers, for without it the government would fail to protect the “private interests” of its people. For example, should the executive branch failed to be checked by the legislative and judicial branches, a likely tyrannical reign of a dictator-like figure would ensue.
“But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Madison makes a point in this quote that while the government indeed exists to serve the people, it also exists to “keep the people in line.” When he says, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison is saying that without a strong government, the people anywhere would indeed fall into anarchy and thus chaos. It is the role of the government to ensure the people of their rights, and to protect against those who seek to deny or harm those rights. He points out that the threat often comes from within the government itself, and is a primary reason why a system of checks and balances is a necessity.
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