PATIENT
Federalist No. 10
AUTHOR
James Madison, as 'Publius'
PRINTED
November 22, 1787
LENGTH
About 3,000 words
CHIEF COMPLAINT
People with different interests will always fight. How does a free country survive that?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
One essay of 85, written to persuade New York to ratify the Constitution. Madison argues that the main danger to a free government is faction, a group of citizens united against others' rights or the community's long-term good, and that you cannot remove its causes without removing liberty. So the answer is to control its effects, and the best way is a large republic with representatives, where so many interests compete that none can easily take over.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
FACTION
Defined by conduct, not identity. It can be a majority or a minority.
TWO CURES
Remove the causes (which would destroy liberty) or control the effects. He picks the second.
DEMOCRACY
His 'pure democracy' meant citizens governing in person. A 'republic' meant representation.
SIZE
Extend the sphere: a bigger republic has more interests, so a majority is harder to build around one cause.
RECEPTION
Famous now. How much it shaped ratification at the time is disputed.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —Madison names the unequal distribution of property as the most common source of faction.
- —He reverses Montesquieu, who said republics had to be small. Hume had made a similar argument earlier.
- —'Brutus' answered in October 1787 that a republic could not work over so large a territory.
- —The 'republic, not a democracy' line rests on Madison's definition of terms, not on how the words are used today.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Read the opening paragraphs, then the 'extend the sphere' section. Every claim here is tagged Settled, Disputed or Popular myth with a source, and the live arguments (control vs reduce, big vs small) show both sides at equal length in the full Study Guide.