PATIENT
Federalist No. 51
AUTHOR
James Madison, as 'Publius'
PRINTED
February 6, 1788
LENGTH
About 2,000 words
CHIEF COMPLAINT
How do you build a government strong enough to rule, and weak enough not to abuse it?
HISTORY OF PRESENT ILLNESS
If No. 10 asks how to live with faction, No. 51 asks how a government can restrain itself. Madison's answer does not rely on good people. Give each branch its own means of resisting the others, and tie each official's personal ambition to defending his own branch. It is a cheerfully unsentimental view of human nature.
REVIEW OF SYSTEMS
ANGELS
If men were angels no government would be needed. The task is to control the governed, then oblige the government to control itself.
AMBITION
Give each branch constitutional means and personal motives to resist the others.
DOUBLE SECURITY
Power is divided between national and state governments, and again among departments.
MINORITIES
In a large republic, the many interests make a majority hard to form on unjust terms.
TODAY
Do parties now undercut the branches' rivalry? Scholars disagree.
PHYSICAL EXAM — STYLE & STRUCTURE
- —The phrase 'separation of powers' does not appear in the Constitution.
- —'What is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?'
- —The aim was not a weak government. Madison wanted it able to control the governed, and Hamilton argued for an energetic executive in No. 70.
- —Justice Brandeis later called the states 'laboratories' for experiments.
ASSESSMENT & PLAN
Read the 'angels' paragraph and the 'ambition' paragraph. Every claim is tagged Settled, Disputed or Popular myth with a source, and both sides of the live arguments (do the checks still work, states vs nation) show at equal length in the full Study Guide.