Text analysis of James Madison Federalist no. 51 (1788)

The primary intent of Madison’s writing throughout Federalist “Number 51” is to articulate a view of republican governance that protects individual and minority interests through the workings of human nature. Madison’s thought repeatedly emphasises the importance of checks on governmental power, a factor that he views as crucial for the “preservation of liberty”.

Madison’s view of government can best be surmised in the quote: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary”. Inherent in such a statement is the value that Madison places on human freedom of action that is not contingent on government for it’s existence. Viewed from such a perspective government action and power can only ever conflict with, not supplement, liberty. To protect liberty from abuse of power, it is therefore necessary for as much autonomy between government departments as possible, and for political power to be divided up so as to avoid concentrating power too much in one local.

This is what Madison means when he talks of security from concentration of power lying in “giving to those who administer each department, the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachments of the others”. “Personal motives” being the key words that explain Madison’s philosophical linkage between human nature and the nature of governance. Far from arguing – as some of a socialistic persuasion may have been persuaded to – that government should seek to amend human avarice, and that governmental agencies can exist fuelled only by morality and good will, Madison was espousing the essentially conservative argument that government (is) “itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature”. It follows therefore that the ability to “oblige it to control itself” rests on recognition of human self-interest and fallibility.

When Madison refers to “external nor internal controls on government” being necessary should angels be rulers, it is not merely analogical – insofar as government exists in a Madisonian system, it exists in a limited, fractured form. Not only that way is the “private interest of every individual…centinel over the public rights” but also it reflects the experience “that has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions”. No doubt the “experience “ that Madison refers to being that of the colonists subjugation to monarchical rule, and the “auxiliary precautions” being based on the need for divided authority to guard against such individualistic abuses of power. Madison’s suspicion of unitary power does not end with his antipathy towards monarchy; within the context of an American republican system he notes the desirability of legislative authority over the presidency, noting that any increase in executive power to offset legislative superiority had the potential to be “perfidiously abused”.

For government to “control itself” is just as essential to the preservation of liberty as is it’s authority over the populace. To facilitate trust in the government Madison regarded it as essential that there be a “necessary partition of power” among governmental departments and that each agency be as free from outside interference in making appointments as possible. The theme is one of checks and balances, with each governmental department acting as a mediator against excessive power by any one agency.

It is notable that where Madison does make an exception to his rule of maximum practical and theoretical autonomy for branches of government in selecting personnel and pursuing their own will, it is in the judiciary – where he notes that the primary methods of selection should be based upon selection of “that mode of choice”, that best picks those “peculiar qualifications” needed for judicial work – irrespective of the ideal of autonomous governmental institutions – and secondly because the “permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them”. This is to say that judges’ permanent tenure rendered them figures influential across the entire governmental spectrum by definition. All of these are integral to Madison’s ideal of checks and balances that require equilibrium and dependence between rival governmental bureaucracies to ensure the health of the nations political system.

The intricacies of the central governmental system desired by Madison manifests itself further in the wish for a strong federal system, founded on two spheres of government, state and federal, acting as a “double security…to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other; at the same time that each will be controlled by itself”. Paradoxically – given his view of governance as a “necessary evil” – Madison’s position was that to guard against abuses of power and to protect liberty, extra layers of administration were needed at state level.

But oppression by rulers is one thing, just as important to Madison was the potential for oppression by one segment of society against another. Madison viewed the only solution to this problem compatible with republican ideals was to: “render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable”. This meant a pluralist society of diverse interests and classes, as well as meaningful civil rights. As Madison puts it: “In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights”. Sociological federalism was the goal; with the principle of plurality applied not just to the structure of US government, but also to the composition of interests that government would represent.

This confederation of interests within society was not just a function of the US as it was comprised in 1788, Madison describes the need for such a system to be recommended to “all sincere friends of republican government” should the nation expand. The reason being that as the territory of the union increased, so the federal structure of US government would guard against “oppressive combinations of a majority”. Madison regarded the expansion of the United States federally as a means of furthering his aim of a pluralist society of differing sects and interests that combined facilitated minority rights, in his words: “In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole of society could seldom take place upon any other principles than those of justice and the general good”.

The combination of safeguards on government and concern for the rights of minorities was deductive of one paramount principle; that “justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society”. Such linguistics once again demonstrates Madison’s conception of the relationship between government and theoretical principles of governance; that government exists not for the nourishment of material needs – or positive freedoms – but as a neutral arbitrator of a “just” society.

How Madison defines justice demonstrates his pessimism with regards to humanity – this evident in his evocation of “anarchy” and the “state of nature” argument when discussing the perils of untrammelled majority rule, as well as his insistence on rigorous checks on governmental power. Madison’s thought, though inspired by liberal republicanism, is ultimately of a profoundly realist persuasion, in part Hobbesian as well as Lockean, and a commentary less on the perfectibility of man, than his timeless fallibility.