Federalist 10 Explains Why a Large Republic Tames Faction Best

Every few years a commission of distinguished people announces that it has found the cure for partisanship. The cure usually involves civility pledges, a nonpartisan panel and a bipartisan dinner. Partisanship survives the dinner. It always does, and a thirty-six-year-old Virginian explained why in a New York newspaper in November 1787.

The essay was the tenth paper of The Federalist, signed "Publius" and written by James Madison. It is the most famous of the eighty-five, and with good reason. In a few thousand words Madison diagnosed the disease that kills republics, rejected the two cures that would kill liberty along with it, and proposed a remedy that turned the conventional wisdom of political science upside down. The conventional wisdom said republics had to be small. Madison said the opposite: a large republic is safer. Nearly two and a half centuries later, his argument is still the best explanation of why American politics is so noisy and why the noise is, on balance, a sign of health.

Let us read it passage by passage.

The problem stated

Madison opens with the claim that frames everything else:

Among the numerous advantages promised by a well-constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.

He then describes the complaint he heard everywhere in the 1780s: that the state governments were too unstable, that the public good was disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures were too often decided "not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." He had watched it happen. In the years after the Revolution, state legislatures passed debtor-relief laws, issued paper money and interfered with contracts, and the losers were the creditors and the property-holders who had no remedy.

Then the definition, which every student of American government should know by heart:

By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

Three things about this definition matter.

1. A faction can be a majority. This is the radical part. In a democracy we assume the majority is the people and therefore cannot be a faction. Madison denies it. A majority united by a passion hostile to the rights of others is a faction, however many votes it has.
2. Faction is defined by its object, not its size or its label. It is "adverse to the rights of other citizens" or to the "permanent and aggregate interests of the community." A party is not a faction merely because it is a party. It becomes one when it aims at others' rights.
3. Passion and interest are both sources. People join factions out of economic interest, yes, but also from religious zeal, political opinion and attachment to leaders.

Two cures rejected

Madison then lays out the logic like a lawyer:

There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects.

And there are two ways to remove the causes:

the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.

The first cure he dismisses with one of the best analogies in political writing:

Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.

You could prevent all house fires by removing the oxygen from the atmosphere. You would also remove the people from the houses. That is the problem with every regime that has tried to end disagreement by ending freedom.

The second cure, making everyone think alike, he calls "as impracticable as the first would be unwise." Men's opinions differ as long as their reason is fallible and free. Their opinions attach to their self-interest. And their faculties differ:

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

Read that last sentence twice. The first object of government, in Madison's account, is not equality of outcome. It is protecting the different faculties of different people, which will produce different amounts of property. Unequal results are the natural consequence of free people using unequal talents, and a government that protects liberty will see them.

The latent causes, and property

Madison's conclusion on causes is blunt:

The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man

Religion, government, attachment to ambitious leaders, even "the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions" have been enough to set men against each other. But one source stands above the rest:

But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.

Creditors and debtors, landowners and manufacturers, merchants and bankers: each has interests, and "the regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation." And here is the problem. The people who make the laws are themselves interested parties.

No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment

Yet legislators judge their own cause every day. A tax law, a tariff, a bankruptcy rule, each is a case in which the lawmakers are parties. And he adds a warning that every reformer should frame on the wall:

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

You cannot design a government on the assumption that wise people will run it. You have to design one that works when they do not. The inference:

The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.

Minority faction is easy; majority faction is the danger

If a faction is a minority, the problem solves itself:

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote.

A minority faction can clog the government or convulse society, but it cannot carry out its plans under constitutional forms. The real danger is a majority faction, because popular government gives it the power to sacrifice "both the public good and the rights of other citizens."

So Madison asks how to protect the public good and private rights against a majority faction "and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government." That, he says, is the great object.

Democracy versus republic

Here Madison distinguishes two kinds of popular government, and the passage on pure democracy is unsparing:

such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

By "pure democracy" he means a small society whose citizens assemble and govern in person. In such a society a common passion will be felt by a majority almost at once, and nothing checks the urge to sacrifice the weaker party.

A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.

He names two differences:

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended.

The first difference, representation, works "to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens." Madison does not pretend this always works; representatives can be men of "factious tempers" or "sinister designs." But a large republic has more fit candidates to choose from and a larger electorate, which makes it harder for a demagogue to win by the "vicious arts" that succeed in small districts. The full distinction is covered in Madison Explained the Republic Versus Democracy Difference in Federalist 14.

The extended sphere

The second difference is the heart of the paper, and it is the part that reversed the conventional wisdom. Montesquieu and most writers of the age held that republics must be small. Madison argued that size is the cure:

Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.

The mechanism is simple. In a small community, there may be only two or three interests, and one of them can easily form a majority and oppress the rest. In a large republic, there are dozens of interests, regions, religions and trades. Any majority has to be a coalition. Coalitions require compromise. And a coalition broad enough to win nationally is less likely to share a single passion hostile to the rights of others.

Madison gives examples of the projects he had in mind:

A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it

A bad idea may capture one state. It is less likely to capture all of them at once. And then the closing line:

In the extent and proper structure of the Union, therefore, we behold a republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.

A republican remedy. Not a king, not a council of experts, not a suspension of liberty. More republic, extended over a larger and more varied country, with representation and a careful structure.

The strongest objections, answered

Federalist 10 has faced two serious objections. Let us state each at full strength.

Objection one: it is a defense of the rich. In 1913 the historian Charles Beard published An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States, arguing that the framers were protecting their own financial interests and that Federalist 10, with its emphasis on property, was the smoking gun. On this reading the "improper or wicked project" list, paper money, abolition of debts, equal division of property, shows that Madison's real fear was democracy threatening wealth.

The answer, point by point.

1. Madison's definition of faction includes passion as well as interest, religion as well as property, and minorities as well as majorities. A class document would not need any of that.
2. The protection Madison names as "the first object of government" is the protection of men's faculties, their abilities and labor, not of existing fortunes. That protects the farmer and the shopkeeper as much as the merchant.
3. The specific projects he named were real policies that had harmed real people in the 1780s. Paper-money laws and debt cancellation fell on anyone who had lent or sold on credit, including small creditors and widows living on savings. Calling those policies dangerous is not class war. It is the rule of law.
4. Historians examined Beard's evidence closely in the decades that followed and found that the framers' financial interests did not line up neatly with their votes. Beard's thesis is no longer the consensus it was. We discuss the wider charge in The Founders Were Not Just Rich Men Protecting Their Property.

Objection two: modern technology broke the extended sphere. Madison relied on the difficulty that people who share a passion would have in discovering "their own strength" and acting "in unison." National parties, national media and the internet have abolished that difficulty. A passion can sweep a continent overnight. So the large republic no longer tames faction.

This is a better objection, and it deserves a careful answer.

1. It is partly right. Faster communication does make it easier for a national majority to form around a passion. Madison's mechanism is weaker than it was in 1787.
2. But the mechanism was never only geography. Madison's remedy was the extended sphere and the "proper structure of the Union." The structure still works where the geography no longer does. A passion that sweeps the country in one election still has to capture the House, then the Senate, chosen in staggered thirds, and the presidency, then survive a veto and the courts. That takes years, and passions rarely last that long. Madison explained the structural half in Federalist 47 and 51; see Federalist 47 Defines Tyranny as All Powers Gathered Into the Same Hands.
3. Federalism multiplies the spheres. Fifty states with their own governments mean that a passion which captures one state's capital cannot automatically capture the others. That is the "particular member" protection Madison described. See Federalism Lets Fifty States Experiment, and the Constitution Planned It.
4. Variety of interests has grown, not shrunk. The country is larger, more diverse in economy and religion, and more varied by region than it was in 1787. Any national majority is still a coalition, and coalitions still moderate.

The verdict: technology weakened one gear in Madison's machine. The others are still turning.

What Federalist 10 asks of us

The paper has three lessons that conservatives in particular should take seriously.

First, distrust every proposal to cure faction by suppressing liberty. Speech codes, restrictions on political spending, and campaigns to drive "misinformation" off public platforms all promise to cool the passions of politics by taking away some of the air. Madison's answer is that liberty is the air, and the cure is worse than the disease. Citizens United v. FEC (2010) applied a version of this principle when it held that the government may not ban independent political speech by corporations and unions.

Second, stop treating gridlock as failure. When the structure forces a majority to persuade, compromise and wait, that is the remedy working. Our argument is at Gridlock Is the Constitution Working, Not the Constitution Failing.

Third, guard the parts of the structure that slow national majorities down. The Senate, the Electoral College, federalism and the separation of powers are frequently called undemocratic. In Madison's terms, that is the point. They are republican. They protect "the rights of other citizens" against a majority faction, which is the danger popular government is most likely to produce. The Senate's role is explained in Calling the Senate Undemocratic Misses Why It Was Built to Represent States, and how the structure protects minorities in Structure Protects Minorities Before the Bill of Rights Ever Does.

Madison's genius was to accept human nature as it is, ambitious, interested and divided, and to build a government that turns that nature against itself. He did not expect angels. He expected Americans. That is why the design has lasted.

The case in brief

1. Madison defined a faction as any group, majority or minority, united by a passion or interest adverse to others' rights or the community's permanent interests.
2. The causes of faction cannot be removed without destroying liberty or forcing uniformity of opinion, so a free government must control its effects.
3. A minority faction is defeated by the vote; the real danger is a majority faction, which pure democracy cannot check.
4. A republic checks it through representation and an extended sphere, where many interests make oppressive majorities harder to form and to act.
5. Modern communication weakened one part of that mechanism, but the Constitution's structure and federalism still supply Madison's republican remedy.

What you can do: read Federalist 10 in full, then look at how the bills your own representative supports would fare if a temporary majority wanted to override the minority's rights, and write to their office about it using the site's representative finder.