Madison’s View Of American Government
...to realize the goods of liberty and security. Madison argued that the sheer size of the new American republic made such injustices less likely. In pure democracies, such as ancient Athens, individuals quickly discovered common interests, formed factions, and oppressed their fellow citizens. The great diversity of interests and groups in the new American republic worked against a mob acting in unison. A farmer in Massachusetts and another in Virginia might not agree that creditors were Satan’s henchmen. Even if they did share that thought, acting on their common hope of renouncing debts would be immensely complicated. Madison worried about majorities abusing minorities; he did not fear that minorities could exploit “the greater number.” Here Madison erred. Every day in the United States small minorities—for example, those who benefit from owning or working for the sugar industry—extract millions of dollars from the mass of consumers by virtue of trade protection. Striving for such privileges is so common that scholars have given it a name, rent seeking. Madison did not see that minorities could exploit majorities when the benefits of government action to those minorities were huge and the costs to each individual in the majority were small. Madison emphasized that the United States would have a representative government rather than a pure democracy. He had little sympathy for the “theoretic politicians” who supported the direct rule of the people. In pure democracies nothing would limit the majority’s abuse of a “weaker party, or the obnoxious individual.” Madison’s indictment is stark: “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.” The delegation of the people’s power to representatives, on the other hand, would “refine and enlarge the public views” and dampen the vicious passions that had destroyed so many republics of the past. Giving the people an indirect voice in making the laws, Madison concluded, would more likely serve the public good than would direct democracy. Madison also spoke of the need for “auxiliary precautions” in the Constitution to limit government and protect freedom. The most important one was the division and balancing of powers. Madison and the other Framers of the Constitution feared the gradual concentration of power in one branch of government. His solution to this danger was entirely pragmatic: the leaders of each branch must have “the necessary constitutional means, and personal motives, to resist encroachment of the…others. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Madison’s invitation to struggle among the branches has worked imperfectly in recent years. Congress has partially restrained the “imperial presidency” of Kennedy and Nixon; the states have done less well at restraining an “imperial” Washington establishment. Congress has delegated too much of its authority to the executive branch where unaccountable bureaucrats make policy outside the rule of law. Madison also insisted that t...