Drawing from natural history, Jefferson reasoned like an anthropologist. People were conditioned by their surroundings, as he reminded Madison in the February letter, and societies arose in three ways: the Indian style of no government (a faulty assumption on Jefferson’s part); monarchies, predicated on force; and republics, which allowed for greater liberty, promoted happiness, and occasionally endured disturbances from below. These disruptions were worth the price of freedom, Jefferson assured, quoting the Roman historian Sallust: “Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem” (I would rather have hazardous liberty than quiet slavery). The most dangerous encroachments, he said, were those made by the state against the rights of the people.3
No doubt reflecting his exposure to the courts of Europe, Jefferson was concerned about the new Society of the Cincinnati, a league of Revolutionary War veterans that was limited to officers. Its membership was hereditary, and Jefferson imagined it as a model for an American aristocracy. When queried, he warned George Washington to keep his distance from the society. Seeing little likelihood that Shays’s rebellion was a herald of anarchy, Jefferson counseled that America should be more wary of a monarchical backlash. Or as he wrote to Edward Carrington: “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” Tyranny came from the top.
On this subject, he was rigid in his judgments. The difference between the American republic and the monarchies of Europe was the difference between heaven and hell, he told a fellow Virginian. Addressing Washington in late 1786, he had dismissed as “light” the “inconveniences” of the Articles of Confederation. Inconveniences? What could be a greater heresy to his friend Madison?4
Thus the erstwhile partners, still apart, routinely expressed their diametrically opposed philosophies regarding the dangers inherent in political society. Madison: Popular commotion weakened a republic. Jefferson: The people should stand guard against all encroachments on their liberties. Reflexive in their dissimilar outlooks, they agreed only that corruption was human.
Whereas Jefferson spoke out for majority rule, Madison understood how difficult it would be to restrain a majority from oppressing any minority. He told Jefferson that factional majorities were no different from the soulless mob, both of them unable to work for the good of the whole. In a similar sense, religion, which should have been a force for the cooling of passions, actually did the reverse, encouraging religious fervor (then called “enthusiasm”). Their philosophical conflict is again apparent in Madison’s reference to the democratic-sounding “sympathy of the multitude”—he was warning Jefferson about sheeplike behavior: when a citizen became part of a crowd, he often went against his own conscience. In these several ways, then, Madison challenged Jefferson’s defense of benign popular majorities, telling him pointedly that a “simple Democracy, or a pure republic, actuated by the sense of the majority,” was unrealizable.
With his experience in Philadelphia weighing heavily, Madison also sketched out for Jefferson his theory of the extended republic, which he would soon publicize in Federalist 10. To forestall the formation of dangerous factions, he advised spreading the unruly classes across a “sphere of a mean extent.” Scattered across physical space, “broken into so many interests and parties,” they would resist the otherwise natural impulse to coalesce as a dangerously large faction. At the same time the people would not be spread so far apart as to lose a sense of unity if they should have to defend themselves against an oppressive administration. Madison’s idea was to achieve a balance of political forces. As he explained to Jefferson after the close of the Constitutional Convention, a federal government functioned best as a neutral arbiter among contending interests.5
Here too we can isolate the influence on Madison of the skeptic David Hume. As scholars have long observed, the Scottish philosopher convinced him that in a large commonwealth factions were inevitable. But Madison was equally convinced that dangerous combinations were preventable. He had long admired Pennsylvania for its policy of religious toleration and could see how religious and religious pluralism might thrive side by side.6
In addition to Hume, when he wrote of factions occupying a spatial dimension, Madison reflected his engagement with Benjamin Franklin’s 1751 Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, a study of population growth and American expansion, well known at this time. Franklin’s focus was on productivity: as plants and animals flourished in a wide expanse, so would Americans prosper as they spread outward, married young, and farmed their land. In answer to a letter from Jefferson on poverty in Europe, Madison adopted Franklinian reasoning, arguing that America’s limited population gave it political advantages over the Old World: “misery seems inseparable from a high degree of populousness.” Indeed, in this case both Madison and Jefferson accepted the premise that concentrated urban populations were a key cause of human misery. Jefferson made a crude but effective analogy in Notes on Virginia: “mobs” in overcrowded cities did as much to advance good government across space as “sores” contributed to the health of the human body. Crowding and competition made for a delicate subsistence, slowed population growth, and impeded the pursuit of happiness.7
What Franklin saw in terms of “a general happy Mediocrity,” Madison referred to as the “sphere of a mean extent.” (The eighteenth-century words mediocrity and mean had the same connotation.) But Madison took Franklin’s argument a step beyond. Territorial expansion not only reduced social conflict, he said; it also checked the growth of political discord. Not only was it the case that Old World cities, manufacturing economies, the consumption of luxury items, and the unequal distribution of resources all corrupted governments, it was also true that factious leaders acquired their greatest sway in small, homogeneous, densely crowded societies, using what Madison called “vicious arts” to kindle class hostilities. Expansion was a means of reducing “mutual animosities”—it provided an emotional safety valve.8
Franklin’s theories may have repaired the perceptual gap in Madison’s and Jefferson’s thought. But when Madison told Jefferson he thought of the new federal system as a “feudal system of republics” with a weak central authority (hardly a ringing endorsement for the Constitutional Convention!), he reframed the argument once again. He predicted the emergence of collaborative groups within Congress that would eventually steamroll over unaligned states. It would begin with an amalgamation of the interests of the original southern states and their offspring (Virginia’s hold on Kentucky, North Carolina’s on Tennessee). Eventually, multiple-state alliances—shared identities—could develop and undermine the spirit of Union. It was not simply the North-South dichotomy that he saw threatening the longevity of the United States.
Madison granted that the Constitution was a “material” improvement over the “Confederacy of independent States” that had preceded it. But it had not corrected the problem that bothered him most: “sacrifices of national to local interests.” Abuses would occur even as the republic grew to occupy an extensive sphere. Majority rule was not enough to correct it; it would never be a reliable source of political justice. But Jefferson was quite explicit: “The will of the Majority should always prevail.”9
Trying to be both thoughtful and careful, Jefferson gave voice to his divergence of opinion with Madison. He was “captivated,” he wrote, by the compromise between the large and small states (unaware, perhaps, of how painful a defeat this had been for Madison). He approved the overall balance among the three branches of government, the reduced dependence on state legislatures, and the popular election of members of the House of Representatives. This last, for Jefferson, preserved “the fundamental principle that the people are not taxed but by representatives chosen immediately by themselves.”
As he noted what he disliked most about the Constitution, Jefferson sounded very much like George Mason and Edmund Randolph. “Omission of a bill of rights” worried him, and so did the absence of term limits for the chief executive: he predicted that the continual reelec
tion of the president would result in his becoming “an officer for life.” And for as long as America remained weak, a president might be persuaded to take money and arms from the European powers and become the pawn of one or another. For Jefferson, as for Mason and Randolph, the chief magistrate, as defined in the Constitution, resembled nothing so much as an elected monarch.
Jefferson repeated his argument as to Shays’s rebellion, which could not but have disquieted Madison. The Shaysites had provoked more alarm than was warranted, he said, and he invoked France, where in the three years of his residency three violent insurrections had occurred. In Massachusetts little blood had been spilled, which prompted him to do a quick calculation: “One rebellion in 13 states in the course of 11 years, is but one for each state in a century and a half.” To this he added, with an almost fanatical satisfaction: “No country should be so long without one.” And if his rebellious streak was not bad enough, Jefferson allowed that he would be perfectly comfortable promoting the cause of a second constitutional convention, so as to amend the first.
To Madison, nothing could be more wrongheaded. If the country was unsatisfied with the first convention, a second would find the states even less willing to reach compromises. They would dismantle the federal system altogether. Of this he was utterly convinced.10
“Can This Possibly Be Jefferson?”
By the time Jefferson had answered Madison’s post-convention letter, Madison had already written several of his Federalist essays, including the oft-quoted number 10. Hamilton had come up with the idea of the collaborative series, asking Madison, John Jay, and Gouverneur Morris to participate. Morris turned him down. Jay suffered a debilitating attack of rheumatism and could contribute only five pieces.
The eighty-five Federalist essays were printed in several New York City newspapers, then in two book-length volumes. Intended to be used in support of the Empire State’s ratification alone, the essays were to be signed “A New Yorker.” The addition of Madison required a different pseudonym, and thus was born (or reborn) “Publius,” by which name was meant Publius Valerius Poplicola, an antimonarchical Roman official of the sixth century B.C. Hamilton penned the majority of the Federalist essays, fifty-one, and Madison wrote twenty-nine. They were done so quickly, Madison told Jefferson, that one author had almost no time to review another’s work, or even to appraise his own, before the press demanded final drafts.11
Hamilton and Madison were an odd couple to combine on this project, given their common estrangement from the new constitution. Madison had watched as the delegates tore down his Virginia Plan; and Hamilton had considered that plan too accepting of the electoral process, blithely calling it “democracy checked by democracy, or pork with a little change of the sauce.” His only significant proposal at the convention was a half-hearted effort to strengthen the chief executive by granting him veto power over state and federal laws. He was shot down. Consequently Hamilton retreated from the debates, floating a few minor resolutions before letting out his displeasure in a perplexing six-hour-long speech on June 18, in which he pronounced a plan of his own and praised the British government as “the best in the world.” In Hamilton’s plan, senators (necessarily men with extensive landed estates) were appointed for life; and the single executive was appointed for life too.
Hamilton was even more distrustful of the American people than Madison was. He wanted the central government to be the strongest possible. His June speech was met with indifference, causing Samuel Johnson of Connecticut to quip: “The Gentleman from New York is praised by every gentleman, but supported by no gentleman.” Unlike Madison, who stayed on despite setbacks, Hamilton left Philadelphia on June 29 and did not return until September 2.12
Hamilton’s almost complete abandonment of the convention has never been adequately explained. He was hypersensitive by nature. Compromise did not come easily to him, and he was no doubt vexed when his biggest speech fell flat. He lacked the diplomatic skills needed to abide the constant give-and-take of the convention, and he informed Washington, under whom he had long served, that his continued attendance in Philadelphia would be a “waste of time.” Washington chastised Hamilton for his desertion and urged him to return to Philadelphia. When he finally did, he lent his support to a federal constitution that he termed “better than nothing,” later adding that “no man’s ideas were more remote from the plan than [my] own.” Nevertheless he soldiered up, called for unity, and gamely signed the Constitution.13
It was a short time later, in early October 1787, that Hamilton took the field with pen in hand. Writing as “Publius” was probably therapeutic for him, as it was for Madison, since neither wholeheartedly believed in the form the Constitution had taken. They found novel ways to justify the design of the new government, able to convince themselves that the “frail and worthless fabric” (to use Hamilton’s words near the end of his life) was more robust than they had earlier imagined it.14
For his contributions, Madison tapped his extensive notes on ancient and modern confederacies. Public debate spurred him on, and one antifederalist essayist in particular got to him. “The Newspapers in the middle & Northern States begin to teem with controversial publications,” he informed Edmund Randolph, “and one new combatant, with considerable address & plausibility, strikes at the foundation.” That writer, who signed his essays “Brutus,” made a strong case against any system of representation that encompassed an extended republic. It was after reading “Brutus” that Madison drafted Federalist 10, and he continued to debate this formidable adversary in subsequent essays.15
“Brutus” raised a concern that was common to the antifederalist critique: the Constitution created a government of “great and uncontrollable powers.” Its powers to tax, to regulate the militia and raise armies, to overrule state laws through the federal judiciary, and to increase its authority at will through the “necessary and proper” clause posed a danger to individual liberty and to the very survival of the states. But his main concern was that in an extensive republic the people would lose touch with their rulers as their rulers lost touch with them.16
Madison defended the extended republic by arguing that the distance between rulers and ruled actually improved the quality of representation: the scattering effect would make it impossible for an “overbearing majority” to exploit passions and impose its will. The representatives in Congress would be “fit” characters, whose views were “consonant with the public good.”
The notion of democracy has been made part of James Madison’s reputation as the “Father of the Constitution,” when democracy is, in fact, irrelevant to any understanding of his thinking in 1787–88. He disputed the idea advanced by “Brutus” (and maintained by Jefferson as well) that the only proper guardians of the public good were the people themselves—or representatives so sympathetic and beholden to the people that they mirrored their sentiments. Madison attributed little virtue to the force of popular opinion, as we understand it, instead embracing the social order that “Brutus” feared most: the creation of a separate, elite ruling class.17
Madison was not about to win over any antifederalists. Few of his contemporaries sufficiently understood the argument about diffusion, and fewer still bothered to repeat it in the debates over ratification. Even Jefferson did not seem to fully grasp its meaning at first. Not until the twentieth century did scholars, in rediscovering Federalist 10, transform Madison into a modern-day champion of pluralism. Downplaying his antiquated emphasis on virtue and elite rule, they presented the false idea that Federalist 10 was seen as something vital at the time it was written.18
The real impact of The Federalist is hard to measure. While many around the country claimed that the series, as a whole, was effective in demolishing the arguments of its enemies, all who made this claim were Madison and Hamilton partisans, writing to silence critics of the Constitution.19 Only a small number of the essays were republished outside New York City; their turgid style limited The Federalist’s appeal to a narrow re
ading public. A Marylander remarked that it was not written “as a pamphlet ought to be” and failed to “force the attention, rouze the passions, or thrill the nerves.”
Its main target was New York, but even there the series received mixed reviews. Melancton Smith, the leading antifederalist spokesman in that state’s ratifying convention (who was possibly “Brutus” himself), dismissed “Publius” as irrelevant. Friends and foes alike found the work tiresome. A Philadelphian who signed his name “SQUIB” wished “Publius” would “rest his arm and let the people draw their breath for a little.” Entirely unimpressed with the scholarly pretense of the windy essays, he let a bit of verse speak his mind: “His labour’d nothings, in so strange a stile, / Amaze th’unlearn’d, and make the learned smile.” “SQUIB’s” point was that the essays displayed empty erudition—the unlearned were bowled over, but the educated were not fooled.20
Madison made a point of getting copies of his essays into the hands of prominent Virginians, notably George Washington and Edmund Randolph. He was most eager to persuade Randolph to return to the federalist fold.21 Madison had written for the New York newspapers with Virginia in mind, knowing he had one dragon to slay: the sixty-two-year-old George Mason, who had circulated “Objections to this Constitution” among a network of influential men inside and outside their state. After reading Mason’s laundry list of complaints, Madison was hot under the collar, writing to Washington that Mason seemed obsessed with minutiae and unable to put a “proper gloss” on the text of the Constitution.22
There was nothing in Mason’s written objections that Madison and his fellow delegates had not heard from him at the convention. Madison bristled in the letter to Washington, because he and Washington were kindred spirits, and Madison needed to vent. Washington himself would never quite reconcile with Mason, convinced that his neighbor’s objections were aimed at alarming southerners about some imagined northern power play. No matter what the issue at hand was, fear of a predatory North was a convenient refrain that worked effectively in Virginia. Mason’s maneuver proved to be a major problem for Madison, who watched uncomfortably as his state divided into rival camps.
Madison and Jefferson Page 25