Federalist 51 Quotes

BURR: Alexander joins forces with James Madison and John Jay to write a series of essays defending the new United States Constitution, entitled The Federalist Papers. The plan was to write a total of 25 essays, the work divided evenly among the three men. In the end, they wrote 85 essays, in the span of six months. John Jay got sick after writing 5. James Madison wrote 29. Hamilton wrote the other 51.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuses of liberty as well as by the abuses of power.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

In Federalist 51, Madison explained the essential balance between the civil society and governmental restraint: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections of human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”7

on Democracies: "there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that 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.

From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that 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. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.

Hence it is that 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 combination in the same hands of the power to make the laws and the power to carry them out is the essence of arbitrary rule by decree, the founders believed, guided by such writers as the Baron de Montesquieu, John Locke, and William Blackstone. For them, the separation of powers was key to the protection of liberty from such tyranny, Thomas writes. The Constitution vested all legislative power in Congress, all executive power in the president, and all judicial power in the Supreme Court and inferior courts, because the framers did not want to have those powers delegated to other hands, lest it bring about the “gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department,” as Madison put it in Federalist 51.

James Madison made clear in Federalist 51 that that this elaborate structure—today often derided as “ gridlock ”—was created to protect individual freedom against oppression by the majority or by powerful interest groups who exploit government power for their own purposes.

In 1788, in a burst of creative energy, Madison wrote twenty-two essays in just forty days, among them Federalist 51, in which he explained the necessity of partitioning power in the government. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” In the absence of angelic leaders, separating power meant that each part could check and balance the others. “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” he wrote.52

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 51 Whatever their proximate causes, the grave problems afflicting humanity in the 21st century are ultimately the result of a lack of governance. Ergo, the solution to those problems is to be found in appropriate governance, not in mere treaties between sovereign nations or in social or technological fixes.