The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, Craig Deitschmann Read Free Book Online

structure that kept everything in place and only if power and liberty were to be held in eternal tension with each other. Publius would wrestle with the role of the people more than any other problem of government. Hamilton, always in favor of stronger authority, openly feared emphasis on the people’s rights as early as “Federalist No. 1.” The people’s “zeal for liberty” was “more ardent than enlightened,” he would write again in “Federalist No. 26” (p. 140). What was wanted from the people—and Hamilton would put it in capital letters in ”Federalist No. 22”—was their “CONSENT” (p. 124). Their role was to receive. They agreed to be governed in the right way. Hamilton would hope against hope in “Federalist No. 35” that the lower orders in society would simply defer to the upper class in government as their “natural patron and friend.”
    More thoughtful, Madison pinned his own hopes of control on the structured dispersal of representation and the check that a detached Senate of worthies would exercise over the more popular House of Representatives, but he was just as worried. He acknowledged in “Federalist No. 49” that the people were given to passions more quickly than reason and that those passions “ought to be controlled and regulated by the government” (p. 283). Yet he was just as convinced in ”Federalist No. 37” that there could be no justice in society without liberty. The greatest problem in the Convention and, hence for Publius, involved “combining the requisite stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to liberty, and to the republican form” (p. 196). If there was acrimony over these combinations, it was because people would diverge over “the difficulty of mingling them together in their due proportions.” Popular government could be consensual only if power was placed in “a number of hands” and if the powerful were “kept in dependence on the people.”
    The interesting questions for modern readers revolve around these variables in defining and maintaining a truly republican government. Have the due proportions between power and liberty been maintained in the modern nation state? Are the far more powerful and isolated leaders of today kept in dependence on the people? Has the evolution of the American empire, a phrase used often by both Hamilton and Madison, changed the meaning and definition of republicanism itself? The delineations of republicanism, power, and liberty in The Federalist are tools for testing the health of any government. A reason for reading with care lies here. If Publius can insist that “mingling” power and liberty is a balance difficult to achieve, the modern reader should join him in searching the fragile dynamics in that difficulty. Balances are susceptible to the unfolding of circumstance. One of many admonitions from Publius would come over this issue of maintenance. In “Federalist No. 48,” he warns all future citizens that “a mere demarkation on parchment of the constitutional limits of the several departments, is not a sufficient guard against those encroachments which lead to a tyrannical concentration of all the powers of government in the same hands” (p. 279).

How Should The Federalist Be Read Today?
    The first task of any reader must be to appreciate the organization of The Federalist for what it is. Hamilton presents his overall plan for the collaboration in “Federalist No. 1,” and he holds the partnership of writers to that understanding across the ten months of haphazard newspaper production and political adjustment. The breakdown of subjects covered by the full pamphlet series falls into six basic units:
    Nos. 1—14 discuss the importance of a strong union to safety
and prosperity.
    Nos. 15—22 describe weaknesses and problems in the current
Confederation.
    Nos. 23—36 explain and justify the powers required for a
more energetic union.
    Nos. 37—51 cover the Constitutional