Madison Federalist #10

2 Pages 615 Words

Federalist Number 10


Throughout our lives we have been raised to believe in democratic government by the people and for the people. We are taught that a person’s view and will are expressed through majority rule. However the truth is the founders of our very constitution were very fearful of majority rule. One man in particular was James Madison, who composed Federalist #10 in order to deal with the possible problematic interest groups label factions. Madison was concerned that this new nation was being torn apart by factions with non legitimate views, which directly threatened the public good. According to Madison a faction was a group of people united and activated by a common desire for certain fervors and interests. The concern was however those factions were a direct result from the different classes that exist within our society, and that class was determined by amount of land owned. This was a problem due to the massive amount of land throughout the nation that poor farmers owned, which created this idea that since they were in the same social level they would have similar interest and ideas. They feared this since now the rich land owners were not at risk, given that they were the minority group. And according to Madison an overbearing majority will end up destroying the rights of others.
However Madison knew that liberty could not be destroyed. He knew that the main object of the government was to not destroy the “diversity in the faculties of men,” but to protect these very abilities or capacities. Madison knew that he would not be able to “cure” a faction completely, and the idea of controlling one opinion was thought of as non democratic itself. He also knew that equalizing property was not an option since that would undermine the “right of property”. The fact is taking away liberty or equalizing property was simply out of the question, and would be a complete heresy. So instead of attempting to elimina...