The Federalist Papers were a series of essays written by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. The were published in area news papers and were written to help convince the voters to ratify the constitution. Some believe it was also the intent of the writers to help influence future interpretation of the constitution. In other words, they were written to give insight into why the constitution and the government were set up the way that they were. Federalist Paper No. 10 was written by James Madison. In it he is trying to convince the people of New York about the advantages of a democratic republic. Madison wanted to let the people know that a large republic would work. In fact, not only would it work, but that it would work better then a small republic. A Large republic had never been tried before. This was a completely new idea.
James Madison stars off by talking about factions. He did not like factions at all. He had a complete mistrust of them. Factions today are also called special interest groups, unions or lobbyist. There had also been several complaints from citizens about the possibility of there being factions under the new Union. This paper was written to show that factions could be controlled in a large republic.
In Federalist No. 10 James Madison gives us a great definition of a faction. He says: "By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community."
So a faction is a group of people, whether large or small, that share a common interest or belief. And who have no regard for the rights or beliefs of other individuals or society as a whole. Their only interest is to assert their agenda or plans.
Now while Madison was greatly concerned about these factions forcing their ideas and plans on everyone else, he also knew that it would be impossible to get rid of them completely. Humans like to associate with like-minded individuals. In fact he had a great analogy. He compares factions with fire and liberty with air. He says it would be just as foolish to try to rid the world of factions as it would to rid the world of air, just because air gives fire its explosive force. That you can not abolish liberty to stop factions.
The only thing we can hope to do is to control the factions. One way to do this was to have a government of representation. Instead of having a pure democracy, you would let the people pick men with integrity, who in turn would pick representatives for Congress. By taking the best men, you could take away some of the effects of self-interest in the national government. A pure democracy would have to be small in size, both geographically and population wise. Which in turn makes the country more susceptible to being controlled by a faction. However, according to Madison, the more people you have, the more interests. And the more interests will create more factions-who disagree and will not be able to combine together to gain control of the majority. This is why he fought for a large democratic-REPUBLIC. This country was meant to be a republic, with representation for all of it's citizens.
One of the fears in creating this type of government was that the minority would be able to dictate the governing, laws and regulations to the majority. And to a large extent, that is happening today. We have strayed from the republic part of our government. We do not always elect good representatives with integrity. Nor do we realize that just because we may be out voted, it does not follow that we are then being discriminated against. It just means that the majority of those who voted, didn't agree with you. Sometimes that is a hard thing to realize. That you lost. Along with the love of liberty and freedom that most Americans have ingrained in their souls, is the belief that you can always win, that you don't have to lose. However, reality is that someone has to lose. That's just the way it is. Everyone can't win. In fact if we don't teach our children that not only is it okay to lose and that losing or failure will make you stronger, it will be to their determent. When you are afraid to fail, it is easy to not even try. They must learn to pick themselves up and to try again. We can not be afraid to stand up for the things we know to be true. We can not be afraid to make a difference, to do our part and reach for something higher. We all must learn to keep trying.
