Alyssa RubioMr. LaraHonors Econ/Gov20 November 2018Federalist Paper 10In 1787, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton wrote The Federalist Papers to persuade the states to ratify the Constitution. The Federalist Papers were published to to change the opinions of politicians and the public when the thirteen colonies were having disagreements about the constitution. James Madison wrote Federalist 10 to defend the constitution’s proposed form of republican government. The main argument of Madison’s essay was about factions. Factions are a number of citizens that are united by a common interest. In the essay, Madison talked about the causes of factions, the removal of factions, and the solutions.
According to Madison, the causes of factions are the differences of opinions and liberty. He says that it’s impractical to give everyone the same opinions and interests. In the paragraph, Madison is saying that as long as people are able to be wrong then peoples’ differences of opinions are unavoidable. Madison says that liberty is essential to factions because its the political society’s air.
If you strip people of their liberty, they won’t be able to gather in factions, it would be political oppression. Due to human nature, factions are inevitable. Since men have different opinions, different amount of property and wealth, they’ll continue to socialize with people who are similar to them. One important source of faction, mentioned in the essay, is the unequal distribution of property.
Madison mentions that because it’s human nature, people engage in conflict. Madison also mentions that there are always disputes between debtors, creditors, land interest, manufacturing, and commerce due to the unequal distribution. Madison states that the causes factions can’t be removed and the only way to get relief from them is to control the factions. Madison argued that if it’s a minority faction, voting can fix it. They could out vote the minority group of people to get rid of them. He argues that minority factions won’t be able to maintain itself the constitution that was proposed because of its republican nature. If it’s a majority faction, he argued that a large republic can fix it.
It was on the idea that a person would vote for representatives who would have have the knowledge to fix it. Madison states that a pure democracy doesn’t provide a a cure for factions because majorities always dominate minorities. Madison argues that the cure to the problem of factions is a large republic. Making a republic control factions means that’s it makes decisions for the country. A republic is more suitable in controlling factions compared to a pure democracy. A republic delegates the chores of government to a small group of elected citizens. It also includes a larger geographical area and greater number of citizens.
To prevent a republic from becoming a faction, a large republic has to be created. A large republic is more likely to control the effects of a fraction compared to a smaller republic. It’s less likely that an unworthy candidate can get away with their vicious acts if there was a large number of citizens. A larger territory will most likely have a large number of interests. A large number of interests would mean that it would be less likely for one interest to possess power.
In conclusion, a faction is a group of people who have a common interest. James Madison, along with John Jay and Alexander Hamilton, wrote The Federalist Papers to persuade the states on the ratification of the constitution. Madison wrote the Federalist 10 discussing the issues of factions. In the paper, Madison mentioned the causes of factions, the removal of factions, and solutions to factions. Madison argued that causes of factions are the differences of opinions and liberty. He also argues that a large republic is the cure to factions.
He stated that factions can’t be removed, only controlled because factions are inevitable. Federalist 10 was written by Madison to argue that a representative republic will stop factions from going against the public’s best interest and from getting too much power.
