The Federalists

For his entry to History of Political Philosophy, Martin Diamond approaches his essay in a different fashion than the others have. While every other essay in the book focuses on one philosopher, or as in the case of Luther and Calvin as well as Bentham and Mill, two Diamond approached his essay differently as he instead focuses on one collection of essays written by three men and later compiled into a single book, that book being The Federalist Papers. Diamond begins his essay by noting that The Federalist Papers are both bound to their time and also able to address future generations. And while many critics of the essays have maintained that they amount to nothing more than pro-Constitution propaganda and are actually of low quality. Diamond argues for their place in the history of political philosophy.

            First and foremost, The Federalist Papers are to be understood as a defense of the republic and it is for this reason that the three authors, John Jay, Alexander Madison, and John Madison; all took Roman pseudonyms. Diamond also sees The Federalist Papers as primarily undertaking two tasks. These tasks are as follows: 1) defend the proposed Constitution and 2) critique the currently existing confederation. In order to do this, they had to fundamentally change how Americans viewed their republic as the United States had to now be seen as a republic, not as a collection of republics. This was an important task as the Constitution was often seen as anti-republican as it was generally assumed at the time that only small countries could be republican in nature while larger counties by their nature trended towards despotism. It was well understood that a republic needed a well-educated and engaged population and a small country was seen as the most conductive environment for these factors.

            For the Federalists however, the Constitution provided a framework for such a citizenry. In The Federalist Papers, a much more pure synthesis of republicanism and democracy is proposed while this synthesis still maintains a distinction between a republic and pure democracy. Instead, the virtue of “popular government” is exalted which created the idea that the United State was not a mixed regime, but rather a wholly popular state. For this, a new science of politics would be needed that would now be focused on the new understanding of democracy and would also be more tailored for a large republic.

            This is not to say the Federalists had an unwavering support of democracy, as they did recognize three instances where democracy could go wrong. These instances are as follows: 1) the people lose control of their representatives, 2) popular majorities, through their elected officials, become oppressive, and 3) popular majorities become foolish and as a result, elected officials become the same. Because of these fears, safeguards to prevent this from happening become essential as now tyranny can come from both rulers as well as from the masses. One of the key ways in which this was done was by splitting the legislature into two houses while the legislature itself was to be checked by both the executive and judicial branches. Here, the Federalists were trying to encourage the development of rightly understood ambition that could harness the power of ambition to do good while avoiding the negative consequences of ambition. Representation is also seen as essential as for the Federalists; representative government can check the excesses of both government of the few as well as government by the many.

 In the end, the idea of separation of powers and checks and balances is a major factor in Federalist arguments for a large republic as while separation of powers is essential for preserving liberty, it is not seen as being very useful in a small republic. What this means is that in order to properly maintain separation of power, a large republic is needed. This connects deeply to the idea of factions, which are seen as good as they can prevent one faction from gaining too much power. Smaller societies are seen as more united and thus it is easier for one faction to gain control of the society. By contrast, a large representative republic is seen as more likely to produce the sort of divisions that great factions, thus making it more difficult for one faction to gain control. Because of this elevation of the importance of factions, commercial republics are highly regarded as they encourage the diversity that creates factions. Furthermore, trade is seen as an important way of bringing about freedom. Even more important is what the use of factions shows what the Federalists are trying to do, get good results for bad motivation. This is because the Federalists know that ultimately the motivation for each of the factions is selfish, but through their coming together, this selfish motivation can be used to bring about good.