To the People of the State of New York:

America’s Founding Fathers, students of history and ancient political theory, were well aware of the problems posed by mobs and factions of citizens, especially in free societies. In constructing the Constitution, they sought to avoid the mob rule and tyranny that would arise from unfettered democracy.

Attached to liberty, our framers did not want government to control the cause of factions—the natural difference of opinions among men.

“But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency,” wrote Madison.

Instead, as James Madison argues in Federalist No. 10, government should be designed to control the effects of factions.

The Constitution was crafted so as to allow most matters to be decided on the State level, so that no one faction could impose its will on the entire Union. Madison argued that the larger the Republic, i.e., the more states included in the Union, the more the ills of factions would be mitigated, provided that the federal government was one of strict and defined limits.

Madison, who would go on to become the fourth president of the United States, has been called the Father of the Constitution and was the primary author of the Bill of Rights. His Federalist No. 10 has become one of the most influential.

In the excerpts from the first half of Federalist No. 10 below, we see Madison’s carefully reasoned argument about the problem of factions. The second half will be published next week.