Federalist 14
Madison begins Federalist 14 by restating the arguments made in the first 13 papers: that a stronger union of the states would result in greater security against foreign threats, the encouraging of commerce, an amelioration of relationships between the states, a military more conducive to liberty, and the best solution to the pernicious effects of faction. He here turns his attention to one of the central theoretical, but also practical issues of the debates: over what extent of territory can republican government be extended? Recall that the consensus among political thinkers prior to the creation of our Constitution was that republican government could only be conducted on a small scale among people who knew each other, who were largely self-sufficient and virtuous, and engaged in relationships of mutual dependence. Only empire, the enemy of republicanism and the spawn of ambition, could extend itself over a large territory. The idea of an extended republic was an innovation.
To calm the fears of the Constitution’s opponents Madison drew on the distinction between a republic and a democracy. “[I]n a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.” Assuming one accepts the distinction, the debates would then necessarily center on the system of representation.
Granted, Madison acknowledged there must be limits, and “the natural limits of a republic is that distance from the centre which will barely allow the representatives to meet as often as is necessary.” One assumes that Madison predicated this distinction on the time it takes to cover certain distances on horseback, so his careful delineation of the extant borders of the country could theoretically expand with the advancements in transportation he was unable to anticipate. Keep in mind that for thousands of years horseback was about as fast as people could go, and within the space of a century were able to hit about 90 mph and within a century of that were traveling over 24,000 mph. Traveling from New York to Washington DC in 1800 took about four days, and now it takes about four hours. This limit on the government’s ability to convene would also limit its activity.
He also identified four further benefits of the Constitutional system that also, in his mind, maintained its republican spirit. First, it was a government of enumerated powers, which is to say that if the Constitution doesn’t give the power, the federal government doesn’t have the power, all those residual powers remaining with the states. Curiously, in the third instance, he cited the ability of the federal government to facilitate interchange and exchange by the building of roads and canals, neglecting that this power is not enumerated in Article I section 8, and not anticipating his own veto in 1817 of a congressional bill to build roads and canals, Madison arguing that the Constitution did not give Congress such power.
A second benefit of the Constitution, Madison claimed, related not only to the union of the thirteen states but the ability of those states to create new states from within “their own bosom” or from neighboring territory. This is a neglected part of our Constitutional structure, and the convention records indicate no serious debates about the Admissions Clause (“New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union”) of Article IV, section 3. Neither does the clause itself provide much guidance to how Congress is supposed to go about this, the actual determination resulting in case history and practice. By deciding state admission on the principle of a simple majority vote, Congress added territorial expansion into the sectional crises that ultimately resulted in secession. The northern states, holding the most power in Congress, could use the issue of state admission to further their political and economic interests against other regions. Add slavery to the problem and you have a recipe for civil war.
Finally, referring back to the problem of representation and the problem of distance to the central government, Madison made the novel argument that the more difficult it will be for a state to send representatives to the federal congress, the more incentivized they will be to support the Constitution, because these were the places most likely to be bordered by foreign and thus hostile powers. “The states which lie the greatest distance from the heart of the Union,” he wrote and would “partake least of ordinary circulation of its benefits,” would also “stand in greatest need of its strength and resources.” Those states might find it difficult to send representatives, but even more difficult to defend themselves, and would gladly make the trade-off.
Madison further defended this experiment in an extended republic by arguing that accepted authorities were exaggerating the defects of republican government because they were either overtly or covertly arguing for monarchy. Despite the fact Hamilton made similar arguments concerning republics in Federalist 9 and Madison had done so in Federalist 10, Madison now argued that these history lessons drew the wrong conclusions because of the confusion of democracies with republics. Those ancient republics whose fate he had previously bemoaned were, in fact, democracies; the fate of democracies, going back to Plato’s Republic was well-known and regretted by all.
But even if history augured against such an experiment, bowing at history’s altar would be contrary to the American spirit. “America can claim the merit of making the discovery” of an extended republic, and displaying to the world a new way of ordering liberty.
But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?
Indeed, Madison suggests, were Americans limited by the past and its hidebound ideas, the American Revolution would never have happened. Instead,
Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate.
Madison's reflections in Federalist 14 expose a faultline in America’s self-understanding: to what degree should America “innovate” with established principles and practices? In what sense is it the creator of a new world neither beholden nor connected to the past? Should its spirit of innovation result in institutions that then become a model to the rest of the world?
The conclusion of Federalist 14 is more hortatory than argument. He admonished his “fellow citizens” to listen not to the naysayers and doubters who would “drive you into the gloomy and perilous scene” of disunion. The critics of the Constitution were to be dismissed as “unnatural” and “petulant” purveyors of “poison” who spoke an “unhallowed language.” He turned the tables on the critics, accusing them of innovation, of engaging in “the most alarming of all novelties” and “the most wild of all projects” and “the most rash of all attempts” to rip the union into pieces – as if either the Constitution or complete disunion were the only options available.
This ascription of bad faith to his opponents is not an uncommon feature of Publius's essays -- nor, to be fair, of some of the Antifederalists. At the same time, underneath the polemics, there remains the beating heart of a statesman trying to figure out the best thing to do under the circumstances. We know that Madison was on the wrong end of the vote about two-thirds of the time at the Convention, but he accepted the compromise on the simple principle that it was, in his judgment, better than what we had. If the new document “betray[s] imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them.” Politics, he reminded us, always involves trade-offs, and the unwillingness to accept them because of a deranged desire for perfection will only serve to make things worse.
Director of the Ford Leadership Forum, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation
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