CHAPTER II
                    FACTION: THE DANGEROUS VICE

 	James Madison was convinced from his comprehensive study of history and the
 writing of philosophers that the greatest threat to popular government was the
 "dangerous vice" that he called faction.  His definition of the term occurs near
 the beginning of his most famous work, Federalist No. 10:

      By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a
majority or a 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.

	In the companion piece to Federalist No. 10, Federalist No. 51, Madison
elaborated: "Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens.  
If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be
insecure."  In No. 10, Madison identified "two methods of curing the mischief of
faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects."  
The former he discarded as inimical to liberty, which, unfortunately, is to faction
as "air is to fire."  Drawing heavily on an essay of David Hume, Madison then
discussed the "latent causes" of faction, which he found to be "sown in the nature
of man":
      
      A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many
      other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different
      leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other
      descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions.... These
      factors have "divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual
      animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other
      than to co-operate for their common good."

	The words of the Federalist echoed the words of Madison on the floor of the
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.  On June 6, 1787, discussing whether the
first chamber of the national legislature should be elected by the state
legislatures or by the people, Madison, speaking in favor of the need to have at
least one chamber elected directly by the people, discussed the problem of factions
in civilized societies, stating that their presence therein is inevitable.  Among
the factions would be:
      
      rich and poor, debtors and creditors, the landed the manufacturing the commercial
      interests, the inhabitants of this district or that district, the followers of 
      this political leader or that political leader, the disciples of this religious
      Sect or that religious Sect.

	The importance of property in creating and nurturing faction was not to be
underestimated; in Federalist No. 10, Madison wrote that "the most common and durable
source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property.  Those who
hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society."  
This conclusion was a result of Madison's dedicated study of history.  It was also a result
of his scrutiny of the works of those who had speculated both as to the best government and
to the causes of the failures of attempts at good government, beginning at least with Plato
and Aristotle.

                        Controlling Faction

	Because the causes of faction cannot be removed, the only hope must lie in
controlling the effects.  Madison had dedicated himself to the design and
implementation of a system of government that would achieve that end.  He worked
for it in Philadelphia, wrote in support of it in New York, and played a seminal
role in its early implementation, serving as a key member of the first House of
Representatives and a trusted advisor of George Washington.  Although Madison did
not get all that he wanted at Philadelphia, he had more influence in shaping the
plan of government that emerged than did any other delegate.  Of particular
importance to the successful completion of the Convention's work was the
philosophical undergirding he provided for the new system in his brilliant speeches
during the convention.  Drawing on all that he had read, learned, and reflected
upon, Madison composed the theory for a system that he hoped would control the
effects of faction, a theory nowhere set forth more brilliantly than in Federalists
Nos. 10 and 51.

	There are three major components to the theory: a republic (instead of a
democracy); an extended (large) republic (rather than a small one); and a federal
system (a compound rather than a unitary republic).  According to Madison, the
advantage of a republic over a democracy is that public views can be refined and
enlarged by "passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose
wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and
love of justice will be less likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial
considerations."  Of course, men and women are not angels and may "betray the
interests of the people."  The chances of avoiding the election of such individuals
are greater in a republic because a republic can extend over a larger area than a
democracy.  Because the number of representatives in a republic of any size is
limited--"to guard against the confusion of a multitude"--it follows that
representatives in larger republics will be elected by larger groups of
constituents.  Madison saw that fact as some assurance that unworthy candidates
would not be able to hoodwink voters by the practice of the "vicious arts by which
elections are too often carried...."

	The advantage of "extend[ing] the sphere," forming a large republic rather
than a small republic, is one of Madison's most important contributions to the
development of political thought.  Montesquieu had argued that, in a large
republic, the public good is sacrificed to a thousand considerations; it is
subordinated to exceptions; it depends on accidents.  The reason for this is the
presence in a large republic of "men of large fortunes, and consequently of less
moderation...."  Such an individual "soon begins to think that he may be happy and
glorious, by oppressing his fellow-citizens; and that he may raise himself to
grandeur on the ruins of his country."  Only in a small republic can such abuses be
avoided.  There "the interest of the public is more obvious, better understood, and
more within the reach of every citizen; abuses have less extent, and, of course,
are less protected."

	Similarly, Rousseau argued that a small state is preferable since "[t]here
is in every body politic a maximum force which it cannot exceed and which is often
diminished as the State is aggrandized.  The more the social bond is extended, the
more it is weakened; and, in general, a small State is proportionally stronger than
a large one."  Among the "thousand reasons" that "demonstrate the truth of this
maxim," Rousseau included that "administration becomes more difficult at great
distances"; that administration "becomes more burdensome in proportion as its parts
are multiplied"; that the government "has less vigor and activity in enforcing
observance of the laws, in putting a stop to vexations, in reforming abuses, and in
forestalling seditious enterprises which may be entered upon in distant places";
and that the people "have less affection for their chiefs whom they never see, for
their country, which is in their eyes like the world, and for their fellow-citizens
who are strangers to them."

	Madison recognized that "by enlarging too much the number of electors, you
render the representative too little acquainted with all their local circumstances
and lesser interests...."  He also noted that, by reducing the scope too much,
representatives are rendered "unduly attached to these, and too little fit to
comprehend and pursue the great and national objects."  He argued that the
Constitution solved the problem with "the great and aggregate interests being
referred to the national, the local and particular to the state legislatures."  
Such a federal system permitted an enlargement of the sphere that would "take in a
greater variety of parties and interests..." and "make it less probable that a
majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other
citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who
feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other."

	The advantages of the federal system, the compound republic, are
two-fold.  First, a "double-security" is provided for the rights of the people in
that "[t]he different governments will control each other, at the same time that
each will be controlled by itself."  Second, "the society itself will be broken
into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of
individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested
combinations of the majority."  Furthermore, "[i]n the extended republic of the
United States and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it
embraces, a coalition of the whole society could seldom take place on any other
principles than those of justice and the general good...."

	In formulating his ideas, Madison, as was his wont, sorted through the
ideas of his philosophic predecessors, borrowing what he believed was valid and
useful and discarding the rest.  Support for his conviction that an extended
republic could work came from David Hume who, in his essay exploring the "Idea of a
Perfect Commonwealth," briefly noted "the falsehood of the common opinion that no
large state...could ever be modeled into a commonwealth, but that such a form of
government can only take place in a city or small territory."  Without elaboration,
Hume concluded that, "[t]hough it is more difficult to form a republican government
in an extensive country than in a city; there is more facility, when once it is
formed, of preserving it steady and uniform, without tumult and faction."  
Madison's ideas about a compound republic were similarly influenced by Hume.  In
the same essay, Hume stated:

      In a large government, which is modeled with masterly skill, there is compass 
      and room enough to refine the democracy, from the lower people, who may be
      admitted into the first elections or first concoction of the commonwealth,
      to the higher magistrates, who direct all the movements.  At the same time,
      the parts are so distant and remote, that it is very difficult, either by
      intrigue, prejudice, or passion, to hurry them into any measure against the
      public interest.

	Madison's scheme for controlling the effects of faction was thus a blend of
philosophical influences, his own experience, and perhaps even his own intuition.  His
willingness to accept Hume's ideas and ignore Montesquieu and Rousseau must have been
affected by his knowledge of his country and its citizens, a knowledge first imparted at
Princeton, where he came in contact with students from almost all of the
then-colonies, and later greatly expanded as a result of his experience in the
Continental Congress.  Similarly, Madison's ideas about the relationship between
factions and the distribution of property were to be influenced by both philosophy
and his own experience.

                Unequal Distribution of Property:
           The Most Common and Durable Source of Faction

 	Intrinsic to Madison's theory of faction is his concern about the
distribution of property, and it is his focus on property and the struggle between
the haves and the have-nots (although he never uses those terms) that has been the
major focus for scholars in the years since.  Much of what has been written is
either inaccurate or incomplete.   The trouble begins with Madison's statement that
"the most common and durable source of factions has been the verious [sic] and
unequal distribution of property."  He provided some elaboration on what he means:

       Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct
       interests in society.  Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors,
       fall under a like discrimination.  A landed interest, a manufacturing
       interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser
       interests, grow up of necessity in civilized  nations, and divide them into
       different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views.
	As is true of factions in general, it is not possible to control the causes of
      these particular factions.  The "diversity in the faculties of men from which the
      rights of property originate" is an "insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of
      interests."  

Furthermore,

      The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.  From the
      protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession
      of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the
      influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors ensues a
      division of the society into different interests and parties.


	Madison's ideas about economic factions were shaped by three major
influences: his readings of history and philosophy; conditions in Europe in the
1780's, especially as described to him by Jefferson; and Shays's Rebellion in
Massachusetts.  Perhaps the most influential in the first category were the
writings of Plato and Aristotle.  In Book IV of The Republic, Plato addressed the
problems of rich and poor; as Socrates described cities, "[e]ach is at least two
cities, one of the poor and one of the rich, enemies to each other...."  
Furthermore, "wealth creates luxury and idleness and faction, and poverty adds
meanness and bad work to the faction."

	John Gillies' 1797 translation of Aristotle's Politics includes the
statement that "[t]he most palpable, and also the most specific difference...[in
governments] is the distinction of riches and poverty: wherefore, all governments
have been divided into oligarchies and democracies...."  Douglas Adair pointed out
that "[t]he most cursory examination of Greek history was sufficient to show that
the organization of property, the maldistribution of wealth, the perpetual
revolutions of the poor against the economically rich, and of the rich against the
politically powerful poor was the major problem of internal policy for the Greek
legislator."

	The relevance of the struggle between rich and poor to a republic could not
be more clearly stated than in the following passage from Gillies' Aristotle:
      
      Aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy, when the few, who are rich, govern
      the state as best suits the interests of their avarice and ambition: and a
      republic degenerates into a democracy when the many who are poor, make the
      gratification of their own passions the only rule of their administration. 
      Wherever wealth alone opens the road to preferment, oligarchy prevails; 
      poverty, on the other hand, is the constant attendant of democracy; and the
      distinctive character of these governments consists not in this, that the
      many or the few bear away, but in the one case, that rapacious poverty be
      armed with power, and in the other, that contemptuous opulence be invested
      with authority.  But as eminence in wealth can only fall to the share of a
      few, and as all may participate [in] the advantages of equal freedom, the
      partisans of the rich and of the multitude agitate republican states, each
      faction striving to engross the government.

	Madison had the opportunity to study and contemplate Aristotle and Plato
over the course of many years, probably beginning in 1762 when, at the age of 12,
he was enrolled in the school of Donald Robertson in King and Queen County in the
Virginia Tidewater.  Like Madison's later mentor at Princeton, John Witherspoon,
Robertson was a product of the University of Edinburgh, and his school's curriculum
resembled that of the University when Robertson was a student there: "progressing
from Latin to Greek to logic, with the optional addition of mathematics."  The
extraordinary education that Madison received there and at Princeton formed a
remarkable background that would have a great and continuing effect on how he saw
the world around him as he left academia and plunged into politics.  His view of
conditions and events would always be influenced by what he had read and learned
about history and philosophy, and his experiences in politics, particularly his
experience dealing with the problems of the Articles of Confederation, led him to
seek more knowledge.

	On March 16, 1784, Madison wrote to Jefferson in Paris asking him to send back
particularly whatever books "may throw light on the general constitutions and droit [sic]
public of the several confederacies which have existed."  Madison expanded his order on
April 27, 1785, requesting "treatises on the ancient and modern federal republics" and a
good deal more.  It is doubtful, however, that anything Madison read in books on hand or
later forwarded by Jefferson affected him more than Jefferson's simple prose in his
extraordinary letter of October 28, 1785.  Jefferson wrote from Fountainbleau, where the
King of France repaired in the fall to hunt.  Jefferson was there for the first time, and
he described setting out in the morning, in quintessential style, to climb the highest
mountain in sight to get a view of the place.  Not one to waste an opportunity, he fell in
with "a poor woman" on his walk out of town and gently steered their conversation to
"enquiries into her vocation, condition, and circumstance."  The woman, a day laborer, had
two children to feed and no bread.  Jefferson insisted she accept a gratuity for her
services as a "guide," whereupon she burst into tears and was unable to speak.

	What follows, in Jefferson's own words, is well worth repeating in detail:
      This little attendrissment, with the solitude of my walk led me into a train of
      reflections on that unequal division of property which occasions the numberless
      instances of wretchedness which I had observed in this country & is to be observed
      all over Europe. The property of this country is absolutely concentered in a very
      few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downwards.  These
      employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200
      domestics, not labouring.  They employ also a great number of manufacturers &
      tradesmen, & lastly the class of labouring husbandmen.  
      But after all these comes the most numerous of all the classes, that is the poor who
      cannot find work.  I asked myself what could be the reason that so many should be
      permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very
      considerable proportion of uncultivated lands?  These lands are kept idle mostly for
      the sake of game.  It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth
      of the proprietors which places them above attention to the increase of their
      revenues by permitting these lands to be laboured.  
      I am conscious that an equal division of property is impractical.  But the
      consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of
      mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only
      taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of
      the human mind.  The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children,
      or to all the brothers & sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic
      measure, and a practicable one.  Another means of silently lessening the inequality
      of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, & to tax the higher
      portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.  Whenever there is in
      any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of
      property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.   The earth is given
      as a common stock for man to labour & live on.  If, for the encouragement of industry
      we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished
      to those excluded from the appropriation.  If we do not, the fundamental right to
      labour the earth returns to the unemployed.  It is too soon yet in our country to say
      that every man who can not find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall
      be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent.  But it is not too soon to
      provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little 
      portion of land.  The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.

	Jefferson's letter and other information Madison obtained concerning conditions in
Europe represent the second influence on his ideas about economic factions.  In his reply
to Jefferson's letter, Madison urged Jefferson, before his return to America, to "compare
with this description of people in France the condition of the indigent part of other
communities in Europe where the like causes of wretchedness exist in a less degree."  
While Madison expressed agreement and optimism that "wherever the Government assumes a
freer aspect, & the laws favor a subdivision of property," the "misery of the lower classes
will be found to abate," he concluded, less optimistically, that "[a] certain degree of
misery seems inseparable from a high degree of populousness."  Thus, "the comparative
comfort of the Mass of people in the United States" may be due at least as much to its
"limited population" as to its "political advantages."

	Implicit in the letters of both men is a concern that would be with them for many
years to come: the need to forestall for as long as possible the day when the United States
would become plagued with a "high degree of populousness."

	The third major influence that shaped Madison's ideas about economic factions was
Shays's Rebellion in Massachusetts.  In the years following the Revolutionary War, the new
nation suffered from a postwar depression, large and growing confederation and state debt,
a scarcity of money, and a heavy tax burden on land.  Farmers in the different states
lobbied their state governments to issue paper money to help them pay their debts and
mortgages.  Madison was acutely aware of these problems as a result of his experience in
the Continental Congress of 1780 to 1783 and as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates
from 1784 to 1787.

	In Massachusetts, after that state's legislature failed to pass legislation
adopting paper currency, angry farmers organized under the leadership of Daniel Shays in
the summer of 1786.  Before they were dispersed in February, 1787, they had prevented
courts from sitting, attacked "prominent merchants, lawyers, and office holders," and
alarmed leaders throughout the country, among them James Madison.  Henry Lee wrote him on
October 19, 1786 from New York with the news that what he called "the eastern commotions"
were becoming "very serious."  Noting that the Massachusetts legislature had yet to act,
Lee speculated that, given their difficulties, they had little option but "to trust too
much to the chapter of accidents, for the U.S. who ought to be able to aid the governments
of particular states in distress like these are scar[c]ely able to maintain themselves."  
As to the rebels:

      Their ostensible object is the revision of the constitution but they certainly mean
      the abolition of debts public & private, a division of property & a new government
      founded on principles of fraud & inequity, or re-connexion with G.B.

	In language that must have had particular meaning to Madison, Lee warned on October
25, 1786 that "present appearances portend extensive national calamity.  The contagion will
spread and may reach Virginia."  On November 1, 1786, shortly after the Virginia House had,
by a vote of 84-17, found paper money to be "unjust, impolitic, destructive of public and
private confidence and of that virtue which is the basis of Republican governments,"
Madison wrote his father about the "great commotions" "prevailing in Massachusetts."  As to
the motives of the Shaysites, he stated: "They profess to aim only at a reform of their
Constitution and of certain abuses in the public administration, but an abolition of debts,
public and private, and a new division of property are strongly suspected to be in
contemplation."

	A communication he received shortly after he wrote his father must have heightened
his alarm.  On November 5th General Washington wrote Madison from Mount Vernon passing
along the contents of a letter from General Knox, who had just returned from Massachusetts:

      Among other things he says, "there [sic] creed is, that the property of the United
      States, has been protected from confiscation of Britain by the joint exertions of
      all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all.  And he that attempts
      opposition to this creed, is an enemy to equity and justice and ought to be swept off
      the face of the Earth."  
      Again "They are determined to annihilate all debts public and private and have
      agrarian laws, which are easily affected by the means of unfunded paper Money which
      shall be a tender in all cases whatsoever." 

Here, just a few hundred miles from Virginia, was the dangerous vice of faction springing
from its most common and durable cause--unequal distribution of property.

	After some time to calm down and to consider more accurate accounts, perhaps, of
the "insurrection" in Massachusetts, Madison seemed less alarmed, but his concern about the
future threat to the nation of an increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots
did not abate.  Speaking in the Constitutional Convention on June 16, 1787, in favor of a
nine-year term for Senators, Madison expressed that concern:

      In framing a system which we wish to last for ages, we should not lose sight of the
      changes which ages will produce.  An increase of population will of necessity
      increase the proportion of those who will labour under all the hardships of life, &
      secretly sigh for a more equal distribution of its blessings.  These may in time
      outnumber those who are placed above the feelings of indigence.  According to the
      laws of suffrage, the power will slide into the hands of the former.  No agrarian
      attempts have yet been made in this Country, but symptoms of a leveling spirit, as we
      have understood, have sufficiently appeared in a certain quarter to give notice of
      the future danger.

	Madison's speech responded in part to that of Charles Pinckney of South Carolina
the day before.  Pinckney was quite sanguine about the domestic situation:

      The people of the U. States are perhaps the most singular of any we are acquainted
      with.  Among them are fewer distinctions of fortune & less of rank, than among the
      inhabitants of any other nation.  Every freeman has a right to the same protection &
      security; and a very moderate share of property entitles them to the possession of
      all the honors and privileges the public can bestow: hence arises a greater equality
      than is to be found among the people of any other country and an equality which is
      more likely to continue.

	Pinckney's assertion that equality was "more likely to continue" was based on the
"immense tracts of uncultivated lands" in the United States, which he called the "new
Country."  Such lands, "where every temptation is offered to emigration & where industry
must be rewarded with competency," will have "few poor, and few dependent--Every member of
the Society almost, will enjoy an equal power of arriving at the supreme offices &
consequently of directing the strength and sentiments of the whole Community."  Pinckney
did not speculate as to how long into the future such conditions might extend, but he gave
the impression that it would be a considerable time.  Madison was not so optimistic,
perhaps agreeing with Plato that "destruction comes to everything existing."

	Of course, Plato was not the only influence on Madison in terms of making him
pessimistic.  Aristotle taught that every good system eventually degenerates and contains
the seeds of its own destruction.  Hume added to the pertinence of Aristotle's teaching
when he asserted that:

      Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of
      nothing new or strange in this particular.  Its chief use is only to discover the
      constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men, in all varieties
      of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with material from which we may
      form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action
      and behavior. 

As to the desire for riches, Hume called it "nothing but a species of ambition...chiefly
incited by the prospect of that regard, distinction, and consideration, which attend on
riches."  The desire to acquire goods and possessions:

      is insatiable, perpetual, and universal, and directly destructive of society.  There
     scare is any one, who is not actuated by it; and there is no one, who has not reason
     to fear from it, when it acts without any restraint, and gives way to its first and  
     most natural movements.  So that upon the whole, we are to esteem the difficulties in 
     the establishment of society, to be greater or less, according to those we encounter
     in regulating and restraining this passion.

	Madison, influenced by his readings of history and philosophy, conditions in
Europe, and the reality of Shays's Rebellion, looked to the future and saw trouble:

      In future times a great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but
      any other sort, of property.  These will either combine under the influence of their
      common situation: in which case, the rights of property & the public liberty, will
      not be secure in their hands: or which is more probable, they will become the tools
      of opulence & ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on another side.
	
	As to Pinckney's belief that immense tracts of uncultivated lands offered
continuing opportunity for equality in the new country, Madison stated in a speech on June
12, 1788, in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, that:

      The period cannot be very far distant, when the unsettled parts of America will be
      inhabited.  At the expiration of twenty-five years hence, I conceive that in every
      part of the United States, there will be as great a population as there is now in the
      settled parts.  We see already, that in the most populous parts of the union, and
      where there is but a medium, manufactures are beginning to be established.
	
	Madison believed that the growth of manufacturing inevitably would lead to the
development of a property-less class.  These individuals would be crammed into tenements in
the large cities, exploited by their employers, and unable to experience the blessings of
liberty.  As this class grew, so would the danger to society.  In the long run, Madison was
pessimistic that anything could be done other than resort to a non-republican form of
government.  For at least a while, perhaps several generations, he thought that there was a
chance for republican government.  That chance depended on how well factions in general
could be controlled and how well, in particular, the struggle between the propertied and
property-less factions could be controlled.  It was concern for this latter problem that
had prompted Madison to add one more essential feature to his proposed system.  If it was
impossible to eliminate the causes of rich and poor factions--impossible because rich and
poor factions are a direct result of the "diversity in the faculties of men" and because
government's first object is the "protection of the faculties" that result in the
"possession of different degrees and kinds of property"--the solution must lie in
controlling the effects.

           Controlling the Effects of Economic Factions

	Madison's solution took the form of a bicameral legislature with each branch
representing different interests.  The lower chamber would be the house of the masses,
directly elected by the people.  As the years went by, and a greater portion of the
populace found itself without property, as Madison expected it would, the House would be
the body representing their interests.  But what was to protect the wealthy minority from
the poor masses, from agrarian attempts, or a leveling spirit?  Madison addressed the
problem on the floor of the Constitutional Convention in a speech that has been
misunderstood, or at least incompletely understood:
      
      How is the danger to be guarded against on general republican principles?  How is the
      danger in all cases of interested coalitions to oppress the minority to be guarded
     against?  Among other means by the establishment of a body in the Govt. sufficiently
     respectable for its wisdom and virtue, to aid on such emergencies, the preponderance
     of justice by throwing its weight into that scale.

	Robert Yates of New York, in his Convention notes, provides a much more colorful
version of the speech and attributes to Madison the purpose of making the Senate the
protector of the "minority of the opulent."  The use of the word "opulent" is indicative of
the type of misunderstanding or misinterpretation of Madison, whether inadvertent or
purposeful, that has persisted ever since.  For Madison, who was to spend the great
majority of his adult life dressed in simple black clothes, was no defender of opulence.  
His goal was to establish a system that could govern people as they were and as they were
likely to be.  His hope for the survival of that government rested to a considerable extent
on his ability to design a system that would check the contending interests, rich and poor,
propertied and property-less, whose conflict had brought down so many previous systems.

	James MacGregor Burns, one of Madison's persistent critics, has contended that
Madison's fears of societies deeply divided between rich and poor were, in effect,
irrelevant since "America was not such a society."  Madison was well aware that America was
not such a society but feared that it would become one.  In a speech concerning
qualifications for holding national office, which he delivered to the Convention on July
26, 1787, Madison opposed the use of the worded "landed" as a qualification, noting:

      The three principal classes into which our citizens were divisible, were the landed,
      the commercial, & the manufacturing.  The 2d & 3d classes, bear as yet a small
      proportion to the first.  The proportion however will daily increase.  We see in the
      populous Countries in Europe now what we shall be hereafter.

	In notes for another speech to the Convention, Madison returned to the subject:

      As appointments for the General Government here contemplated will, in part, be made
      by the State Govts.: all the Citizens in the States where the right of suffrage is
      not limited to the holders of property, will have an indirect share of representation
      in the General Government.  But this does not satisfy the fundamental principle that
      men can not be justly bound by laws in making which they have no part.  Persons & 
      property being both essential objects of Government, the most that either can claim,
      is such a structure of it, as will leave a reasonable security for the other.  And
      the most obvious provision, of this double character, seems to be that of confining
      to the holders of property the object deemed least secure in popular Govts., the
      right of suffrage for one of the two Legislative branches.

	Madison noted that "the U.S. have not reached the Stage of Society in which
conflicting feelings of the Class with, and the Class without property, have the operation
natural to them in Countries fully peopled."  His system was designed to work in the
future, not just at the time of its implementation.  His built-in protection for the
propertied class was not designed primarily for the benefit of that class; it was designed
primarily to create a system of government that would survive into the ages while
protecting the interests of all classes.

	Madison saw the threats to his republic from both rich and poor.  At the same time,
he respected both the rights of property and the rights of human beings.  His system was
designed to protect both classes and both types of rights.  But, if it should come to a
choice, there was no doubt where he would side.  Late in his life, in further notes on
suffrage, he wrote:

      if the only alternative be between an equal and universal right of suffrage for each
      branch of Government, and a confinement of the entire right to a part of the
      citizens, it is better that those having the greater interest at stake, namely that
      of property and persons both, should be deprived of half their share in the
      Government, than that those having the lesser interest, that of personal rights only,
      should be deprived of the whole.

	Often overlooked in analyses of Madison's views regarding property is the fact that
he did not favor its unlimited acquisition.  In an essay on political parties written for
the National Gazette in 1792, he discussed parties much as he had factions in 1787: "A
difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most natural and fruitful source of
them."  Since parties are "unavoidable" in political society, the "great object should be
to combat the evil."  This would be accomplished in five ways:

      1. By establishing a political equality among all.  2. By withholding unnecessary
      opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate 
      and especially an unmerited accumulation of riches.  3. By the silent operation of
      laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards
      a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.  4. By
      abstaining from measures which operate differently on different interests, and 
      particularly such as favor one interest at the expence of another.  5. By making one
      party a check on the other, so far as the existing parties cannot be prevented, nor
      their views accommodated.

	Thus we see that Madison's ideas about controlling the effects of unequal
distribution of wealth went beyond merely establishing a compound federal republic over an
extended sphere with an intricate systems of checks and balances, including different
representation for different elements.  Madison actually envisioned positive action by the
new government that would counteract inequality in the distribution of wealth by "silent
operation of laws."  It is unfortunate that Madison did not expand on this idea, since
implicit in it would seem to be the philosophical justification for measures ranging from
the graduated income tax to the welfare state.  We have only his speculations about the
value of a sumptuary tax.  But, given that Madison's system would make it possible for the
wealthy to exercise direct control over the Senate and perhaps indirect control over the
House, how could he expect the legislature to pass such measures, silent or otherwise?

	The answer lies in Madison's own beliefs about people.  Humans were not angels, but
Madison believed in the ability of human beings to govern themselves.  Like Aristotle, he
saw the good in the middle class, and he hoped that that class would prosper, heading off
the day when a permanent aristocracy developed in the United States.  Thus, the men of
property who would be elected to the Senate were to be more than representatives of an
opulent, indolent class.  They were to be educated, thoughtful, a "temperate and
respectable body of citizens," who would be guided by "enlightened policy, and attachment
to the public good."  Senators would serve, as did Madison himself, with concern for the
protection of all rights of all people, those with property and those without.  Would such
a group vote to tax its own wealth?  Madison, perhaps na‹vely, thought that it would.