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reled with the
principle
of central government, only with the way George
III, his ministers, and Parliament were conducting the government.
Moreover, among the announced purposes of the new governmental
compact was securing the liberties of individual citizens, a pledge which
someone like James Madison seemed to take with the utmost seriousness.
In
Federalist 10,
while deploring the evils caused by factions, Madison still
stated unequivocally that factions could never be eliminated, because to
do so would violate basic freedoms that government was bound to pro–
tect.
Altogether the picture painted in
Federalist 10
was of a nation of
individuals busily - if not frantically - scrambling after material advantage
and at the same time doing their utmost to bend the political process to
suit their own particular interests. How, if ever, was such a world to be
ordered? The key, Madison argued, was to extend vigorous, republican
government across the
entire
nation. In a large republic, selfish, individual
interests would tend to cancel one another out. But equally important
was the fundamental nature of republican government. To Madison re–
publican government meant representative government, and the great
virtue of representative government was that it refined and enlarged pub–
lic views "by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of
citizens, whose wisdom ... patriotism and love of justice" would natu–
rally incline them to look beyond all "temporary or partial considera–
tions."
Clearly the representatives Madison was counting on to help blunt
the effects of faction - individuals he also described as those possessing
"the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established charac–
ters" - were not to be ordinary Americans. And in fact much of the ar–
gument in
Federalist 10
amounted to unabashed elitism, an approach that
in the abstract might have seemed poorly contrived to win popular sup–
port for the proposed Constitution. Happily, however, the case did not
have to rest on abstractions. For by intimating at every possible oppor–
tunity that the man most likely to become President under the Constitu–
tion was George Washington, Madison and his fellow Federalists could
hope to make government by the elite not only unthreatening but
also
finally quite appealing.
In due course, too, the Constitution was adopted, and after an ap–
propriate interlude of soul-searching Washington took up the burdens of
the Presidency. He even reluctantly agreed to serve a second term,
acquitting himself throughout with unsurpassed dignity. But as before,
during the Revolution, the great moment - in symbolic terms, at least -
came at the end, when he voluntarily withdrew from public life to live
out his remaining days at Mount Vernon. What better example could
there have been of the virtues that Madison had hoped the governing
