Words Worth Remembering: Federalist 51
From May through September 1787, and in the ratification debates that followed, no constitutional mechanism was more vital to the unique shape and function of the United States Constitution than checks and balances. It was then, and remains, the safeguard frame around which all else in the American political system stands.
Writing in Federalist 51, which first appeared in New York newspapers on Wednesday, February 8, 1788, the Virginian James Madison explained why checks and balances were central to sound governance.
The title of the essay was, “The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments.”
Questions had been raised about the possibility of one branch scheming to usurp the authority of another. This hypothetical situation, Madison opened, would be best prevented “by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.”
It was not seen as a compromise but as “essential to the preservation of liberty” that “the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others.”
Madison wrote, “the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.”
In what became famous phrasing, Madison added, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”
Madison continued, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to govern itself.”
While a general “dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government,” Madison clarified that “experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.” These “inventions of prudence” had a specific, “constant aim”: “to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other.”
In Federalist 47, Madison described the separation of powers and checks and balances as “this essential precaution in favor of liberty.” He added, “No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty.”
The “why” was clear. “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, may justly be pronounced as the very definition of tyranny.”
During the Confederation period—the era of the Articles of Confederation—it was the legislatures that, ironically, had become the source of tyranny. No state had a constitution capable of resisting their seemingly absolute power. As Madison wrote, “The legislative department is everywhere extending the sphere of its activity, and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.”
Experience, not only in Britain and the ancient world but also in independent America, taught the need for checks and balances.
It is no wonder, then, that George Washington stressed the necessity of submitting to the order imposed by the Constitution. “The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and alter their Constitutions of Government,” he wrote in his farewell address of September 1796. “But the Constitution which at any time exists, ’til changed by an explicit and authentic act of the People, is sacredly obligatory upon all.”
Factions may arise, Washington warned, which may “become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the Power of the People, and to usurp for themselves the reigns of Government; destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
To preserve the liberty and happiness of the Constitution, Washington urged Americans to “resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles however specious the pretexts.”
Today, as ever, vigilance and resistance are the duty—not just the heritage—of every concerned American citizen.