#58: Will the Number of Members Be Augmented?

Several of the essays in the series of Federalist papers seem peculiar to a modern reader, because they focus on an issue that no longer concerns us. Essay #58 is one of those.

The concern addressed in #58 is that the states would not increase their congressional membership to keep up with the growing population, or that Congress would not receive additional members sent by the states.

This is a non-issue in 2021. No one alive can remember the last time the number of congressional members change. It was fixed in 1929 and has stood at 100 senators and 435 members of the House since then. Second, why would any state hesitate to increase its membership? More members means more representation and why wouldn’t a state want to be represented?

Unlikely as it seems, opponents of the Constitution trotted out this objection in 1787 and 1788 along with all their other arguments. They were just throwing up all the objections they could think of. Suffice it to say that, from the adoption of the Constitution through 1929, there was never any problem with new members being elected and seated.

Publius (James Madison) assures readers that the House of Representatives would continue to grow. But that doesn’t mean he looked on a larger and larger chamber as a good thing. On the contrary, he admits that more members means a diluted pool of talent, and more weak and ignorant members:

[T]he larger the number, the greater will be the proportion of members of limited information and of weak capacities. . . . Ignorance will be the dupe of cunning and passion the slave of sophistry and declamation.

Madison knew what he was talking about. He had just spent four months in the Constitutional Convention and had seen how a small number of men — himself included — had pushed the process along while others sat mute and passive. And the Constitutional Convention had involved only a few dozen men . He imagined how much worse it would get when Congressional membership exceeded 100. Or, as it does today, 435 members.

In addition to his low opinion of the quality of people who would sit in an expanded future Congress, Madison also recognized that increasing membership would inevitably diminish the role of most members and would concentrate power in the hands of a few movers and shakers.

[I]n all legislative assemblies the greater the number composing them may be, the fewer will be the men who will in fact direct their proceedings.

Madison was 100% right about this, except for insisting that those “who will in fact direct the proceedings” would always be men. In today’s House of Representatives, the member who hold disproportionate power is a woman.

I have written elsewhere about the problems of a legislative chamber with 435 members. That is just too many people to work effectively. Ironicqally, 435 is also too few.

There is one more important note in #58. Madison responds to a suggestion that congressional decisions ought to require the support of more than a quorum. A quorum is a minimum number of members required to hold an official meeting. for the US House of Representatives, a quorum is half the members or 218 members. The suggestion aimed to ensure that no significant bills could be sneaked through the House when a large part of the membership was absent. But Madison gives a clear answer in support of majority rule: “In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued. . . ,” the majority should rule. A minority of members — even a substantial minority of 40% or more — should not rule over the majority.