#9-10: How big is too big?

Madison takes on an important question in this essay. Is/was the American nation too large, populous, diverse and spread out to succeed with a republican type of government?

 The great political philosopher Montesquieu said yes. Montesquieu had written that republics needed to be very small and local, to ensure that the people were sufficiently well represented. The larger American states (New York and Virginia) were already much larger than the Greek city states of ancient times that were the model for Montesquieu’s 18th century theorizing. Hamilton assures his readers that the limitations Montesquieu prescribed could be overcome with modern thinking:

The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times. They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided.

The key, elaborated on by Hamilton in #9 and Madison in #10, is the “confederated republic” or “republican confederacy.” By either name, it meant a collection of states that a) cooperated on matters of shared interest and b) maintained their individual sovereignty about issues for which combined action was unnecessary.

Montesquieu had insisted that republics should be small because representatives needed to keep in intimate contact with their constituents. The Federalist authors believed they could do that, even on a larger scale than Montesquieu allowed, by combining state sovereignty with national combination. Still, Madison recognized that the perfect balance was hard to know:

It must be confessed that in this, as in most other cases, there is a mean, on both sides of which inconveniences will be found to lie. By enlarging too much the number of electors, you render the representatives too little acquainted with all their local circumstances and lesser interests; as by reducing it too much, you render him unduly attached to these, and too little fit to comprehend and pursue great and national objects.

Madison expresses confidence that the proposed constitution get this balance right.

Discuss:

•  America today is vastly larger than Madison envisioned. Rather than the 30,000 constituents that the founders envisioned, each member of Congress today represents from half a million people to more than 800,000 constituents. Does that still provide for meaningful representation?