Decent Democrat, Indecent Democracy: Madison on Public Opinion and Westward Expansion

These books underscore how seriously James Madison thought about the needs of republics and how best to establish stable, just, and accountable government by, for, and of the people. Together, they make an excellent case to understand Madison as a devoted democrat who was committed to majority rule and ordered, legal territorial expansion to secure the blessings of liberty. Though neither author comes to this conclusion, Stagg's book in particular offers enough evidence to suggest that the outcome of Madison's efforts was far different from his, frankly, naïve and even utopian intentions. Beyond that, one could assemble evidence from these books to argue that Madison should have seen that his policies would almost certainly lead in directions he did not want. His career shows, as Sheehan reminds us, that "a founder creates a nation . . . but . . . the founder can have only partial control over what he has created" (Sheehan, p. xviii).

Colleen Sheehan is thoroughly convincing in arguing that majority rule was the animating principle of Madison's political thought. This majority grew out of the public opinion of the nation, a national discussion among citizens about the Republic's business. Sheehan argues that Madison believed government derived its legitimacy, and popular sovereignty its purpose, when they became instruments to translate into policy the majority will that emerged from the articulation of public opinion.

Sheehan insists that Madison's thought must not be treated as frozen with his contribution to the Federalist Papers. Emphasizing so heavily those essays over subsequent writing distorts their meaning in the broader context of his thinking and ignores his "Notes on Government" and the nineteen articles he published in Philip Freneau's National Gazette. He wrote these pieces in 1791-92, one of the most creative periods of his life, when he produced work "every bit as theoretically interesting and provocative as the essays he penned under the pseudonym Publius" (p. 8).

Madison wrote "Notes on Government" and the Gazette articles in response to John Adams' Discourse on Davila and Alexander Hamilton's financial program. He saw Adams' political philosophy and Hamilton's political economy as parts of a whole that, if realized, would destroy freedom and self-government. Madison believed that Adams, Hamilton, and the Federalist Party proceeded as they did because they misunderstood ancient republicans and feared modern ones. In "Notes on Government," Madison challenged Adams' claims concerning the central question of classical republican theorists: why did popular regimes degenerate and eventually produce tyranny? Adams, Madison argued, treated this tragic development as axiomatic, the inevitable result of factional conflict. The only solution was political architecture that institutionalized conflict; hence Adams' praise of mixed and balanced constitutions and Great Britain. Madison argued that Adams incorrectly believed that a mixed and balanced constitution was the central insight of classical republican theorists. As a result, concluded Madison, Federalists used (really misused) the new constitutional order to, as much as they could, replicate Britain.

But Madison had no doubt that Adams was wrong. Classical theorists were in fact committed to respecting the obvious, even irresistible, power of the majority while also protecting the rights of the minority. They sought to harmonize the zealous devotion to liberty exhibited by an engaged citizenry with the stability and moderation on which the rule of law and justice depended. But the truly republican method for balancing majority will with minority rights, and zeal for liberty with self-control and calm respect for settled legal practice, was not to institutionalize entrenched and bitterly antagonistic factions. Rather, a republic worthy the name fostered a genuine community of citizens and the perpetual space for enlightened, learned, and civil conversation. In this space the undeniable legitimacy and might of the majority would, through sober deliberation, begin to approximate...