Federalist No. 10

Federalist No. 10 is an essay written by James Madison as the tenth of The Federalist Papers, a series of essays initiated by Alexander Hamilton arguing for the ratification of the United States Constitution. It was first published in The Daily Advertiser (New York) on November 22, 1787, under the name "Publius". Federalist No. 10 is among the most highly regarded of all American political writings.^[1]

No. 10 addresses the question of how to reconcile citizens with interests contrary to the rights of others or inimical to the interests of the community as a whole. Madison saw factions as inevitable due to the nature of man—that is, as long as people hold differing opinions, have differing amounts of wealth and own differing amounts of property, they will continue to form alliances with people who are most similar to them and they will sometimes work against the public interest and infringe upon the rights of others. He thus questions how to guard against those dangers.^[2]

Federalist No. 10 continues a theme begun in Federalist No. 9 and is titled "The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection". The whole series is cited by scholars and jurists as an authoritative interpretation and explication of the meaning of the Constitution. Historians such as Charles A. Beard argue that No. 10 shows an explicit rejection by the Founding Fathers of the principles of direct democracy and factionalism, and argue that Madison suggests that a representative democracy is more effective against partisanship and factionalism.^[3][4]

Madison saw the federal Constitution as providing for a "happy combination" of a republic and a purer democracy, with "the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures" resulting in a decentralized governmental structure. In his view, this would make it "more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried."^[5]