SOURCE: Burns, Edward McNall. “Views on Democracy.” In James Madison: Philosopher of the Constitution, 1938. Reprint, pp. 60-90. New York: Octagon Books, 1968.

[In the following essay, Burns compares Madison's views on democracy with those of his contemporaries, notably Thomas Jefferson.]

The subject of this chapter involves first of all a matter of definition. In the modern age the term democracy in the political sense has generally been defined in either of two ways. Since about 1825 it has usually been understood to mean the sovereignty of the majority, with few if any restrictions upon the right of the majority to put its will into effect. Thus defined, it has generally implied universal manhood suffrage, direct election of all of the principal officers of government, frequent elections, some degree of direct government, at least to the extent of popular referenda on constitutional changes, and, finally, an abiding faith in the political wisdom and virtue of the masses. In this form, as an American ideal, it has had as its principal source the Jacksonian Revolution of the 1820's.

There has also been an older and broader definition, perhaps comprising all of the meaning given to the term by Harold J. Laski when he defined it as “The effort of men to affirm their own essence and to remove all barriers to that affirmation.”¹ At any rate democracy in this broader sense has certainly included such ideals as the abolition of privilege, the condemnation of slavery, equality before the law, freedom of speech, press, religion, and assemblage, a regard for “the eminent dignity of man,” and abundant protection for the rights of minorities, as well as opportunity for expression of the majority will. Democracy according to this definition has not assumed the validity of the maxim, Vox populi, vox Dei. On the contrary it has been predicated upon notions of a “higher law” of reason and universal right, existing as a limitation upon all government. Its proponents have been as suspicious of the absolute sovereignty of the majority as of the exercise of any other kind of unlimited power. In a word, it has been virtually synonymous with liberalism.

ATTITUDE TOWARD THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE MASSES

As a democrat according to the first of these definitions, Madison could scarcely be given a very good rating, although perhaps not such an inferior one as is commonly assigned to him. To begin with, he did not believe in the unrestricted sovereignty of the majority. As early as 1786 he wrote that the multiplicity, mutability, and injustice of the laws of republics bring into question the whole theory that the majority who rule in such governments are the safest guardians of public good and private rights. How is a majority, he asked, united by an apparent interest and a common passion, to be restrained from unjust infringements of the rights of minorities and individuals? By respect for character? However strong this motive may be in individuals, its efficacy is reduced in proportion to the number who are to share the praise or blame. Besides, it is in itself dependent upon public opinion; and in popularly governed societies public opinion is merely the opinion of the majority, that is, of the very group whose conduct is to be measured by it. Will religion restrain the majority intent upon an illegitimate interest? It is not even an effective restraint upon individuals, much less upon groups of individuals.² Writing to James Monroe in the same year, Madison declared “There is no maxim which is more liable to be misapplied … than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.” In effect it can only mean the assumption of the vicious principle that force is the measure of right.³ In the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788 he maintained that the destruction of republics, both ancient and modern, has generally resulted from the hatred and discord growing out of majority tyranny over the rights of minorities.⁴

Those who advocate a simple democracy, according to Madison, or a pure republic governed by majority rule assume an altogether fictitious situation. They assume that the people composing the society enjoy not only an equality of political rights, but that they have a precise identity of interests and the same feelings in every respect. The majority interest would be the interest of the minority also. Questions of policy would be decided according to the majority judgment concerning the good of the whole. But in reality no community is so homogeneous. Civilized societies inevitably become divided into various groups and classes based upon conflicting economic interests. In addition to these natural divisions, artificial ones also develop founded upon differences in political, religious, and miscellaneous opinions. Combinations and alliances are formed among these groups on divers sorts of bargains, so that what passes for an expression of the will of the majority regarding the general good represents in reality a concerted scheming for factious advantage.⁵

Instead of defending the absolute sovereignty of the majority, Madison detested it so strongly that he sought in almost every conceivable way to prevent its exercise. As a disciple of Locke he set up the presumption, first of all, of liberty and property as natural rights which the state, no matter what its organization, cannot invade.⁶ One of his principal reasons for advocating a national government in the United States of considerable strength was to frustrate the ambitions of reckless majorities in the State legislatures,⁷ and his scheme of checks and balances in the Federal government was designed largely to prevent domination by the legislative branch,⁸ the agency most likely to reflect the popular will. His theory of representation did not contemplate that device as a means of giving more efficient expression to the desires of the majority, but rather as a means of “refining and enlarging the public views” by passing them through the minds of a select few, whose intelligence and virtue would discern the good of the whole better than the people themselves could do.⁹ His suggestions for controlling the spirit of faction were also designed to check too immediate an expression of popular ambitions. He believed it essential to play one faction off against another in Machiavellian fashion,¹⁰ and to extend the territorial sphere of government so that the people would be broken up into so many conflicting interests and parties that a common sentiment could hardly ever be felt by a majority.¹¹

But even these numerous recommendations did not exhaust the list of Madison's remedies against the rule of the majority. In the Philadelphia Convention he urged the adoption of fairly long terms of office for members of the national legislature—three years for Representatives and nine years for Senators—so that they might have sufficient independence and firmness to “intervene against impetuous counsels.”¹² He denied that tenure of such length would be dangerous to liberty; on the contrary it would be one of its best safeguards. By correcting the infirmities of popular government, a relatively permanent legislation would prevent disgust with popular rule that might culminate in a movement toward despotism.¹³ The Presidential veto he thought could well be employed also as a means of preventing “popular or factious injustice,” and he urged that the Convention should adopt a requirement of a three-fourths vote in both houses of Congress to override executive disapproval of a proposed law.¹⁴

Most of all, Madison would have relied upon the existence of an upper house to protect the people against themselves. In “Number 52” of the Federalist, which he claimed to have written, reference was made to the tendency of all single assemblies to yield to sudden and violent impulses “and to be seduced by factious leaders into intemperate and pernicious resolutions.”¹⁵ Moreover, the time will come, the author maintained, when greater extremes of wealth and poverty will characterize the American nation. With an increasing population there will be a larger proportion who will labor as hewers of wood and drawers of water and secretly long for a more equitable distribution of life's blessings. Under a republic with substantially equal privileges of suffrage, power will gravitate into the hands of this least prosperous element. “Symptoms of a levelling spirit,” he asserted, “have sufficiently appeared already to give notice of the impending danger.” How can this danger be guarded against? “Among other means by the establishment of a body in the government sufficiently respectable for its wisdom and virtue, to aid on such emergencies, the preponderance of justice by throwing its weight into that scale.”¹⁶ Alexander Hamilton or John Adams could scarcely have made a more candid avowal of aristocratic inclinations.

It should be added, however, that while Madison condemned the sovereignty of the majority, he was just as emphatically opposed to government by a minority, at least in its more obvious forms. Despotism of any sort was repugnant to him, whether of the few or of the many; and sometimes in his zeal for combating the former, he almost went to the extreme of advocating the latter. He was addicted on occasions to referring in glowing terms to the ideal of popular rule, although he certainly did not mean all that would now be conveyed by that phrase. In “Number 39” of the Federalist he commended a republic as the only form of government that could ever be reconciled with the genius of the people of America, with the fundamental principles of the Revolution, and with that resolve in the mind of every apostle of liberty that all our political experiments shall rest on the capacity of mankind for self-government.¹⁷ As a member of Congress he proposed the following declaration as the first amendment to the Constitution: “That all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people, that government is instituted and ought to be exercised for the benefit of the people, which consists in the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right of acquiring and using property, and generally of pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety; that the people have an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform their government, whenever it be found adverse or inadequate to the purposes of its institution.”¹⁸

During the Philadelphia Convention and later, Madison proposed a number of safeguards against minority domination. He urged the adoption of measures to prevent election of a President by the representatives of less than a majority of the people in case the election should be thrown into the lower house of Congress.¹⁹ He opposed a proposal to have the Constitution adopted by the concurrence of nine States, lest that might mean its being put into force over the whole body of the people, though less than a majority of them should have ratified it.²⁰ He insisted upon proportionate representation of the States in the Senate, for otherwise a minority of the people would be able to negative the will of a majority.²¹ In 1823 he advised changing the method of electing the President in the event of failure of any candidate to receive a majority of the electoral votes. He advocated submitting the election to a joint session of the Senate and the House, with each member voting as an individual. He opposed the existing method of election by the House of Representatives, voting by States, as too great “a departure from the republican principle of numerical equality.”²²

In addition he believed direct popular election of some agencies of the government essential as a check upon minority tyranny and as a means of preserving the republican character of the system. He admitted in the Convention his advocacy of a “policy of refining the popular appointments by successive filtrations,” but he feared that this might be carried too far. He would confine it to the selection of the second branch of the legislature and perhaps the executive and the judiciary. He believed that “the great fabric to be raised would be more stable and durable, if it should rest on the solid foundation of the people themselves …”²³ In a later speech in the Convention he even declared himself in favor of popular election of the national executive in principle. Such a method, he thought, would be as likely as any that could be devised to produce a magistrate of distinguished character. The suffrages of the people generally could only be attracted by a candidate of sufficient merit to become widely known and an object of general esteem.²⁴ Although he later decided in favor of selection of the President by an electoral college, mainly, as he averred, because of the practical problem of a wider diffusion of the franchise in the Northern States than in the South, he continued to maintain his theoretical preference for popular election.²⁵

But Madison did not look with an excess of favor upon direct participation by the people in government. He referred in Federalist “Number 10” to a pure democracy, which he defined as one in which the citizens enact and administer the laws directly, as one of the worst forms of government.²⁶ In the Federal Convention of 1787 he insisted upon ratification of the new Constitution by conventions in the States elected by the people. He urged this method not because it would be more democratic, but because he regarded the people in the States, not the State governments, as the real sovereigns;²⁷ and of course also for the reason that he did not trust the legislatures to pass judgment on a Constitution that would deprive them of important powers. Furthermore, he said nothing about the desirability of submitting the question of ratification or rejection to a popular referendum, which would have been the truly democratic procedure.

In 1790 Madison wrote a long reply to Jefferson's famous letter advocating periodic submission of constitutions and laws to the people for approval, revision, or repeal. Jefferson believed that no one generation had any right to bind succeeding generations, and that therefore no constitution or law should continue in force for more than about twenty years unless reapproved at the end of that period by the people.²⁸ Madison thought the idea a good one from the standpoint of pure theory, but he maintained that there were serious practical objections that could be adduced against it. If applied to a constitution, the government would automatically come to an end at a given time, unless prolonged by a previous constitutional act. But the nation would always be confronted by the danger of an interregnum with all the confusion incident thereto. In the case of ordinary laws a similar difficulty would obtain. Unless they were kept in force by other laws anticipating their expiration, all rights depending upon positive laws, especially the rights of property, would become defunct, and violent struggles would occur between the parties interested in reviving, and those interested in overthrowing, the previous distribution of property. Moreover, frequent submission of constitutions and laws to revision would agitate the public mind more frequently and more violently than necessary, and popular esteem for a government too mutable and novel would be diminished.²⁹

In order to avoid such embarrassments, Madison thought it would be better to rely upon the doctrine of tacit assent to justify the right of one generation to bind generations to come. That is, succeeding generations would, of course, have the right to revoke the political acts of their forebears; but unless they exercised this right it should be assumed that they gave tacit approval to those acts.³⁰ He neglected to consider the vast difference between a positive act of repealing a law and deciding whether a law which had automatically expired should be revived. The weight of inertia and the force of the habit of obedience, the extreme conservatism of the bulk of mankind, would have much more influence in the former case than in the latter. The contrasting attitudes of the two philosophers on this question illustrated about as neatly as anything could their divergent temperaments. Jefferson, the idealist, cherished what was theoretically desirable, and minimized or ignored the practical difficulties. In his judgment a bit of confusion and uncertainty was not a high price to pay for liberty. Madison, the realist, respected the theory, but magnified the practical difficulties. For him stability and the rights of property came pretty close to being the all-important considerations.

Madison's views on the suffrage also reflected the basic conflict in his mind between democratic and aristocratic inclinations. He often referred to his theoretic prepossessions in favor of a universal franchise. In the Philadelphia Convention he declared the right to vote to be “one of the fundamental articles of republican government.”³¹ In his Autobiography, written about the year 1830, he affirmed his belief that the suffrage ought to be extended so far “as to secure in every event and change in the state of society a majority of people on the side of power. A government resting on a minority is an aristocracy, not a republic, and could not be safe with a numerical and physical force against it without a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.”³²

On the other hand, the right to property, especially property in land, was a veritable obsession with Madison. For him the possession of a freehold estate was at once the emblem of stability, the badge of respectability, and the evidence of political capacity. The right to such possession sprang from the law of nature and was therefore coeval with eternal justice. Since it was the primary duty of government to protect this right, no apportionment of the franchise could ever justly be made that would endanger it. But wholly aside from the question of justice, the security of liberty itself, according to Madison, depends upon protection for the rights of property in the distribution of the suffrage. If all power be allowed to the indigent masses, one of two things will certainly happen: either they will yield to blind passion in legislative attacks upon the more prosperous minority, or else they will become the dupes of wealthy miscreants ambitious for power. In either case liberty will be overthrown: in the first by a despotism, the natural fruit of anarchy; in the second, by an oligarchy based upon corruption.³³

The best expression of Madison's views on the suffrage is undoubtedly to be found in his famous speech of August 7 in the Federal Convention and in the note which he appended to that speech about 1821. He avowed the right of suffrage to be an essential provision in a republican constitution. But he maintained that extreme care must be exercised as to the apportionment of that right. Allow it exclusively to property, and the rights of persons may be oppressed. Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property may be trampled upon by indigent majorities.³⁴ Like Gouverneur Morris he feared that the time was not far distant when the great majority of Americans would have neither landed nor any other form of property, or worse still, they would become the dupes and retainers of their capitalist employers and vote not as free men, but in obedience to the dictates of powerful magnates to whom they owed their livelihood.³⁵ In the latter case the interests of true wealth, especially of landed property, would be at the mercy of the speculators and money changers.

He was disposed to advocate, therefore, some plan by which landholders could enjoy an added degree of representation besides their representation as persons. He thought this could be done by confining the suffrage for one branch of the legislature to freeholders, and admitting all others to a common right with freeholders in electing the other branch; or by an enlargement of the election district and an extended term of service for one branch. He believed that large districts would be favorable to the choice of men of “general respectability” and “of probable attachment to the rights of property.” But if neither of these devices should be found practicable, and if the alternative should lie between universal suffrage for both branches and restriction of the entire right to a part of the citizens, then he would favor universal suffrage; for it would be better that those having interests of property and persons both at stake should be deprived of half of their share, than that those having personal rights only should be deprived of the whole.³⁶ It was his hope that some kind of a balance could be achieved in which the interests of both could be represented. In this way the republican ideal of a wide extension of the franchise would be harmonized with the practical necessity of protecting the rights of property.

In spite of his agrarian sympathies Madison did not desire to convert the government of the United States into a landholding oligarchy. When a proposal was made in the Constitutional Convention to require possession of landed property as a qualification for membership in the national legislature, he opposed it. Landed possessions, he maintained, are no certain evidence of wealth, for they may be encumbered by debts greater than their actual worth. The unjust laws of the States were instigated by this class of debtors more than by any other. In addition it is “politic as well as just that the interests and rights of every class should be duly represented and understood in the public councils.” He pointed out that the three principal classes which the population of this country comprises are the landed, the commercial, and the manufacturing. Although the last two are not so numerous as the first, in time they will become so; and it would be unjust to include in the organic law a provision depriving them of representation.³⁷

Although he asserted in the Federalist that all political experiments should rest on the capacity of mankind for self-government,³⁸ Madison did not have a very exalted opinion of the political wisdom and virtue of the masses. In a letter to Edmund Randolph in 1788 he wrote, “There can be no doubt that there are subjects to which the capacities of the bulk of mankind are unequal, and on which they must and will be governed by those with whom they happen to have acquaintance and confidence.”³⁹ More than this, the masses are the chronic victims of factious tendencies, of violent hatreds and transient impulses that often lead them to desire defective and unnecessary laws which are altogether too difficult to repeal even after time and reflection have shown them to be unwise. These evils increase the expense of government, multiply litigation between individuals, and impair that certainty and stability which are among the chief essentials of a well-ordered state.⁴⁰ As much as anything else it was this conviction, that the masses are generally impetuous and prone to envy and contention, that was at the bottom of Madison's distrust of democracy in the sense of majority rule.

VIEW OF DEMOCRACY IN THE BROADER SENSE

As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, democracy has had another and broader meaning. It has been the expression of a tradition that stemmed originally from Cicero and the Stoics and was carried forward by medievalists like Isidore of Seville, John of Salisbury, Marsiglio of Padua, and John Gerson, and in more modern times by such famous opponents of absolutism as Francis Hotman, John Milton, James Harrington, and John Locke. Under the aegis of this tradition democracy has emphasized individual rights and the protection of minorities fully as much if not more than it has the sovereignty of the people and the common welfare. The major concern of its exponents has been to defend the common man against oppression resulting from the exercise of political power founded upon privilege and inequality—in other words, to combat monarchy and hereditary aristocracy, and to insist that government should rest upon the informed consent of the governed. Perhaps it is on this basis alone that the philosophers of what is essentially a liberal ideal can justly be called democrats.

That Madison was very definitely a representative of democracy in this broader sense must be apparent already from what has been said respecting his views of sovereignty and the bases of political power. Absolutism, whatever its form, was the bête noire of his mind, and natural rights, especially the right of property, were the sacred heritage of civilized man and the principal subjects of the law of nature. Some additional observations are necessary to present a complete picture of his democratic theory in this larger sense. His views on slavery, natural rights, freedom of expression, and opposition to war and militarism will need to be considered since they may be taken to exemplify a general attitude of regard for liberty, equality, and protection of the common man against arbitrary government.

From the time of the Stoics philosophers of the democratic tradition had recognized a fundamental inconsistency between the law of nature, as the embodiment of eternal right and justice, and the institution of slavery. That one man should own another could scarcely be reconciled with the idea of the natural equality of all men. Although the Stoics and some of their successors tolerated the existence of the institution, they never sought to justify it on theoretical grounds, and most of them would have welcomed its speedy extinction. This was essentially the attitude of the democratic philosophers in America in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Madison was born into a slaveholding environment, and he continued to own slaves until the end of his life. He treated them, however, with a consideration bordering upon indulgence.⁴¹ He never sold any of them until two years before his death, when straitened circumstances compelled him to dispose of several, with their own consent, to certain of his kinsmen.⁴² Furthermore, on several occasions he expressed his philosophic convictions against the institution. In the Philadelphia Convention he opposed a twenty-year limitation on the power of Congress to forbid the importation of slaves on the ground that such a long term would be “dishonorable to the national character.”⁴³ But in addition he thought it wrong to “admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in human beings.”⁴⁴ In a letter to Lafayette in 1826 he deplored the fact that the presence of slavery in the American republic impaired the influence of our political example.⁴⁵ In the Virginia constitutional convention of 1829 he declared it to be essential to justice, to humanity, to the sympathies of human nature, to the integrity of the national character that those who belonged to the class of slaves should be considered as much as possible in the light of human beings and not as mere property.⁴⁶

But while he regarded slavery as an evil which ought to be abolished, it was foreign to his temperament to lead a crusade against it or to demand its immediate extirpation by drastic methods. He believed that peaceful and gradual methods were the best means of getting rid of any deeply rooted evil. In 1819 in a letter to Robert J. Evans he recommended a solution for the slave problem which he considered at once humane and just. He proposed that a sufficient acreage of the lands belonging to the United States should be sold over a period of years to provide for the gradual purchase of slaves from their masters. The negroes thus redeemed from bondage would be transported to a colony to be established in Africa. Certain exceptions would have to be made. Blacks who preferred to remain in slavery rather than face the uncertainties of life in a strange environment would be permitted to do so. Slaves who had been disabled or worn out in the service of their masters would remain a charge upon their former owners. And then Madison offered one other exception which probably would have been fatal to the whole scheme: servants whom their masters regarded as too valuable to be disposed of at the price fixed by due process of law would not need to be sold.⁴⁷

Madison opposed the Missouri Compromise and other attempts to prevent the spread of slavery. He believed that an uncontrolled dispersion of the total number of slaves would be best, not only for the nation, but for the slaves themselves. The fewer the number of slaves in proportion to the rest of the population in a given area, the better their prospects for an improved condition and for emancipation.⁴⁸ But to the end of his life the method that appealed to him as the most practicable for eliminating the evil was emancipation through purchase by the national government, followed by colonization. In his will he bequeathed two thousand dollars to an organization dedicated to the promotion of that method, the American Colonization Society.⁴⁹

During the contest over ratification of the Constitution Madison opposed the movement for adding a bill of rights to that instrument. This fact is sometimes taken to mean that he had no sympathy with the libertarian ideals of the Revolution, that he was concerned only with the protection of the property right, and cared little for such personal rights as freedom of the press and religion, trial by jury, and exemption from double jeopardy in criminal cases. Such a view can scarcely be maintained in the face of the facts. Madison's opposition to the movement for adding a bill of rights did not spring from an indifference to liberty, but from a desire to avoid confusion and delay in ratification, and from a concern for preventing every possible opportunity for an abuse of power. In the Virginia convention, for example, he argued that the inclusion of a bill of rights might be dangerous, to the extent that if an imperfect enumeration should be made, the implication might follow that everything omitted had been given to the general government.⁵⁰

In a letter to Jefferson in October, 1788, Madison gave a more complete exposition of his views on the subject. He declared that there was always the danger that a positive declaration of the most essential rights might not be given sufficient latitude. He was convinced that the rights of conscience in particular, if submitted to majority definition, would be restricted in most undesirable fashion. A common objection of the masses in New England, he pointed out, was that the Constitution, by prohibiting religious tests for public office, opened the door for Jews, Turks, and infidels. Moreover, experience demonstrates, he claimed, the ineffectiveness of a bill of rights on the very occasions when its control is most needed. In Virginia the declaration of rights has been violated in every instance where it has been opposed by a willful majority. Wherever the real power of a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. “Wherever there is an interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done, and not less readily by a powerful and interested party than by a powerful and interested prince.”⁵¹ What Madison undoubtedly meant was that the real security to liberty lies in checks and balances which reduce the powers of government to the lowest minimum consistent with order and stability.

Still he thought a bill of rights has a certain value. The political principles declared in so solemn a manner eventually acquire the character of fundamental maxims of free government, and as they gain a wide and familiar acceptance, counteract the impulses of passion and interest. Moreover, although it is generally true that the danger of tyranny springs from determined majorities, yet there may be occasions when the evil proceeds from usurped powers of the government. A declaration of rights may be a convenient precaution against such possibilities, however remote they may appear to be. It is often alleged, he observed, that there is a tendency in all governments to augment their powers at the expense of liberty. But the premise is only partly true. Power when it has reached a certain degree of energy and independence does tend to augment itself by any convenient means. But below that degree the tendency is the reverse, that is, toward gradual relaxation, until the abuses of liberty compel a sudden swing in the opposite direction. Liberty, in other words, is equally endangered when governments have too much power and when they have too little. A proper mean between these extremes is the appropriate remedy to be sought.⁵²

With the establishment of the new political system in 1789 Madison's fear of anarchy was supplanted by the other principal emotion that prompted most of his theory, namely, the fear of abuse of power. Consequently in the First Congress he became the leader of the very movement he had formerly opposed, the movement in favor of a bill of rights. He now declared that he wanted to render the Constitution “as acceptable to the whole people of the United States as it had been to a majority” [sic], to create the impression that the defenders of the new instrument were sincere votaries of liberty, and to guard against any possible abuses of power by the general government. He was not satisfied to stop there, however. He believed that there was danger of oppression from majorities in the particular States, even greater than had to be feared from any branch of the general government. Accordingly he proposed to include, along with the limitations upon the national government, prohibitions upon the States against violating freedom of conscience and the press and against deprivation of jury trial in criminal cases.⁵³

As the years passed and the true significance of Federalist policies became apparent, Madison evinced more and more solicitude for protection of liberty against excess of power. Some of the assertions he made in Congress during this period would have done credit to Jefferson himself. He avowed, for example, that when a people form a constitution they reserve all those rights which they have not expressly delegated; and it is questionable whether Congress can even legislate respecting those rights, much less violate them.⁵⁴ He made it his special business to combat all attacks upon freedom of expression, even going so far as to defend the vituperative outbursts of the press and political clubs against the government during the Whiskey Rebellion.⁵⁵ As a member of the Virginia House of Delegates in 1799 he maintained the same uncompromising attitude, denouncing the infamous Sedition Act for its denial of freedom of the press. He declared that “to the press alone, chequered as it is with abuses, the world is indebted for all the triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.” He regarded the prohibition upon Congress in the First Amendment as absolute. To the question whether the Federal government does not even have the power to protect itself against libelous attacks, he replied with a categorical negative.⁵⁶ He denied the possibility of drawing a distinction between freedom and “licentiousness” of the press. No means have ever yet been devised, he insisted, by which the press can be corrected without being enslaved. A supposed freedom which admits of exceptions, alleged to be licentious, is not freedom at all.⁵⁷

Needless to say, Madison condemned the Alien Act just as emphatically as he did its companion in infamy. But of course on different grounds. He maintained that it deprived persons of their rights to a judicial trial and the writ of habeas corpus. He denied the justice of empowering the President to revoke the admission of aliens without a judicial conviction of crime. Their admission to this country was a public grant of personal right, and there was no more propriety in an arbitrary revocation of such a grant than there would be in a similar revocation of a grant of land.⁵⁸ Here we seem to have a rather interesting refutation of the thesis that Madison always exalted the rights of property above the rights of persons.

There was another species of liberty that engaged Madison's earnest attention, and that was liberty of religion. Absolute exemption of religion from any degree of political control was almost an obsession with him. He condemned the doctrine that without some alliance or coalition between church and state, neither can endure.⁵⁹ He maintained that complete separation of the two does more to foster true religion than all the religious establishments that have ever been devised.⁶⁰ Some of his other views were even more extreme. He disapproved of the appointment of chaplains to be paid out of the national treasury, suggesting that if any member of the legislature felt that he needed the spiritual ministrations of one of these, he should provide for them at his own expense. Finally, he objected to executive proclamations of religious fasts and festivals, unless in the form of mere recommendations to the people.⁶¹

Opposition to militarism and war has had a place of no small importance in the democratic ideal, broadly defined. The doctrine of Stoicism was essentially pacifist, and philosophers inheriting the Stoic tradition have ever since viewed with distrust the dominance of the military. It was the privilege of Madison and Jefferson to represent this position in America. Both condemned a standing army as a menace to liberty and insisted upon a strict subordination of the military to the civil authority.⁶² Madison condemned war as the most dreaded of all enemies to public liberty, “because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” It is the progenitor of armies and debts and taxes, and these are the favored instruments for establishing the domination of the few over the many. War is the corroding principle of republicanism producing, as it does, inequalities of fortune, opportunities for fraud, and executive tyranny.⁶³ But the same mind that conceived these excellent doctrines was able to affirm seventeen years later that the War of 1812 was “stamped with that justice which invites the smiles of Heaven on the means of conducting it to a successful termination.”⁶⁴ Sweet are the uses not only of adversity, but also of political expediency.

Madison was not over-sanguine as to the possibility of ridding the world of the curse of war. Still he believed there was some hope, and that men ought to strive to their utmost to make that hope a reality. He suggested several remedies which he thought might be effective. For that class of wars which emanate from the mere will of absolutist governments the obvious cure would lie in enforcing responsibility of the government to the people. This would not be a panacea, for there would remain those types of wars which germinate in the passions and prejudices of the people themselves. An efficacious mode of preventing these would be to compel each generation to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of allowing them to carry them on at the expense of future generations. In addition the taxes imposed to defray the cost of this type of war ought to bear as directly as possible upon the people themselves, so that those who pay them would really feel something of the penalty of rushing heedlessly into conflict and would not be deluded into permitting misapplications of their money. If such restraints were imposed, parsimony would be sure to checkmate ambition, and in the impasse that would result, reason might have a better chance to decide the issue for the public good.⁶⁵ He overlooked the fact that a government intent upon war might poison the minds of its citizens and seduce them into paying direct taxes as readily as they would purchase bonds. In fact he himself as President did not scruple to generate a little popular prejudice and passion in favor of a war with Great Britain.⁶⁶

MADISON'S THEORY AND “JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY”

The concluding section of this chapter may well be devoted to a study of the question, Was Madison a true exponent of Jeffersonian democracy? There is a disposition on the part of many writers to imply that this question should be answered in the negative, to suggest that Jefferson's theory was so permeated with popular sympathy that Madison could never have accepted it. Thus Professor Jacobson considers “confidence in majority rule” to be one of “the vital contributions to American political thought” made by the Sage of Monticello.⁶⁷ William E. Dodd declares that “Jefferson had a boundless faith in the masses.”⁶⁸ And in the opinion of Professor Parrington, it was Jefferson's belief that “The cure for the evils of democracy was more democracy.”⁶⁹

But generalizations like these would seem to betray a rather uncritical view of Jefferson's philosophy. The idea that he was animated by “confidence in majority rule,” for example, cannot be squared with several of his own assertions on the subject. In his Notes on Virginia he declared that “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.”⁷⁰ In other words, he believed in the good old system of checks and balances, which had always had as one of its main purposes the frustration of majority rule. In his first inaugural he admonished the nation to “bear in mind this sacred principle that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate which would be oppression.”⁷¹ Moreover, he believed that he as President had a perfect right to pronounce the Sedition Act unconstitutional, and to nullify it, although it had been passed by an undoubted majority of the representatives of the people.⁷² The conclusion seems inescapable that his conception of “majority rule” was essentially the same as that of Locke, that is, the will of the majority should prevail except in those cases where the natural rights of the individual are violated,⁷³ which is a pretty large qualification. Certainly he adhered to no dogma that the voice of the people is the voice of God.⁷⁴

The statement that “Jefferson had boundless faith in the masses” would appear to be just a little ridiculous in the face of such assertions of his as the following: “The mobs of great cities add just so much to the support of pure government, as sores do to the strength of the human body,”⁷⁵ and, “I consider the class of artificers as the panders of vice, and the instruments by which the liberties of a country are generally overturned.”⁷⁶ A boundless faith in the masses is exactly what he did not have, unless we are to suppose that the “masses” in America as late as 1800 included only “the chosen people of God who labor in the earth.”⁷⁷

Furthermore, instead of maintaining limitless confidence in the masses, Jefferson affirmed his belief as late as 1813 in a “natural aristocracy,” the foundations of which “are virtue and talent,” as distinguished from an “artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth.” He did not subscribe to the doctrine of the equality of all men except in the sense of equality before the law. He considered the natural aristocracy “the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and the government of society.” “May we not say,” he went on to inquire, “that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectively for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”⁷⁸

If Jefferson had really believed that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy, he certainly would have advocated universal suffrage and direct popular election of the officers of government as absolute minimum essentials. But this was not quite the case. In 1776 he drafted a plan for a constitution of Virginia that revealed no great enthusiasm for either of these measures. The plan provided for landholding qualifications to vote for members of the lower house, at the same time recommending that the State should make grants out of the public domain to all non-landholders. Eventually this would mean universal manhood suffrage, but the enfranchised would vote not as citizens, but as property owners. The plan also provided for a senate elected by the lower house for a nine year term, an executive chosen by the same body, and judges with life tenure.⁷⁹ In 1783 he drafted another plan only slightly more democratic. It did provide for the enfranchisement of all free males who possessed a certain amount of real property or who had served in the militia. But it also provided for a senate elected indirectly by electors chosen by the people, a judiciary with life tenure, and an executive with a veto power.⁸⁰

In reality, Jefferson's vision of democracy was “simply a faith in personal liberty as the highest guiding principle in the progress of civilization.”⁸¹ To him the great object of government was to secure the natural rights of the individual, and certain democratic methods like popular election of the lower house of the legislature were merely the best means of realizing that object, not ends in themselves. Instead of a positive good, he conceived of government as a necessary evil, and declared that that government is best which governs least. His philosophy also embraced a demand for equal and exact justice, periodic revisions of constitutions and laws, and subordination of the military to the civil authority. Finally, it included opposition to judicial supremacy over the other branches of the government and a belief in the necessity of popular education and in the importance of local government.⁸²

How closely did Madison's theory of democracy correspond with this? So far as concerns fundamentals there was substantial agreement. Both men abhorred absolutism regardless of its form. Both adhered to the ideals of limited government, dominance of the civil authority over the military, universal suffrage (in principle), and the importance of popular education and local government. Both regarded the preservation of natural rights as the great object of political society, although Madison was more inclined than Jefferson to think of natural rights in terms of property. Both distrusted the proletarian masses of large cities, the hangers-on of parasitic capitalists, the rootless mobs that have neither the stability nor the independence essential for the responsibilities of citizenship. The chief differences in the theories of the two men would seem to consist in Madison's more cynical view of human motives, his Whiggish emphasis upon property rights, his opposition to frequent submission of constitutions and laws to the people, and his disposition at times, particularly in his earlier career, to sacrifice liberty to order. One cannot imagine Madison rejoicing over Shays' Rebellion or declaring as Jefferson did in 1789 that “The tree of liberty needs to be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”⁸³ After 1789, however, these divergencies in theory tended gradually to disappear, and it is not without significance that in actual political practice the policies of the two men were scarcely distinguishable, in reference to democracy as well as nearly everything else.

Notes

1. “Democracy,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. V, p. 76.

2. Vices of the Political System of the United States, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. II, pp. 366-68.

3. Ibid., vol. II, p. 273.

4. Elliot, Debates, vol. II, p. 90.

5. Letter to Jefferson, Oct. 24, 1787, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. V, pp. 28-29.

6. John Locke, Second Essay on Civil Government (Everyman ed.), p. 185.

7. Federalist (Lodge ed.), No. 44, pp. 278-79.

8. Ibid., No. 48, p. 309.

9. Ibid., No. 10, p. 57.

10. “Parties,” National Gazette; reprinted in Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. VI, p. 86.

11. Letter to Jefferson, Oct. 24, 1787, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. V, p. 31.

12. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, pp. 214, 421.

13. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. V, pp. 284-85.

14. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, p. 587.

15. Lodge edition, p. 388.

16. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. I, pp. 421-23.

17. Lodge edition, p. 246.

18. Annals of Congress, vol. I, pp. 433-34.

19. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, pp. 527, 536.

20. Ibid., vol. II, p. 469.

21. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 8-10.

22. Letter to George Hay, Aug. 23, 1823, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 151.

23. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. I, pp. 49-50.

24. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 56-57.

25. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 56-57; 110-11.

26. Lodge edition, p. 56.

27. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, p. 476.

28. Writings of Jefferson (Ford ed.), vol. V, p. 115.

29. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. V, pp. 436-40 note.

30. Ibid., vol. V, p. 440 note. On the other hand, in a letter to Caleb Wallace, Madison affirmed that a State constitution should provide for a convenient and relatively easy mode of revision. He suggested that a majority of any two of the three departments should have authority to call a plenipotentiary convention whenever they considered that their constitutional rights had been violated by the other department, or whenever they considered that an essential part of the constitution needed amendment. He declared such an arrangement as this to be particularly valuable in a new State, where it would be “imprudent and indecent” for a handful of early settlers to impose a frame of government, based on its limited experience and needs, upon what would later be a populous area with a higher state of development. He lamented the difficulty of amending the constitution of Virginia and observed that unless a constitution contained some principle making revision necessary and certain, it would probably never be changed. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 175-76.

31. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, p. 203.

32. Manuscript, Madison Papers, Library of Congress.

33. Writings (Cong. ed.), vol. I, p. 188.

34. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, pp. 203-4; 204 note.

35. Ibid., vol. III, pp. 451-52, Appendix A, CCCXLII.

36. Ibid., vol. III, pp. 454-55, Appendix A, CCCXLII.

37. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 123-24.

38. Lodge edition, No. 39, p. 246.

39. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. V, pp. 81-82.

40. Letter to John Cartwright, 1824, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, pp. 181-82.

41. Hunt, Life of Madison, pp. 380-81.

42. Letter to Edward Coles, 1834, manuscript, Madison Papers, Library of Congress.

43. Farrand, Records of the Federal Convention, vol. II, p. 415.

44. Ibid., vol. II, p. 417.

45. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 266.

46. Ibid., vol. IX, p. 362.

47. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. VIII, pp. 439-47.

48. Letter to James Monroe, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 25.

49. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 550.

50. Elliot, Debates, vol. II, pp. 451-52.

51. Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. V, p. 272.

52. Ibid., vol. V, pp. 271-74.

53. Annals of Congress, vol. I, pp. 431-32.

54. Ibid., vol. I, pp. 439-40.

55. Ibid., vol. IV, pp. 934-35.

56. Report on the Virginia Resolutions, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. VI, pp. 389-92.

57. Address of the General Assembly to the People of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. VI, pp. 334-36.

58. Report on Virginia Resolutions, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. VI, p. 363.

59. Letter to Edward Livingston, 1822, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 99.

60. Letter to Edward Everett, 1823, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 127.

61. Letter to Edward Livingston, 1822, Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. IX, p. 99.

62. Elliot, Debates, vol. II, p. 285; Federalist (Lodge ed.), No. 41, p. 251; Charles E. Merriam, A History of American Political Theories, New York, 1920, p. 172.

63. Political Observations, manuscript, Columbia University Library.

64. Richardson, op. cit., vol. I, p. 524.

65. “Universal Peace,” National Gazette, Feb. 2, 1792; reprinted in Writings (Hunt ed.), vol. VI, pp. 88-90.

66. Supra, pp. 22-23.

67. J. Mark Jacobson, The Development of American Political Thought, New York, 1932, p. 247.

68. Statesmen of the Old South, New York, 1911, p. 55.

69. Main Currents in American Thought, vol. I, p. 354.

70. Writings of Jefferson (Ford ed.), vol. II, p. 224.

71. Richardson, op. cit., vol. I, p. 322.

72. Charles A. Beard, The Economic Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy, New York, 1915, p. 456.

73. Locke, op. cit., pp. 184-85.

74. Ephraim D. Adams, The Power of Ideals in American History, New Haven, 1926, p. 133.

75. Writings of Jefferson (Washington ed.), vol. I, p. 403.

76. Ibid., vol. I, p. 403.

77. Ibid., vol. VIII, p. 405.

78. Letter to John Adams, Oct. 28, 1813, Writings of Jefferson (Ford ed.), vol. IX, pp. 425-26.

79. Ibid., vol. II, pp. 7ff.

80. Works of Jefferson (Washington ed.), vol. VIII, p. 444.

81. Ephraim D. Adams, op. cit., p. 130.

82. Cf. C. E. Merriam, Jr., “The Political Theory of Jefferson,” Political Science Quarterly, vol. XVII (March, 1902), pp. 33-39.

83. Writings of Jefferson (Ford ed.), vol. IV, p. 467.

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