Federalist Paper #10: Protecting Minority Rights in a Large Republic, Study Guides, Projects, Research of History

Download Federalist Paper #10: Protecting Minority Rights in a Large Republic and more Study Guides, Projects, Research History in PDF only on Docsity! Federalist Paper #10 Recommended Grade/Ability Level: 11th Grade, United States History Recommended Lesson Length: One to two class periods, typically 45-55 minutes each period. Central Engagement Question/Essential Question: How can the rights of the minority be protected in a majority republic? Overview: Anti-Federalists were extremely leery of strong central governments because much of world history has shown that these governments can become abusive and strip individuals of their basic rights. This fear was affirmed by the American Revolutionary period when the British colonists in America struggled against English policies that the colonists believed violated their inalienable rights. While colonial independence was finally secured from England with the Treaty of Paris in 1783, it was doubtful that the United States of America could keep it. By 1787, Shays’ Rebellion revealed the weaknesses of its first government under the Articles of Confederation and therefore, a meeting was called in Philadelphia in 1787, at which a new and stronger central government was eventually crafted in a new document. This new document was known as the United States Constitution. However, not all Americans were pleased at this meeting, nor with this new government. Those who opposed the ratification of the U.S. Constitution were known as Anti-federalists. Anti- federalists advocated for a weak central government as a way to preserve liberty. Several individuals put pen to paper to articulate their arguments in papers known as the Anti-Federalist Papers. However, those who supported the U.S. Constitution and therefore, a stronger central government, responded with their own arguments collectively known as the Federalist Papers. This lesson explores James Madison’s Federalist Paper #10 and his answer to the critics’ charge that a republic would not protect the rights of a minority simply because the minority will always be out-voted by the majority. It also asks students to evaluate the extent to which Madison’s argument is still valid today after exploring specific contemporary issues. Materials: • Federalist Paper #10 (Appendix A) • Questions for Federalist Paper #10 (Appendix B) • Overhead of graphic organizer of Madison’s Argument (Appendix C). o Make copies of this graphic organizer for each student. • List of sample contemporary issues for debate (Appendix D) Objectives: • Students will be able to analyze Madison’s Federalist Paper #10 and determine his central argument (thesis) as to why the U.S. Constitution provides the best solution to protect minority rights. • Students will evaluate and judge Madison’s argument in light of contemporary issues. Standards: NCSS Standard(s): • STANDARD #6: Power, Authority, and Governance National Center for History in the Schools, UCLA: • STANDARD 3: The institutions and practices of government created during the Revolution and how they were revised between 1787 and 1815 to create the foundation of the American political system based on the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. o 3a) The student understands the issues involved in the creation and ratification of the United States Constitution and the new government it established. § Grade Level 5-12: Analyze the features of the Constitution, which have made this the most enduring and widely imitated written constitution in world history. Common Core Standards: • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.2 Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas. • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10). • CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.5 Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured, including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text contribute to the whole. Background Information/Homework/Pre-Learning Students must read and mark up Federalist Paper #10 prior to coming to class. Questions for the reading are available to guide them through the reading (Appendix B). Anticipatory Activity/Bell-Ringer: • Ask students to define “republic” and “direct democracy.” Contrast. • Define and identify examples of minority groups in the United States today. • Pose to students how might a republic or a direct democracy protect or safe guard the rights of a minority in a republic/direct democracy. Activity (Activities): • Remind students that you are exploring James Madison’s answer to the Anti-federalist’s charge that minority rights will not be protected under the U.S. Constitution. o (Answer that students should conclude AFTER analyzing Fed. 10: A LARGE republic (like the one under the U.S. Constitution) will best protect the rights of minorities because a large republic would prevent majority factions from forming and thus, secure the liberties of minority factions). • Put students in groups. Your discretion. It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. The second expedient is as impracticable as the first would be unwise. As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. As long as the connection subsists between his reason and his self-love, his opinions and his passions will have a reciprocal influence on each other; and the former will be objects to which the latter will attach themselves. The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government. From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results; and from the influence of these on the sentiments and views of the respective proprietors, ensues a division of the society into different interests and parties. The latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man; and we see them everywhere brought into different degrees of activity, according to the different circumstances of civil society. A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government. No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine? Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail. Shall domestic manufactures be encouraged, and in what degree, by restrictions on foreign manufactures? are questions which would be differently decided by the landed and the manufacturing classes, and probably by neither with a sole regard to justice and the public good. The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets. It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole. The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS. If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. Let me add that it is the great desideratum by which this form of government can be rescued from the opprobrium under which it has so long labored, and be recommended to the esteem and adoption of mankind. By what means is this object attainable? Evidently by one of two only. Either the existence of the same passion or interest in a majority at the same time must be prevented, or the majority, having such coexistent passion or interest, must be rendered, by their number and local situation, unable to concert and carry into effect schemes of oppression. If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together, that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful. From this view of the subject it may be concluded that a pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions. A republic, by which I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking. Let us examine the points in which it varies from pure democracy, and we shall comprehend both the nature of the cure and the efficacy which it must derive from the Union. The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter, to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens, and greater sphere of country, over which the latter may be extended. The effect of the first difference is, on the one hand, to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations. Under such a regulation, it may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. The question resulting is, whether small or extensive republics are more favorable to the election of proper guardians of the public weal; and it is clearly decided in favor of the latter by two obvious considerations: In the first place, it is to be remarked that, however small the republic may be, the representatives must be raised to a certain number, in order to guard against the cabals of a few; and that, however large it may be, they must be limited to a certain number, in order to guard against the confusion of a multitude. Hence, the number of representatives in the two cases not being in proportion to that of the two constituents, and being proportionally greater in the small republic, it follows that, if the proportion of fit characters be not less in the large than in the small republic, the former will present a greater option, and consequently a greater probability of a fit choice. In the next place, as each representative will be chosen by a greater number of citizens in the large than in the small republic, it will be more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice with success the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried; and the suffrages of the people being more free, will be more likely to centre in men who possess the most attractive merit and the most diffusive and established characters. 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. The federal Constitution forms a happy combination in this respect; the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures. The other point of difference is, the greater number of citizens and extent of territory which may be brought within the compass of republican than of democratic government; and it is this circumstance principally which renders factious combinations less to be dreaded in the former than in the latter. The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party; and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression. Extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other. Besides other impediments, it may be remarked that, where there is a consciousness of unjust or dishonorable purposes, communication is always checked by distrust in proportion to the number whose concurrence is necessary. Hence, it clearly appears, that the same advantage which a republic has over a democracy, in controlling the effects of faction, is enjoyed by a large over a small republic, -- is enjoyed by the Union over the States composing it. Does the advantage consist in the substitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice? It will APPENDIX C Overhead & Graphic Organizer for Federalist Paper #10 Federalist Paper #10 What is the problem according to Madison? _____________________ What are the TWO ways of curbing this problem? 1)  Remove  its               cause   2)     1B)  1A)   Two  types  of  _______________   2)   Majority   1)     2A)  Prevent  the   same  interests  or   passions   2B)   Two  types  of   governments   2)    1)  A  pure   democracy   2B)    2A)  Small   APPENDIX D Federalist Paper #10 and Modern America. Objective: Evaluate and judge the extent to which Madison’s argument is still valid today after exploring specific contemporary issues. Write: To what extent and in what ways does the U.S. Constitution in this large republic effectively protect the rights of minorities as argued by James Madison? Were the Anti- federalists right? Issues to debate/discuss/write about: • Gun control • Same sex marriage • Abortion • School searches • ______________ Macintosh HD:Users:noramoc:Documents:Backup 12.19.11:Documents:APUSHistory:Unit 1 Colonies to Constitution:Federalist Paper #10 Lesson Plan.docx