The Founders' Design · Lesson 4 of 7
A Republic, If You Can Keep It
The founders did not set out to build a pure democracy. They built a republic, and they told the country plainly that keeping it would be the people’s job.
There is a story from the last day of the Constitutional Convention in September 1787. As Benjamin Franklin left the hall, a woman asked him what kind of government the delegates had made. Maryland delegate James McHenry wrote down the answer in his notes.
If You Can Keep It
A republic, if you can keep it.
The answer has two halves. The first names the design. The second hands the responsibility to the people. Franklin was eighty-one years old and had watched governments rise and fall. He knew a constitution is a starting point, not a guarantee.
A Republic, Not a Pure Democracy
In the founders’ vocabulary, a pure democracy meant citizens gathering to vote on every question themselves, as in ancient Athens. A republic meant the people choosing representatives to deliberate and decide for them, and holding those representatives accountable at the next election.
Madison argued that representation could improve on direct rule. Passing public views through a chosen body of citizens could refine them, cool sudden passions and give time for reason to catch up with emotion. The Constitution also guarantees every state a republican form of government in Article IV, so the principle reaches beyond Washington.
The Problem of Faction
Madison’s great worry was faction: a group of citizens, whether a majority or a minority, united by a passion or interest that runs against the rights of others or the good of the whole community.
Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires.
You could end faction by ending liberty, he wrote, but that cure would be worse than the disease. Since the causes of faction are sown into human nature, the only real option is to control its effects.
Extend the Sphere
Here Madison made an argument that surprised many readers. Conventional wisdom said republics only worked in small places. Madison argued the opposite: a large republic was safer.
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.
In a small community, one interest can dominate. In a large and varied nation, farmers, merchants, workers, regions and beliefs pull in different directions, and any majority has to be built from many groups. Building that coalition forces compromise, and compromise protects the minority.
Keeping It
A republic depends on things no document can force: citizens who vote, serve on juries, read the law, speak up and hold their representatives to account. The founders built the structure. They could not build the habits.
That is the second half of Franklin’s answer, and it is still addressed to whoever is reading. Understanding how the system was designed is the first step in keeping it.
Sources
Every quotation in this lesson is from a primary source. The founding documents are published by the National Archives; the Federalist Papers and the founders' letters are in the public record.
- James Madison, Federalist No. 10 (1787)
- James McHenry, notes from the Federal Convention, September 18, 1787
- The Constitution of the United States (1787): Article IV, Section 4
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