Balancing Interests: Federalist 51 Explained *Part 2* | A Primary Source Close Read w/ BRI

0:00 Hello and welcome back to the Bill of Rights Institute’s Close Reads. Today we’re going to be doing part 2 of explaining Federalist 51. This time we’re going to be looking at the second half of the essay where Publius shifts his argument from looking at some of the checks and balances between branches and takes a look at the entire federal system to help explain how our system of federalism

0:21 helps the Constitution to maintain its protections of liberty. So let’s take a look. So we’re back to looking at this central question of how does the structure of our federal system protect liberty. So in the last video we talked about how there’s these external and internal controls that are helping to maintain the system of government that we have.

0:41 The new Constitution. Poolees is arguing that these will be enough to ensure that the government continues to protect liberty and focus on the ends for which it was prescribed. So again, this is our central question how does the structure of our federal system protect liberty? So another piece of the federal system is thinking about how the national nature of the government can help maintain this as well.

1:05 So we’re going to dive into the second half of Federalist 51 and take a look how he outlined that argument. So in the second half of the paper, Publius starts to outline this second argument that’s included in Federalists. He says, it is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part

1:25 of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. So there’s a lot to unpack in the sense. Again, so here Publius is talking about the people themselves. So he had already said that the people are

1:47 without a doubt the primary control from the government. But you also need to ensure that those people here he’s saying, aren’t oppressing each other. In a democracy. Of course, majority tyranny is a word that comes up a lot. There are famous examples from all the way back to Thucydides history, the Peloponnesian War, of a majority of Athenians deciding to do

2:08 something that would be oppressing another group within the community. And so there’s this fear within a democracy or in democratically elected governments that a group of the community will get together and just oppress another group. And that’s something we’ve seen throughout the history united States here as well. And here Publius is pointing that out and giving an argument for how it is that this could be maintained.

2:31 And he says that if a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the majority will be insecure. And why he’s saying that is if those rights of any citizens are insecure, then the system is not designed properly. And so he’s going to outline the argument for how the Constitution works to counteract this reality that exists within a democratic government.

2:53 And he says all authority in it will be derived from independent on the society or the people. The society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests and classes of citizens that the rights of individuals or of the minority will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government, the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights.

3:18 Of course, arguments over religious rights were very central during this period. James Madison, who was writing here himself, was involved in debates over religious rights and religious toleration in the state of Virginia. And so when he’s pointing to that he said look, people jealously guard these things. But the reality is that all civil rights ought to be as jealously guarded as religious rights are.

3:41 And so what he’s saying here too is interesting. The thing about the new federal system so whereas before we had the Articles of Confederation it was just one big government that didn’t have a lot of powers and the states were really the ones that were governing. What he’s saying is the slightly more powerful federal government because it doesn’t rule upon the states but directly upon the people and that the people have

4:01 a voice in it, you will now have this sort of expanding sphere. So if you think about if you’ve got a small sphere, you’ve got a very likely idea that all of those people are going to be the same and have the same interests. So if you have a think about maybe one of your classes or something that’s really small, there’s going to be a lot of people in there that maybe have the same interest.

4:23 But as you expand that out to your whole town, your whole community and your whole state, the bigger you make that circle, the more people that come into it. And so the more interests in classes of citizens and rights of individuals there are within that mix. The idea is that the bigger you make that circle, the more interests get represented, the harder it is for one singular group to be oppressing another.

4:46 So you have all these interests now competing with each other. If someone’s going to come along and propose an idea it has to appeal to this huge group of people as opposed to just this really small one. And so the theory that Cooper is putting forward here is that as big as you make that those competing interests are going to compete and bounce off one another. And so within that you develop security. When you make that bigger, you include more of those interests.

5:08 It forces those interests to have to come to some kind of common ground with common understanding, which the hope was it would be the common good for everybody. So what is the highest common good? You can get to well, that is the pursuit of justice. And so the way it goes on to say justice is the end of government, it is the end of civil society. In other words, this is why we have a government in the first place.

5:29 We’re looking to develop a system that allows us to get justice, which has been defined lots of ways. But for sake of argument here, we’ll say it’s everybody being able to have what is theirs by right having what it is that they deserve by their existence, their rights are protected. And it’s a just society. It has been, and it will ever be pursued

5:52 until it be obtained or liberty lost and it’s pursued right. Justice is the thing toward which we’re working, and we work toward it so zealously at times that liberty could be lost, things could be sacrificed to pursue that thing, but it’s going to be the thing that we are pursuing. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker,

6:12 anarchy may have truly be said to reign as in a state of nature where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger. And as in the latter states, even the strong individuals are prompted by the uncertainty of their condition to submit to a government which may protect a week as well as themselves. So in the former state, will this more powerful factions or

6:35 parties be gradually induced by a like motive to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful? All right, that’s a mouthful. What we’re saying here is that a state in which the majority dominates is no different than a state of nature, because in a state of nature, meaning there is no government,

6:57 we’re all existing independently apart from one another. There is always a fear that you’re going to be dominated by somebody who is stronger than you. You’re always concerned that you have no protection. So we grouped together in order to be more secure in our rights and more secure in our property and our possessions and be protected against that unknown force that’s out there. And he’s saying that in a government

7:17 in which a majority rules, it’s the same kind of thing. And so, with all of these other interests that are now being combined, people will seek to find things that will balance things out, because there’s always a possibility that you could find yourself being in the minority party. And so the theory was

7:38 that Publius argues here is that once that happens, everybody understands that their interests are bound up and creating something that is going to allow for the most amount of people to have the most amount of rights and most amount of liberty that will keep that system maintained, because oppressing another group means that that group could then oppress you if they become the majority of ruling interests in the nation.

7:59 And so the end of that will be that justice is what is pursued. It is the thing to which everybody works because it is the one thing that we can all agree on that we should be looking for. Again, that’s what public is arguing that this new federal system will allow. Obviously it doesn’t progress perfectly in the United States but the structure itself has allowed for

8:20 different conversations and different debates and different things to orient so as to progress towards this idea of justice. And over time the government continues to work and we continue to work as individuals working towards that higher end trying to make a government that is ultimately more just and ultimately moving in a better direction to fulfill this ideal of justice that we hope to obtain.

8:43 So again, looking back at our central question how does the structure of our federal government, our federal system protect liberty? Well, it does so in a number of ways that people is outlined for us. It does so by having the auxiliary precautions which is ensuring that different agencies and departments are operating in a way that they have their own agency ability to act.

9:06 It is also in how it is that they relate to one another that they not only do they have their own prerogatives and interests but they also can’t dominate another one. There are certain checks and certain balances which maintains the system. There’s also this dependence on the people that the people ultimately control what’s going on in government and that their voice is mattering and helping maintain the system and finally the federal system

9:29 of having all of those people with all of these interesting interests. The theory was the only way that we could have things that come and become laws are things that are going to benefit a large amount of people because it’s going to be really hard to get stuff done. So thank you again for joining me. I hope you’ve enjoyed this sort of walk through Federalist 51.

9:51 We’ll be back to check out more of these Federalist papers. They’re really a rich treasure trove of figuring out just how it was that the framers at the time understood the Constitution that they were creating and how that generation in 1787 and 1788 helped them understand what was the design of the Constitution they were debating and arguing about.

10:13 So thank you so much and we’ll look forward to seeing you next time.