If Men Were Angels: James Madison and the Heartless Empire of Reason

American Political Thought

by Richard K. Matthews

"What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

The ever wary James Madison viewed his fellow citizens as anything but angelic. In this radically new interpretation, Richard Matthews portrays a much less optimistic (and yet more liberal) Madison than we've seen before. Neither civic humanist nor democrat, this Madison is a distrusting, calculating, and pragmatic Machiavellian Prince.

Hardly an imposing figure, Madison was barely five-feet-six-inches tall, pale complexion, a poor speaker, a perpetual hypochondriac and secret epileptic, pursued by bouts of depression and given to dressing in black. And yet his political achievements and intellectual legacy are monumental. Revered as the "Father of the Constitution," Madison was also architect of the "Virginia plan"; one of the two principal authors of The Federalist; leader of the inaugural House of Representatives; reluctant champion of the Bill of Rights; cofounder of the Republican Party, Washington's ghostwriter; Jefferson's Secretary of State; and president and commander-in-chief during America's second war of Independence.

Nevertheless, Madison's preeminence in the rise of the modern American state has not always been so widely recognized. And, Matthews contends, what has been written about Madison's political thought has been limited in scope and skewed in interpretation.

Unlike previous authors, Matthews goes well beyond Madison's work on the Constitution to reconstruct the complete range of Madison's political thought and intellectual development over the course of his extensive life. In the process, he provides a powerful critique of Madisonian politics. It is possible, he shows, to applaud the energy, design, and intellect that went into Madison's thought and simultaneously challenge the assumptions and values upon which that thought rests.

Matthews's Madison understood the potentially fatal problems of a weak, divided state; saw salvation in a strong central government astride an expanding commercial republic; drafted that government's fundamental charter; ran the infant regime as an advisor to two presidents before becoming president himself; and, in retirement, strove to control and manipulate historical interpretations of these efforts. From "The Legislator" to chief executive to keeper of the past and controller of the future, Madison adjusted his political posture to suit the moment. . . . just as Machiavelli's ideal Prince would have done. Madison's system achieved the stability he desired, but at a price Americans should have refused to pay.

Provocative and controversial, Matthews's study revises our understanding of this central figure in American history. It illuminates his profound impact upon the America imagined by the Framers, his ongoing influence on the nation we have become, and the tragedy of his success in foreclosing the possibility of a radical Jeffersonian America that never was, but might have been.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

320 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

Reviews

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates; every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”

— James Madison, Federalist 55

An intriguing critical study of Madison’s political philosophy, which portrays the Father of the Constitution as a kind of liberal-elitist foil to the romantic democratism of Jefferson. Steeped in a Calvinistic pessimism regarding human nature and a Malthusian anxiety over the sustainability of populous states, Madison sought to design a political system in which the governing apparatus was insulated from the “passions” of factional partisanship (which Madison viewed as endemic to virtually all human association) and the state would be guided by Madison’s own understanding of instrumental reason. To this end he contributed to a constitutional order in which democratic inputs were minimal (at least at the federal level); a federated government prevented sectional interests from destabilizing the whole nation; the protection of unequal human “faculties” and the differences in property ownership that followed therefrom was of paramount importance; and American civil society, largely banished from the political sphere, developed almost entirely as a series of competing commercial enterprises, producing an American citizenry that was far more homo economicus than zoon politikon.

Matthews concludes his study by wondering, amidst a post-industrial society with a largely proletarianized citizenry, whether the Jeffersonian vision of embracing popular government even at the cost of political stability, though superseded in his own time by Madison’s Empire of Reason, might be primed for a revival.

[Serge · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remain skeptical of the portrait Matthews paints of Madison as a cross between Hobbes, Macchiavelli, and Marx. The Madisonian plan of government privileges homeostasis not so much because of the primacy of property but instead because of the desirability of happiness. Here are my notes:
p.3 all of his political roles can be combined in a helpful heuristic metaphor of Madison as an ideal Machiavellian Prince: first, he comprehends the problems of a weak, divided sovereign; conceives of the modern, protective state atop a commercial republic as the solution; drafts the government’s fundamental charter and sees to it that the necessary precedents are established and enabling laws adopted; runs the infant regime as adviser to two presidents then as the chief executive; and, in retirement, strives to control how the future will interpret the past so that he can , in a very real sense, rule from the grave
p.7 …where Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton each had their diametrically opposed dreams about what America should aspire to be—Jefferson his democratic pastoral republic, Hamilton his liberal-elite , heroic empire—Madison lacked an analogous dream. Rater Madison appears to have been driven by a nightmare. Like Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Calvin, Madison believed that throughout history all governments were subject to temporal forces tat guaranteed they would eventually crumble and decay. Drew McCoy best captures the essence of Madison’s historic perspective. “If the republican revolution had initially been defined as an escape from time, Madison had always acknowledged that, in the long run, such a revolution was doomed. Eventually the New World would come to resemble the Old.
p.22 Six interrelated postulates frame Madison’s political theory. (I) Neither a democrat nor a civic humanist, Madison had little faith in either the demos or virtue. … Individual human beings could not be counted on to rule themselves, let alone others, justly. (II) The protection of individuals—especially their property and other rights—was one of the cardinal values in Madison’s politics. (III) Although the unmolested individual was a goal of Madison’s politics, the individual as political actor should be of minor import if the Madisonian system functioned as designed. Individuals, while timid and reasonable when alone, join other individuals and form factions. Madison’s primary political concern centered on the maintenance of social stability by the political and social control of factions. (IV) If Madison worshipped a deity, it would be reason... Reason provides the theoretical possibility of transcending the experience of the past. (V) The individual and collective tendences toward the irrational were so multifaceted and powerful that all segments of the political system needed an appropriate degree of defensive power for self-protection. Power, in Madison’s view, is negative; it is necessary for individuals to have some power to protect oneself and one’s property by stopping others. (VI) Madison stands within the predemocratic portion of the liberal tradition , somewhere between Thomas Hobbes and John Locke…. A strong, centralized, rational state was one of Madison’s primary solutions to the human condition.
p.24 The specific problem with Madison is not his belief that men were not angels; indeed no political theorist of repute has ever argued that men were angels. The insurmountable difficulty is that Madison believed that “had every Athenian Citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.” Madison accepted the incredible notion that even a room full of Socrateses could not deal justly with each other without a Leviathan.
p.50 Madison maintained three fundamental divisions in his concept of humanity. First, there exists an essential division between the people and their rulers—which is not to suggest that the individual’s place in society was determined by birth or that either the rulers or the ruled could be trusted . Second, when joining in the actions of a faction , the individual undergoes a profound alteration where the more antisocial tendencies come to the surface and find group support for unreasonable behavior. And finally, these factions can be separated into two broad categories, one based on reason and one on passion : the former, in spite of its intentions, allows republican government to exist; the latter creates unpredictable but potentially fatal difficulties that the wise state builder must systematically temper and control since they cannot be eliminated.
p.51 Put differently, Madisonian man remains a static creature who could not be trusted beyond his capacity to look out for his own self-interest. And yet, the fact that the individual can be relied upon to do precisely this permits stability to be maintained and self-government to work. From Madison’s view of the individual, democracy was a fool’s illusion; in the long run, little could be done, beyond playing for time, to forestall the decline or to improve the human condition.
p.67 Madison cannot envision even as few as three individuals living together peacefully without the presence of “rules & forms of justice.”
p.77 To Madison, humans were antisocial creatures who would break into violence over “ the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions.” It is not that humans are virtuous, but that they are selfish—and government has been appropriately constructed—that permits them the illusion of self-government. Contrary to Montesquieu who argued that republican form of government could rule a small territory, Hume and Madison claimed the reverse…” 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.”
p.79 [according to Martin Diamond] “Madison’s whole scheme essentially comes down to this. The struggle of classes is to be replaced by a struggle interests. The class struggle is domestic convulsion; th struggle interests is a safe, even energizing, struggle which is compatible with, or even promotes, the safety of society.”
p.84 The private arena—relatively unencumbered bby government interference , so long as individuals continued to obey the political rules silently governing the economic and social spheres—provided the space where individuals and groups could pursue their self-interest however they desired. All of this self-interested activity, moreover, would continue to produce balance and equilibrium. Under this arrangement, most men by necessity and choice would find ownership of property instrumental to their personal pursuits of happiness… Property, then, constituted the specific link between economics and government: ownership was the price for suffrage.
p.85 As a state-builder, all he had to do—given factious human nature—was accept the plural nature of reality and permit the multiple factions to perform collectively and unknowingly their self-balancing act. When this conception of pluralism becomes linked with Madison’s governmental system, designed both to balance itself and to permit an elite, limited ruling power, his theory can be seen as an early form of what C.B. MacPherson calls the pluralist-elitist-equilibrium model of political theory.
p.156 Because Madison feared local politics n the separate states, it seems inevitable that lacking the federal veto over state legislation, for which he lobbied throughout the Constitutional Convention, he should try to gain added protection against local government.
p.158 The logic behind Madison’s politics required that every actor in the political system have some degree of protective power, “ a defensive armour for each,” as he described it.
p.159 First, Madison’s position remained simply to have the people exercise their voting power to pick men of wisdom. He did not want the demos intimately involved in politics. They were not to set the agenda or discuss policy choices; they were restricted to kicking the bums out of office when they got out of line. Second, Madison linked rights and constitutions as “the most sacred part of” the people’s property.
Counterpressure and balance contained the keys of freedom.
p.173 Madison was not inclined to abstract intellectualizing about a theoretically perfect system, and his thoughts were usually grounded in the context of the political reality of space and time
p.176 Checks and balances, separation of powers, a limited Constitution, federalism , a scheme of representation , and an extended republic , among other precautions, created a self-balancing machine that worked because of its structure, its design, not because humans were either angelic or virtuous. In fact, when the auxiliary precautions functioned as designed, there would be little need for the people to exercise their primary control of voting the representatives out of power.
p.179 Lacking a single supreme of authority and power, the states treated each other as if they were still in Locke’s state of nature: they “trespassed” on each others’ rights because they acted as judges in their own cases
p.181 The final trilogy of evils concerned the shortcomings of the individual state governments, producing a “multiplicity,” mutability,” and “injustice” of state laws. When discussing the problem of “the multiplicity of laws from which no State is exempt,” he observed that the state governments have produced far too much legislation: “The short period of independency has filled as many pages as the century which preceded it. Every year, almost every session, adds a new volume.”
p.187 The ability of the central government to coerce the state governments Madison believed to be among the foremost alterations required in the new system. He repeated his desire to find a “middle ground” where “the local authorities” could be made “subordinately useful.” And again, he suggested a national veto on terms similar to that “exercised by the kingly prerogative.” This time when Madison explained his thinking , he asserted the prerogative might help make up “ the great desideratum which has not yet been found for Republican Governments,” that is, “some disinterested & dispassionate umpire in disputes between different passions & interests in the State.” While this veto would have no impact on directly controlling national policy, Madison believed it would allow the federal government to function as “ sufficiently disinterested for the decision of local questions of policy.
p.189 [on selective incorporation] Without the veto, Madison believed the new government lacked the energy necessary to control the state governments and protect individuals. Madison’s apprehension faded but slowly: it helps explain not only his shift of position on the Bill of Rights, which could now attempt to function as a weak substitute for the veto, but also his rigorous advocacy of a specific amendment applying portions of the Bill of Rights against the state governments.
p.211 Madison appreciated fully the advantages of cooption—especially when the role of the voter remained merely to pick “men of wisdom” and continued to be restricted to one legislative house. He still believed, moreover, that “the territorial proprietors … in a certain sense may be regarded as the owners of the Country itself, [and]form the safest basis of free Government.”
p.217 The role of the citizen in 1787 remained exclusively “to select men of virtue and wisdom.” In a few years he would expand that role to include being a self-interested watchdog over their own rights. Beyond that, however, they were to find meaning and dignity in the pursuit of self-interest in civil society.
p.225 [contra Hamiltonian implied powers] Madison openly worried that if creative , non-Madisonian interpretations of the Constitution based on a notion of implied powers gained acceptance, “implications , thus remote and thus multiplied, can be linked together , a chain may be formed that will reach every object of legislation, every object within the whole compass of political economy.”
p.231 What, then, are the consequences of Madisonian government? The greatest of all reflections on human nature, Madison’s governmental system was designed to control non angelic men; he designed it to regulate itself as well. The first part of the plan he based on a civil society where Hobbes’s war of all against all could continue, so long as individual behavior complied with certain rules of the economic game. An enormous receptacle that could absorb the energies of these power-hungry individuals, the expanded territory helped create and maintain the balance and equilibrium Madison desired. As the population increased, therefore, so too would the need for ever more space to absorb the pressure of competing individuals and factions. Manifest destiny, signaling ruin for the Native Americans and international difficulties for England, Spain, Mexico, and Canada, helped maintain the equilibrium and hope of equal opportunity Madison believed essential to American harmony.
Control of the governed was but part of the task; the machine must also control itself. Government must be structured to maintain homeostasis. Since the legislative branch, closest to the people, was perceived to be the least stable and most risky, it had to be divided in two. The entire design of the governmental edifice pitted power against power, ambition counteracting ambition. It gave the advantage to those who wanted to keep the status quo, to stop change: if any of the four political bodies responded negatively, political change would not occur. Those who wanted to pass legislation, consequently, would have to sustain political pressure over an extended period and must be ready to compromise if they hoped for legislative success. To Madison, inefficiency in the speed of legislative action was in itself a political good: time allowed the passions to cool and reason to control the process. For Madison, the system should always play for time, believing it would allow cooler heads to prevail. Legislative change should occur in a slow and not necessarily steady manner; after all, the fundamental governmental concern remained the protection of property first and persons second.
p.242 As an Enlightenment liberal whose god was reason, Madison viewed politics as a necessary evil that had to be accepted as part of the mechanism by which humans made collective decisions. Nevertheless, he viewed politics as a dangerous exercise since it always stirred the unpredictable human passions. Only under the appropriate conditions could politics be counted on to reach rational conclusions…Politics then remained an evil necessity humans had to engage in to protect themselves, since people would try to use politics to their own selfish advantage. However, by forcing citizens to work their way through a political system that had been structurally designed to favor the status quo and to play for time, Madison believed the chances for rational solutions would be increased while the opportunities for hasty and disastrous actions would be minimized.
p.276 In Madison’s design, the very notion of a future is an illusion. Once the new state had been founded and was governing, succeeding generations had little to do but play around the margins of power, given its rules and procedures.

[Sean Chick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult and at times off the wall, Matthews makes a good case for the limitations of Madison's political ideas by showing the limitations of extreme checks and balances. We are now seeing those limits being played out by a petulant Republican Party that blocks all reform.