Hannah Paquette

APUSH
Federalist No. 10 Write Up
12/3/13
Factions, according to James Madison, are a group of citizens, regardless of their
numbers or influence, that share a common goal or interest that affect the whole community,
which can range from a national community to a local community. Some examples of factions
today are the Blue Dog Coalition and the Trade Working Group. Madison firmly believes that
factions are created due to the unequal distribution of all types of property, whether its money,
land, or business. He proposes that the legislative system outlined in Article 1 of the Constitution
can be used to overcome the effects of factions as well. If the faction with a destructive idea is a
minority, then it simply cannot gain any momentum in Congress, since it will always be out
voted by the majority. When the faction with a destructive idea is the majority it has to set aside
its specific issues to not only focus on running the country, but also to secure the rights of
citizens that they agreed to protect.
A pure democracy is a small society where its citizens run the government themselves. A
republic is a government where the citizens elect representatives to govern for them. Madison
had serious problems with pure democracy: it could never work outside of a city, there was no
protection against factions; they have never been stable enough to secure peoples security and
property, or last a long time. Democracies also did not have a way to check factions. Republics,
on the other hand, had a much smaller number of people representing different ideas, towns or
cities, and interests. To get their interests brought up in a meeting, a citizen would have to
communicate their ideas with their representative, which could lead to an improvement on the
original idea. Also, if a corrupt politician ran for office, and was then elected, he or she would
only be one voice among many and unable to accomplish their goals.