Federalist No. 10

Federalist No. 10 (Federalist Number 10) is an essay written by James Madison as the tenth of The Federalist Papers, a series of essays initiated by Alexander Hamilton arguing for the ratification of the United States Constitution. Published on November 29, 1787 under the pseudonym "Publius", Federalist No. 10 is among the most highly regarded of all American political writings.

No. 10 addresses the question of how to guard against "factions", or groups of citizens, with interests contrary to the rights of others or the interests of the whole community. Madison saw factions as inevitable due to the nature of man - that is, as long as men hold differing opinions, have differing amounts of wealth, and own differing amount of property, they will continue to form alliances with people who are most similar to them, and they will sometimes work against the public interest, and infringe upon the rights of others. Thus, he questions how to guard against those dangers.

Federalist No. 10 continues a theme begun in Federalist No. 9; it is titled, "The Same Subject Continued: The Utility of the Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection". The whole series is cited by scholars and jurists as an authoritative interpretation and explication of the meaning of the Constitution. Jurists have frequently read No. 10 to mean that the Founding Fathers did not intend the United States government to be partisan and others have argued that given Madison's clear understanding that partisanship is inevitable, he suggests that a representative republic form of government is more effective against factions than a direct democracy. Thus, Madison saw the Constitution as forming a "happy combination" of a republic and a democracy and with "the great and aggregate interests being referred to the national, the local and particular to the State legislatures" the power would not be centralized in a way that would make it "more difficult for unworthy candidates to practice the vicious arts by which elections are too often carried."

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