Madison’s Gift to America

City Journal ^ | 15 January 2010 | Richard M. Reinsch (reviewer)

[Lorianne]

A new study points to the Virginian’s emphasis on civic virtue. A book review of:

James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government, by Colleen A. Sheehan (Cambridge University Press, 204pp.)

In her excellent new study, Colleen A. Sheehan argues that James Madison is preeminent among the Founders in his insistence on the civic cultivation of public opinion. Madison’s purposes, seemingly inconsistent at different points of his political career, ultimately cohere, she believes, in his quest to secure republican self-government in the infant nation.

She begins with a Madison whose faith in self-government had been shaken after American independence, thanks to the states’ majoritarian abuses of property rights, threatened and actual public rebellions, and the near impotence of the government operating under the Articles of Confederation. The young statesman faced the discomfiting reality that majority rule had not remained virtuous—or even lawful—in the young nation. Madison wanted to find the right remedy for this ancient republican disease.

Conventional scholarship generally holds that Madison’s solution was to dull the edge of a fully participatory and democratic politics by “modifying the sovereignty,” as he put it—that is, expanding the realm and territorial extent of federal power over the states, while simultaneously limiting the democratic basis of the Senate (whose members state legislators would choose) and the presidency (whose executives the electoral college would choose). This analysis, however, ignores Madison’s belief in the importance of public opinion in holding the republican center together—and correcting this imbalance is the significance of Sheehan’s contribution.

[SunkenCiv]

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[ForGod'sSake]

Good review. Thanks for the ping Civ. Another indicator of just how well read most of our Founders were.

[fieldmarshaldj]

*ping*