Text provided by Vote Smart.

Federalist No. 51

Author: Alexander Hamilton or James Madison

Date: February 6, 1788

Subject: The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Betweeen the Different Departments


To the People of the State of New York:

TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several
departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be
inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by
their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming to undertake a full development of this
important idea, I will hazard a few general observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more correct
judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the convention.

In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is
admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and
consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members
of the others. Were this principle rigorously adhered to, it would require that all the appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and
judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever
with one another. Perhaps such a plan of constructing the several departments would be less difficult in practice than it may in contemplation
appear. Some difficulties, however, and some additional expense would attend the execution of it. Some deviations, therefore, from the
principle must be admitted. In the constitution of the judiciary department in particular, it might be inexpedient to insist rigorously on the
principle: first, because peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to be to select that mode of
choice which best secures these qualifications; secondly, because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that
department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them.

It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the
emoluments annexed to their offices. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their
independence in every other would be merely nominal.
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who
administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision
for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract
ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that
such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on
human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls
on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this:
you must first enable the government tocontrol the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is,
no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.


This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human
affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to
divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other that the private interest of every individual
may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of
the State.

But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority
necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by
different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and
their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further
precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on
the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with which
the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it would be neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it
might not be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary occasions it might be perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an
absolute negative be supplied by some qualified connection between this weaker department and the weaker branch of the stronger
department, by which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of the former, without being too much detached from the
rights of its own department?


If the principles on which these observations are founded be just, as I persuade myself they are, and they be applied as a criterion to the
several State constitutions, and to the federal Constitution it will be found that if the latter does not perfectly correspond with them, the
former are infinitely less able to bear such a test. There are, moreover, two considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of
America, which place that system in a very interesting point of view.

First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the
usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of
America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each
subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments
will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.


Second. 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 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. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a
will in the community independent of the majority that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate
descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first
method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a
power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may
possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all
authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, 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. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests,
and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this
may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the
subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it
shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive
combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be
diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be
proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be
obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the
weaker, anarchy may as 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 state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a
government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be
gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can
be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the
popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some
power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the
necessity of it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a
coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst
there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the
former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is
no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it
lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the
practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE.

PUBLIUS