Enlightenment & Revolutions
James Madison
1751–1836 · Constitutional limits
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
In their words
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
Madison designed the Bill of Rights as limits on the federal government itself, and wrote in Federalist 51 that men are not angels, so power must be divided, enumerated and checked by competing interests. He opposed a national bank and federal internal improvements as powers never granted. His later career in office pulled the other way, and that tension is exactly what his best writing anticipates.
Why it matters for freedom
He assumed power is dangerous as a matter of design, not of the character of the person holding it.
Who they stood against
both the monarchists and the populists who thought a majority could do no wrong