The Federalists and Anti-Federalists on Representation

Akash Mehta
Word Count: 3871
3/17/19

Stop a random passerby on the street and ask: “What was the great achievement of the
American Founders?” One word will almost invariably figure in the response—‘democracy.’
That ours is the oldest modern democracy is a fact ingrained in the American self-consciousness,
the wellspring of our national pride, the continuing lodestar of much of our politics (or at least
our political rhetoric). And so it can be a little alarming, upon opening the pages of that august
document The Federalist Papers, to find the word ‘democracy’ used as something of a slur. In
James Madison’s telling, democracies suffer from “incapacity of regular deliberation and
concerted measures” and sooner or later collapse into tyranny (Kesler 306). Indeed history has
proved democracies “spectacles of turbulence and contention… incompatible with personal
security or the rights of property… [and] as short in their lives as they have been violent in their
deaths” (Kesler 76). Democracy, according to the man often called the architect of the
Constitution, was precisely what it was designed to forestall.1
The Anti-Federalists, on the other hand—that discredited motley group of naysayers,
heads buried miles deep in the sand, of no continuing political relevance other than an exemplar
of the obstinate stupidity with which every great advance of history must contend—openly and
frequently praise democracy. Patrick Henry proudly invokes “the language of democracy” to
proclaim the principle of majority rule (Ketcham 206), the Federal Farmer criticizes “how
disproportionately the democratic and aristocratic parts of the community were represented” at
the Constitutional Convention (Ketcham 273), and Cato criticizes the Constitution for having
“departed from this democratic principle” of annual elections (Ketcham 340).
What does this difference in orientation towards ‘democracy’ reveal about the divide
between the two camps? The difficulty in drawing any hasty conclusions is that they simply use
the word to mean different things. Madison makes clear that the difference between a democracy
and a republic, as he uses the terms, is the difference between what today we would term ‘direct’
and ‘representative’ democracies: “In a democracy the people meet and exercise the government
in person; in a republic they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents”
(Kesler 95). When the Anti-Federalists praise democracy, on the other hand, they of course are
not advocating for direct democracy. Indeed at the Constitutional Convention, Madison had
spoken of the American “democratic form of government” (Ketcham 26). We would be hard
pressed to identify a significant change in Madison’s orientation towards popular government in
the intervening year; more likely is that he had simply redefined the terms he used to classify its
different forms.
Thus it would be obviously wrongheaded to say something as crude as that the Anti-
Federalists support and the Federalists oppose democracy. And yet it would also be crude to hold
that their differing vocabularies reveal nothing about their differing ideologies. In this essay I
will argue that what it reveals (or at least manifests) is a substantive divide between the two
camps’ orientations toward the institution of representation and the people’s capacity to govern

1 This may strike some as an exaggeration—but note Madison’s striking statement that “the true
distinction” between ancient popular governments and the United States “lies in the total exclusion of the
people in their collective capacity, from any share of the latter”! (Kesler 385)
themselves. The Anti-Federalists recognize the necessity of representation, but as a practical
necessity given the size of the polity rather than as an institution valuable in itself. As Melancton
Smith writes, the people only consent to representation as a “protection against [the]
inconvenience” that “it [is] not possible for them for them to come together; the multitude would
be too great” (Ketcham 364). Representation is unavoidable but perilous, and the chief failure of
the Constitution is its lack of sufficient democratic controls to prevent the ultimate danger that
representatives will govern as aristocrats. The people are virtuous and knowledgeable enough to
rule themselves, and thus, while direct democracy is not realizable in America, it still serves as
the ideal by which government should be measured.
The Federalists, on the other hand, saw representation as a positive good, indeed as a
primary safeguard against the greatest danger facing the republic: that the people—base,
ignorant, shortsighted, self-seeking and easily corrupted and misled as they often are—will rule
as a tyrannical majority running roughshod over the rights of minorities, or else will cede their
own freedom to a single tyrant in exchange for some short-term gain. Representation, far from a
mere concession to practicality, serves the key function of empowering noble and virtuous men
to protect the republic from the masses and the tyrant-breeding “turbulence and contention” they
foster. Thus if we were to abstract away from the many shades and variations within the two
camps and distill a core political sensibility motivating each, we could say that the Federalists
tend toward Hamilton’s view that “we ought to go as far in order to attain stability and
permanency, as republican principles will admit” (Ketcham 55), and the Anti-Federalists toward
the inverse view that we ought to go as far in a democratic direction as practical exigency will
admit.

Anti-Federalists tend to believe that the ideal representative would simply make the
decisions his constituents would have. The Pennsylvania minority holds that representatives
should “possess the same interests, feelings, opinions, and views, which the people would
themselves possess, were they all assembled” (Ketcham 255); the Federal Farmer says nearly
word-for-word the same (Ketcham 276). As Centinel puts it, the people’s “sense or opinion [must
be] the criterion for every public measure” (Ketcham 236)—the perfect representative body
would enact nothing more or less than the undiluted will of the people.
For the Federalists, on the other hand, the people are insufficiently intelligent, wise,
virtuous or able to rise above local interests to discern the good of the whole—and thus enacting
their undiluted would be a recipe for incompetence, instability and tyranny. Federalist #10’s case
for large republics is remembered best for Madison’s innovative argument about size preventing
majority factions, but this argument only bears on the second “great point of difference between a
democracy and a republic,” the maxima of their possible sizes and populations. The first
difference, the “delegation of government” to elected representatives, has the crucial effect of
“refin[ing] and enlarg[ing] the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen
body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose
patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial
considerations” (Kesler 76). Indeed it is often forgotten that the prevention of majority factions is
not Madison’s only argument for large republics; the first argument he gives is that, given the
“greater probability of a fit choice” from a larger citizen body and the greater difficulty of
electoral manipulation, large republics will be governed by wiser and more virtuous
representatives (Kesler 77).
 One can see this fixation with finding ways to choose the best representatives—who will
‘refine and enlarge’ rather than reflect the people’s will, who will enact their “true interest” rather
than their stated interest—throughout the Federalist Papers. Indeed it explains why of the four
components of the national government—the executive, judiciary, Senate and House—only the
latter is directly elected by the people. Madison praises the Senate as “a temperate and
respectable body of citizens… [who will] check the misguided career and suspend the blow
meditated by the people against themselves” (Kesler 383). Similarly, Hamilton praises the
indirect election of the President as enabling “men most capable of analyzing the qualities
adapted to the station” and “most likely to possess the [requisite] information and discernment”
(Kesler 410).
For the Anti-Federalists, the thrust of these arguments—that the people are rubes needing
better sorts of men to discern their true interests and protect them against themselves—betrayed
the Federalists’ fundamentally aristocratic disposition. Thus the Pennsylvania Minority meant it
as a criticism that “men of the most elevated rank of life will alone be chosen” for Congress,
while “farmers, traders and mechanics… will be totally unrepresented” (Ketcham 256).
Melancton Smith expands on this criticism, arguing at length in the New York ratification
debates that “men of the middling class” have much more “acquaintance with the common
concerns and occupations of the people,” and moreover “are more temperate, of better morals and
less ambition than the great,” and thus that only a representative body composed predominantly
of such men will pursue the common good (Ketcham 366-367).
Nothing could be further from the view of Hamilton, who quite openly admits that
representatives will largely come from the wealthier classes, but views this as not a defect but an
advantage of the Constitution. Hamilton argues that the interests of manufacturers, for example,
can “be more effectively promoted by the merchants than by themselves” given the merchants’
“influence and weight and superior acquirements” (Kesler 210). Indeed, in response to Smith’s
speech quoted above, Hamilton apparently rises to declaim Smith as “an enemy to the rich”
(Ketcham 372), and in his conclusion to the Federalist Papers he decries “the perpetual changes
which have been rung upon the wealthy, the well-born, and the great [which] have been such as
to inspire the disgust of all sensible men” (Kesler 521)! Discredited though the Beardian
interpretation of the Constitution as a simple instrument of class power may be, class tensions at
the very least inflect the Federalists and Anti-Federalists’ dispute over representation.
As we have begun to see, the Anti-Federalists have far more faith in the ordinary man’s
sense of policy and politics and far more suspicion of the elite who claim to act in his true
interest. Brutus argues that the latter, especially if vying for national office, are likely to
motivated by the “great honor and emolument” of elected office and to use power not for the
common good but to “gratify their own interest and ambition” (Ketcham 292-293). Such men
tend to do well in elections because, as Centinel writes, “the love of domination is generally in
proportion to talents, abilities and superior acquirements” (Ketcham 234). Indeed, Smith goes to
far as to suggest that the main reason not to exclude the wealthy from public office is that “they
would be more dangerous out of power than in it!” (Ketcham 368).
Among the most glaring examples of the untrustworthiness of representatives, from the
Anti-Federalist perspective, is the very convention which crafted the Constitution under debate.
Just as federal representatives will inevitably tend to represent aristocratic interests, in the
estimation of Federal Farmer, the signatures at the bottom of the Constitution are
disproportionately those of aristocratic men (Ketcham 273). In what to the Pennsylvania
Minority would seem an illustration of representatives’ inherent tendency to overstep their
authority and seize more power that was granted them, they did not merely “revis[e] and amen[d]
the present articles of confederation,” as they were authorized to, but instead granted themselves
the right to “annihilate the present confederation” (Ketcham 244-255). In an indication of the lack
of democratic control to be expected over any federal representative assembly, the Convention’s
“doors were kept shut, and the members brought under the most solemn engagements of secrecy”
(Ketcham 255). And just as we saw Smith argue that wealthy representatives tend to be
motivated more by private ambition than by public sentiment, so too he insinuates that
Federalists may have their eyes on the “number of honorable and lucrative offices to be filled”
upon the Constitution’s adoption.(Ketcham 361).
Nevertheless, the Anti-Federalists’ procedural objections to the Conventions are liable to
be dismissed as the cantankerousness of an opposition which, lacking compelling arguments
against the substance of the Constitution, resorts to cavil about the formalities of its adoption.
Madison dismisses the objection on such grounds, arguing that what matters was not “from
whom the advice comes, [but] whether the advice be good” (Kesler 250). But for the Anti-
Federalists, Madison’s argument illustrates the shallowness of the Federalists’ appreciation for
freedom. As we have seen, Anti-Federalist opposition to aristocracy focuses on the divide
between the interests of the few and the many. But for many Anti-Federalists, popular
government is important not only because it secures the peoples’ interests, but also because self-
rule is valuable in itself. Thus Patrick Henry values liberty above any of the goods government
might procure (Ketcham 200) and Brutus affirms that “let the administration of it be good or ill”
a government without a “full and just representation of the people” is not a free government
(Ketcham 346, my italics). When Madison advocates overlooking “from whom” political
decisions come and only evaluating the content of those decisions, an Anti-Federalist would
argue that he has revealed himself as what today we would call a technocrat.

Against these charges that his view of representation belies an aristocratic mistrust of
popular self-rule, Madison gives a powerful rejoinder in Federalist #57 that in fact it is the Anti-
Federalists who malign the people’s capacity to govern themselves. The Anti-Federalists,
Madison charges, “pretend to be champions for the right and the capacity of the people to choose
their own rulers, yet maintain that they will prefer those only who will immediately and infallibly
betray the trust committed to them” (Kesler 351). If the Anti-Federalists are so confident in
peoples’ political wisdom, why don’t they trust them to elect worthy representatives? Take
Centinel’s remark that “the science of government is so abstruse that few are able to judge for
themselves” and that without the assistance of those few (like himself!), “the people are too apt to
yield an implicit assent to the opinions of those characters, whose abilities are held in the highest
esteem” but who will, once elected, pursue private ambition and “make the people the
instruments of their own subjugation” (Ketcham 234). Isn’t Centinel here evincing exactly the
kind of paternalist condescension toward the people’s political judgement for which he and other
Anti-Federalists so indignantly criticize the Federalists?
But if Madison’s critique demonstrates that the Anti-Federalists, too, acknowledged
weaknesses of the people’s political judgement, it nevertheless stands they came to very different
conclusions about the implications of those weaknesses. For the Federalists, the peoples’
weaknesses meant that better sorts of men must rule; for the Anti-Federalists, that government
should be structured to minimize those weaknesses and that power should be greatest in the areas
in which those weaknesses were least present.
 It is the Constitution’s perceived failure to adhere to these principles that informs many of
the Anti-Federalist’s concrete objections to it. Centinel advocates a simplified structure of
government, for example, to make it more comprehensible to an otherwise easily confused
populace; he argues for a unicameral legislature because “[i]f you complicate the plan by various
orders, the people will be perplexed and divided in their sentiments about the sources of abuse or
misconduct… [and their] interposition may be rendered imperfect or perhaps wholly abortive”
(Ketcham 237). Or to take a more significant example, the Anti-Federalists’ charge that the
House is too small stems in large part from the conviction that, as Brutus puts it, “it is impossible
the people of the United States should have sufficient knowledge of their representatives, when
the numbers are so few”; lacking direct familiarity with candidates, voters will be forced to rely
upon candidates’ reputations and thus will elect famous and ‘great’ men rather than men “of their
neighbors and of their own rank in life” (Ketcham 349). If the House were larger and thus
districts were smaller, not only would representatives better know the will of their constituents
but voters would know candidates more intimately and so would make better choices.
The Federalists counter this latter argument by pointing to all the disadvantages of large
assemblies, including the “confusion and intemperance of [any] multitude” (Kesler 340). The
Anti-Federalists agree that assemblies can be only so large, and indeed cite that limitation as a
primary reason for preferring to invest power in state governments, whose representatives each
had fewer constituents, than the national government. Smith acknowledges that “a complete
representation would make the legislature too numerous; and therefore, it is our duty to limit
those powers, and form checks on the government, in proportion to the smallness of the number”
(Ketcham 373). Thus while the Anti-Federalists’ opposition to centralized national power is often
framed as an axiom of their politics, they understood it as a consequence of the deeper principle
of their view of representation; they preferred state to federal power because the latter was
necessarily more removed and less representative of the people.
The Anti-Federalist’ trust in the people’s political judgement led them to worry far less
than the Federalists not only about the people’s ignorance of policy and efficient administration,
but also about majority oppression of minorities. Indeed one of their most frequent charges
against the Constitution was that it would enable counter-majoritarian rule. Patrick Henry, for
example, protested the ability of what he calculated to be one-twentieth of the population to
block amendments: “how different from the sentiments of freemen,” he asked, “that a
contemptible minority can prevent the good of the majority” (Ketcham 206). Similarly, one of
the most frequent Anti-Federalist complaints is that equal state representation in the Senate
violates the principle of majority rule; the Federal Farmer goes so far as to call “the tenacity of
the small states to have an equal vote in the senate” (along with the centralization of power) one
of the two “greatest defects in the proposed plan” (Ketcham 275).
The Federalists, on the other hand, are preoccupied by few threats more than that posed
by majorities to minority rights—by debtors, for example, to creditors. (The specter of paper
money is never far throughout the Convention and the Federalist Papers!) Federalist #10’s
famous plan to guard against majoritarianism rests on size, of course, rather than the institution
of representation. But it is likely that many Federalists’ views on representation were motivated
by their desire to curb majority rule. While Hamilton’s argument at the Convention for lifetime
Senate tenures did not carry the day, it demonstrates the principle behind Federalists' support of a
Senate with longer terms and a more “respectable body” than the House: to prevent “the many…
[from] oppress[ing] the few” and protect against “the amazing violence and turbulence of the
democratic spirit” (Ketcham 54). Similarly, the sponsor of the successful motion for indirect
election of Senators described the rationale as to ensure that the Senate would “consist of the
most distinguished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property,
and bearing as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords as possible” (Ketcham 29). Thus
indirect representation were some of the methods (though not the only ones) by which
Federalists sought to restrain majoritarianism.
The Federalists defended formal restraints on majoritarianism not as a fundamental
diminution of the people’s power, but only as “a defense to the people against their own
temporary errors and delusions” (Kesler 382). For after all, even with Senators’ long terms and
opportunities for unlimited re-election, the majority could still eventually remove them from
office by electing state representatives who promised to vote them out. In this way, the Senate is
an example of how the Constitution realizes Madison's principle that “the reason, alone, of the
public ought to control and regulate the government” whereas “the passions ought to be
controlled and regulated by the government” (Kesler 314). What the Anti-Federalists view as
aristocratic repression of the people’s right to self-government, the Federalists consider as
necessary safeguards against the people’s passions that are the prerequisites for self-government
if it is to be just, effective and stable.

In sketching these fundamental differences of the Federalists’ and Anti-Federalists’ views

on representation, it is possible that I have risked reductively simple characterizations of both
sides. The Federal Farmer implies that all men may be divided into those of “aristocratic and
democratic” temperaments, but surely it is more accurate to say that all men of the Founding era
(or at least all those whose writings I have considered) lay somewhere on a spectrum between
these two poles. Nevertheless, I have attempted to show that the Anti-Federalists lay far closer to
the democratic pole, and the Federalists—well, even if we reject as hyperbole that the Federalists
represented “the most daring attempt to establish an aristocracy that the world has ever seen”
(Ketcham 237), shall we nonetheless say alongside the Anti-Federalists that they tended towards
the aristocratic pole? Or shall we accept their self-characterization as occupying a stable
republican center of the spectrum that combined the virtues and avoided the vices of each
extreme?
That is not a question this essay can answer. But in conclusion we may note that the
question is still a matter of deep contention today. In a 2014 study that is now ubiquitous in
discussions of American democracy, Princeton scholars Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page
compare policy preferences with actually enacted federal policy and purport to prove that “[i]n
the United States… the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually
determining policy outcomes.”2 The paper received many critiques, but foremost among them
was that it misunderstands the purpose of democracy—or, in Madison’s terms, that it
“confound[s] a republic with a democracy” (Kesler 95). “[T]he idea that the point of democracy
is to implement legislative outcomes that are supported by broad-based surveys seems almost
like a straw man dreamed up by an eighteenth-century monarchist,” Matthew Yglesias writes.
“When you hire a plumber,” he continues in an echo of Federalist #57, “you don’t want him to
ask you how you think the plumbing should be fixed. You’ve hired him so that he can look at the
situation and do what needs to be done.”3 In short, the dispute is only a rehashing of an old

2 Gilens, M., & Page, B. (2014). Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and
Average Citizens. Perspectives on Politics, 12(3), 564-581. doi:10.1017/S1537592714001595
3 Yglesias, Matthew. “Holding Politicians Accountable.” Boston Review, 28 Jan. 2013,
bostonreview.net/forum/under-influence/holding-politicians-accountable-matthew-yglesias.
debate: whether representation should reflect the “sense or opinion” of the people or “refine and
enlarge” their will. And so we see that Anti-Federalists cannot be consigned to irrelevance, nor
even considered only as the correction to the Founders’ underestimation of the dangers of statism
(as implied by accounts that view the Bill of Rights as their only contribution to history). We
must recognize theirs as a substantive view of representation, fundamentally different from the
Federalists’, that lives on and that—if we allow ourselves to put it a little dramatically—will
continue to, as long as popular government exists on this earth.