Parties
James Madison
National Gazette, January 23, 1792
In every political society, parties
are unavoidable. A difference of interests, real or supposed, is the most
natural and fruitful source of them. The great object should be to combat
the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By withholding
unnecessary
opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an
immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches. 3. By
the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property,
reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme
indigence towards a state of comfort. 4. By abstaining from measures which
operate differently on different interests, and particularly such as favor
one interest at the expence of another. 5. By making one party a check
on the other, so far as the existence of parties cannot be prevented, nor
their views accommodated. If this is not the language of reason, it is
that of republicanism.
In all political societies, different
interests and parties arise out of the nature of things, and the great
art of politicians lies in making them checks and balances to each other.
Let us then increase these natural distinctions by favoring an inequality
of property; and let us add to them artificial distinctions, by
establishing kings, and nobles, and plebeians. We
shall then have the more checks to oppose to each other: we shall then
have the more scales and the more weights to perfect and maintain the equilibrium.
This is as little the voice of reason, as it is that of republicanism.
From the expediency, in politics,
of making natural parties, mutual checks on each other, to infer the propriety
of creating artificial parties, in order to form them into mutual checks,
is not less absurd than it would be in ethics, to say, that new vices ought
to be promoted, where they would counteract each other, because this use
may be made of existing vices.
Writings
of James Madison
Classical
Liberals