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Majority faction, in other words, cannot finally be defeated except by a healthy majority opinion, the formation of which is Publius’s chief educational and political goal. This implies not so much a politics of virtue as of responsibility, which is consistent with men’s natural rights understood in light of "the honor of the human race" (No. 11, p. 85) rather than in light of man’s dishonorable necessities. The Federalist elucidates the kind of politics and constitutionalism that are needed in order to rescue the cause of the American Revolution and to vindicate the Declaration of Independence, which after all proclaimed not only "that all men are created equal" and "are endowed by their Creator" with certain unalienable rights, but that in defense of those sacred rights, good men ought to pledge their "sacred honor."

This pledge goes beyond the requirements of responsibility, of course, but it suggests how responsibility points beyond itself to virtue or statesmanship. Responsibility comes into its own, after all, when some sort of action must be taken: It strives to bring interest and duty together in order to do the right thing, often in disagreeable situations where someone must act with a view to a remote and long-term good (act responsibly, we call it) or must take charge (take responsibility, as we say today). The Constitution provides platforms for both kinds of responsibility in the offices of the national government, particularly the Senate (see Federalist No. 63) and the presidency (No. 70). Responsibility is the only virtue or quasi-virtue that has entered our moral language from the American Founding, and in large measure it is The Federalist that has defined and still defines its contemporary meaning. Publius shows us what it means, and what it takes, to live as responsible republicans under a written Constitution. This is The Federalist’s lesson in self-government.

—Charles R. Kesler

March 1999

Endnotes

1George Mason, "Objections to the Constitution of Government formed by the Convention (1787)," in Herbert J. Storing, ed., The Complete Anti-Federalist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), vol. 2, p. 13 (2.2.15); Letters of Centinel, in Storing, vol. 2, pp. 139, 156 (2.7.10, 2.7.64). A collection of Anti-Federalist writings that appeared in New York in the midst of the ratification struggle echoed this charge in its very title: Observations on the Proposed Constitution for the United States of America, Clearly Showing It To Be a Complete System of Aristocracy and Tyranny and Destructive of the Rights and Liberties of the People. See Storing, vol. 2, p. 135n3.

2The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett and Jacob E. Cooke, 24 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961–1979), vol. 4, p. 253; The Papers of James Madison, ed. Robert A. Rutland et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), vol. 10, pp. 163–64.

3A fine selection of other writings on behalf of the new Constitution is available in Colleen A. Sheehan and Gary L. McDowell, eds., Friends of the Constitution: Writings of the "Other" Federalists (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1998).

4The Federalist, No. 78, p. 466.

5The Federalist, No. 38, pp. 227–29.

6Letter to Madison, November 18, 1788, in Andrew A. Lipscomb, ed., The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 vols. (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903), vol. 7, p. 183; From the Minutes of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, March 4, 1825, in Ibid., vol. 19, pp. 460–61.

7Syrett and Cooke, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, vol. 4, p. 253; and cf. p. 276.

8See the interesting discussion in Albert Furtwangler, The Authority of Publius: A Reading of the Federalist Papers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 45–54.

9See Herbert J. Storing, The Complete Anti-Federalist, 7 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 9–11; and Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution 1781–1788 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961), pp. viii–x.

10For further information