The Federalist Papers were a series of essays, written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, under the penname Publius.  They were an attempt to persuade the newly independent American states to ratify—that is, vote to approve—the Constitution. 

While our founders knew that virtuous citizens were necessary for our system of self-government to work, they also knew that men are still imperfect, and that any effective government had to account for that, and particularly of how human beings tend to use and abuse their power.  So, they designed our system of government to have two things:

First—separate departments in the federal government, each having its own, limited sphere of power: the congress to make the laws, the president to execute or enforce them, and the courts to interpret them.  And second—separate sovereigns or units of power: the federal government and also the state governments.  The idea was that these different departments and sovereigns would, because of the very nature of man, always be in a kind of tug of war for power—and that tug-of-war would keep any one of them from becoming all-powerful.  Remember the Greek games—the tug-of-war rope didn’t move when the two teams pulled with equal strength in opposite directions.

The wisdom in setting it up this way was defended by James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 51.  He wrote:

“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 to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

You may think that philosophy and reflections on human nature are at best just interesting academic exercises, or at worst a boring and impractical waste of time.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  A proper understanding of these things can mean the difference between liberty and tyranny for a whole nation.  Just ask the founders what it was like to live under a system of government where it had to be assumed that the king was always right…

Have a wonderful day.