Spend the rest of this semiquincentennial year reading the Federalist Papers and mark how often the authors—Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison—base their contentions on the reality that fallen man can be counted on to conflate his own narrow interests with justice and the common good. The essays refer often to man’s ingenuity and capacity for innovation and commerce—they didn’t think him so stupid as to require coercion. But Hamilton, Jay and Madison aimed chiefly to convince the public that the proposed Constitution, by balancing powers against each other, mitigated man’s propensity for mischief, violence and corruption.

Madison famously observes in No. 51 that government’s existence itself testifies to the morally defective state of its subjects. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” he writes. “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.” Read more»

Barton Swaim | “What the Founders Didn’t Trust: Madison, Hamilton, et al. Would Wonder at Our Credulous View of Human Nature” | Wall Street Journal | July 1, 2026

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