74 pages • 2 hours read
Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John JayThe Federalist Papers
Nonfiction | Essay Collection | Adult | Published in 1787A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Federalist No. 37-Federalist No. 51Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Federalist No. 37 Summary: “Concerning the Difficulties of the Convention in Devising a Proper Form of Government”
Madison offers a survey of the unique challenges faced by the Constitutional Convention in drafting the document under proposal for ratification. The first challenge lay in “combining the requisite stability and energy in government, with the inviolable attention due to liberty and to the republican form” (178). For example, a balance needed to be struck between longer electoral terms of office, which support stability, and shorter electoral terms, which support liberty.
Equally challenging was the balance between the powers invested in the federal government versus state governments. Similar conflicts arose when reaching a compromise between what is best for large states and what is best for small states. Set against all this is the broader challenge of imprecise language, both in a general sense and in a legal sense, given that modern conventions of the law are still being settled in nations as old as Great Britain.
Federalist No. 38 Summary: “The Same Subject Continued, and the Incoherence of the Objections to the New Plan Exposed”
Madison compares the country to a sick patient who, after consulting the best physicians, is given a prescribed treatment. Numerous critics, though they do not doubt the seriousness of the disease, emerge to label that treatment a poison. However, these critics do not have a consistent alternative remedy to offer. Rather, Madison writes, they cannot even agree on what must change about the remedy.
