Federalist No. 10 — On Factions
by James Madison
Published November 23, 1787 · Added May 27, 2026 · 21 min listen
TL;DR
Federalist No. 10 is James Madison's defense of a large republic as the best protection against the dangers of factions — what we would now call political interest groups. Madison argues that you cannot remove the causes of faction without destroying liberty itself, so the only sound approach is to design institutions that control its effects.
The essay is the clearest single statement of why the Constitution structures power the way it does, and it is regularly cited in Supreme Court opinions and political-science classrooms two centuries later. It runs around 3,500 words — under 30 minutes of audio — and is one of the most-quoted political essays ever written in English.
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