James Madison: A Testament Of Time
James Madison didn't originate the idea of checks and balances for limiting government power, but he helped push it farther than anyone else before or since. Previous political thinkers, citing British experience, had talked about checks and balances with a monarch in the mix, but Madison helped apply the principle to a republic. Contrary to such respected thinkers as Baron de Montesquieu, Madison insisted checks and balances could help protect liberty in a large republic.
Madison, incredibly, insisted that to be legitimate, a government must coerce people. "A sanction is essential to the idea of law, as coercion is to that of Government," he wrote in his paper Vices of the Political System of the United States (April 1787). The Confederation, he continued, "being destitute of both, wants the great vital principles of a Political Constitution. Under the form of such a constitution, it is in fact nothing more than a treaty of amity of commerce and alliance, between independent......
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