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933 pages, Hardcover
First published September 18, 2018
History isn’t only a subject; it’s also a method. My method is, generally, to let the dead speak for themselves. I’ve pressed their words between these pages, like flowers, for their beauty, or like insects, for their hideousness. The work of the historian is not the work of the critic or of the moralist; it is the work of the sleuth and the storyteller, the philosopher and the scientist, the keeper of tales, the sayer of sooth, the teller of truth.
A democracy, in which the people “assemble and administer the government in person,” will always be subject to endless “turbulence and contention,” [Madison] argued, but a republic, in which the people elect representatives to do the work of governing, can steer clear of that fate by electing men who will always put the public good before narrow or partisan interests, the good of all above the good of any part or party.
Madison argued that it could only work if a republic were large, for two reasons. First, in a large republic, there would be more men to choose from, and so a better chance, purely as a matter of numbers, for the people to elect men who will guard the public interest. Second, in a large republic, candidates for office, in order to be known and to appeal to so large a number of voters, would need to be both notable and worthy.
... as early as 1791, Madison had begun to revise his thinking. ... “The larger a country, the less easy for its real opinion to be ascertained,” he explained.