Essay Topic: what were some of the difficulites Madison proses and how he believed the constitution set axillary precautions to prevent them.

Now that America gained its independence there is some concerns when it comes to how the government will work. James Madison poses the concern in the article The Federalist #51, “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.” The difficulty of having a federal government is making sure that not any one specific person or division becomes stronger than the other branches or divisions. James Madison also states in The Federalist #51 that, “The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.” He says this because it is hard for men to rule over other men and not want to become greedy or power hungry. It is our human nature to want to become powerful and so James Madison saw that it was necessary to create come auxiliary precautions to prevent this from happening.

            James Madison felt that in order for our government to be efficient and to protect the rights and liberties of the people that precautions needed to be set, and the constitution does solve this problem. The constitution does this through checks and balances. Now there are multiple parts of checks and balances a couple of these main parts are the divisions of powers and the separation of powers. First let us talk about the division of powers. This is explained in the 10^th amendment of the constitution is states, “"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." This causes the division between the federal government and the individual states governments. This is important to have because if we didn’t have this division of powers the government would decide everything leaving no power to the people. As citizens of the United States of America the power is supposed to lie with the people and if there wasn’t separation between state and federal government the people would have no vote or say in how the government was being run. The people would be oppressed and really wouldn’t have the liberties in which they just won from Great Britain.

            Secondly, the separation of powers is very important when talking about checks and balances because through the separation of powers our government is divided into three separate branches. These branches are; legislative, executive, and judiciary the reason these branches were created was to eliminate the chance for just one person or group to control all of the power. They wanted to avoid the risk of having a dictatorship so they created these groups which all control different systems within the federal government to make sure that not one specific group or branch could grow too strong. They call the system checks and balances because that’s what the branches do for each other, one example of this is when the legislative branch passes a bill or a law they have to send it to the executive branch to get it signed and approved as well. However, if the President does not sign the bill and he chooses to veto it revisions will have to be made or a 2/3 majority must be won. The branches have to go through certain step in order to make sure that the work they are doing is really for the best interest of the people of the United States of America, they cannot infringe upon our rights as citizens. The constitution sets many axillary provisions to that not one group or person can rule or take over all of the power. James Madison’s difficulties have been solved through the amendments of the constitution. The constitution has been written in such a way that the power will always be in the hand of people. The founding fathers prepared the constitution in such a way that the country could continue to grow but that the government ruling it could only obtain so much power. The founding fathers put forth many axillary precautions so that the people of our country would be protected for many years to come.