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Thank you for reposting this. Yours is much more comprehensive than mine. Mine was an attempt to respond to a poster who said that Federalist 46 contained all the necessary means to box in the federal government short of calling for an Article V convention. I opposed that opinion.

Maybe age is catching up to me, but I thought that this series of yours began long before 2010. :-( I think I dropped out long before you reached #46.

Rereading your paper, it occurs to me that the one thing that Madison did not foresee was the compact that would form between blocs of people that were independent of state boundaries, that is, the national parties. I think that Madison saw the states as firewalls that would be the strongest and final binding of people's common interests. Today, that cannot be said to be true.

Today, the problem is that the states send Senators to the federal government, and once there they lose their allegience to their home states and instead, form party bonds that drive competing interests. I put the blame for this on the 17th amendment, which makes Senators have to divert their focus towards the need for campaign funds. By joining a national party, they take advantage of economies of scale, and can reduce some of the pressures to raise funds by aligning with a party that will share its accumulated funds across its members - but only if they toe the party line on an agenda that may be at odds with the interests of their home states.

And thus begins the break between We the People and the Federal Government that we ordained and established.

-PJ