How we cite our quotes: (Essay.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Complaints are everywhere heard […] that our governments are too unstable, that the public good is disregarded in the conflicts of rival parties, and that measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority. (10.1)
Madison's tossing shade at the political climate he's writing in, clearly. However, it's interesting to note that—if he did have Shays' Rebellion in mind when he was writing Federalist 10—that event was a crisis of a minority's overbearing power over a majority. Curious. Given his distrust of average people in a democracy, which majority group do you think he's most concerned about?
Quote #2
If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution. (10.10)
This seems like a pretty apt prediction at the different partisan block-ups that have occurred over our long two-century relationship with the two-party system: two factions always fighting for the majority position.
Quote #3
When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. (10.11)
This is his main rationale as to why true democracies can't work. In a lot of ways, he's right: there has to be protections for the most vulnerable people in society. But what groups did he consider vulnerable?
Quote #4
A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual. (10.13)
This is pretty much the definition of what we know as mob mentality. Take Shays' rebellion for example: It was a case where a majority—the farmers—decided to take up arms to put down a minority group—the wealthy merchants who were squeezing them for money they didn't have.
Madison's idea of a minority group just might not be the same as our idea of a minority group in politics, at least in terms of power-to-population ratios. A billionaire is in a much, much stronger position of power than a hundred people making minimum wage, for example.
Quote #5
It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. (51.9)
It's interesting that Madison used Rhode Island as his example, considering the Rhode Island state legislature was one of the first to vote against the Constitution. Was he tossing what he viewed as some well-deserved shade?