incentive to generations of intellectual effort, the authors of the Constitution had no reason to conceive at all. In order to set up national government, Hamilton and his colleagues had to make plans, not on the theory that men would cooperate because they had a sense of common interest, but on the theory that men could be governed, if special interests were kept in equilibrium by a balance of power. "Ambition," Madison said, [Footnote: Federalist , No. 51, cited by Ford, op. cit. , p. 60.] "must be made to counteract ambition."
They did not, as some writers have supposed, intend to balance every interest so that the government would be in a perpetual deadlock. They intended to deadlock local and class interest to prevent these from obstructing government. "In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men," wrote Madison, [Footnote: Id .] "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." In one