In a large patchwork quilt of an essay, Madison takes up in Federalist No. 43 a number of “miscellaneous powers” of the proposed new government. Each is historically interesting in its own right: the copyright and patent power, the punishment of treason, the admission of new states and the government of territories, the protection of each state’s republican form of government, and so on. One subject Madison briefly considers is of current interest to us, and that is the status of the territory constituting “the seat of the government of the United States.” In 1788 the future site of the nation’s capital was unknown—though it is likely that a site on the banks of the Potomac was already in more than a few minds—and so Madison’s discussion is entirely in the abstract regarding an eventual establishment “not exceeding ten miles square” in a location that would, presumably, not be constructed in an unpopulated wasteland.

Lately the plight of the residents of the District of Columbia has been much in the news, with a bill before Congress to give D.C. a seat in the House of Representatives, notwithstanding the fact that it has no status as a state that can be constitutionally be represented there. (See my previous remarks on this issue here, here, here, here, here, and here.) What is striking about Madison’s treatment of the issue in the Federalist is his evidently complete lack of concern about the residents of the capital having no representation in Congress, coupled with what seems a perfect anticipation of that result. The Washington Post last week quoted Virginia Republican congressman Tom Davis as calling the lack of congressional representation of D.C. residents an “undemocratic accident,” as though it were some sort of flub on the framers’ part that needs correcting in line with their own “true” intentions. This is not the impression one gets from Madison, who writes thus of the future capital:

[A]s it is to be appropriated to this use with the consent of the state ceding it; as the state will no doubt provide in the compact for the rights, and the consent of the citizens inhabiting it; as the inhabitants will find sufficient inducements of interest to become willing parties to the cession; as they will have had their voice in the election of the government which is to exercise authority over them; as a municipal legislature for local purposes, derived from their own suffrages, will of course be allowed them; and as the authority of the legislature of the state, and of the inhabitants of the ceded part of it, to concur in the cession, will be derived from the whole people of the state, in their adoption of the constitution, every imaginable objection seems to be obviated.

Notice that the residents of the capital “will have had their voice” in electing Congress, while they were still residents of a state prior to the cession of its territory. This looks to the past, from the moment of the District’s creation. But they “will of course be allowed” a form of elected municipal government. This, and this only, looks to the future of self-government by District residents. The District’s powers of self-government have always been at the disposal of Congress, and Madison’s “of course” is a promissory note that has not always been honored in District history. But Madison seems perfectly aware that the capital territory will pass from a state to the “compleat authority” of the federal government, which will mean no possibility of representation in Congress thereafter.

Call it undemocratic if you like—though it may be that Madison subscribes to something like Edmund Burke’s notion of “virtual representation.” But it was no accident.

(For explanation of this recurring feature, see here.)