There is no maxim in my opinion echo is more likely to be misapplied, and which therefore more needs elucidation,” [Madison] wrote Monroe on October 5 [1786], “than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.” That would be true if “the word ‘interest,’ is synonymous with ‘Ultimate happiness,’” he conceded. “But taking it in the popular sense, as referring to immediate augmentation of property and wealth, nothing can be more false. In the latter sense it would be the interest of the majority. In every community to despoil and enslave the minority of individuals…
Original Meanings, by Jack N. Rakove, 1996, p. 46
