Federalist No. 55
Federalist No. 55 is an essay by James Madison, the fifty-fifth of The Federalist Papers. It was published on February 13, 1788 under the pseudonym Publius, the name under which all The Federalist Papers were published. It is titled "The Total Number of House of Representatives". It is the first of four papers defending the number of members in the House of Representatives against the critics who believe the number of members to be inadequate. The critics presume that there aren't enough representatives to defend the country against the small group of legislators who are violating the rights of the people. In this paper, Madison examines the size of the United States House of Representatives.
The Federalist Papers
Both Hopkins's and Gideon's editions incorporated significant edits to the text of the papers themselves, generally with the approval of the authors. In 1863, Henry Dawson published containing the original text of the papers, arguing that they should be preserved as they were written in that particular historical moment, not as edited by the authors years later.