An eulogy on the life and character of James Madison, fourth President of the United States: Delivered at the request of the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the City of Boston, September 27, 1836 [Digital Version]

EULOGY.

WHEN the imperial despot of Persia, surveyed
the myriads of his vassals, whom he had assembled
for the invasion and conquest of Greece, we are told
by the father of profane history,^* that the monarch's
heart, at first, distended with pride, but immediately
afterwards sunk within him, and turned to tears of
anguish at the thought, that within one hundred
years from that day, not one of all the countless
numbers of his host would remain in the land of the
living.

The brevity of human life, had afforded a melancholy
contemplation to wiser and better men than
Xerxes, in ages long before that of his own existence.
It is still the subject of philosophical reflection or of
Christian resignation, to the living man of the present
age. It will continue such, so long as the race
of man shall exist upon earth.

But it is the condition of our nature to look before
and after: The Persian tyrant looked forward, and
lamented the shortness of life; but in that century
which bounded his mental vision, he knew not what
was to come to pass, for weal or woe, to the race
whose transitory nature he deplored, and his own
purposes, happily baffled by the elements which he
with absurd presumption would have chastised, were
of the most odious and detestable character.

4

Reflections upon the shortness of time allotted to
individual man upon this planet, may be turned to
more useful account, by connecting them with ages
past than with those that are to come. The family
of man is placed upon this congregated ball to earn
an improved condition hereafter by improving his own
condition here—and this duty of improvement is not
less a social than a selfish principle. We are bound
to exert all the faculties bestowed upon us by our
Maker, to improve our own condition, by improving
that of our fellow men, and the precepts that we
should love our neighbor as ourselves, and that we
should do to others as we would that they should do
unto us, are but examples of that duty of co-operation
to the improvement of his kind, which is the first
law of God to man, unfolded alike in the volumes of
nature and of inspiration.

Let us look back then for consolation from the
thought of the shortness of human life, as urged upon
us by the recent decease of JAMES MADISON, one of
the pillars and ornaments of his country and of his
age. His time on earth was short, yet he died full
of years and of glory—less, far less than one hundred
years have elapsed since the day of his birth—yet
has he fulfilled, nobly fulfilled, his destinies as a man
and a Christian. He has improved his own condition
by improving that of his country and his kind.

He was born in Orange Country in the British Colony
of Virginia on the 5th of March, 1750; or according
to the computation of time by the Gregorian
Calender, adopted the year after that of his birth, on
the 16th of March 1751, of a distinguished and opulent
family; and received the early elements of education
partly at a public school under the charge of

5

There are three stages in the history of the North
American Revolution—The first of which may be
considered as commencing with the order of the
British Council for enforcing the acts of trade in
1760, and as having reached its crisis at the meeting
of the first Congress fourteen years after at Philadelphia.
It was a struggle for the preservation and
recovery of the rights and liberties of the British
Colonies. It terminated in a civil war, the character
and object of which were changed by the Declaration
of Independence.

The second stage is that of the War of Independence,
usually so called—but it began fifteen months
before the Declaration, and was itself the immediate
cause and not the effect of that event. It closed by
the preliminary Treaty of Peace concluded at Paris
on the 30th of November, 1782.

The third is the formation of the Anglo-American
People and Nation of North America. This event
was completed by the meeting of the first Congress
of the United States under their present Constitution
of the 4th of March, 1789. Thirty years is the
usual computation for the duration of one generation
of the human race. The space of time from 1760
to 1790 includes the generation with which the North
American Revolution began, passed through all its
stages and ended.

The attention of the civilized European world and
perhaps an undue proportion of our own has been
drawn to the second of these three stages—to the

6

7

And such had continued to be the prevailing spirit
of the people of New England from the period of
their settlement to that of the revolution. The
people of Virginia too, notwithstanding their primitive
loyalty, had been trained to revolutionary doctrines
and to warlike habits; by their frequent collisions
with Indian wars; by the convulsions of
Bacon's rebellion, and by the wars with France, of
which their own borders were the theatre, down
to the close of the war which immediately preceded
that of the revolution. The contemplation and the
defiance of danger, a qualification for all great enterprise
and achievement upon earth, was from the very
condition of their existence, a property almost universal
to the British Colonists in North America, and
hardihood of body, unfettered energy of intellect and
intrepidity of spirit, fitted them for trials, which the
feeble and enervated races of other ages and climes
could never have gone through.

For the three several stages of this new Epocha
in the earthly condition of man, a superintending
Providence had ordained that there should arise from
the native population of the soil, individuals with
minds organized and with spirits trained to the exigencies
of the times, and to the successive aspects of

8

But the great work of the North American revolution
was not in the maintenance of the rights of the
British Colonies by argument, nor in the conflict of
physical force by war. The Declaration of Independence
annulled the national character of the American
people. That character had been common to
them all as subjects of one and the same sovereign,
and that sovereign was a king. The dissolution of
that tie was pronounced by one act common to them
all, and it left them as members of distinct communities
in the relations towards each other, bound only

9

But what was to be the condition of their national
existence? This was the problem of difficult solution
for them; and this was the opening of the new
era in the science of government and in the history
of mankind.

Their municipal governments were founded upon
the common law of England, modified by their respective
charters; by the Parliamentary law of England
so far as it had been adopted by their usages,
and by the enactments of their own Legislative assemblies.
This was a complicated system of law,
and has formed a subject of much internal perplexity
to many of the States of the Union, and in several of
them continues unadjusted to this day. By the
common consent of all, however, this was reserved
for the separate and exclusive regulation of each State
within itself.

As a member of the community of nations, it was
also agreed that they should constitute one body—
"E pluribus unum" was the devise which they assumed
as the motto for their common standard. And
there was one great change from their former condition,
which they adopted with an unanimity so absolute,
that no proposition of a different character was
ever made before them. It was that all their governments
should be republican. They were determined
not only to be separately republics, but to
tolerate no other form of government as constituting
a part of their community. A natural consequence
of this determination was that they should remain
separate independences, and the first suggestion which

10

In the first and in the early part of the second
stage of the revolution, the name of JAMES MADISON
had not appeared. At the commencement of the
contest he was but ten years of age. When the first
blood was shed, here in the streets of Boston, he was
a student in the process of his education at Princeton
College, where the next year, 1771, he received the
degree of bachelor of Arts. He was even then so
highly distinguished by the power of application and
the rapidity of his progress, that he performed all the
exercises of the two senior Collegiate years in one—
while at the same time his deportment was so exemplary,
that Dr. Witherspoon, then at the head of that
College, and afterwards himself one of the most eminent
Patriots and Sages of our revolution, always delighted
in bearing testimony to the excellency of his
character at that early stage of his career; and said
to Thomas Jefferson long afterwards, when they
were all colleagues in the revolutionary Congress,
that in the whole career of Mr. MADISON at Princeton,
he had never known him to say or do an indiscreet
thing.

Discretion in its influence upon the conduct of
men is the parent of moderate and conciliatory counsels,
and these were peculiarly indispensable to the
perpetuation of the American Union; and to the prosperous
advancement and termination of the revolution,
precisely at the period when Mr. Madison was first
introduced into public life.

In 1775, among the earliest movements of the revolutionary
contest, he was a member of the Committee
of Public Safety of the County of Orange, and in

11

One of the provisions in the articles of Confederation
most strongly marked with that same spirit of
Liberty, the vital breath of the contest in which our
fathers were engaged; the true and undying conservative
spirit by which we their children enjoy that
Freedom which they achieved; but which like all other
pure and virtuous principles sometimes leads to error
by its excess was that no member of this impotent

12

A Confederation is not a country. There is no magnet
of attraction in any league of Sovereign and Independent
States which causes the heart strings of the
individual man to vibrate in unison with those of his
neighbour. Confederates are not Countrymen, as the
tie of affinity by convention can never be so close as
the tie of kindred by blood. The Confederation of the
North-American States was an experiment of inestimable
value, even by its failure. It taught our fathers
the lesson, that they had more, infinitely more to
do than merely to achieve their Independence by War.
That they must form their social compact upon principles
never before attempted upon earth. That the
Achean leagues of ancient days, the Hanseatic league
of the middle ages, the leagues of Switzerland or of
the Netherlands of later times, furnished no precedent
upon which they could safely build their labouring
plan of State. The Confederation was perhaps as

13

The deficiency of powers in the Confederation was
immediately manifested in their inability to regulate
the commerce of the country, and to raise a revenue,
indispensable for the discharge of the debt accumulated
in the progress of the Revolution. Repeated efforts
were made to supply this deficiency; but always
without success.

On the 3d of February, 1781, it was recommended
to the several States as indispensably necessary that
they should vest a power in Congress to levy for the
use of the United States a duty of five per cent. ad
valorem upon foreign importations, and all prize goods
condemned in a Court of Admiralty; the money arising
from those duties to be appropriated to the discharge
of the debts contracted for the support of the War.

On the 18th of April, 1783, a new recommendation
was adopted by Resolutions of nine States, as indispensably
necessary to the restoration of public credit,
and to the punctual and honorable discharge of the
public debt to invest the Congress with a power to lay
certain specific duties upon spirituous liquors, tea, sugar,
coffee and cocoa, and five percent, ad valorem upon
all other imported articles of merchandise, to be
exclusively appropriated to the payment of the principal
or interest of the public debt.

And that as a further provision for the payment of
the interest of the debt, the States themselves should

14

And that to provide a further guard for the payment
of the same debts, to hasten their extinguishment, and
to establish the harmony of the United States the several
States should make liberal cessions to the Union
of their territorial claims.

With this act a Committee consisting: of Mr. MADISON,
Mr. Ellsworth and Mr. Hamilton was appointed
to prepare an address to the States, which on the 26th
of the same month was adopted, and transmitted together
with eight documentary papers, demonstrating
the necessity that the measures recommended by the
act should be adopted by the States.

This address, one of those incomparable State papers
which more than all the deeds of arms, immortalized
the rise, progress and termination of the North
American revolution was the composition of JAMES
MADISON. After compressing into a brief and luminous
summary all the unanswerable arguments to induce
the restoration and maintenance of the public
faith; it concluded with the following solemn and prophetic
admonition.

"Let it be remembered finally, that it has ever been
the pride and boast of America, that the rights for
which she contended, were the rights of human nature.
By the blessing of the author of these rights
on the means exerted for their defence, they have prevailed
over all opposition, and form the basis of thirteen
independent States. No instance has heretofore
occurred nor can any instance be expected hereafter
to occur, in which the unadulterated forms of republican
Government can pretend to so fair an opportunity

15

My countrymen! do not your hearts burn within
you at the recital of these words, when the retrospect
brings to your minds the time when, and the persons
by whom they were spoken? Compare them with the
closing paragraphs of the address from the first Congress
of 1774, to your forefathers, the people of the
Colonies.

"Your own salvation and that of your posterity now
depends upon yourselves. Against the temporary inconveniences
you may suffer from a stoppage of Trade,
you will weigh in the opposite balance the endless miseries
you and your descendants must endure from an
established arbitrary power. You will not forget the
Honor of your Country that must from your behavior
take its title in the estimation of the world to Glory
or to Shame; and you will, with the deepest attention

16

That was the trumpet of summons to the conflict
of the revolution; as the address of April, 1783 was
the note of triumph at its close. They were the first
and the last words of the Spirit, which in the germ of
the Colonial contest, brooded over its final fruit, the
universal emancipation of civilized man.

Compare them both with the opening and closing
paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, too
deeply riveted in your memories to need the repetition
of them by me; and you have the unity of action
essential to all heroic achievement for the benefit of
mankind, and you have the character from its opening
to its close; the beginning the middle and the end
of that unexampled, and yet unimitated moral and political
agent, the Revolutionary North American Congress.

But the Address of 1783 marks the commencement
of one aera in American History as well as the close
of another. MADISON, Ellsworth, Hamilton, were not
of the Congress of 1774, nor yet of the Congress
which declared Independence. They were of a
succeeding generation, men formed in and by the
revolution itself. They had imbibed the Spirit of the
revolution, but the nature of their task was

17

The warfare of self-defence against foreign oppression
was accomplished. Independence, unqualified,
commercial and political was achieved and recognized.
But there was yet in substance no nation—no people
—no country common to the Union. These had
been self-formed in the heat of the common struggle
for freedom; and evaporated in the very success of
the energies they had inspired. A Confederation of
separate State Sovereignties, never sanctioned by the
body of the people, could furnish no effective Government
for the nation. A cold and lifeless indifference
to the rights, the interests, and the duties of the Union
had fallen like a palsy upon all their faculties instead
of that almost supernatural vigor which at the origin
of their contest had inscribed upon their banners, and
upon their hearts "join or die."

In November, 1783, Mr. MADISON's constitutional
term of service in Congress as limited by the restriction
in the articles of Confederation, expired. But
his talents were not lost to his Country. He was
elected the succeeding year a member of the Legislature
of his native State, and continued by annual election
in that station till November, 1786, when having
become re-eligible to Congress, he was again returned
to that body, and on the 12th of February, 1787, resumed
his seat among its members.

In the Legislature of Virginia, his labors, during his

18

19

The principle that religious opinions are altogether
beyond the sphere of legislative control, is but one
modification of a more extensive axiom, which includes
the unlimited freedom of the press; of speech,
and of the communication of thought in all its forms.
An authoritative provision by law for the support of
teachers of the Christian Religion was prescribed by
the third Article of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution
of this Commonwealth. An amendment recently
adopted by the people has given their sanction
to the opinions of Jefferson and MADISON, and the
substance of the Virginian Statute for the establishment
of Religious Freedom, now forms a part of the
Constitution of Massachusetts. That the freedom
and communication of thought is paramount to all
legislative authority, is a sentiment becoming from
day to day more prevalent throughout the civilized
world, and which it is fervently to be hoped will
henceforth remain inviolate by the legislative authorities
not only of the Union, but of all its confederated
States.

At the Session of 1785, a general revisal was made
of the Statute Laws of Virginia, and the great burden
of the task devolved upon Mr. MADISON as
chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the House.
The general principle which pervaded this operation
was the adaptation of the civil code of the Common-wealth,
to its republican and unfettered independence
as a Sovereign State, and he carried it through with
that same spirit of liberty and liberality which had

20

The experience of four years in the Congress of
the Confederation, had convinced Mr. MADISON that
the Union could not be preserved by means of that
institution. That its inherent infirmity was a deficiency
of power in the federal head, and that an insurmountable
objection to the grant of further powers
to Congress, always arose from the adverse prejudices
and jealousy with which the demand of them was
urged by that body itself. The difficulty of obtaining

21

To avoid these obstacles it occurred to Mr. MADISON
that the agency of a distinct, delegated body,
having no invidious interest of its own, or of its
members, might be better adapted, deliberately to
discuss the deficiencies of the federal compact, than
the body itself by whom it was administered. The
friends with whom he consulted in the Legislature of
Virginia, concurred with him in these opinions, and
the motion for the appointment of Commissioners to
consider of the state of trade in the confederacy suggested
by him, was made in the Legislature by his
friend, Mr. Tyler, and carried by the weight of his
opinions, and the exertion of his influence, without
opposition.

This proposition was made and Commissioners
were appointed by the Legislature of Virginia, on the
21st of January, 1786. The Governor of the Commonwealth,
Edmund Randolph, was placed at the
head of the delegation from the State. Mr. MADISON
and six others, men of the first character and
influence in the State, were the other Commissioners.
The meeting was held at Annapolis in September,
and two Commissioners from New York, three
from New Jersey, one from Pennsylvania, three from
Delaware, and three from Virginia, constituted the
whole number of this Convention. Five States
only were represented, and among them, Pennsylvania
by a single member. Four States, among

22

Yet even in that Convention of Annapolis, was the
gem of a better order of things. The Commissioners
elected John Dickinson, of Delaware, their chairman,
and after a session of three days, agreed upon a
report, doubtless drafted by Mr. MADISON,—addressed
to the Legislatures by which they had been appointed,
and copies of which were transmitted to the
other State Legislatures and to Congress.

In this report they availed themselves of a suggestion
derived from the powers which the Legislature
of New Jersey had conferred upon their Commissioners,
and which contemplated a more enlarged revision
of the Articles of Confederation, and they urgently
recommended that a second convention of delegates
to which all the States should be invited to appoint
Commissioners, should be held at Philadelphia, on the
second Monday of the next May, for a general revisal
of the Constitution of the Federal Government, to
render it adequate to the exigencies of the Union, and
to report to Congress an act, which, when agreed to
by them and confirmed by all the State Legislatures,
should effectually provide for the same. In this report,
first occurred the use of the terms Constitution
of the Federal Government as applied to the United
States—and the sentiment was avowed that it should

23

The recommendation of the report was repeated
by Congress without direct reference to it, upon a
resolution offered by the delegation of Massachusetts,
founded upon a proviso in the Articles of Confederation
and upon instructions from the State of New
York to their delegates in Congress, and upon the
suggestion of several States. The Convention assembled
accordingly at Philadelphia, on the 9th of
May, 1787.

In most of the inspirations of genius, there is a
simplicity, which, when they are familiarized to the
general understanding of men by their effects, detracts
from the opinion of their greatness. That the
people of the British Colonies, who, by their united
counsels and energies had achieved their independence,
should continue to be one people, and constitute
a nation under the form of one organized government,
was an idea, in itself so simple, and addressed
itself at once so forcibly to the reason, to the
imagination, and to the benevolent feelings of all,
that it can scarcely be supposed to have escaped the
mind of any reflecting man from Maine to Georgia.
It was the dictate of nature. But no sooner was it
conceived than it was met by obstacles innumerable
and insuperable to the general mass of mankind.
They resulted from the existing social institutions,
diversified among the parties to the projected national
union, and seeming to render it impracticable. There
were chartered rights for the maintenance of which
the war of the revolution itself had first been waged.
There were State Sovereignties, corporate feudal

24

It was earnestly contested in the Convention itself.
A large proportion of the members adhered to the
principle of merely revising the articles of the Confederation
and of vesting the powers of Government in
the confederate Congress. A proposition to that effect
was made by Mr. Patterson of New Jersey, in a
series of Resolutions, offered as a substitute for those
of Mr. Randolph immediately after the first discussions
upon them.

Nearly four months of anxious deliberation were employed
by an assembly composed of the men who had
been the most distinguished for their services civil and
military, in conducting the country through the arduous
struggles of the revolution—of men who to the
fire of genius added all the lights of experience and
were stimulated by the impulses at once of ardent patriotism
and of individual ambition aspiring to that last
and most arduous labor of constituting a nation destined
in after times to present a model of Government
for all the civilized nations of the earth. On the 17th
of September 1787, they reported.

When the substance of their work was gone through
a Committee of five members of whom Mr. MADISON

25

The address to the People was reported in the form
of a Letter from Washington the President of the
Convention to the President of Congress; a Letter,
admirable for the brevity and the force with which it
presents the concentrated argument for the great
change of their condition, which they called upon their
fellow citizens to sanction. And this Letter, together
with an addition of two or three lines in the preamble,
reported by the same Committee, did indeed comprise
the most powerful appeal that could sway the
heart of man, ever exhibited to the contemplation and
to the hopes of the human race.

It did not escape the notice or the animadversion
of the adversaries to this new national organization.
They were at the time when the Constitution was
promulgated, perhaps more numerous, and scarcely
less respectable, than the adherents to the Constitution
themselves. They had also in the management
of the discussion, almost all the popular side of the
argument.

Government in the first and most obvious aspect
which it assumes, is a restraint upon human action,
and as such a restraint upon Liberty. The Constitution
of the United States was intended to be a government
of great energy, and of course of extensive
restriction not only upon individual Liberty but upon
the corporate action of States claiming to be Sovereign
and Independent. The Convention had been aware
that such restraints upon the People, could be imposed

26

So cogent were these motives and so forcibly were
they compressed within the compass of this preamble,
and in the Letter from President Washington to the
President of Congress, that this body immediately and
unanimously adopted the resolutions of the Convention,
recommending that the projected Constitution
should be transmitted to the Legislatures of the several
States, to be by them submitted to Conventions
of Delegates, to be chosen in each State by the People
thereof, under the recommendation of its Legislature,
for their assent and ratification. This unanimity
of Congress is perhaps the strongest evidence
ever manifested of the utter contempt into which the

27

Thus far the proposal first made by Mr. MADISON
in the Legislature of Virginia, for the new political organization
of the Union, had been completely successful.
A People of the United States was formed. A
Government, Legislative, Executive and Judicial was
prepared for them, and by a daring though unavoidable
anticipation, had been declared by its authors to
be the Ordinance of that people themselves. It could
be made so only by their adoption. But the greatest
labor still remained to be performed. The people
throughout the Union were suffering, but a vast proportion
of them were unaware of the cause of the evil
that was preying upon their vitals. A still greater
number were bewildered in darkness in search of a
remedy, and there were not wanting those among the
most ardent and zealous votaries of Freedom, who instead
of adding to the powers of the general Congress,
inefficient and imbecile as they were, inclined
rather to redeem the confederacy from the forlorn condition
to which it was reduced by stripping the Congress
of the pittance of power which they possessed.
In the indulgence of this spirit the Delegates from our
own Commonwealth of Massachusetts, by express instructions

28

This morbid terror of patronage, this patriotic anxiety
lest corruption should creep in by appointments
of members of Congress to office under the authorities
of the Union, has often been reproduced down even
to recent days under the present Government of the
Union. Upon the theories or the practice of the
present age, it is not the time or the place here to
comment. But we cannot forbear to remark upon the
solicitude of our venerable forefathers in this Commonwealth,
to remedy the imperfection of the Articles
of Confederation, the abuses of power, by the
Congress of that day, and the avenues to corruption
by the appointment of their members to office, when
we consider that under the exclusions thus proposed,
Washington could never have commanded the armies
of the United States: That neither Franklin, John
Adams, Arthur Lee, John Jay, Henry Laurens, Thomas
Jefferson, Robert Morris, nor Robert R. Livingston
could have served them as Ministers abroad, or
in any ministerial capacity at home—and when we
reflect that two public Ministers in Europe with their
Secretaries, one Secretary of Foreign Affairs, one
Secretary of War and three Commissioners of an empty
Treasury, constituted the whole list of lucrative offices
civil and military which they had to bestow.

This incident may serve as an illustration of the
difficulties which were yet to be encountered before

29

In a people inhabiting so great an extent of Territory,
the difficulties to be surmounted before they could
be persuaded to adopt this Constitution, were aggravated
both by their dissensions and by their agreements
—by the diversity of their interests and the
community of their principles. The collision of interests
strongly tended to alienate them from one another,
and all were alike imbued with a deep aversion
to any unnecessary grant of power. The Constitution
was no sooner promulgated, than it was assailed
in the public journals from all quarters of the Union.

The Convention was boldly and not unjustly charged
with having transcended their powers, and the
Congress of the Confederation, were censured in no
measured terms for having even referred it to the
State Legislatures, to be submitted to the consideration
of Conventions of the People.

The Congress of the Confederation were in session
at New York. Several of its members had been at
the same time members of the Convention at Philadelphia
—and among them were JAMES MADISON and
Alexander Hamilton. John Jay was not then a
member of Congress nor had he been a member of the
Convention—but he was the Secretary of Congress
for foreign affairs and had held that office, from the
time of his return from Europe, immediately after
the conclusion of the definitive Treaty of Peace. He

30

The papers under the signature of Publius were
addressed to the People of the State of New York,
and the introductory Essay written by Hamilton, declared
the purpose to discuss all the topics of interest
connected with the adoption of the Constitution. The
utility of the Union to the prosperity of the People:
The insufficiency of the Confederation to preserve that
Union: The necessity of an energetic Government:
The conformity of the proposed Constitution to the
true principles of a republican Government: Its analogy
to the Constitution of the State of New-York,
and the additional security which its adoption would

31

In the distribution of the several subjects embraced
in the plan of the work, the inducements to adopt the
Constitution arising from the relations of the Union
with foreign nations, were presented by Mr Jay; the
defects of the Confederation in this respect were so
obvious and the evil consequences flowing from them
were so deeply and universally felt, that the task was
of comparative ease, and brevity, with that of the
other two contributors. The defects of the Confederation
were indeed a copious theme for them all;
and in the analysis of them, for the exposition of their
bearing on the Legislation of the several States the
two principal writers treated the subject so as to interlace
with each other. The 18th, 19th and 20th
numbers are the joint composition of both. In examining
closely the points selected by these two great
co-operators to a common cause, and their course of
argument for its support, it is not difficult to perceive
that diversity of genius and of character which afterwards
separated them so widely from each other on

32

The fourteenth number of the Federalist, the next
in the series written by Mr. MADISON, is an elaborate
answer to an objection which had been urged against
the Constitution, drawn from the extent of country,

33

The question to what extent of territory a confederate
Republic, under one general government may
be adopted, without breaking into fragments by its
own weight, or settling into a monarchy, subversive
of the liberties of the people, is yet of transcendent
interest, and of fearful portent to the people of the
Union. The Constitution of the United States was
formed for a people inhabiting a territory confined to
narrow bounds, compared with those which can
scarcely be said to confine them now. The acquisition
of Louisiana and of Florida have more than
doubled our domain; and our settlements and our

34

The other papers of the Federalist, written by
Mr. MADISON, are from the 37th to the 58th number
inclusive. They relate to the difficulties which the
Convention had experienced in the formation of a
proper plan. To its conformity with Republican
principles, with an apologetic defence of the body for
transcending their powers. To a general view of the
powers vested by the plan in the general government,
and a comparative estimate of the reciprocal influence
of the general and of the State governments with
each other. They contain a laborious investigation
of the maxim which requires a separation of the departments
of power, and a discussion of the means
for giving to it practical efficacy—and they close with
an examination critical and philosophical of the organization
of the House of Representatives in the
Constitution of the United States—with reference
to the qualifications of the electors and elected—to
the term of service of the members; to the ratio of
representation; to the total number of the body; and
to the expected subsequent augmentation of the members—and

35

The papers of the Federalist had a powerful, but
limited influence upon the public mind. The Constitution
was successively submitted to Conventions
of the People, in each of the thirteen States, and in
almost every one of them was debated against oppositions
of deep feeling, and strong party excitement.
The authors of the Federalist were again called to
buckle on their armour in defence of their plan.
The Convention for the Commonwealth of Virginia,
met in June, 1788, nine months after the Constitution
had been promulgated. It had already been ratified
by seven of the States, and New Hampshire, at an
adjourned session of her Convention, adopted it while
the Convention of Virginia were in session. The
assent of that State was therefore to complete the
number of nine, which the Constitution itself had
provided should be sufficient for undertaking its execution
between the ratifying States. A deeper interest
was then involved in the decision of Virginia,

36

The debates in the Virginia Convention furnish an
exposition of the principles of the Constitution, and
a Commentary upon its provisions not inferior to the
papers of the Federalist. Patrick Henry pursued his
hostility to the system into all its details; objecting not
only to the Preamble and the first Article, but to the
Senate, to the President, to the Judicial Power, to
the treaty making power, to the controul given to
Congress over the militia, and especially to the omission
of a Bill of Rights—seconded and sustained

37

The result was the unconditional ratification by a
majority of only eight votes, of the Constitution of the
United States on the part of the Commonwealth of
Virginia, together with resolutions, recommending
sundry amendments to supply the omission of a Bill of
Rights. The example for this had been first set by

38

In the organization of the Government of the United
States, Washington the leader of the armies of the
revolution, the President of the Convention which had
prepared the Constitution for the acceptance of the
People—first in War, first in Peace, and first in the
hearts of his Countrymen, was by their unanimous
voice called to the first Presidency of the United
States. For his assistance in the performance of the
functions of the Executive power, after the Institution
by Congress of the chief Departments, he selected
Alexander Hamilton for the office of Secretary of the
Treasury, and Thomas Jefferson for that of Secretary
of State. Mr. MADISON was elected one of the members
of the House of Representatives in the first Congress
of the United States under the Constitution.

The Treasury itself was to be organized. Public
credit, prostrated by the impotence of the Confederation
was to be restored, provision was to be made for
the punctual payment of the public debt—taxes were
to be levied—the manufactures, commerce and navigation
of the Country were to be fostered and encouraged;
and a system of conduct towards foreign
powers was to be adopted and maintained. A Judiciary
system was also to be instituted, accommodated
to the new and extraordinary character of the general
Government. A permanent seat of Government was
to be selected and subjected to the exclusive jurisdiction

39

40

No sooner was the new Government organized than
the eyes, the expectations and the interests and passions
of men turned to the designation of the succession
to the Presidency, when the official term of Washington
should be completed. His own intention was
to retire at the expiration of the first four years allotted
to the service. The candidates of the North and
the South supported by the geographical sympathies
of their respective friends were already giving rise to
the agency of political combinations. The Northern
candidate was not yet distinctly designated, but before
the expiration of the first Congress, Mr. Jefferson
was the only intended candidate of the South.

The Protection of Manufactures, the restoration of
public credit, the recovery of the securities of the
public debt from a state of depreciation little short of
total debasement, and the facilities of exchange and of
circulation furnished by the establishment of a National
Bank were of far deeper interest to the commercial
and Atlantic than to the plantation States. Mr. Jefferson's
distrust and jealousy of the powers granted by
the Constitution followed him into office and were
perhaps sharpened by the successful exercise of them,
under the auspices of a rival statesman; he insisted
upon a rigid construction of all the grants of power—
he denied the Constitutional power of Congress to establish

41

To the sources of dissensions and the conflicts of
opinion transmitted from the confederation or generated
by the organization of the new Government were
soon added the confluent streams of the French revolution
and its complication of European Wars. There
were features in the French revolution closely resembling
our own; there were points of national interest in
both Countries well adapted to harmonize their relations
with each other, and a sentiment of gratitude
rooted in the hearts of the American People by the
recent remembrance of the benefits derived from the

42

On the 18th of April, 1793, President Washington
submitted to his Cabinet thirteen questions with regard
to the measures to be taken by him in consequence
of the revolution which had overthrown the
French monarchy; of the new organization of a republic
in that country; of the appointment of a minister
from that republic to the United States, and of the
war, declared by the National Convention of France
against Great Britain. The first of these questions
was whether a proclamation should issue to prevent
interferences of the citizens of the United States in
the War? Whether the proclamation should or should
not contain a declaration of neutrality? The second
was whether a minister from the republic of France
should be received. Upon these two questions the
opinion of the Cabinet was unanimous in the affirmative—
that a Proclamation of neutrality should issue—
and that the minister from the French Republic should

43

General Hamilton and General Knox were of opinion
that the Minister from France should be conditionally
received, with the reservation of the question,
whether the United States were still bound to fulfil

44

Whatever doubts may have been entertained by a

45

Mr. Jefferson had advised the Proclamation; but

46

47

48

But whether in conjunction with or in opposition to
each other, the co-operation or the encounter of intellects
thus exalted and refined, controled by that
moderation and humanity, which have hitherto characterised
the history of our Union, cannot but ultimately
terminate in spreading light and promoting
peace among men. Happy, thrice happy the people,
whose political oppositions and conflicts have no ultimate
appeal but to their own reason; of whose party
feuds the only conquests are of argument, and whose
only triumphs are of the mind. In other ages and in
other regions of our own, the question of the respective
powers of the Legislature and of the Execuive with
reference to war, might itself have been debated in
blood and sent numberless victims to their account on
the battle-field or the scaffold. So it was in the sanguinary
annals of the French Revolution. So it has
been and yet is in the successive revolutions of our
South American neighbors. May that merciful Being
who has hitherto overruled all our diversities of opinion,
tempered our antagonizing passions, and conciliated
our conflicting interests, still preside in all our
councils and in the tempests of our civil commotions,
still ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm.

49

It was indeed at one of the most turbulent and tempestuous
periods of human history that the Constitution
of the United States first went into operation.
It was convulsed not only by the convulsions of the
old world but by tumultuary agitations of the most
alarming character and tendency from within. Such
were the dangers and the difficulties with which the
Government of the United States from the first moment
of its organization under Washington was beset
and surrounded, that they undoubtedly led him to the
determination to withdraw from the charge and responsibility
of presiding over it, at as early a period as
possible. It was with difficulty that he was prevailed
upon to postpone the execution of this design till
the expiration of a second term of service; but so
radically different were the opinions and the systems
of policy of Washington's two principal advisers, especially
with reference to the external relations of the
United States, that he was unable to retain beyond
the limits of the first term their united assistance in
his Cabinet. In the struggle to maintain the neutrality
which he had proclaimed, and in the festering inflammation
of interests and passions, gathering with
the progress of the French revolution, he coincided
more in judgment with the Secretary of the Treasury
than with the Secretary of State, and they successively
retired from their offices, in which each of them
had rendered the most important services and contributed
to raise the Country and its Government high in
the estimation of the world, but unfortunately without
being able to harmonise, and finally, even to co-operate
with each other.

Mr. Jefferson's retirement was first in order—it
was voluntary but under circumstances of dissatisfaction

50

51

The principles of the administration of Washington
were pursued by his immediate successor. The opposition
to them was encouraged and fortified by the
position of their leader in the second seat of power;
and the Directory of France wallowing in corruption
and venality, was preparing the way, for their own
destruction at home, and setting up to sale the Peace
of their Country with other nations and especially
with the United States. By their violence and fraud
they compelled the Congress to annul the existing
Treaties between the United States and France; and
without an absolute declaration of War to authorize
defensive hostilities.

In the controversy with France during this period,
the executive administration was sustained by a vast
majority of the People of the Union and the elections
both of the People and of the State Legislatures returned
decided majorities in both houses of Congress
of corresponding opinions and policy. A powerful and
inveterate opposition to all the measures both of Congress
and of the administration was however constantly
maintained with the countenance and co-operation
of Mr. Jefferson, whose partialities in favor of
France and the French revolution, though not extending
to the justification of the secret intrigues and
open hostilities of the Directory still counteracted the
operations of the American Government to resist and
defeat them.

The violence and pertinacity of the opposition provoked

52

Among the eminent qualities of Mr. Jefferson, was
a keen, constant, and profound faculty of observation
with regard to the action and re-action of the popular
opinion upon the measures of government. He
perceived immediately the operation of the alien and
sedition Acts, and he availed himself of them with
equal sagacity and ardor for the furtherance of his
own views of public policy and of personal advancement.
In opposition to the alien and sedition Acts,

53

The principles thus assumed, and particularly that
of remedial nullification by State authority, have been
more than once re-asserted by parties predominating
in one or more of the confederated States, dissatisfied
with particular acts of the general government.
They have twice brought the Union itself to the
verge of dissolution. To that result it must come,
should it ever be the misfortune of the American
People that they should obtain the support of a sufficient

54

The influence of Mr. Jefferson over the mind of
Mr. MADISON, was composed of all that genius, talent,
experience, splendid public services, exalted reputation,
added to congenial tempers, undivided friendship
and habitual sympathies of interest and of feeling
could inspire. Among the numerous blessings which
it was the rare good fortune of Mr. Jefferson's life to
enjoy, was that of the uninterrupted, disinterested,
and efficient friendship of MADISON. But it was the
friendship of a mind not inferior in capacity and tempered
with a calmer sensibility and a cooler judgment
than his own. With regard to the measures of
Washington's administration, from the time when the
Councils of Hamilton acquired the ascendancy over
those of Jefferson, the opinions of Mr. MADISON generally
coincided with those of his friend. He had
resisted, on Constitutional grounds, the establishment
of a National Bank—he had proposed, and with all
his ability had urged important modifications of the
funding system. He had written and published the
papers of Helvidius, and he had originated measures
of commercial regulation against Great Britain, instead

55

56

The resolutions did but in part carry into effect the
principles and purposes of Mr. Jefferson. His original
intention was that the alien and sedition acts
should be declared by the State Legislatures, null and
void—and that with the declaration that nullification
by them was the rightful remedy for such usurpations
of power by the federal Government, committees of
correspondence and co-operation should be appointed
by the Legislatures of the States concurring in the
resolutions, for consultation with regard to further
measures. Before the adoption of the Virginia resolutions,
the Legislature of Kentucky had adopted

57

The Virginia Resolutions were transmitted to the
other States with an address to the people in support
of them, written by Mr. MADISON. They were
strongly disapproved by resolutions of all the Legislatures
of the New England States and by those of New
York and Delaware. They were not nor were those
of the Legislature of Kentucky concurred in by any
other State Legislature of the Union, but they contributed
greatly to increase the unpopularity of the
measures which they denounced and sharpened the
edge of every weapon, wielded against the administion
of the time.

At the succeeding sessions of the Legislatures of
Kentucky and of Virginia, they took into consideration
the answers of the Legislatures of the other States
to their resolutions of 1798. The reply of Kentucky
was in the form of a resolution re-asserting the right
of the separate States to judge of infractions, by the
Government of the union, of the Constitution of the
United States, and expressly affirming that a nullification
by the State Sovereignties of all unauthorized
acts done under color of that instrument was the
rightful remedy; and complaining of the doctrines
and principles attempted to be maintained in all the
answers, that of Virginia only excepted.

In the Legislature of Virginia, a long, most able and

58

"That the General Assembly, having carefully and
respectfully attended to the proceedings of a number
of the States, in answer to the resolutions of December
21, 1798, and having accurately and fully re-examined
and re-considered the latter, find it to be their
indispensable duty to adhere to the same as founded in
truth, as consonant with the Constitution and as conducive
to its preservation; and more especially to be
their duty to renew as they do hereby renew their
protest against the alien and sedition acts, as palpable
and alarming infractions of the Constitution."

The report and resolution were adopted by the
Legislature in February, 1800. The alien law expired
by its own limitation on the 25th of June of that year,
and the sedition act on the 4th of March, 1801.

The proceedings of the Legislatures of Kentucky
and Virginia relating to the alien and sedition acts,
gave to them an importance far beyond that which
naturally belonged to them. The acts themselves and
the resolutions of the Legislatures concerning them
may now be considered merely as adversary party
measures.

The agency of Mr. Jefferson in originating the
measures of both the State Legislatures was at the
time profoundly secret. It has been made known
only since his decease, but in estimating the weight
of the objections against the two laws on sound principles
as well of morals as of politics, the fact as well
as the manner of that agency are observable. The
situation which he then held, and that to which he
ascended by its operation, are considerations not to be

59

60

Emergencies may arise in which the authority of
Congress will be invoked by the portion of the people
most aggrieved by the alien and sedition acts, for
arbitrary expulsion of foreign incendiaries, and for the
suppression of incendiary publications at home, by
measures far more rigorous and more palpably violative
of the Constitution than those laws, and if the temper
of that portion of the people which approved them,
shall be, as it has recently been and perhaps still is,
attuned to endure the experiment, the Constitutional

61

In this respect there appears to have been a very
material difference between the opinions and purposes
of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. MADISON. Concurring in
the doctrine that the separate States have the right
to interpose, in case of palpable infractions of the Constitution
by the Government of the United States,
and that the alien and sedition acts presented a case
of such infraction, Mr. Jefferson considered them as
absolutely null and void; and thought the State
Legislatures competent not only to declare but to
make them so; to resist their execution within their
respective borders by physical force; and to secede
and separate from the Union, rather than submit to
them, if attempted to be carried into execution by
force. To these doctrines Mr. MADISON did not subscribe.
He disclaimed them in the most explicit manner,
at a very late period of his life, and in his last and
most matured sentiments with regard to those laws, he
considered them rather as unadvised Acts, passed in
contravention to the opinions and feelings of the community
than as more unconstitutional than many other
acts of Congress which have generally accorded with
the views of a majority of the States and of the people.

Upon the change of the administration by the election
Of Mr. Jefferson as President of the United States
in 1801, a new career was opened to the talents and

62

That administration was destined to pass through
ordeals scarcely less severe than those which had tested
the efficiency of the Constitution of the United
States under the Presidency of his predecessors.

By a singular concurrence of good fortune, Mr. Jefferson
was immediately after his accession relieved
from the pressure of all the important difficulties and
menacing dangers which had so heavily weighed upon
the administration of both his predecessors. The
differences between them both and the United States,
which had during the twelve years of those administrations
kept the nation without intermission in the
most imminent dangers of War, first with Great
Britain, and afterwards with France, had all been
adjusted by Treaties with both those nations. The
revolutionary violence of Republican France had
already subsided into a military Government. Still
retaining the name of a republic; but rapidly ripening
into a hereditary monarchy. The wars in Europe
themselves were about to cease, for a short period indeed,
and soon to blaze out with renewed and aggravated
fury, but upon questions of mere conquest and
aggrandizement between the belligerent powers. In
the same year with the inauguration of Mr. Jefferson,
the Peace of Amiens, had replaced France at the head
of continental Europe, leaving Great Britain in the
uncontested if not undisputed dominion of the sea.

The expenditures for the army and navy, already
much reduced by the reduction of the former to a
small Peace establishment, admitted of further retrenchments,
and the very questionable policy of

63

The reduction of the navy, while it lasted, deeply
injurious both to the honor and the interest of the
nation, gave however to the incipient administration
the credit of reduced expenditures, retrenchment and
reform: such was its first effect at home. Abroad its
first fruit was the contempt of the Barbary powers—
insult, outrage and war—a new armament, and new
taxation under the denomination of a mediterranean
fund, took the place of retrenchment; and when the
smothered flames of war burst forth anew between
France and Britain, the impressment of our seamen,
Orders in Council, Paper Blockades, Decrees of Berlin,
of Milan, of Rambouillet, and finally the murder

64

On the other hand the renewal of the European
war, and the partialities of Mr. Jefferson in favor
of France enabled him to accomplish an object
which greatly enlarged the territories of the Union—
which removed a most formidable source of future
dissensions with France; which exceedingly strengthened
the relative influence and power of the State
and section of the Union, to which he himself belonged,
and which in its consequences changed the character
of the Confederacy itself. This operation, by
far the greatest that has been accomplished by any
administration under the Constitution, was consummated
at the price of fifteen millions of dollars in
money, and of a direct, unqualified, admitted violation
of the Constitution of the United States. According
to the theory of Mr. Jefferson, as applied by him to
the alien and sedition Acts, it was absolutely null and
void. It might have been nullified by the Legislature of
any one State in the Union, and if persisted in would
have warranted and justified a combination of States,
and their secession from the confederacy in resistance
against it.

That an amendment to the Constitution was necessary
to legalize the annexation of Louisiana to the

65

In the interval between the Peace of Amiens, and
the renewal of the wars of France with the rest of
Europe, the grasping spirit and gigantic genius of
Napoleon had been revolving projects of personal
aggrandizement and of national ambition of which
this western hemisphere was to be the scene. He

66

67

Never in the fortunes of mankind was there a more
sudden, complete and propitious turn in the tide of
events than this change in the purposes of Napoleon
proved to the administration of Mr. Jefferson. The
wrangling altercation with Spain for the navigation of
the Mississippi, had been adjusted during the administration
of Washington, by a treaty, which had conceded
to them the right, and stipulated to make its
enjoyment effective a right of deposit at New Orleans.
In repurchasing from Spain the Colony of Louisiana,
Napoleon, to disincumber himself from the burden of
this stipulation, and to hold in his hand a rod over the
western section of this Union, had compelled the dastardly
and imbecile monarch of Spain to commit an
act of perfidy, by withdrawing from the people of the
United States, this stipulated right of deposit before
delivering the possession of the Colony to France.
The great artery of the commerce of the Union was
thus choaked in its circulation. The sentiment of

68

69

It will be no detraction from the merits or services
of Mr. Jefferson or of his Secretary of State to acknowledge
that in all this transaction Fortune claims
to herself the lion's share. To seize, and turn to
profit the precise instant of the turning tide is itself
among the eminent properties of a Statesman, and
if requiring less elevated virtue than the firmness and
prudence that withstand adversity, or the moderation
which adorns and dignifies prosperity, it is not less
essential to the character of an accomplished ruler of
men.

But Napoleon had transferred the acquisition which
he had wrenched from the nerveless hand of Spain
with its indefinite and equivocal boundary. He had
also violated his faith, pledged to Spain, when he took
back the Province, once the Colony of France; that
he would never cede it to the United States. Spain
immediately complained, remonstrated, protested
against the cession, the just reward of her own perfidy,
in withdrawing the stipulated right of deposit
at New Orleans; and although Napoleon soon silenced
her complaints and constrained her to withdraw
her protest against the cession, yet on the question of
boundary, he had contracted his province of Louisiana,
almost within the dimensions of the Island of New

70

In the first wars of the French revolution Great
Britain had begun by straining the claim of belligerent
as against neutral rights, beyond all the theories
of international jurisprudence and even beyond her
own ordinary practice. There is in all war a conflict
between the belligerent and the neutral right, which
can in its nature be settled only by convention.
And in addition to all the ordinary asperities of dissension
between the nation at war and the nation at
peace, she had asserted a right of man-stealing from
the vessels of the United States. The claim of right
was to take by force all sea-faring men, her own subjects,
wherever they were found by her naval officers,
to serve their king in his wars. And under color of
this tyrant's right, her naval officers, down to the
most beardless Midshipman actually took from the
American merchant vessels which they visited any
seaman whom they chose to take for a British subject.
After the Treaty of November 1794, she had
relaxed all her pretensions against the neutral rights,

71

72

The controversies of conflicting neutral and belligerent
rights continued through the whole of Mr. Jefferson's
administration, during the latter part of which
they were verging rapidly to war. He had carried
the policy of peace, perhaps to an extreme. His system
of defence by commercial restrictions, dry docks,
gun-boats and embargoes was stretched to its last
hair's breadth of endurance. Far be it from me my
fellow citizens, to speak of this system or of its motives
with disrespect. If there be a duty, binding in
chains more adamantine than all the rest the conscience
of a Chief Magistrate of this Union, it is that
of preserving peace with all mankind—peace with the
other nations of the earth—peace among the several
States of this Union—peace in the hearts and temper

73

And such was the condition of the two mightiest
nations of the earth during the administration of Mr.
Jefferson. Frantic, in fits of mutual hatred, envy and
jealousy against each other; meditating mutual invasion
and conquest, and forcing the other nations of

74

Mr. Jefferson pursued his policy of peace till it
brought the nation to the borders of internal war. An
embargo of fourteen months duration was at last reluctantly
abandoned by him, when it had ceased to be
obeyed by the people, and State Courts were ready to
pronounce it unconstitutional. A non-intercourse was
then substituted in its place and the helm of State
passed from the hands of Mr. Jefferson to those of Mr.
MADISON, precisely at the moment of this perturbation
of earth and sea, threatened with war from abroad
and at home, but with the principle definitively settled
that in our intercourse with foreign nations, reason,
justice and commercial restrictions require live
oak hearts and iron or brazen mouths to speak, that
they may be distinctly heard, or attentively listened
to, by the distant ear of foreigners, whether French or
British, monarchical or republican.

The administration of Mr. MADISON, was with regard
to its most essential principles a continuation of
that of Mr. Jefferson. He too was the friend of
peace, and earnestly desirous of maintaining it. As a
last resource for the preservation of it, an act of Congress
prohibited all commercial intercourse with both
belligerents, the prohibition to be withdrawn from

75

Of the necessity, the policy or even the justice of
this war, there are conflicting opinions not yet, perhaps
never to be harmonized. This is not the time
or the place to discuss them. The passions, the prejudices
and the partialities of that day have passed
away. That it was emphatically a popular war, having
reference to the whole people of the United
States, will, I think, not be denied. That it was in
a high degree unpopular in our own section of the
Union is no doubt equally true; and that it was so,
constituted the greatest difficulties and prepared the
most mortifying disasters in its prosecution.

The war itself was an ordeal through which the
Constitution of the United States, as the Government
of a great nation was to pass. Its trial in that respect
was short but severe. In the intention of its
founders and particularly of Mr. MADISON, it was
a Constitution essentially pacific in its character, and
for a nation above all others, the lover of peace—yet
its great and most vigorous energies and all its most
formidable powers are reserved for the state of war—
and war is the condition in which the functions allotted
to the separate States sink into impotence compared
with those of the general Government.

The war was brought to a close without any definitive
adjustment of the controverted principles in which
it had originated. It left the questions of neutral

76

The extreme solicitude of the American Government
for the perpetuity of peace, especially with
Great Britain, induced Mr. MADISON to institute with
her negotiations after the peace of Ghent, for the adjustment
of all these questions of maritime collisions
between the warlike and the pacific nation. The
claims of neutral right are all founded upon the precepts
of Christianity and the natural rights of man.
The warring party's claim is founded upon the immemorial
usages of war, untempered and unmitigated
by the chastening spirit of Christianity. They all
rest upon the right of force—or upon what has been
termed the ultimate argument of kings. But since
the whole Island of Albion has been united under
one Government, her foreign wars have necessarily
all been upon or beyond the seas. Her consolidation

77

This glaring inconsistency with the first principles
of the British Constitution is justified on the plea of
necessity, which being above all law, claims equal
exemption from responsibility to the tribunal of reason.
The efforts of Mr. MADISON and of his successors
to obtain an amicable adjustment of this great
source of hostility between the kindred nations have
hitherto proved equally unavailing. One short interval
has occurred since the peace, during which a war
broke out between France and Spain to which Britain
was neutral, and the views of her ruling Statesmen
were then favorable to the rights of neutrality. Had
that war been of longer continuance the prospects of
a mitigation of the customs of maritime warfare might
have been more propitious; but we can now only
indulge the hope that the glory of extinguishing the
flame of war by land and sea is reserved for the future
destinies of our confederated land.

78

The peace with Great Britain was succeeded by a
short war with Algiers in which the first example was
set of a peace with that piratical Power purchased by
chastisement substituted for tribute—and which set
the last seal to the policy of maintaining the rights
and interests of the United States by a permanent
naval force.

The revolutions in Spain, and in her Colonies of
this hemisphere, complicated with questions of disputed
boundaries, and with claims of indemnity for
depredations upon our commerce, formed subjects for
important negotiations, during the war with Great
Britain, and after its close. Never, since the institution
of civil society, have there been within so short
a time so many assumptions of sovereign powers.
The crown of Spain was abdicated by Charles the
Fourth, and then by his son Ferdinand, while a prisoner
to Napoleon, at Bayonne, transferred to the
house of Bonaparte, as the kingdom of Naples had
been by conquest before. In Germany, the dissolution
of the German Empire had generated a kingdom
of Westphalia, and converted into kingdoms the electorates
of Saxony, of Bavaria, of Wirtemberg and of
Hanover. The kingdom of Portugal had been overshadowed
by an empire of Brazil, and every petty
Province of Spain in this hemisphere down to the
Floridas and Amelia Island constituted themselves
into sovereign States, unfurled their flags and claimed
their seats among the potentates of the earth. Under
these circumstances, it became often a question of
great delicacy, who should be recognized as such, and
with whom an exchange of diplomatic functionaries
should be made. There was during Mr. MADISON's
administration a period during which war was waged

79

80

The act of recognition, being an execution of the
laws of nations, is an attribute of executive power, and
has therefore been invariably performed under the
present Constitution of the United States by their
President. Mr. MADISON withheld this recognition
from the minister of the Spanish Regency, but yielded
it to the same person, when commissioned by Ferdinand.
He left to his successors the obligation, of
withholding and of conceding the acknowledgment,
as the duties of this nation might from time to time
forbid or enjoin; and a question of the deepest interest,
under circumstances pregnant with unparalleled
consequences, is while I speak under the consideration
and subject to the decision of the President of the
United States.

The severest trials of our country induced by the
war with Great Britain were endured by the disorder
of the national finances. The revenues of the Union
until then had consisted almost exclusively in the proceeds
of taxation by impost on imported merchandize.
Excises, land taxes and taxes upon stamps were
resorted to during the war, but were always found
more burdensome and less acceptable to the people.
It is however a disadvantage, perhaps counterbalanced

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From that day, for a period advancing upon its
twentieth year, he lived in a happy retirement; in
the bosom of a family and with a partner for life alike
adapted to the repose and comfort of domestic privacy,
as she had been to adorn and dignify the highest

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On one occasion of deep interest to the people of
the State, on the question of the ratio of representation
in the two branches of the Legislature, Mr. MADISON
took an active part and made a speech the substance
of which has been preserved.

"Such in those moments as in all the past,"

This speech is so perfectly characteristic of the man
that it might itself be considered as an epitome of his
life. Though delivered upon a question, which in a
discussion upon a Constitution of this Commonwealth
could not even be raised, it was upon a subject which
probed to the deepest foundations the institution of

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"It is sufficiently obvious said Mr. MADISON, that
persons and property are the two great objects on
which Governments are to act; that the rights of
persons and the rights of property are the objects for
the protection of which Government was instituted.
These rights cannot well be separated. The personal
right to acquire property which is a natural right,
gives to property when acquired, a right to protection,
as a social right."

"It is due to justice; due to humanity; due to
truth; to the sympathies of our nature in fine, to our
character as a people, both abroad and at home; that
the colored part of our population should be considered,
as much as possible, in the light of human beings,
and not as mere property. As such, they are acted
upon by our laws, and have an interest in our laws."

"In framing a Constitution, great difficulties are
necessarily to be overcome; and nothing can ever
overcome them but a spirit of compromise. Other
nations are surprised at nothing so much as our having
been able to form constitutions in the manner
which has been exemplified in this country. Even
the union of so many States, is, in the eyes of the
world, a wonder; the harmonious establishment of a
common Government over them all, a miracle. I cannot
but flatter myself that without a miracle, we shall
be able to arrange all difficulties. I never have despaired,

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Mr. MADISON was associated with his friend Jefferson
in the institution of the University of Virginia,
and after his decease was placed at its head under
the modest and unassuming title of Rector. He was
also the President of an Agricultural Society in the
county of his residence, and in that capacity delivered
an address which the practical farmer and the classical
scholar may read with equal profit and delight.

In the midst of these occupations the declining days
of the Philosopher, the Statesman and the Patriot
were past, until the 21st day of June last, the anniversary
of the day on which the ratification of the
Convention of Virginia in 1788 had affixed the seal
of JAMES MADISON as the father of the Constitution
of the United States, when his earthly part sunk
without a struggle into the grave, and a spirit bright
as the seraphim that surround the throne of omnipotence,
ascended to the bosom of his God.

This Constitution, my countrymen, is the great
result of the North American revolution. This is the
giant stride in the improvement of the condition of
the human race, consummated in a period of less than
one hundred years. Of the signers of the address to
George the Third in the Congress of 1774—of the
signers of the Declaration of Independence in 1776—
of the signers of the Articles of Confederation in
1781, and of the signers of the federal and national
Constitution of Government under which we live,
with enjoyments never before allotted to man, not
one remains in the land of the living. The last surviver

85

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Their days on earth are ended, and yet their century
has not passed away. Their portion of the blessings
which they thus labored to secure, they have
enjoyed—and transmitted to us their posterity. We
enjoy them as an inheritance—won, not by our toils—
watered, not with our tears—saddened, not by the
shedding of any blood of ours. The gift of heaven
through their sufferings and their achievements—but
not without a charge of correspondent duty incumbent
upon ourselves.

And what, my friends and fellow citizens, what is
that duty of our own? Is it to remonstrate to the
adders's ear of a king beyond the Atlantic wave, and
claim from him the restoration of violated rights?
No. Is it to sever the ties of kindred and of blood,
with the people from whom we sprang: To cast
away the precious name of Britons and be no more the
countrymen of Shakspeare and Milton, of Newton and
Locke—of Chatham and Burke? Or more and worse,
is it to meet their countrymen in the deadly conflict
of a seven year's war? No. Is it the last and greatest
of the duties fulfilled by them? Is it to lay the
foundations of the fairest Government and the mightiest
nation that ever floated on the tide of time?
No! These awful and solemn duties were allotted to
them; and by them they were faithfully performed.
What then is our duty?

Is it not to preserve, to cherish, to improve the inheritance
which they have left us—won by their toils
—watered by their tears—saddened but fertilized by
their blood? Are we the sons of worthy sires, and

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ORDER OF PERFORMANCES
IN THE
ODEON,
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27th, 1836,
OCCASIONED BY THE DECEASE OF
JAMES MADISON,
FORMERLY
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

I...VOLUNTARY ON THE ORGAN–By G. J. Webb.

II...PRAYER–By Rev. Dr. Lowell.

III...ODE–By the Choir of the Boston Academy of Music.
Poetry by Park Benjamin. Music by G. J. Webb.

Eulogy═By the Hon. John Quincy Adams.

V...HYMN.

VI...BENEDICTION.