collegiate course. These studies were further prosecuted under the Reverend Thomas Martin, the parish minister of the Established Church of England, who was engaged as private tutor in his father's family.

The climate of Williamsburgh being deemed uncongenial with persons from the mountain region, Mr. Madison, instead of being put at the College of William and Mary, was sent to that of Princeton, New Jersey, of which Dr. Witherspoon was then President, where he completed his college education, and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in the autumn of 1771. While at college his health was impaired by over ardent study. It continued feeble during some years after his return home. We learn, from good authority, that for more than sixty years he suffered from organic bodily irregularity, which is mentioned only for the purpose of the encouraging reflection, how long, how cheerful, and how useful life may be with tolerable health, and much how enjoyment may be had notwithstanding bodily misfortunes which are a constant source of uneasiness. He laid deep the foundations of those attainments, habits and principles, which gradually but without fail raised him to after eminence. When he got home with impaired health, far from neglecting literary pursuits, he persevered in extensive and systematic reading, somewhat miscellaneous, but not without reference to the profession of law, although he formed no absolute determination to enter upon the practice. Mr. Madison studied probably just law enough, but his breeding was altogether that of a statesman; an American statesman, for he never was out of his own country; and though it has often truly been said that he would make a great Chief Justice of the United States, yet his studies and acquirements were free from all technical or professional restraint, and his seldom if ever equalled powers of reasoning were always exercised on a large scale, and with a philosophical comprehension of the subject matter. From nature, from habit, it may be even from the imperfect state of health to which he was reduced at the outset of his career, his was a passionless progress to elevation. He never addressed a passion or propitiated a prejudice: but relying on reason alone for conviction, he effected his purpose without any appeal to excitement. Taking nothing for granted by intuition or sympathy, he worked out every result like a problem to be proved. No one was ever more inflexibly attached to the principles of his adoption; but then he always adopted them on earnest consideration and sufficient authority, before he gave them his affections. They were not his natural offspring. His preceptor, Jefferson, a man of high genius surpassed him in enthusiasm and brilliancy of imagination, and was better versed in mathematical science, and that of languages. But Madison was a good linguist, a chaste, elegant and attractive writer; as a reasoner, superior to Jefferson, and perhaps of sounder

judgment, certainly more circumspect. His conversational talents were uncommon, and his power of debate in public bodies, when he at length overcame the extreme diffidence by which he was at first much restrained, was of the first order. No man ever was more averse to controversy, detraction or invective; he never gave offence by personality.

Having received very early and strong impressions in favor of liberty, both civil and religious, he embarked with the prevalent zeal in the American cause at the beginning of the dispute with Great Britain; but his devotion to study and his impaired health, probably prevented his performing any military service. Devoted to freedom of conscience, he was particularly active in opposing the persecution of the Baptists, then a new sect in Virginia, who were consigned in some instances to jail for violating the law prohibiting preaching by dissenters from the established church. Throughout life he was remarkable for strict adherence to the American doctrine of absolute separation between civil and religious authority; and one of his vetoes, while President, attested that in advanced station and age the principles early imbibed on this subject were as dear to him as at first, when he was but a young and gratuitous reformer.

In the spring of 1776, when twenty-five years of age, he was initiated into the public service, from which he rarely afterwards was absent for forty years of constantly rising eminence, till it was all crowned by that spontaneous retirement from the highest station which is itself the crown of American republicanism. His first election was to the Legislature of Virginia, which, in May of that year, anticipated the declaration of independence by unanimously instructing the deputies of that State to propose it.

It is a proof of Mr. Madison's character that in this Assembly, being surrounded by experienced and distinguished members, he modestly refrained from any active part in its proceedings; and never tried that talent for debate which he afterwards displayed so eminently. Beyond committee duty and private suggestions he was unknown in the Assembly. At the succeeding county election he was superseded by another competitor. His failure was partly owing to his declining to treat the electors; but in no small degree to the diffidence which restrained him from giving fair play to his faculty of speech and active participation in public affairs.

But the Legislature, in the course of the ensuing session, repaired this popular defection by appointing him member of the Council of State, which place he held till 1779, when he was elected a delegate to the Congress of the Revolution. During the first part of his service in the council, Patrick Henry was Governor of the State; and during the latter part of it, Mr. Jefferson. Both these personages experienced and appreciated the importance of

Mr. Madison's assistance, knowledge and judgment, in a station which did not put his natural modesty to the severe trial of public display. His information, patriotism, probity and unpretending worth, gained for him the first fruits of his maturing distinction. He proved himself a safe and serviceable man,-recommendations without which brilliancy is often troublesome, and always useless. Mr. Jefferson used to say that Mr. Madison rendered himself very acceptable to the members of the Legislature by his amiable deportment, and by the services he performed in drafting reports, bills, &c., for them. It was this that recommended him for election the next winter as a member of the Executive council, where his talents for writing and for business generally, particularly his acquaintance with the French language, of which Governor Henry was ignorant, and which was necesary to the Executive of Virginia, in their constant intercourse with French officers, soon made Mr. Madison the most efficient member of the council. He wrote so much for Governor Henry, that he was called the Governor's Secretary. The council, moreover, was the best adapted stage for his first essays as a public speaker; not consisting of more than ten persons, their discussions were less trying to a modest man. So extreme was Mr. Madison's diffidence, that it was Mr. Jefferson's opinion that if his first public appearance had taken place in such an assembly as the House of Representatives of the United States Mr. Madison would never have been able to overcome his aversion to display. But by practice first in the Executive Council of Virginia, and afterwards in the old Congress, which was likewise a small body, he was gradually habituated to speech-making in public, in which he became so powerful.

Elected to Congress, he took his scat in that body in March, 1780, and was continued there by re-elections till the expiration of the allowed term, computed from the ratification of the articles of confederation in 1781. From the spring of 1780 till the fall of 1783, the journals show, as is known to all, that he became an active and leading member of Congress, taking prominent part in many of the most important transactions. The letter of instructions to Mr. Jay, American minister in Spain, in October, 1780, maintaining the right of the United States to the Mississippi river, and the address of the States at the close of the war, urging the adoption of the plan providing for the debts due to the army, and the other public creditors, were composed by him, and are some of the earliest of his contributions to those American State papers, which, during the infancy of the United States, were among their most effectual means of conservation and advancement.

In the years 1784, '5, '6, he was elected a delegate by his county to the State legislature. During Mr. Madison's service in this capacity, it was his primary object to explain and inculcate the

pressing necessity of a reform in the federal system, and to promote the means leading to such amelioration. The unsuccessful attempt to vest Congress with powers immediately required for the public wants, led to the meeting at Annapolis in August, 1786, to which Mr. Madison was deputed, and which resulted in a recommendation of the Convention with fuller powers at Philadelphia, in May, 1787. The State of Virginia promptly set the example of compliance with this recommendation, by an act drawn by Mr. Madison, and by the appointment of a deputation, in which he was included.

From 1784 to 1786 inclusive, beside what related to the federal system, several subjects of great importance were agitated in the Virginia legislature: paper money, British debts, the separation of Kentucky from Virginia, the code of laws revised by Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton, and the religious establishment proposed by Mr. Henry. Mr. Madison took a conspicuous and effective part in all these proceedings against paper emissions, in favor of paying British debts, in favor of the separation of Kentucky, in support generally of the revised code, and in opposition to a religious establishment. To the latter project he was strenuously and successfully an explicit antagonist; and he composed the memorial and remonstrance, which was so generally concurred in and signed by persons of all denominations, as to crush Mr. Henry's scheme. The journal of the federal Convention which sat at Philadelphia in 1787, proves that he participated, as much as any member of that body, in framing the Constitution of the United States, which for now nearly fifty years has been the government of this country. For many years the survivor of all his associates in that illustrious assembly, Mr. Madison became entitled by various claims before his death to be called the Father of the Constitution.

During the same period, and until the expiration of the old Congress, to which he had been re-appointed in 1786, he continued a member of that body. His avowed object in returning there was to prevent, if possible, the project favored, by Congress, of shutting the river Mississippi for a long period.

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In the interval between the close of the Convention at Philadelphia for framing the Federal Constitution, and the meeting of the State Conventions to sanction it, the well-known work called the Federalist was written, which has since become a constitutional text-book. Gideon's edition authenticates Mr. Madison's contributions to it, and it is too well known to require that it should be dwelt upon.

Till his country was secured, and its welfare established by a proper form of national government, Mr. Madison was indefatigable in his efforts to explain and recommend the Constitution for adoption. Accordingly, in 1788, he was elected by his county a

delegate to the Convention of Virginia, which was to determine whether that State would accede to it. His agency in the proceedings of that Convention appears in the printed account of them, and is too familiar with every person whose attention has been turned to the subject, to require explanation.

On the adoption of the Constitution, he was elected a representative to Congress from the district in which he lived, in February, 1789, and remained a member by reëlections till March, 1797. His participation, during those eight years, in all the acts and deliberations of Congress was so prominent and pervading, that nothing of importance took place without his instrumentality; and in most of the leading measures his was a leading place, especially in all that concerned foreign relations. Addressing the house on all important questions, he never spoke without full preparation, and so completely exhausted every topic he discussed, that it was remarked by his adversaries that Mr. Madison's refutation of their views frequently suggested arguments which they themselves had not thought of, to be answered by him in the same triumphant strain of calm and respectful, but irresistible argument.

The resolutions of the Legislature of Virginia in 1798, against the alien and sedition laws, are now known to have been written by Mr. Madison, though not a member of that legislature. And it being understood that a vindication of those resolutions would be called for, he was elected a member the next year, and drew up the celebrated report containing their vindication, which, like the papers of the Federalist, has become a standard of constitutional doctrine.

Mr. Jefferson being chosen President of the United States in 1801, appointed Mr. Madison his Secretary of State, in which office he continued during the eight years of Jefferson's presidency, illustrating the whole period by his masterly writings and judicious participation. This is not the occasion for a full view of his performances in the Department of State; but it may be said, in a word, that of all the great disputes on international and municipal law evolved by an epoch that at last, after great difficulties and efforts to avert hostilities, closed with the war which it was Mr. Madison's destiny to conduct as Chief Magistrate,-the complicated questions of the conflicting rights of war and peace, colonial commerce, contraband trade, impressment of seamen, search and seizure of ships and cargoes, blockades, embargoes, non-importation and non-intercourse, there was not one which Mr. Madison did not present to his country, and before the world, with a power of research and argument unsurpassed in the annals of diplomatic writing. In 1805, he visited Philadelphia for more convenient access to the best treatises on the subject of a pamphlet he published in 1806, on the British doctrine against the trade of neutrals with