enemies' colonies. Throughout every succeeding year the country was enlightened by his elaborate productions, which every session of Congress brought forth. On the question of impressment, the most trying and perplexing of the grievances to which the United States were then subjected, his letters to the American ministers in England, and the British ministers in this country, were composed with a power equal to all we could desire, and in a temper which it was impossible for them to take offence at. It has been said of him, that give Mr. Madison the right side of a good cause, and no man could surpass him in its vindication. The Department of State at that time was the main stay of the country. Doubting the ability of the United States to contend in war with the great belligerents who were devastating the universe by land and sea; at all events, deeply interested in adhering to that neutrality which Washington established, and to which no one was more thoroughly attached than Mr. Madison; his exertions to substitute the moral artillery of international law for brute force were incessant and intense. Although the war he endeavoured so earnestly to prevent came at last, in spite of his exertions and Mr. Jefferson's immoveable determination to preserve peace; yet the legacy of trouble which was left by him to Mr. Madison, when he succeeded to the presidency, was at any rate preceded by a theory of prevailing, if not perpetual peace, in that code of international justice and fair intercourse which is now a goodly part of the inheritance of these United States, and a national property that all other civilized nations have begun to appreciate. Peace on earth and good will to all mankind, were always principles dear to him. War he considered only and rarely tolerable, as, if even a necessary, a great evil, to be avoided as long, and whenever it takes place to be closed as soon, as possible. With these impressions it was nevertheless his lot to be Presi dent during the war declared against Great Britain in June, 1812. In 1809 he was elected President, on the retirement of Mr. Jefferson; and excepting the mere glimpse of accommodation which proceeded from Mr. Erskine's short-lived arrangement, the first period of his chief magistracy was but the prelude to the war that accompanied his reelection. His inaugural addresses, annual messages, frequent special communications to Congress; his proclamation for a fact, with the particular grounds on which it was issued; his letters to Governor Snyder, of Pennsylvania, in the Olmstead case; his recommendation of war; his conduct of the war; his various missions for peace; the peace of Ghent negotiated under his auspices; his settlement of the army, navy, and the internal revenue at the close of the war; his veto, on one of the last days of his administration, of the great system of internal improvement introduced by some of those who have since relinquished it as unconstitutional;-these, together with the Bank of the U. S., may be deemed the principal measures of his administration of the Federal Government. Even before Mr. Madison's demise, there appeared to be well nigh one universal sentiment of cordial respect and deference towards him as a patriot of the purest intentions and wisest conduct. Undertaking the presidency at a crisis of the utmost difficulty, he continued in it by reëlection during the established period of eight years, and when he retired, left the country in the highest degree glorious, prosperous, and content. Future ages must look back to his administration as a time of great trial and great renown. The Constitution which had succeeded in peace, under his governance, triumphed in war. While hostilities were checkered with the reverses which seldom fail to occur, under all circumstances Mr. Madison was the same. Victory never elated, nor could disasters ever depress him, beyond the happy mean of his temperate life; always calm, consistent, and conscientious, determined to do right, come what might. Exposed to that deluge of abuse which the leading men of free countries, with a licentious press, cannot avoid, he was perfectly serene and unmoved by any vindictive emotion; true to friends, patient with adversaries, and forbearing even with public enemies. All the emergencies of war never once betrayed him into infringements of the Constitution. It has been stated, on high authority, that while a candidate for the presidency, no one, however intimate, ever heard him mention the subject. Constitutionally simple and unostentatious in his habits, taste, and intercourse, he nevertheless maintained the dignity of his station with a decorum and urbanity that lent new grace to the duties of his office. At about sixty-six years of age he retired from public life, and ever after resided on his estate in Virginia, except about two months while at Richmond as a member of the convention in 1829, to remould the constitution of that State. His farm, his books, his friends, and his correspondence, were the sources of his enjoyment and occupation, during the twenty years of his retirement. During most of that time his health, never robust, was as good as usual, and he partook with alacrity of the exercise and the conviviality in which he had always enjoyed himself. A good farmer on a large scale, he acted for some time as president of an agricultural society, and for a much longer time first as visiter, and after Mr. Jefferson's death as rector of the University of Virginia, at Charlottesville, in his near neighbourhood; among the founders and friends of which he bore a conspicuous part. Prevailed upon, when just convalescent from severe illness, to be a member of the Virginia convention of 1829, the infirm condition of his health, being then near eighty years old, prevented his taking a very active part in its deliberations. His main purpose, indeed, appears to VOL. V. NO. XV.-MARCH, 1839. R have been to promote a compromise between parties so stiffly divided on local and personal interests as to threaten the tranquillity of the State. On some of the principal topics discussed, he is understood to have yielded his own opinions to that consideration, as well as the urgent instances of his constituents. At eighty-five years of age, though much reduced by debility, his mind was bright, his memory retentive, and his conversation highly instructive and delightful. Suffering with disease, he never repined. Serene, sociable and animated, he loved to discuss the Constitution, to inculcate the public good, strictly abstaining from party topics, and to charge his friends with blessings for his country. He was long one of the most interesting shrines to which its votaries repaired a relic of republican virtue which none could contemplate without reverence and edification. One of his most striking characteristics was tenderness for the feelings, and deference for the opinion, of others; always anxious to avoid giving offence, though frequently so situated as to be obliged to adhere to his own convictions, and differ sometimes with his best friends. Towards his numerous dependents and domestics on extensive plantations, he was uniformly kind; and like most intelligent southern gentlemen, deplored the evils inherited from colonial dependence. He was actively alive to every feasible project for mitigating or removing these evils. The respectable gentleman who was his physician towards the latter part of his life, bears cordial testimony to the compassionate interest with which every member of his family, in common with their amiable and illustrious head, never failed to manifest for those who were by law his much regretted property. At periods towards the termination of his career, when conflicting sentiments on important questions agitated the country, and when urged by zealous and importunate friends to let his views be known, he was always disposed diffidently to decline interference; but every visiter of his hospitable mansion must have been struck with his patriotic devotion to his country, and with his veneration for that Union of which he was one of the original founders, and ever remained the enthusiastic and honest advocate. His attachment to the Constitution amounted almost to a passion, and, whenever the subject was at all relevant, he never failed to inculcate his views of its importance to the future developement and grandeur of America. One of his last acts, shortly before he died, was to reduce to writing the following patriotic aspiration, as it was communicated by his excellent widow. "ADVICE TO MY COUNTRY. "As this advice, if it ever see the light, will not do it till I am no more, it may be considered as issuing from the tomb, where truth alone can be respected, and the happiness of man consulted. It will be entitled, therefore, to whatever weight can be derived from good intentions, and from the experience of one who has served his country in various stations through a period of forty years, who espoused in his youth, and adhered through his life to the cause of its liberty, and who has borne a part in most of the great transactions which will constitute epochs of its destiny. "The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions, is, that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the avowed enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with deadly wiles into Paradise." As a leading member of the convention which framed the government, of the Congresses which organized it, of the administration of Jefferson, which conducted it for a long time in the path it has since for the most part followed, and finally as the head of his own administration in the most trying time, when the exigencies of war were superadded to the occasions of peace, no individual has impressed more of his mind, either theoretically or practically, on American institutions, than James Madison. Until within a short period of his decease, Mr. Madison continued to keep pace with the passing literature of the day. Most American writers were proud to lay their productions before him; and he was a subscriber to the best periodicals. He was consequently acquainted with every thing literary that was of interest, and devoted no small attention to science; -most attached, perhaps, to the practical pursuit of natural history, having accumulated numerous interesting facts from his own observation. A member of his family, of whom we ventured to request information of his religious sentiments-on which subject, though an excellent biblical scholar, and otherwise well informed, he was always remarkably silent-answered by the significant assurance that he was good and perfect in religion and domestic life, and that nothing short of true religion can make man so. On the 29th June, 1836, he died-as serene, philosophical, and calm in the last moments of existence, as he had been in all the trying occasions of life. President Jackson announced the event to Congress in a communication calling on that body for such measures as were proper to testify their sense of the respect due to the memory of one whose life had contributed so essentially to the happiness and glory of his country, and the good of mankind. And ex-president Adams in his eloquent address to the House of Representatives, of which he was a member, dwelt on the merits of the venerable statesman, to whose memory appropriate honors were unanimously voted. Congress soon after appropriated adequate means to publish the precious relique of his private Journal of the Debates of the Convention which formed the Constitution of the United States, and others of his papers. They also conferred the franking privilege on his widow; and the whole American people, grown under his auspices from a small to a great nation, with one accord pronounced the spontaneous and cordial obituary eulogium of the honored and venerated Madison. SONG. THOUGH 'NEATH THE WINTER'S DREARY CHILL. Though 'neath the winter's dreary chill Faded and fall'n lie leaf and flower, And when the first soft gale of spring Then yield not thou to dark despair, My heart, 'neath fortune's bitterest frown, Though sad and slow the hour the while, EPIGRAM. From the Greek of Anacreon. ·Δι Μᾶσαι τον Ερωτα, κ. τ. λ. The Muses roving forth one day, Met little Cupid in the way: They bound him fast with chains of flowers, To free her son, her darling charge: But though some friend should grant her prayer, He has so long in bondage lain, The child has learned to like his chain. EAST HAMPTON, L. I. |