CHAPTER XVII.

Review of Mr. Madison's Career in old Congress - Complex and diversified Questions, foreign and domestic, before that Body, during Period of his Service - Distinction acquired by him- General Confidence and Support of his Constituents - A Party hostile to him His Constancy and unintermitted Attention to his Public Duties Pecuniary Sacrifices- Nature of Provision made by Virginia for Support of her Delegates in Congress - Mr. Madison's Social Habits - His Humor- A tender Attachment- Enters upon the Study of the Law, after his Return to Virginia - Correspondence on public Questions with Friends who consulted him- A favorite Project for their future Lives urged by Mr. Jefferson-Prepares himself for the great Work of Constitutional Reform by diligent Researches into the History of Confederacies, ancient and modern - Summoned again from his Retirement into the Legislature of the State Character of that Body - Its Parties - Its Leaders-Patrick Henry Richard Henry Lee.

THE period of Mr. Madison's service in Congress presented by far the most arduous and complex problems of national policy, internal and external, which the war of the Revolution gave rise to. He came into the body just at the moment when the system of paper credit, by which the war had been hitherto supported, experienced a sudden and fatal collapse; and when it became

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imperiously necessary to provide other financial resources, at home or abroad. At the same moment, the enemy, despairing of the success of the diplomatic wiles he had for some time been essaying in vain, recommenced his operations in the field with a vigor and formidable array of force, both military and naval, that he had never before displayed, and which was directed to the entire conquest and permanent occupation of the whole of the Southern States.

New and most important relations with the powers of Europe were, also, then inaugurated, not only by the alliance with France, but by the successive mediations offered for the reëstablishment of peace; and especially by the negotiations with Spain, who demanded, as the price of her support, the surrender of the Mississippi and of the Western country. In the midst of these exigencies of war and negotiation, jealousies and discords prevailed, to a great degree, among the States of the Union, mainly in regard to their interests in the territory which Spain was endeavouring to obtain; and owing to those discords, the articles of confederation, by which the national energies were to be firmly united and efficiently directed, still remained uncompleted.

We have seen what an able and leading and successful part Mr. Madison took in all these great and difficult questions, -ever loyal to the rights and dignity of his own State, but animated, at the same time, with a comprehensive

American spirit, which looked upon all the members of the confederacy as one family, bound to mutual concession and harmony among themselves, but to inflexible firmness and perseverance in the maintenance of the common dignity and rights against the rest of the world. It was this just and elevated spirit, combined with his disciplined statesmanship, superior knowledge, and balanced judgment and temper, which placed him, yet a young man, in the very first rank of the distinguished assembly of which he was a member. And when it is recollected that in that assembly he sat with such men as Samuel Adams, Gerry, Gorham, Langdon, Ellery, Ellsworth, Sherman, and Wolcott, from the East; John Dickinson, Witherspoon, Clymer, Wilson, Peters, McKean, Robert R. Livingston, Alexander Hamilton, and Duane, from the Middle States; the Rutledges, Laurens, Middleton, Matthews, Randolph, Lee, Jones, Mercer, Williamson, and Burke, from the South such a rank in such a body might well have filled the measure of an ambition much greater than his.

The law of Virginia, at the time of Mr. Madison's election to Congress, expressly disqualified a delegate from serving more than three years in any term of six. As he was first elected in the autumn of 1779, he could not, under this limitation, have continued in Congress beyond the autumn of 1782. But when the annual

1 Hen. Stat. vol. x. p. 74.

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election came on, at the May session of 1782, of delegates to serve in the Congress commencing with the first Monday of November following, so important was it felt to be to secure the continuance of his services in the field of patriotic labor, in which he had so much signalized his usefulness to the State and to the whole country, that the law which rendered him ineligible was repealed, and he was chosen for a fourth year of consecutive service in the national councils.2

At the end of the fourth year, there remained, under the triennial rotation established by the articles of confederation, but which did not begin to operate until the 1st of March, 1781, (the date of the final ratification of those articles,) a period of four months, from November to March, during which he was legally capable of serving. It was even proposed to reëlect him for this brief fragment of a year. But he felt it proper to discourage the suggestion.

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From these signal and most honorable proofs of the general satisfaction his conduct had given his constituents, it must not, however, be inferred

Hen. Stat. vol. x. p. 164. 2 In a manuscript letter of his colleague, Mr. Joseph Jones, to Mr. Madison, of the 25th of June, 1782, there is the following allusion to the motives of the repeal of the disqualifying law. "I mentioned" (in a former letter) "the continuation of the old delegates by a vote,

but which I afterwards found to be a mistake, the vote being postponed until the bill had passed repealing the law which rendered yourself and J. J. ineligible.”

3 Madison Debates and Correspondence, vol. 1. p. 540, and manuscript letter of E. Pendleton to J. Madison, of the 9th of June, 1783.

that there was absolute unanimity in the sentiments they implied. In the legislature of Virginia there was at that time a party, though not

numerous one, which manifested an habitual jealousy and distrust of the national authorities, and all their leading measures. To those who were actuated by that feeling, Mr. Madison could not have been an acceptable representative; and they were ready enough to avail themselves of the rigors of a statutory ostracism to displace him. Mr. Edmund Randolph, in writing to him on the 20th of June, 1782, gives the following account of the abortive attempt then made to effect his exclusion, under the specious cover of an existing legal disqualification.

"My last and preceding communications which spoke of certain manoeuvres, alluded to in your letter of the 11th instant, mentioned, I believe, that a design appeared to be formed against the reëlection of you and myself to Congress. The attack was unexpected; and the secret sugges tions, which were intended to injure, had had their fullest operation before it came to the knowledge of our friends. But it may be triumphantly said that the wicked and malignant did not dare to exclude from their most poisonous reports a respect for our characters. You were assailed under the garb of friendship. It was lamented that the rigor of the law should cut off so valuable a servant from public employment. And to say the truth, there was such a