DEATH OF MR. MADISON, FOURTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
He died in the last year of the second term of the presidency
of General Jackson, at the advanced age of eighty-six, his mind
clear and active to the last, and greatly occupied with solicitous
concern for the safety of the Union which he had contributed so
much to establish. He was a patriot from the beginning. "When the
first blood was shed in the streets of Boston, he was a student
in the process of his education at Princeton College, where the
next year, he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He was even
then so highly distinguished by the power of application and the
rapidity of 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 the 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
say, or do, an indiscreet thing." So wrote Mr. John Quincy Adams
in his discourse upon the "Life of James Madison," written at the
request of the two Houses of Congress: and in this germ of manhood
is to be seen all the qualities of head and heart which mature
age, and great events, so fully developed, and which so nobly went
into the formation of national character while constituting his
own: the same quick intellect, the same laborious application,
the same purity of morals, the same decorum of deportment. He had
a rare combination of talent--a speaker, a writer, a counsellor.
In these qualities of the mind he classed with General Hamilton;
and was, perhaps, the only eminent public man of his day who
so classed, and so equally contended in three of the fields of
intellectual action. Mr. Jefferson was accustomed to say he was
the only man that could answer Hamilton. Perspicuity, precision,
closeness of reasoning, and strict adherence to the unity of his
subject, were the characteristics of his style; and his speeches
in Congress, and his dispatches from the State Department, may be
equally studied as models of style, diplomatic and parliamentary
as sources of information, as examples of integrity in conducting
public questions: and as illustrations of the amenity with which
the most earnest debate, and the most critical correspondence,
can be conducted by good sense, good taste, and good temper. Mr.
Madison was one of the great founders of our present united federal
government, equally efficient in the working convention which
framed the constitution and the written labors which secured its
adoption. Co-laborer with General Hamilton in the convention and
in the Federalist--both members of the old Congress and of the
convention at the same time, and working together in both bodies
for the attainment of the same end, until the division of parties
in Washington's time began to estrange old friends, and to array
against each other former cordial political co-laborers. As the
first writer of one party, General Hamilton wrote some leading
papers, which, as the first writer of the other party, Mr. Madison
was called upon to answer: but without forgetting on the part of
either their previous relations, their decorum of character, and
their mutual respect for each other. Nothing that either said could
give an unpleasant personal feeling to the other; and, though
writing under borrowed names, their productions were equally known
to each other and the public; for none but themselves could imitate
themselves. Purity, modesty, decorum--a moderation, temperance, and
virtue in everything--were the characteristics of Mr. Madison's life
and manners; and it is grateful to look back upon such elevation
and beauty of personal character in the illustrious and venerated
founders of our Republic, leaving such virtuous private characters
to be admired, as well as such great works to be preserved. The
offer of this tribute to the memory of one of the purest of public
men is the more gratefully rendered, private reasons mixing with
considerations of public duty. Mr. Madison is the only President
from whom he ever asked a favor, and who granted immediately all
that was asked--a lieutenant-colonelcy in the army of the United
States in the late war with Great Britain.