DEATH OF MR. MONROE, FIFTH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
He died during the first term of the administration of President
Jackson, and is appropriately noticed in this work next after Mr.
Madison, with whom he had been so long and so intimately associated,
both in public and in private life; and whose successor he had been
in successive high posts, including that of the presidency itself.
He is one of our eminent public characters which have not attained
their due place in history; nor has any one attempted to give him
that place but one--Mr. John Quincy Adams--in his discourse upon the
life of Mr. Monroe. Mr. Adams, and who could be a more competent
judge? places him in the first line of American statesmen, and
contributing, during the fifty years of his connection with the
public affairs, a full share in the aggrandisement and advancement
of his country. His parts were not shining, but solid. He lacked
genius, but he possessed judgment: and it was the remark of Dean
Swift, well illustrated in his own case and that of his associate
friends, Harley and Bolingbroke (three of the rarest geniuses that
ever acted together, and whose cause went to ruin notwithstanding
their wit and eloquence), that genius was not necessary to the
conducting of the affairs of state: that judgment, diligence,
knowledge, good intentions, and will, were sufficient. Mr. Monroe
was an instance of the soundness of this remark, as well as the
three brilliant geniuses of Queen Anne's time, and on the opposite
side of it. Mr. Monroe had none of the mental qualities which dazzle
and astonish mankind; but he had a discretion which seldom committed
a mistake--an integrity that always looked to the public good--a
firmness of will which carried him resolutely upon his object--a
diligence that mastered every subject--and a perseverance that
yielded to no obstacle or reverse. He began his patriotic career
in the military service, at the commencement of the war of the
revolution--went into the general assembly of his native State at
an early age--and thence, while still young, into the continental
Congress. There he showed his character, and laid the foundation
of his future political fortunes in his uncompromising opposition
to the plan of a treaty with Spain by which the navigation of the
Mississippi was to be given up for twenty-five years in return
for commercial privileges. It was the qualities of judgment, and
perseverance, which he displayed on that occasion, which brought
him those calls to diplomacy in which he was afterwards so much
employed with three of the then greatest European powers--France,
Spain, Great Britain. And it was in allusion to this circumstance
that President Jefferson afterwards, when the right of deposit at
New Orleans had been violated by Spain, and when a minister was
wanted to recover it, said, "Monroe is the man: the defence of
the Mississippi belongs to him." And under this appointment he
had the felicity to put his name to the treaty which secured the
Mississippi, its navigation and all the territory drained by its
western waters, to the United States for ever. Several times in
his life he seemed to miscarry, and to fall from the top to the
bottom of the political ladder: but always to reascend as high, or
higher than ever. Recalled by Washington from the French mission, to
which he had been appointed from the Senate of the United States,
he returned to the starting point of his early career--the general
assembly of his State--served as a member from his county--was
elected Governor; and from that post restored by Jefferson to the
French mission, soon to be followed by the embassies to Spain
and England. Becoming estranged from Mr. Madison about the time
of that gentleman's first election to the presidency, and having
returned from his missions a little mortified that Mr. Jefferson had
rejected his British treaty without sending it to the Senate, he
was again at the foot of the political ladder, and apparently out
of favor with those who were at its top. Nothing despairing, he
went back to the old starting point--served again in the Virginia
general assembly--was again elected Governor: and from that post was
called to the cabinet of Mr. Madison, to be his double Secretary
of State and War. He was the effective power in the declaration of
war against Great Britain. His residence abroad had shown him that
unavenged British wrongs was lowering our character with Europe, and
that war with the "mistress of the seas" was as necessary to our
respectability in the eyes of the world, as to the security of our
citizens and commerce upon the ocean. He brought up Mr. Madison to
the war point. He drew the war report which the committee on foreign
relations presented to the House--that report which the absence of
Mr. Peter B. Porter, the chairman, and the hesitancy of Mr. Grundy,
the second on the committee, threw into the hands of Mr. Calhoun,
the third on the list and the youngest of the committee; and the
presentation of which immediately gave him a national reputation.
Prime mover of the war, he was also one of its most efficient
supporters, taking upon himself, when adversity pressed, the actual
duties of war minister, financier, and foreign secretary at the
same time. He was an enemy to all extravagance, to all intrigue,
to all indirection in the conduct of business. Mr. Jefferson's
comprehensive and compendious eulogium upon him, as brief as true,
was the faithful description of the man--"honest and brave." He
was an enemy to nepotism, and no consideration or entreaty--no
need of the support which an office would give, or intercession
from friends--could ever induce him to appoint a relative to any
place under the government. He had opposed the adoption of the
constitution until amendments were obtained; but these had, he
became one of its firmest supporters, and labored faithfully,
anxiously and devotedly, to administer it in its purity. He was
the first President under whom the author of this View served,
commencing his first senatorial term with the commencement of the
second presidential term of this last of the men of the revolution
who were spared to fill the office in the great Republic which they
had founded.