MADISON.
From Hamilton we naturally turn to his associate in the
Federalist,--James Madison, afterwards fourth President of the United
States,--whose faithful and laborious record has preserved to us the
debates of the Convention.
* * * * *
Mr. Madison was thirty-six years old when he entered that assembly. His
previous life had fitted him to play a conspicuous and important part in
its proceedings. He was born in 1751, of a good family, in Orange
County, Virginia, and was educated at Princeton College in New Jersey,
where he took the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1772. He returned to
Virginia in the spring of 1773, and commenced the usual studies
preparatory to an admission to the bar; but the disputes between the
Colonies and the mother country soon drew him into public life. In 1776,
he became a member of the State Convention which formed the first
Constitution of Virginia. He was afterwards a member of the legislature
and of the Council of the State, until he was appointed one of its
delegates in Congress, where he took his seat in March, 1780.[405]
From this time to the assembling of the Federal Convention in 1787,
his services to the Union were of the most important character. He
entered Congress without a national reputation, but with national
views. Indeed, it may be said of him, that he came from his native
Commonwealth,--"mother of great men,"--grown to the full proportions
of a continental statesman. At the moment when he appeared upon the
larger theatre of the national interests, the Articles of
Confederation had not been finally ratified by all the States.
Maryland had insisted, as a necessary condition of her accession to
the new Confederacy, that the great States should surrender to the
Union their immense claims to the unoccupied territories of the West;
Virginia had remonstrated against this demand; and the whole scheme of
the Confederation had thus been long encountered by an apparently
insurmountable obstacle.[406] The generous example of New York, whose
Western claims were ceded to the United States in the month preceding
Mr. Madison's entry into Congress, had furnished to the advocates of
the Union the means for a powerful appeal to both sides of this
critical and delicate controversy; but it required great tact,
discretion, and address to make that appeal effectual, by inducing
Maryland to trust to the influence of this example upon Virginia, and
by inducing Virginia to make a cession that would be satisfactory to
Maryland. In this high effort of statesmanship--a domestic diplomacy
full of difficulties--Mr. Madison took part. He did not prepare the
very skilful report which, while it aimed to produce cessions of their
territorial claims by the larger States, appealed to Maryland to
anticipate the result;[407] but the vast concession by which Virginia
yielded the Northwestern Territory to the Union was afterwards brought
about mainly by his exertions.
In 1782, he united with Hamilton in the celebrated report prepared by
the latter upon the refusal of the State of Rhode Island to comply with
the recommendations of Congress for a duty on imports.[408]
In 1783, he was named first upon a committee with Ellsworth and
Hamilton, to prepare an Address to the States, urging the adoption of
the revenue system which has been described in a previous chapter, and
the Address was written by him.[409] The great ability and high tone of
this paper gave it a striking effect. The object of this plan of revenue
was, as we have seen, to fund the national debts, and to make a
sufficient provision for their discharge. I have already assigned to it
the merit of having preserved the Union from the premature decay that
had begun to destroy its vitality;[410] and it may here be added, that
the statesman whose pen could produce the comprehensive and powerful
appeal by which it was pressed upon the States, was certain to become
one of the chief founders of the Constitution of which the plan itself
was the forerunner. It settled the fact, that a national unity in
dealing with the debts of the Revolution was "necessary to render its
fruits a full reward for the blood, the toils, the cares, and the
calamities which had purchased them."
Such were Mr. Madison's most important services in the Congress of the
Confederation; but they are of course not the whole. A member so able
and of such broad and national views must have had a large agency in
every important transaction; and accordingly the Journals, during the
whole period of his service, bear ample testimony to his activity, his
influence, and his zeal.
At the close of the war, he retired to Virginia, and during the three
following years was a member of the legislature, still occupied,
however, with the interests of the Union. His attention was specially
directed to the subject of enlarging the powers of Congress over the
foreign trade of the country. It is a striking fact, and a proof of the
comprehensive character of Mr. Madison's statesmanship, that Virginia, a
State not largely commercial, should have taken so prominent a part in
the efforts to give the control of commerce to the general
government;--an object which has justly been regarded as the
corner-stone of the Constitution. It arose partly from the accident of
her geographical position, which made it necessary for her to aim at
something like uniformity of regulation with the other States which
bordered upon her contiguous waters; but it is also to be attributed to
the enlightened liberality and forecast of her great men, who saw in the
immediate necessities of their own State the occasion for a measure of
general advantage to the country.
Mr. Madison's first effort was, to procure a declaration by the
legislature of Virginia of the necessity for a uniform regulation of the
commerce of the States by the federal authority. For this purpose, he
introduced into the legislature a series of propositions, intended to
instruct the delegates of the State in Congress to propose a
recommendation to the States to confer upon Congress power to regulate
their trade and to collect a revenue from such regulation. This measure,
as we have seen, encountered the opposition of those who preferred a
temporary to a perpetual and irrevocable grant of such power; and the
propositions were so much changed in the Committee of the Whole, that
they were no longer acceptable to their original friends. The steps
which finally led the legislature of Virginia to recommend a general
convention of all the States have been detailed in a previous chapter of
this work; but it is due to Mr. Madison's connection with this movement,
that they should here be recapitulated with reference to his personal
agency in the various transactions.
A conflict of jurisdiction between the two States of Virginia and
Maryland over the waters which separated them had, in the spring of
1785, led to the appointment of commissioners on the part of each State,
who met at Alexandria in March. These commissioners, of whom Mr. Madison
was one, made a visit to General Washington at Mount Vernon, and it was
there proposed that the two States, whose conflicting regulations, ever
since the peace, had produced great inconvenience to their merchants,
and had been a constant source of irritation, should be recommended by
the commissioners to make a compact for the regulation of their impost
and foreign trade. Mr. Madison has left no written claim, that I am
aware of, to the authorship of this suggestion, but there exists
evidence of his having claimed it in conversation.[411] The
recommendation was made by the commissioners, and their report was
adopted by both States;--by Virginia unconditionally, and by Maryland
with the qualification that the States of Delaware and Pennsylvania
should be invited to unite in the plan.
After the commercial propositions introduced by Mr. Madison had lain on
the table for some time as a report from the Committee of the Whole, the
report of the Alexandria commissioners was received and ratified by the
legislature of Virginia. Although the friends of those propositions were
gradually increasing, Mr. Madison had no expectation that a majority
could be obtained in favor of a grant of commercial powers to Congress
for a longer term than twenty-five years. The idea of a general
convention of delegates from all the States, which had been for some
time familiar to Mr. Madison's mind, then suggested itself to him, and
he prepared and caused to be introduced the resolution which led to the
meeting that afterwards took place at Annapolis, for the purpose of
digesting and reporting the requisite augmentation of the powers of
Congress over trade.[412] His resolution, he says, being, on the last
day of the session, "the alternative of adjourning without any effort
for the crisis in the affairs of the Union, obtained a general vote;
less, however, with some of its friends, from a confidence in the
success of the experiment, than from a hope that it might prove a step
to a more comprehensive and adequate provision for the wants of the
Confederacy."[413]
Mr. Madison was appointed one of the commissioners of Virginia to the
meeting at Annapolis. There he met Hamilton, who came meditating nothing
less than the general revision of the whole system of the Federal Union,
and the formation of a new government. Mr. Madison, although less
confident than the great statesman of New York as to the measures that
ought to be taken, had yet for several years been equally convinced that
the perpetuity and efficacy of the existing system could not be confided
in. He therefore concurred readily in the report recommending a general
convention of all the States; and when that report was received in the
legislature of Virginia, he became the author of the celebrated act
which passed that body on the 4th of December, 1786, and under which the
first appointment of delegates to the Convention was made. It was also
chiefly through his exertions, combined with the influence of Governor
Randolph, that General Washington's name was placed at the head of the
delegation, and that he was induced to accept the appointment. Mr.
Madison himself was the fourth member of the delegation.
In the Convention, his labors must have been far more arduous than those
of any other member of the body. He took a leading part in the debates,
speaking upon every important question; and in addition to all the
usual duties devolving upon a person of so much ability and influence,
he preserved a full and careful record of the discussions with his own
hand. Impressed, as he says, with the magnitude of the trust confided to
the Convention, and foreseeing the interest that must attach to an
authentic exhibition of the objects, the opinions, and the reasonings
from which the new system of government was to receive its peculiar
structure and organization, he devoted the hours of the night succeeding
the session of each day to the preparation of the record with which his
name is imperishably associated. "Nor was I," he adds, "unaware of the
value of such a contribution to the fund of materials for the history of
a Constitution on which would be staked the happiness of a people, great
even in its infancy, and possibly the cause of liberty throughout the
world."[414]
As a statesman, he is to be ranked, by a long interval, after Hamilton;
but he was a man of eminent talent, always free from local prejudices,
and sincerely studious of the welfare of the whole country. His
perception of the principles essential to the continuance of the Union
and to the safety and prosperity of the States, was accurate and clear.
His studies had made him familiar with the examples of ancient and
modern liberty, and he had carefully reflected upon the nature of the
government necessary to be established. He was one of the few persons
who carried into the Convention a conviction that an amendment of the
Articles of Confederation would not answer the exigencies of the time.
He regarded an individual independence of the States as irreconcilable
with an aggregate sovereignty of the whole, but admitted that a
consolidation of the States into a simple republic was both
impracticable and inexpedient. He sought, therefore, for some middle
ground, which would at once support a due supremacy of the national
authority, and leave the local authorities in force for their
subordinate objects.
For this purpose, he conceived that a system of representation which
would operate without the intervention of the States was indispensable;
that the national government should be armed with a positive and
complete authority in all cases where a uniformity of measures was
necessary, as in matters of trade, and that it should have a negative
upon the legislative acts of the States, as the crown of England had
before the Revolution. He thought, also, that the national supremacy
should be extended to the judiciary, and foresaw the necessity for
national tribunals, in cases in which foreigners and citizens of
different States might be concerned, and also for the exercise of the
admiralty jurisdiction. He considered two branches of the legislature,
with distinct origins, as indispensable; recognized the necessity for a
national executive, and favored a council of revision of the laws, in
which should be included the great ministerial officers of the
government. He saw also, that, to give the new system its proper energy,
it would be necessary to have it ratified by the authority of the
people, and not merely by that of the legislatures.[415]
Such was the outline of the project which he had formed before the
assembling of the Convention. How far his views were modified by the
discussions in which he took part will be seen hereafter. As a speaker
in a deliberative assembly, the successive schools in which he had been
trained had given him a habit of self-possession which placed all his
resources at his command. "Never wandering from his subject," says Mr.
Jefferson, "into vain declamation, but pursuing it closely, in language
pure, classical, and copious, soothing always the feelings of his
adversaries by civilities and softness of expression, he rose to the
eminent station which he held in the great national Convention of 1787;
and in that of Virginia which followed, he sustained the new
Constitution in all its parts, bearing off the palm against the logic of
George Mason and the fervid declamation of Mr. Henry. With these
consummate powers were united a pure and spotless virtue, which no
calumny has ever attempted to sully."[416]
Mr. Madison's greatest service in the national Convention consisted in
the answers which he made to the objections of a want of power in that
assembly to frame and propose a new constitution, and his paper on this
subject in the Federalist is one of the ablest in the series.
As this work is confined to the period which terminated with the
adoption of the Constitution, it is not necessary to examine those
points on which the two principal writers of the Federalist became
separated from each other, when the administration of the government led
to the formation of the first parties known in our political history.
These topics it may become my duty to discuss hereafter, should I pursue
the constitutional history of the country through the administration of
Washington. At present, it may be recorded of both, that, upon almost
all the great questions that arose before the Constitution was finally
adopted, the single purpose of establishing a system as efficient as the
theory of a purely republican government would admit, was the object of
their efforts; and that, although they may have differed with regard to
the details and methods through which this object was to be reached, the
purpose at which they both aimed places them in the same rank at the
head of those founders of our government, towards whom the gratitude of
the succeeding generations of America must be for ever directed.[417]
FOOTNOTES:
[405] Article "Madison" in the Penny Encyclopædia, written for that work
by Professor George Tucker of the University of Virginia.
[406] Ante, pp. 131-141.
[407] It was drawn by James Duane of New York.
[408] Ante, pp. 174, 206-208.
[409] Ante, pp. 177-179.
[410] Ante, pp. 176, 186, 188.
[411] In preparing the note to page 342 (ante), I refrained from
attributing to General Washington the suggestion of the enlarged plan
recommended by the Alexandria commissioners, although it was concerted
at his house, because there is no evidence, beyond that fact, of his
having proposed this enlargement of the plan. Since that note was
printed, I have learned in a direct manner, that Mr. Madison had stated
to the Hon. Edward Coles, formerly his private secretary and afterwards
Governor of Illinois, that he (Mr. Madison) first suggested it. In
assigning, therefore, to the different individuals who took a prominent
part in the measures which led to the formation of the Constitution, the
various suggestions which had an important influence upon the course of
events,--a curious and interesting inquiry,--I consider that to Mr.
Madison belongs the credit of having originated that series of Virginia
measures which brought about the meeting of commissioners of all the
States at Annapolis, for the purpose of enlarging the powers of Congress
over commerce; while Hamilton is to be considered the author of the plan
in which the Convention at Annapolis was merged, for an entire revision
of the federal system and the formation of a new constitution.
[412] The resolve was introduced by Mr. Tyler, father of the
Ex-President, a person of much influence in the legislature, and who had
never been in Congress. Although prepared by Mr. Madison, it was not
offered by him, for the reason that a great jealousy was felt against
those who had been in the federal councils, and because he was known to
wish for an enlargement of the powers of Congress. See Madison's
Introduction to the Debates in the Convention, Elliot, V. 113.
[413] Ibid., p. 114.
[414] Introduction to the Debates, Elliot, V. 121.
[415] Letter to Edmund Randolph, dated New York, April 8, 1787.
[416] Jefferson's Autobiography. Works, I. 41, edition of 1853.
[417] The following extract from an autograph letter of Mr. Madison,
hitherto unpublished, which lies before me, written after the adoption
of the Constitution, shows very clearly that he concurred with Hamilton
in the opinion that the strongest government consistent with the
republican form was necessary in the situation of this country. The
letter is dated at Philadelphia, December 10, 1788, and is addressed to
Philip Mazzei, at Paris.
"Your book, as I prophesied, sells nowhere but in Virginia; a very few
copies only have been called for, either in New York or in this city.
The language in which it is written will account for it. In order to
attract notice, I translated the panegyric in the French Mercure, and
had it made part of the advertisement. I did not translate the comment
on the Federal Constitution, as you wished, because I could not spare
the time, as well as because I did not approve the tendency of it. Some
of your remarks prove that Horace's '_Coelum non animum mutant qui trans
mare currunt_' does not hold without exception. In Europe, the abuses of
power continually before your eyes have given a bias to your political
reflections, which you did not feel in equal degree when you left
America, and which you would feel less of, if you had remained in
America. Philosophers on the old continent, in their zeal against
tyranny would rush into anarchy; as the horrors of superstition drive
them into atheism. Here, perhaps, the inconveniences of relaxed
government have reconciled too many to the opposite extreme. If your
plan of a single legislature, as in Pennsylvania, &c., were adopted, I
sincerely believe that it would prove the most deadly blow ever given to
republicanism. Were I an enemy to that form, I would preach the very
doctrines which are preached by the enemies to the government proposed
for the United States. Many of our best citizens are disgusted with the
injustice, instability, and folly which characterize the American
administrations. The number has for some time been rapidly increasing.
Were the evils to be much longer protracted, the disgust would seize
citizens of every description.
"It is of infinite importance to the cause of liberty to ascertain the
degree of it which will consist with the purposes of society. An error
on one side may be as fatal as on the other. Hitherto, the error in the
United States has lain in the excess.
"All the States, except North Carolina and Rhode Island, have ratified
the proposed Constitution. Seven of them have appointed their Senators,
of whom those of Virginia, R. H. Lee and Colonel Grayson, alone are
among the opponents of the system. The appointments of Maryland, South
Carolina, and Georgia will pretty certainly be of the same stamp with
the majority. The House of Representatives is yet to be chosen,
everywhere except in Pennsylvania. From the partial returns received,
the election will wear a federal aspect unless the event in one or two
particular counties should contradict every calculation. If the eight
members from this State be on the side of the Constitution, it will in a
manner secure the majority in that branch of the Congress also. The
object of the anti-Federalists is, to bring about another general
convention, which would either agree on nothing, as would be agreeable
to some, and throw every thing into confusion, or expunge from the
Constitution parts which are held by its friends to be essential to it.
The latter party are willing to gratify their opponents with every
supplemental provision for general rights, but insist that this can be
better done in the mode provided for amendments.
"I remain, with great sincerity, your friend and servant,
"JAS. MADISON, JR."