Mr. Madison, in retiring for a time from public office, did not lose his interest in public affairs. Of few Americans can it be said with more truth that he had a genius for politics, and the subject, wherever he might be, was never out of his mind. There is not much else in the volumes of his published letters, while there is just enough else to show that in these he said all he had to say about anything. His more ambitious writings, the papers in "The Federalist," the essay on The British Doctrine of Neutral Trade, his controversial articles in the newspapers under various pseudonyms, are all political, all able, and all of great value as a part of the history of the times. Those which are controversial, however, must be taken, like his letters, as aids to knowledge rather than as definite conclusions to be accepted without question. It does not detract from the value of these letters, however, that they are written from the point of view of a party leader. Affairs of only temporary importance sometimes loom up before him merely because of their influence upon some immediate party movement; and others, of far-reaching conse[226]quences, which have no such bearing, escape his notice altogether; but the reader soon learns that he may, at any rate, confide in the sincerity of the writer, and accept as freely the reasons given for his course as they are frankly stated.

Of the literary value of his writings, aside from their historical interest, there is not much to be said, though Mr. Madison always wrote, even in his letters, as if writing for posterity. He was not felicitous in the use of language; the style is turgid, heavy with resounding words of many syllables, unillumined by any ray of imagination, any flash of wit or of humor; and the sentences are often involved and badly put together. But there is a genuineness, an evident sincerity of purpose, in all he wrote, and occasionally an expression of deep feeling, which are always impressive. We search for glimpses of his private life and character in such letters, for they are not easily apparent. In one sense he had no private life, or, at least, none that was not so subordinate to his public career that there was little in it either significant or attractive. There is, in this respect, a marked contrast between his correspondence and that of Jefferson. There was, possibly, a little affectation in Jefferson's frequent assertions of his intense desire for the quiet of the country and the tranquillity of home, and of his distaste for the turmoils and anxieties of public office. But he was certainly fond of country life, with the leisure to potter about among his sheep and his trees; to[227] watch the growth of his wheat and his clover; to contrive new coulters for his plows; to talk of philosophy, of the Social Contract, of mechanics, and of natural history: if he was averse to public life, it was not because political power and distinction were a burden to him, except as they brought with them strife and unpopularity, which truly his soul loathed for himself, though he rather liked to set other people by the ears. His private life was unquestionably as full of interest to himself as it is entertaining to look upon in the unconscious revelation of his own letters.

But with Madison it was apparently quite otherwise. He unbent with difficulty. Always solemn and dignified, it was rather painful than pleasant to him to stoop to the petty matters of every-day existence. He had no small affectations, and was not forever asserting that he was without ambition; as if that, without which nobody is of much use in the world either to himself or to others, were a weakness akin to depravity. With brief intervals, covering only a few months altogether, he was where he best liked to be, from his entrance upon public life in 1775 till he stepped down in 1817 from that political elevation beyond which there are no ascending steps. During these forty-two years he found a certain enjoyment in a country home for a little while at a time, but it was chiefly the enjoyment of needed rest from official labor. The price of tobacco and the promise of the wheat crop interested him then, but only as they inter[228]ested him always as a source of his own income, and as the index to the general prosperity. At the end of a letter upon political matters, he announces with satisfaction that his merino ewe has dropped a lamb, and both mother and offspring are as well as could be expected; but it was probably Mr. Jefferson's gratification rather than his own that he had in mind, for it was Mr. Jefferson who had imported the sheep. Again, in a similar letter, he takes a little remaining space to express a hope that Mr. Jefferson may permit the use of the rams of that flock to improve the breed of the native stock; not, apparently, that he cared so much about wool as that he wished to show a courteous and friendly interest in one of Mr. Jefferson's many projects for the improvement of things generally.

It was probably during the year of comparative leisure after he left Congress that Mr. Madison built his house at Montpellier, though some question has been raised on this point. He certainly was building a house at that time, and it is not likely that he ever employed himself in that way more than once. Scattered among discussions of Alien and Sedition Laws, the war in Europe, free goods in neutral ships, and other public topics, are brief allusions to lathing nails which he depended upon Mr. Jefferson to supply; that gentleman having recently set up a machine for their manufacture, which, however, like a good many other of his contrivances, seems to have had a[229] hitch in it. So also he asks the Vice-President to see to it that, when the window-glass and the pulleys are forwarded, the "chord" for the latter shall not be forgotten; and orders for other articles, only to be found in Philadelphia, are sent to his obliging friend. Mr. Jefferson, it is easy to believe, found them rather the most interesting part of the political letters to which they were appended; and he was quite willing, no doubt, to relieve the tedium of presiding over the Senate by searching through the Market Street shops for the latest improvements in builders' hardware. To Mr. Monroe, Madison wrote that, as he is sending off a wagon to fetch nails for his carpenters, "it will receive the few articles which you have been so good as to offer from the superfluities of your stock, and which circumstances will permit me now to lay in." Evidently he was getting ready to go to housekeeping with his young wife. Monroe's stock of household goods had been replenished, perhaps by importations from France on his recent return, and he was disposing of his old supplies, by gift or sale, among his neighbors. Madison, at any rate, sends this modest list of what he would like to have: "To wit, two table-cloths for a dining-room of about eighteen feet; two, three, or four, as may be convenient, for a more limited scale; four dozen napkins, which will not in the least be objectionable for having been used; and two mattresses." It was not an extravagant outfit, even though it had not been meant for[230] one of those lordly Virginia homes of which some modern historians give us such charming pictures. "We are so little acquainted,"—Mr. Madison continues in that stately way which nothing ever surprised him into forgetting,—"we are so little acquainted with the culinary utensils in detail that it is difficult to refer to such by name or description as would be within our wants."

But pots and kettles,—though that may not be the name they were known by in Virginia,—table-cloths and mattresses, however moderate in number, are sure indications that the house, which was to be his residence when he should be content to retire from public service, was finished early in 1798. He had rested long enough, and was busy that year in attendance upon the state Assembly at Richmond, to which he consented the next year to be returned as a member. Perhaps it was because he could not keep longer out of the fray. Perhaps he felt called to a special duty. Affairs, foreign and domestic, were in a critical condition. France, in her resentment at the Jay treaty, had committed so many fresh outrages upon American commerce; had so exasperated the American people by these outrages; and, by refusing to receive the ministers from the United States, had so insulted them and the government they represented in the proposed arrangements,—disclosed in the X. Y. Z. correspondence,—that all friendly relations between the two countries had ceased, and it had seemed impossible that war could be avoided.

[231]For a while the popular sympathy was entirely with Mr. Adams's administration, and the promise could hardly be fairer that the Federalists, if they managed wisely, might remain in power and be sustained by the whole country. But in some respects they were as unwise as in others they were unfortunate. President Adams, though possessing many great qualities, was of too irascible and jealous a temper to be a successful leader or a good ruler. But there were other men of distinction among the Federalists who were hardly less fond of having their own way than the President was of having his. The incompatibility of temper was not altogether on one side in that family quarrel. But all were equally responsible for such a blunder as the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws. The provocation, it is true, was unquestionably great. Refugees from abroad had crowded to the United States, many of whom were professional agitators, and some were very sorry vagabonds. Whatever reason they might have had for fomenting discontent with government in England or in France, there was nothing to justify any such violent measures in this country. But from their conduct as political partisans, particularly as newspaper editors, they soon came to be looked upon by the Federalists—for they all joined the other party—as a dangerous class. There grew up a feeling that it would be wiser for civil affairs to remain, in city, state, and nation, in the hands of those who were born and[232] educated under republican institutions, and not to fall altogether under control of those who were alien in blood and religion, and who were inclined to look upon politics, not in the light of the citizen's duty to the common weal, but as an easy and profitable calling where the least scrupulous scoundrel could gather the largest share of spoils. It may be that the authors of those laws were so determined to forestall the apprehended evils of such a dispensation because use had not accustomed them, as it has later generations of American citizens, to live under it in humility if not content. Or, perhaps, they wanted that profound faith of our time that the longer this subversion of government is submitted to, the easier it will be to get back to the rule of the honest and wise.

But, at any rate, whatever their reasons, they meant by these laws relating to aliens to put the acquirement of citizenship under more stringent regulations, and to check the growth and promulgation of seditious doctrines. If it be true, as is sometimes maintained with some plausibility, that citizens, to be intrusted with self-government, should be endowed with a certain degree of intelligence and virtue, then the aim of the framers of the laws, in the first case, was a good one; and, in the second case, the country has had some experience in later times which tends to show that they were not altogether wrong in believing that doctrines and practices which may lead to insurrection[233] and civil war might best be met, so far as is possible, at the outset. Nevertheless, the laws, under the circumstances of the time, were ill-considered and injudicious. For one reason, they put an efficient weapon into the hands of the opposition at a moment when it was at a loss where to turn for one. "Anglicism" and "British gold" were blunderbusses which, in the present popular irritation against France, had for a time lost their usefulness, and were apt to miss fire. But an appeal to a generous and impulsive people on behalf of the unfortunate refugees, who had fled from the tyranny of the Old World to find liberty and a home in the New, was sure to be listened to. A good many, besides those who assumed that republicanism and the rights of man were in their special keeping, believed that an unfortunate class had been dealt with hastily, and even cruelly. The clamor, once begun, tol............