first, almost solely upon Madison. Some of the
wisest and best men of the State were slow to see,
as he saw, that religious freedom was in danger
from such legislation. There was, it was said, a
sad falling-off in public morality as indifference
to religion increased. There was no cure, it was
declared, for prevalent and growing corruption
except in the culture of the religious sentiment,
and the teachers of religion, therefore, must be
upheld and supported. But granting all this,
Madison saw that the proposed remedy would be
to give, not bread but a stone, and a stone that
would be used in return as a weapon. It was
impossible to regulate religious belief by act of the
Assembly, and therefore it was worse than foolish
to try.
It was due to him that the question was post-
poned from one session to the next. A copy of
the bill was sent, meanwhile, into every county
of the State for the consideration of the people,-
and that was aided by a " Memorial and Remon-
strance," written by Madison, which was circulated
everywhere for signature, in readiness for presenta-
tion to the next legislature. The bill, the memo-
rial said, would be " a dangerous abuse of power,"
and the signers protested against it with unanswer-
able arguments, taking for a starting-point the
assertion of the Bill of Rights, " that religion, or
the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner
of discharging it, can be directed only by reason
IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 65
and conviction, not by force or violence." It is
not at all improbable that many signed this remon-
strance, not so much because they believed it to
be true as because it was a protest against a tax ;
that others were more moved by jealousy of the
power of the Episcopal Church than they were by
anxiety to protect religious liberty outside of their
own sects. But whatever the motives, the move-
ment was too formidable to be disregarded. It
was made a test question in the election of mem-
bers for the legislature of 1785-86 ; at that session
the bill for the support of religious teachers was
rejected, and in place of it was passed " an act for
establishing religious freedom," written by Jeffer-
son seven years before. This provided " that no
man shall be compelled to frequent or support any
religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever,
nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or
burthened in his body or goods, nor shall other-
wise suffer on account of his religious opinions or
belief ; but that all men shall be free to profess,
and by argument maintain, their opinions in mat-
ters of religion, and that the same shall in no
wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capaci-
ties." 1
1 With how much interest Jefferson watched the progress of thia
controversy he showed iu his letters from Paris. In February,
1786, he wrote to Madison : " I thank you for the communica-
tion of the remonstrance against the assessment. Mazzei, who is
now in Holland, promised me to have it published in the Leyden
Gazette. It will do us great honor. I wish it may be as much
approved by our Assembly as by the wisest part of Europe."
m JAMES MADISON
In the memorial and remonstrance Madison had
said : " If this freedom be abused, it is an offense
against God, not against man. To God, therefore,
not to man, must an account of it be rendered."
If the people of Virginia did not clearly compre-
hend this doctrine in all its length and breadth
a hundred years ago, it is not quite easy to say
who were then, or who are now, at liberty to throw
stones at them. The assertion of the broadest
relio'ious freedom was no more new then than it
is true that persecution for opinion's sake is now
only an ancient evil. It was not till fifty years
after Virginia had refused to tax her citizens for
the support of religious teachers that Massachu-
setts repealed the law that had long imposed a
similar burden upon her people.
It was in 1786, the last year of Madison's ser-
Again, in December of the same year, he says : " The Virginia
Act for religious freedom has been received with infinite approba-
tion in Europe, and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not mean
by the governments, but by the individuals who compose them.
It has been translated into French and Italian, has been sent to
most of the courts of Europe, and has been the best evidence of
the falsehood of those reports which stated ns to be in anarchy.
It is inserted in the Encydopedie, and is appearing in most of the
publications respecting America, In fact, it is comfortable to
see the standard of reason at length erected, after so many ages,
during which the human mind had been held in vassalage by kings,
priests, and nobles ; and it is honorable for us to have produced
the first legislature who had the courage to declare that the reason
of man may be trusted with the formation of his own opinions ! "
This latter passage is characteristic, and many who do not like
Jefferson will read between the lines the exultation of a man who
was not always careful to draw the line between religious liberty
and irreligious license.
IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 67
vice in the Yirginia Assembly before he returned
to Congress, that the craze of paper money broke
out again through all the States. The measure
was carried in most of them, followed in the end
by the usual disastrous consequences. Madison's
anxiety was great lest his own State should be
carried away by this delusion, and he led the oppo-
sition against some petitions sent to the Assembly
praying for an issue of currency. The vote against
it was too large to be due altogether to his influ-
ence ; but he gave great strength and concentration
to the opposition. In Virginia, tobacco certificates
supplied in some measure the want of a circulat-
ing medium, and it was, therefore, easier there
than in some of the other States to resist the
clamor for a paper substitute for real mone}^ A
tobacco certificate at least represented something
worth money. Madison assented to a bill which
authorized the use of such certificates. But his
" acquiescence," he wrote to Washington, " was
extorted by a fear that some greater evil, under
the name of relief to the people, would be sub-
stituted." He was "far from being sure," he
added, that he "did right." But no evils with
which he had to reproach himself followed that
measure.
These three years of his life were probably
among the happiest, if they were not altogether
the happiest, in his long public career. There was
little disappointment or anxiety, and evidently
much genuine satisfaction as he saw how certainly
68 JAMES MADISON
he was gaining a high place in the estimation of
his fellow-citizens for his devotion to the best
interests of his native State. In the recesses of
the legislature he had leisure for studies in which
he evidently found great contentment. He trav-
eled a good deal at intervals, especially at the
North ; learned much of the resources and char-
acter of the people outside of Virginia, and became
acquainted with the leading men among them.
Jefferson urged him to pass a summer with him in
Paris ; and some foreign diplomatic service was
open to him, had he expressed a willingness to
accept it. But he preferred to know something
more of his own country while he had the leisure ;
and if his life was to be passed in public service,
as now seemed probable to him, he chose, at least
for the present, to serve his country at home,
where he thought he was more needed, rather than
abroad. In his orders for books sent to Jefferson
the direction of his studies is evident. He sought
largely for those which treated of the science of
government ; but they were not confined to that
subject. Natural history had great charms for
him. He was a diligent student of Buffon, and
was anxious to find, if possible, the plates of his
thirty-one volumes, in colors, that he might adorn
the walls of his room with them. He made careful
comparisons between the animals of other conti-
nents, as described and portrayed by the naturalist,
and similar orders in America. All new inventions
interested him. " I am so jileased," he writes,
IN THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 69
"with the new invented lamp that I shall not
grudge two guineas for one of them." He had
seen " a pocket compass of somewhat larger diame-
ter than a watch, and which may be carried in
the same way. It has a spring for stopping the
vibration of the needle when not in use. One of
these would be very convenient in case of a ramble
into the western country." A small telescope, he
suggests, might be fitted on as a handle to a cane,
which might " be a source of many little gratifica-
tions," when " in walks for exercise or amusement
objects present themselves which it might be mat-
ter of curiosity to inspect, but which it was difficult
or impossible to approach." Jefferson writes him
of a new invention, a pedometer ; and he wants one
for his own pocket. Trifles like these show the
bent of his mind ; and they show a contented mind
as well.
While writing of important acts of the legisla-
ture of 1785, he is careful to give other information
in a letter to Jefferson, which is not uninteresting
as written ninety-eight years ago, and written by
him.
"I. Rumsey," he says, "by a memorial to the last
session, represented that he had invented a mechanism
by which a boat might be worked with little labor, at the
rate of from twenty-five to forty miles a day, against
a stream running at the rate of ten miles an hour, and
prayed that the disclosure of his invention might be pur-
chased by the public. The apparent extravagance of his
pretensions brought a ridicule upon them, and nothing
70 JAMES MADISON
was clone. In the recess of the Assembly he exemplified
his machinery to General Washington and a few other
gentlemen, who gave a certificate of the reality and im-
portance of the invention, which opened the ears of this
Assembly to a second memorial. The act gives a mo-
nopoly for ten years, reserving a right to abolish it at
any time by paying £10,000. The inventor is soliciting
similar acts from other States, and will not, I suppose,
publish the secret till he either obtains or despairs o£
them."
This intelligence was evidently not unheeded
by Jefferson. In writing, some months after he
received it, to a friend on the application of steam-
power to grist-mills, then lately introduced in
England, he adds : " I hear you are applying tlie
same agent in America to navigate boats, and I
have little doubt but that it will be applied gen-
erally to machines, so as to supersede the use of
water-ponds, and of course to lay open all the
streams for navigation." Nor does Madison seem
to have been one of those who doubted if anything
was to come of Rumsey's invention. All this was
less than a hundred years ago, and now there is a
steam-ferry between New York and Europe run-
ning about twice a day.
In a similar letter, a year later, he is careful,
among grave political matters, to remember and
report to the same friend that in the sinking of a
well in Richmond, on the declivity of a hill, there
had been found, "about seventy feet below the
surface, several large bones, apparently belonging
m THE VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE 71
to a fish not less than the shark ; and, what is more
singular, several fragments of potter's ware in the
style of the Indians. Before he [the digger]
reached these curiosities he passed through about
fifty feet of soft blue clay." Mr. Madison had
only just heard of this discovery, and he had not
seen the unearthed fragments. But he evidently
accepts the story as true in coming from " unex-
ceptionable witnesses." He adds, as a corrobora-
tion, that he is told by a friend from Washington
County of the finding there, in the sinking of a
salt-well, " of the hip-bone of the incognitum, the
socket of which was about eight inches in diame-
ter." Such things were peculiarly interesting to
JefPerson, and Madison was too devoted a friend
to him to leave them unnoticed. But they w^ere
hardly less interesting to himself, though he had
not much of Jefferson's habit of scientific investi-
gation. That "the potter's ware in the style of
the Indians" should be found so deeply buried
only seems to him " singular ; " nor, indeed, is there
any record, so far as we know, that this particular
fact was any more suggestive to Jefferson, though
apparently so likely to arouse his inquiring mind
to seek for some satisfactory explanation. But
his geological notions were too positive to admit
even of a doubt as to the age of man. Supposing
a Creator, he assumed that " he created the earth
at once, nearly in the state in which we see it, fit
for the preservation of the beings he placed on it."
Theorist as he was himself, he had little patience
72 JAMES MADISON
with the other theorists who were ah'eady begin-
ning to discover in the structure of the earth the
evidence of successive geological eras. The differ-
ent strata of rocks and their inclination gave him
no trouble. He explained them all by the assump-
tion that " rock grows, and it seems that it grows
in layers in every direction, as the branches of
trees grow in all directions." That evidences of
the existence of man should be found with a super-
imposed weight of earth seventy feet in thickness
would present to him no difficulty. If the fact
had specially aroused his attention he would have
explained it in some ingenious way as the result of
accident.
CHAPTER VI
PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES
In February, 1787, Madison again took a seat
in Congress. It was an anxious period. Shays's
rebellion in Massachusetts had assumed rather
formidable possibilities, and seemed not unlikely
to spread to other States. Till this storm should
blow over, the important business of Congress was
to raise money and troops ; in reality, to go to the
help of Massachusetts, if need should be, though
the object ostensibly was to protect a handful of
people on the frontier against the Indians. It was
a striking instance of the imbecility of the gov-
ernment under the Articles of Confederation, that
it could only undertake to suppress rebellion in a
State under the pretense of doing something else
which came within the law. Massachusetts, it is
true, was quite able to deal with her insurgents ;
but when Congress convened it was not known in
New York that Lincoln had dispersed the main
body of them at Petersham. Nevertheless, a like
difficulty might arise at any moment in any other
of the States, where the strength to meet it might
be quite inadequate.
Madison's ideal still was, the Union before the
74 JAMES MADISON
States, and for the sake of the States ; the whole
before the parts, to save the parts ; the binding
the fagot together that the sticks might not be lost.
"Our situation," he wrote to Edmund Randolph
in February, " is becoming every day more and
more critical. No money comes into the federal
treasury ; no respect is paid to the federal author-
ity; and people of reflection unanimously agree
that the existing Confederacy is tottering to its
foundation. Many individuals of weight, particu-
larly in the eastern district, are suspected of lean-
ing toward monarchy. Other individuals predict
a partition of the States into two or more confed-
eracies. It is pretty certain that if some radical
amendment of the single one cannot be devised and
introduced, one or the other of these revolutions,
the latter no doubt, will take place."
It is not impossible that Madison himself may
have had some faith in this suspicion that " indi-
viduals of weight in the eastern district " were
inclined to a monarchy. For such suspicion, how-
ever, there could be little real foundation. There
were, doubtless, men of weight who thought and
said that monarchy was better than anarchy.
There were, doubtless, impatient men then who
thought and said, as there are impatient men now
who think and say, that the rule of a king is better
than the rule of the people. But there was no dis-
loyalty to government by the people among those
who only maintained that the English in America
must draw from the common heritage of English
PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 75
institutions and English law the material where-
with to build up the foundations of a new nation.
No intelligent and candid man doubts now that
they were wise; nor would it have been long
doubted then, had it not so si3eedily become man-
ifest that, if the stigma of "British" was once
affixed to a political party, any appeal from pop-
ular prejudice to reason and common sense was
hopeless.
There were a few persons who would have done
away with the divisions of States and establish
in their j^lace a central government. Those most
earnest in maintaining the autonomy of States
declared that such a government was, as Luther
Martin of Maryland called it, of " a monarchical
nature." What else could that be but a mon-
archy? An insinuation took on the form of a
logical deduction and became a popular fallacy.
Yet those most earnest for a central government
only sought to establish a stable rule in place of
no rule at all ; or, worse still, of the tyranny of
an ignorant and vicious mob under the outraged
name of democracy, into which there was danger of
drifting. Whether their plan was wise or foolish,
it did not mean a monarchy. Even of Shays's
misguided followers Jefferson said : " I believe you
may be assured that an idea or desire of returning
to anything like their ancient government never
entered into their heads." As Madison knew and
said, the real danger was that the States would
divide into two confederacies, and only by a new
76 JAMES MADISON
and wiser and stronger union could that calamity
be averted.
To gain the assent of most of the States to a
convention was surmounting only the least of the
difficulties. Three weeks before the time of meet-
ing Madison wrote : " The nearer the crisis ap-
proaches, the more I tremble for the issue. The
necessity of gaining the concurrence of the con-
vention in some system that will answer the pur-
pose, the subsequent approbation of Congress, and
the final sanction of the States, present a series of
chances which would inspire despair in any case
where the alternative was less formidable." He
said, in the first month of the session of that body,
that " the States were divided into different inter-
ests, not by their difference of size, but by other
circumstances ; the most material of which residted
partly from climate, but principally from the effects
of their having or not having slaves. These two
causes concurred in forming the great division of
interests in the United States. It did not lie be-
tween the large and small States. It lay between
the Northern and Southern."
During the earlier weeks of this session of Con-
gress, and, indeed, for some months before, events
had made so manifest this difference of interest,
coincident with the difference in latitude, that
there seemed little ground for hope that any good
would come out of a constitutional convention.
The old question of the navigation of the Missis-
sippi was again agitated. The South held her
PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 77
rig-ht to that river to be of mucli more value than
anything she could gain by a closer union with the
North, and she was quite ready to go to war with
Spain in defense of it. On the other hand, the
Northern States were quite indifferent to the navi-
gation of the Mississippi, and not disposed ap-
parently to make any exertion or sacrifice to secure
it. Just now they were anxious to secure a com-
mercial treaty with Spain ; but Spain insisted, as
a preliminary condition, that the United States
should relinquish all claim to navigation upon a
river whose mouths were within Spanish territory.
In the Northern mind there was no doubt of the
value of trade with Spain ; and there was a good
deal of doubt whether there was anything worth
contending for in the right to sail upon a river
running through a wilderness where, as yet, there
were few inhabitants, and hardly any trade worth
talking about. More than that, there was un-
questionably a not uncommon belief at the North
and East that the settlement and prosperity of the
West would be at the expense of the Atlantic
States. Perhaps that view of the matter was not
loudly insisted upon ; but many were none the less
persuaded that, if population was attracted west-
ward by the hope of acquiring rich and cheap
lands, prosperity and power would go with it. At
any rate, those of this way of thinking were not
inclined to forego a certain good for that which
would profit them nothing, and might do them
lasting harm.
78 JAMES MADISON
For these reasons, spoken and unspoken, the
Northern members of Congress were at first quite
willing, for the sake of a commercial treaty, to
concede to Spain the exclusive control of the Mis-
sissippi. But to pacify the South it was proposed
that the concession to Spain should be for only
five and twenty years. If at the end of that period
the navigation of the Mississippi should be worth
contending for, the question could be reopened.
The South was, of course, rather exasperated than
pacified by such a proposition. The navigation of
the river had not only a certain value to them now,
but it was theirs by right, and that was reason
enough for not parting with it even for a limited
period. Concessions now would make the reasser-
tion of the right the more difficult by and by. If
it must be fought for, it would lessen the chance
of success to put off the fighting five and twenty
years. Indeed, it could not be put off, for war
was already begun in a small way. The Spaniards
had seized American boats on trading voyages down
the river, and the Americans had retaliated upon
some petty Spanish settlements. Spain, moreover,
seemed at first no more inclined to listen to com-
promise than the South was.
England watched this controversy with interest.
She had no expectation of recovering for herself
the Floridas, which she had lost in the war of the
Revolution, and had finally ceded to Spain by the
treaty of 1783; but she was quite willing to see
that power get into trouble on the Mississippi
PUBLIC DISTURBANCES AND ANXIETIES 79
question, and more than willing that it should
threaten the peace and union of the States. Her
own boundary line west of the Alleghanies might
possibly be extended far south of the Great Lakes,
if the Northern and Southern States should divide
into two confederacies ; but, apart from any lust
of territory, she rejoiced at anything that threat-
ened to check the growth of her late colonies.
Fortunately, however, the question was disposed
of, before the Constitutional Convention met at
Philadelphia, by the failure to secure a treaty.
The Spanish minister, Guardoqui, consented, at
length, after long resistance, to accept as a com-
promise the navigation of the river for five and
twenty years ; but Mr. Jay, who was willing, could
he have had his way, to concede anything, found
at that stage of the negotiations he could not com-
mand votes enough in Congress to secure a treaty
even in that modified form. Hitherto he had
relied upon a resolution passed by Congress in
August, 1786, by the vote of seven Northern States
against five Southern. This, it was assumed,
repealed a resolution of the year before, and au-
thorized the secretary to make a treaty. The res-
olution of the year before, August, 1785, had been
passed by the votes of nine States, and was in
confirmation of a provision of the Articles of Con-
federation declaring that " no treaties with foreign
powers should be entered into but by the assent of
nine States." The minority contended that such
a resolution could not be repealed by the vote of
80 JAMES MADISON
only seven States, for that would be to violate a
fundamental condition of the Articles of Confed-
eration. It is easy to see now that there ought not
to have been a difference among honorable men on
such a point as that. Nevertheless Mr. Jay, sup-
ported by some of the strongest Northern men,
held that the votes of seven States could be made,
in a roundabout way, to authorize an act which the
Constitution declared should never be lawful except
with the assent of nine States. So the secretary
went on with his negotiations and came to terms
with the Spanish minister.
In April the secretary was called upon to report
to Congress what was the position of these nego-
tiations. Then it first publicly appeared that a
treaty was actually agreed upon which gave up the