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.