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.