MADISON, JAMES (ante). The public life and works of James Madison fill a long period of American history, and are marked by a precocity of statesmanship, and calm, logical, judicial wisdom. At 21 years, a graduate of Princeton college, among a class of students who subsequently filled many of the highest judicial, political, and military offices, he appears from the beginning to have taken that intellectual leadership which he subsequently maintained. The exciting period of the opening of the revolu rtion stimulated all young men of noble ambition to the study of the relationship of governors to the governed and of human riptts in general; so that political discussions were on the fundamental laws of society in the broad fields of abstract justice, rather than in the ruts of partisan warfare and individual interests. The violence of arbitrary power which England exercised towards the colonies at this time, and the debates in the British parliament in which Chatham, Camden, Burke, and Fox assumed the defense of constitutional against arbitrary power, in opposition to lord IsTorth, Mansfield, -and others, were calculated to place before the students of that day high ideals of polit ical warfare. The vigorous pen of the masked Junius was a model of style for the more fiery patriots. That of Addison seems to have attracted young Madison, or, rather, his mind was by nature on the philosophic plane, so that it naturally expressed itself in a similar style. The following letter written from college to his father, July 23, 1770, indicates, however, that his mind was fired by the lack of patriotic resistance to British rule of which the merchants of New York had just given proof: " We have no public news," he writes, " but of the base conduct of the New York merchants in breaking through their spirited resolution not to import," etc. . . " Their letter to the merchants of Philadelphia requesting their concurrence was lately burned by the students in the college yard, all of them appearing in their black gowns, and the bell tolling. There are about 115 in college and school, all of them in American cloth." On his return home from college he read law and miscellaneous literature, and at the same time taught his younger brothers and sisters. A lull took place in the controversy between the colonies and the mother country in consequence of the repeal of the stamp act and port duties, the tax on tea being the only one left; the repeal of which, said lord North, " is not to be thought of till America is prostrate at our feet." An extract of a letter written in 1772 to his college friend Bradford, afterwards attorney-general under the presidency of Washington, shows the grave maturity of his mind: " Pray do not suffer those impertinent fops that abound in every city to divert you from your business and philosophical amusements. You may please them more by admitting them to the pleasure of your company, but you will make them respect and admire you more by showing your indignation at their follies, and by keeping them at a distance. I am luckily out of the way of such troubles; but I learn you are surrounded with them, for they breed in towns and populous places as naturally as flies do in the shambles, because they get food enough for their vanity and impertinence." About this time Madison studied, exhausting the theological works of his time, and the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and so erudite was he already considered that the founder of the university of Virginia called upon him to furnish a list of theological works for its library. When the question arose in Virginia, in 1774, whether the state church (the church of Eng land) should be maintained, his breadth of view became manifest. The Episcopalians of Virginia and the Puritans of New England were quite ready to practice against others Ille same exclusion for religious opinions which had cringed the migration of the latter. In Virginia the Episcopal had been a state church, and Jaws were in force to nunish non-conformity. The Baptists were at that time the subjects of the penalties and were then being imprisoned in the county where Madison lived, for " disturbing the public peace by their preaching." In a letter to Bradford, Jan. 24, 1774, Madison shows the intensity of his indignation at this renewal of religious persecution in words contrasting with his usual rnoderation: " That diabolical, hell-conceived principle of persecution,'' he writes, " rages among some; and to their eternal infamy, the clergy can furnish. their quota of imps for such purposes." Again, writing to Bradford in April he says: " The sentiments of our people of fortune and fashion on this subject are vastly differ ent from what you have been used to. That liberal. catholic, and equitable way of thinking, as to the rights of conscience, which is one of the characteristics of a free peo ple and so strongly rnarks the people of your province (Pennsylvania), is but little known among the zealous adherents to our hierarchy."
The year 1774 was an exciting one in the colonies. New forms of oppression by the English government raised determined resistance from Boston to Charleston. Madison entered into the struggle in no half-way spirit, but seemed fully to appreciate from the. beginning the necessity of speedy military organization to oppose the mother country. As early as Jan. 20, 1775, he writes a friend: " We are very busy at present in raising men, and procuring the necessaries to defend ourselves and our friends in case of a sud den invasion." In an address of thanks to Patrick IIenry, written by Madison as the expression of a public meeting held in his own county May 9, 1773, we find this expression: " The blow struck in the Massachusetts government is a hostile attack on this and every other colony, and a sufficient warrant to use violence and reprisal in alb cases in which it may be expedient for our security and welfare." Mr. Madison entered public life in May, 1776, as a delegate to the Virginia convention which instructed her delegates in the continental congress to propose the declaration of independence. Though. the youngest man in that body, he was by special request made a member of the commit tee of ten to draft a new constitution for the state. In the committee Mr. Madison dis tinguished himself by opposing the use of the following phrase of an article on religion, designed to secure freedom of worship: " toleration in the exercise of religion, . . . unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate, unless under color of religion any man disturb the peace, the happiness, or the safety of society," as a dangerous form of guar anty of religious freedom. Toleration, he maintained, belonged to a system where there, was an established church, and where it was a thing granted not of right, but of grace. He feared the power, in the hands of a dominant religion, to construe what "may dis turb the peace, the happiness, or the safety of society," and ventured to propose a substitute, which was filially adopted. It marks an era in legislative history; and is believed to be the first provision ever embodied in any constitution or law for the. security of absolute equality before the law to all religious opinions. We give it entire: " That religion, or the duty that we owe to our creator, and the manner of discharging it, being under the direction of reason and conviction only, not of violence or com pulsion, all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it, according to the dictates of conscience; and, therefore, that no man or class of men ought, on account of religion, to be invested with peculiar emoluments or privileges, nor subjected to ally penalties or disabilities, unless, under color of religion, the preservation of equal liberty, and the existence of the state be manifestly endangered." At the first session of the Virginia legislature under the new constitution, beginning in Oct., 1776, Madison and Jefferson first met, and began an intimate friendship that lasted unclouded for half a. century. Jefferson long afterwards thus describes him " Mr. Madison came into the house in 1776, a new member and young; which circum stances, concurring with his extreme modesty, prevented his venturing himself in debate before his removal to the council of state in Nov., 1777. From thence he went to congress, consisting of few members. Trained in these successive schools, lie acquired a habit of self-possession, which placed at ready command the rich resources of his luminous and discriminating mind and of his extensive information, and ren dered him the first of every assembly afterwards of which lie became a member. Never wandering from his subject in vain declamation, but pursuing it closely, in language pure, classical, and copious, soothing always his adversaries by civilities and softness of expression, he rose to the eminent station which he held in the great national con vention of 1787. With these consmaimate powers was united a pure and spotless virtue which no calumny has ever attempted to sully." In 1777 Madison lost his election by his conscientious abstention from the practice of " treating" on election day. But in November the assembly elected him a member of the council of state, a body of eight members, advisers of the governor, and participating with him in the exercise of executive powers, Chosen to this high position without his own knowledge, the compliment was not more appreciated by him than timely to the state, and a position of more importance during the crisis of war than one in legis lative councils. The fact that Madison was the only member of the council versed in foreign languages made his services of additional value to the governor, Patrick Henry; as the number of foreigners iu the employ of the state at that thne IN as numerous.