Chapter IX: Part 9

The finest speech I heard from Mr. Clay in the Senate was on the sad subject of the injuries of the Indians. He exposed the facts of the treatment of the Cherokees by Georgia. He told how the lands in Georgia, guaranteed by solemn treaties to the Cherokees, had been surveyed and partitioned off to white citizens of the state; that, though there is a nominal right of appeal awarded to the complainants, this is a mere mockery, as an acknowledgment of the right of Georgia to divide the lands is made a necessary preliminary to the exercise of the right; in other words, the Indians must lay down their claims on the threshold of the courts which they enter for the purpose of enforcing these claims! The object of Mr. Clay's plea was to have the Supreme Court open to the Cherokees, their case being, he contended, contemplated by the Constitution. A minor proposition was that Congress should assist, with territory and appliances, a body of Cherokees who desired to emigrate beyond the Mississippi.

It was known that Mr. Clay would probably bring forward his great topic that day. Some of the foreign ambassadors might be seen leaning against the pillars behind the chair, and many members of the other house appeared behind and in the passages; and one sat on the steps of the platform, his hands clasped, and his eyes fixed on Mr. Clay, as if life hung upon his words. As many as could crowd into the gallery leaned over the balustrade; and the lower circle was thronged with ladies and gentlemen, in the centre of whom stood a group of Cherokee chiefs, listening immoveably. I never saw so deep a moral impression produced by a speech. The best testimony to this was the disgust excited by the empty and abusive reply of the senator from Georgia, who, by-the-way, might be judged from his accent to have been about three months from the Green Island. This gentleman's speech, however, showed us one good thing, that Mr. Clay is as excellent in reply as in proposition; prompt, earnest, temperate, and graceful. The chief characteristic of his eloquence is its earnestness. Every tone of his voice, every fibre of his frame bears testimony to this. His attitudes are, from the beginning to the close, very graceful. His first sentences are homely, and given with a little hesitation and repetition, and with an agitation shown by a frequent putting on and taking off of the spectacles, and a trembling of the hands among the documents on the desk. Then, as the speaker becomes possessed with his subject, the agitation changes its character, but does not subside. His utterance is still deliberate, but his voice becomes deliciously winning. Its higher tones disappointed me at first; but the lower ones, trembling with emotion, swelling and falling with the earnestness of the speaker, are very moving, and his whole manner becomes irresistibly persuasive. I saw tears, of which I am sure he was wholly unconscious, falling on his papers as he vividly described the woes and injuries of the aborigines. I saw Webster draw his hand across his eyes; I saw every one deeply moved except two persons, the vice-president, who yawned somewhat ostentatiously, and the Georgian senator, who was busy brewing his storm. I was amazed at the daring of this gentleman; at the audacity which could break up such a moral impression as this Cherokee tale, so told, had produced, by accusing Mr. Clay of securing an interest in opposition to Georgia "by stage starts and theatric gesticulations." The audience were visibly displeased at having their feelings thus treated, in the presence even of the Cherokee chiefs; but Mr. Clay's replies both to argument and abuse were so happy, and the Georgian's rejoinder was so outrageous, that the business ended with a general burst of laughter. The propositions were to lie over till the next day; and, as I soon after left Washington, I never learned their ultimate fate.

The American Senate is a most imposing assemblage. When I first entered it I thought I never saw a finer set of heads than the forty-six before my eyes: two only being absent, and the Union then consisting of twenty-four states. Mr. Calhoun's countenance first fixed my attention; the splendid eye, the straight forehead, surmounted by a load of stiff, upright, dark hair; the stern brow; the inflexible mouth; it is one of the most remarkable heads in the country. Next him sat his colleague, Mr. Preston, in singular contrast; stout in person, with a round, ruddy, good-humoured face, large blue eyes, and a wig, orange to-day, brown yesterday, and golden to-morrow. Near them sat Colonel Benton, a temporary people's man, remarkable chiefly for his pomposity. He sat swelling amid his piles of papers and books, looking like a being designed by nature to be a good-humoured barber or innkeeper, but forced by fate to make himself into a mock-heroic senator. Opposite sat the transcendant Webster, with his square forehead and cavernous eyes; and behind him the homely Clay, with the face and figure of a farmer, but something of the air of a divine, from his hair being combed straight back from his temples. Near them sat Southard and Porter; the former astute and rapid in countenance and gesture; the latter strangely mingling a boyish fun and lightness of manner and glance with the sobriety suitable to the judge and the senator. His keen eye takes in everything that passes; his extraordinary mouth, with its overhanging upper lip, has but to unfold into a smile to win laughter from the sourest official or demagogue. Then there was the bright _bonhommie_ of Ewing of Ohio, the most primitive-looking of senators; and the benign, religious gravity of Frelinghuysen; the gentlemanly air of Buchanan; the shrewdness of Poindexter; the somewhat melancholy simplicity of Silsbee; all these and many others were striking, and for nothing more that for their total unlikeness to each other. No English person who has not travelled over half the world can form an idea of such differences among men forming one assembly for the same purposes, and speaking the same language. Some were descended from Dutch farmers, some from French Huguenots, some from Scotch Puritans, some from English cavaliers, some from Irish chieftains. They were brought together out of law-courts, sugar-fields, merchants' stores, mountain farms, forests, and prairies. The stamp of originality was impressed upon every one, and inspired a deep, involuntary respect. I have seen no assembly of chosen men, and no company of the highborn, invested with the antique dignities of an antique realm, half so imposing to the imagination as this collection of stout-souled, full-grown, original men, brought together on the ground of their supposed sufficiency, to work out the will of their diverse constituencies.

In this splendid chamber, thus splendidly inhabited, we spent many hours of many weeks. Here I was able to gain no little knowledge of the state, political and other, of various parts of the country, from my large acquaintance among the members of the Senate. When dull official reports were read, and uninteresting local matters were discussed, or when the one interminable speaker, Benton, was on his legs, one member or another of the body would come and talk with us. I have heard certain of the members, stalking from their seats towards those of the ladies, compared to cranes in search of fish. The comparison is not a bad one.

I wished every day that the ladies would conduct themselves in a more dignified manner than they did in the Senate. They came in with waving plumes, and glittering in all the colours of the rainbow, causing no little bustle in the place, no little annoyance to the gentlemen spectators, and rarely sat still for any length of time. I know that these ladies are no fair specimen of the women who would attend parliamentary proceedings in any other metropolis. I know that they were the wives, daughters, and sisters of legislators, women thronging to Washington for purposes of convenience or pleasure, leaving their usual employments behind them, and seeking to pass away the time. I knew this, and made allowance accordingly; but I still wished that they could understand the gravity of such an assembly, and show so much respect to it as to repay the privilege of admission by striving to excite as little attention as possible, and by having the patience to sit still when they happened not to be amused, till some interruption gave them opportunity to depart quietly. If they had done this, Judge Porter would not have moved that they should be appointed seats in the gallery instead of below; and they would have been guiltless of furnishing a plea for the exclusion of women, who would probably make a better use of the privilege, from the galleries of other houses of parliament.

I was glad of an opportunity of hearing both the South Carolina senators soon after my arrival in Washington. They are listened to with close attention, and every indication of their state of feeling is watched with the interest which has survived the nullification struggle. Mr. Calhoun on this occasion let us a little into his mind; Mr. Preston kept more closely to the question before the body. The question was whether a vote of censure of the president, recorded in the minutes of the proceedings of the Senate the preceding session, should be expunged. The motion for the expunging was made by Colonel Benton, and rejected, as it had been before, and has been since; though it was finally carried, to the agony of the opposition, at the end of last session (February, 1837).

Mr. Preston was out of health, and unable to throw his accustomed force into his speaking; but his effort showed us how beautiful his eloquence is in its way. It is not solid. His speeches, if taken to pieces, will be found to consist of analogies and declamation; but his figures are sometimes very striking, and his manner is as graceful as anything so artificial can be. I never before understood the eloquence of action. The action of public speakers in England, as far as I have observed (and perhaps I may be allowed to hint that deaf persons are peculiarly qualified to judge of the nature of such action), is of two kinds; the involuntary gesture which is resorted to for the relief of the nerves, which may or may not be expressive of meaning, and the action which is wholly the result of study; arbitrary, and not the birth of the sentiment; and, therefore, though pleasing, perhaps, to the eye, perplexing to the mind of the listener. Mr. Preston's manner unites the advantages of these two methods, and avoids most of their evils. It is easy to see that he could not speak without an abundant use of action, and that he has therefore done wisely in making it a study. To an unaccustomed eye it appears somewhat exuberant; but it is exquisitely graceful, and far more than commonly appropriate. His voice is not good, but his person is tall, stout, and commanding, and his countenance animated.

Mr. Calhoun followed, and impressed me very strongly. While he kept to the question, what he said was close, good, and moderate, though delivered in rapid speech, and with a voice not sufficiently modulated. But when he began to reply to a taunt of Colonel Benton's, that he wanted to be president, the force of his speaking became painful. He made protestations which it seemed to strangers had better have been spared, that he would not turn on his heel to be president; and that he had given up all for his own brave, magnanimous little State of South Carolina. While thus protesting, his eyes flashed, his brow seemed charged with thunder, his voice became almost a bark, and his sentences were abrupt, intense, producing in the auditory that sort of laugh which is squeezed out of people by the application of a very sudden mental force. I believe he knew little what a revelation he made in a few sentences. They were to us strangers the key, not only to all that was said and done by the South Carolina party during the remainder of the session, but to many things at Charleston and Columbia which would otherwise have passed unobserved or unexplained.

I was less struck than some strangers appear to have been with the length and prosy character of the speeches in Congress. I do not remember hearing any senator (always excepting Colonel Benton) speak for more than an hour. I was seldom present in the other house, where probably the most diffuse oratory is heard; but I was daily informed of the proceedings there by the representative who was of our party, and I did not find that there was much annoyance or delay from this cause. Perhaps the practice may be connected with the amount of business to be done. It is well known that the business of Congress is so moderate in quantity, from the functions of the general government being few and simple, that it would be considered a mere trifle by any parliament in the Old World; and long speeches, which would be a great annoyance elsewhere, may be an innocent pastime in an assembly which may have leisure upon its hands.

The gallery of the splendid Hall of Representatives is not well contrived for hearing, and I rarely went into it for more than a passing view of what was going on; a view which might be taken without disturbance to anybody, as the gallery was generally empty, and too high raised above the area of the hall to fix the eye of the members. My chief interest was watching Mr. Adams, of whose speaking, however, I can give no account. The circumstance of this gentleman being now a member of the representative body after having been president, fixes the attention of all Europeans upon him with as much admiration as interest. He is one of the most remarkable men in America. He is an imbodiment of the pure, simple morals which are assumed to prevail in the thriving young republic. His term of office was marked by nothing so much as by the subordination of glory to goodness, of showy objects to moral ones. The eccentricity of thought and action in Mr. Adams, of which his admirers bitterly or sorrowfully complain, and which renders him an impracticable member of a party, arises from the same honest simplicity which crowns his virtues, mingled with a faulty taste and an imperfect temper. His hastiness of assertion has sometimes placed him in predicaments so undignified as almost to be a set-off against the honours he wins by pertinacious and bold adherence to a principle which he considers sound. His occasional starts out of the ranks of his party, without notice and without apparent cause, have been in vain attempted to be explained on suppositions of interest or vanity; they may be more easily accounted for in other ways. Between one day and another, some new idea of justice and impartiality may strike his brain, and send him to the house warm with invective against his party and sympathy with their foes. He rises, and speaks out all his new mind, to the perplexity of the whole assembly, every man of whom bends to hear every syllable he says; perplexity which gives way to dismay on the one hand and triumph on the other. The triumphant party begins to coax and honour him; but, before the process is well begun, he is off again, finding that he had gone too far; and the probability is, that he finishes by placing himself between two fires. I now describe what I actually saw of his conduct in one instance; conduct which left no more doubt of his integrity than of his eccentricity. He was well described to me before I saw him. "Study Mr. Adams," was the exhortation. "You will find him well worth it. He runs in veins; if you light upon one, you will find him marvellously rich; if not, you may chance to meet rubbish. In action he is very peculiar. He will do ninety-nine things nobly, excellently; but the hundredth will be so bad in taste and temper, that it will drive all the rest out of your head, if you don't take care." His countrymen will "take care." Whatever the heats of party may be, however the tone of disappointment against Mr. Adams may sometimes rise to something too like hatred, there is undoubtedly a deep reverence and affection for the man in the nation's heart; and any one may safely prophesy that his reputation, half a century after his death, will be of a very honourable kind. He fought a stout and noble battle in Congress last session in favour of discussion of the slavery question, and in defence of the right of petition upon it; on behalf of women as well as of men. While hunted, held at bay, almost torn to pieces by an outrageous majority--leaving him, I believe, in absolute unity--he preserved a boldness and coolness as amusing as they were admirable. Though he now and then vents his spleen with violence when disappointed in a favourite object, he seems able to bear perfectly well that which it is the great fault of Americans to shrink from, singularity and blame. He seems, at times, reckless of opinion; and this is the point of his character which his countrymen seem, naturally, least to comprehend.

Such is the result of the observations I was able to make on this gentleman when at Washington. I was prevented seeing so much of him as I earnestly desired by his family circumstances. He had just lost a son, and did not appear in society. It is well known in America that Mr. Adams will leave behind him papers of inestimable value. For forty years (I was told) he has kept a diary, full and exact. In this diary he every morning sets down not only the events of the preceding day, but the conversations he has had with foreigners, and on all subjects of interest. This immense accumulation of papers will afford such materials for history as the country has never yet been blessed with. Perhaps no country has ever possessed a public man, of great powers, and involved in all the remarkable events of its most remarkable period, who has had industry enough to leave behind him a similar record of his times. This will probably turn out to be (whether he thinks so or not) the greatest and most useful of his deeds, and his most honourable monument.

Those whose taste is the contemplation of great and original men may always have it gratified by going to Washington. Whatever may be thought of the form and administration of government there; however certain it may be that the greatest men are not, in this age of the world, to be found in political life, it cannot be but that, among the real representatives of a composite and self-governing nation, there must be many men of power; power of intellect, of goodness, or, at least, of will.

MOUNT VERNON.

"He might have been a king
But that he understood
How much it was a meaner thing
To be unjustly great than honourably good."

_Duke of Buckingham on Lord Fairfax._

On the 2d of February I visited Mount Vernon, in company with a large party of gentlemen and ladies. Of all places in America, the family seat and burial-place of Washington is that which strangers are most eager to visit. I was introduced by Judge Story to the resident family, and was received by them, with all my companions, with great civility and kindness.

The estate of Mount Vernon was inherited by General Washington from his brother. For fifteen years prior to the assembling of the first general Congress in Philadelphia, Washington spent his time chiefly on this property, repairing to the provincial legislature when duty called him there, but gladly returning to the improvement of his lands. The house was, in those days, a very modest building, consisting of only four rooms on a floor, which form the centre of the present mansion. Mrs. Washington resided there during the ten years' absence of her husband in the wars of the Revolution; repairing to headquarters at the close of each campaign, and remaining there till the opening of the next. The departure of an aiddecamp from the camp to escort the general's lady was watched for with much anxiety as the echoes of the last shot of the campaign died away; for the arrival of "Lady Washington" (as the soldiers called her) was the signal for the wives of all the general officers to repair to their husbands in camp. A sudden cheerfulness diffused itself through the army when the plain chariot, with the postillions in their scarlet and white liveries, was seen to stop before the general's door. Mrs. Washington was wont to say, in her latter years, that she had heard the first cannon at the opening and the last at the close of every campaign of the revolutionary war. She was a strong-minded, even-tempered woman; and the cheerfulness of her demeanour, under the heavy and various anxieties of such a lot as hers, was no mean support to her husband's spirits, and to the bravery and hopefulness of the whole army, whose eyes were fixed upon her. She retired from amid the homage of the camp with serene composure when the fatigues and perils of warfare had to be resumed, and hid her fears and cares in her retired home. There she occupied herself industriously in the superintendence of her slaves, and in striving to stop the ravages which her husband's public service was making in his private fortunes.

After the peace of 1783 she was joined by her husband, who made a serious pursuit of laying out gardens and grounds round his dwelling, and building large additions to it. He then enjoyed only four years of quiet, being called in 1787 to preside in the convention which framed the Constitution, and in 1789 to fill the presidential chair. Mrs. Washington was now obliged to leave the estate with him, and it was eight years before they could take possession of it again. In 1797 Washington refused to be made president for a third term, and retired into as private a life as it was possible for him to secure. Trains of visiters sought him in his retreat, and Mrs. Washington's accomplishments as a Virginia housewife were found useful every day; but Washington was at home, and he was happy. In a little while he was once more applied to to serve the state at the head of her armies. He did not refuse, but requested to be left in peace till there should be actual want of his presence. Before that time arrived he was no more. Two years after his retirement, while the sense of enjoyment of repose was still fresh, and his mind was full of such schemes as delight the imaginations of country gentlemen, death overtook him, and found him, though the call was somewhat sudden, ready and willing to go. In a little more than two years he was followed by his wife. From the appearance of the estate, it would seem to have been going to decay ever since.

Our party, in three carriages, and five or six on horseback, left Washington about nine o'clock, and reached Alexandria in about an hour and a half, though our passage over the long bridge which crosses the Potomac was very slow, from its being in a sad state of dilapidation. Having ordered a late dinner at Alexandria, we proceeded on our way, occasionally looking behind us at the great dome of the Capitol, still visible above the low hills which border the gray, still Potomac, now stretching cold amid the wintry landscape. It was one of the coldest days I ever felt, the bitter wind seeming to eat into one's very life. The last five miles of the eight which lie between Alexandria and Mount Vernon wound through the shelter of the woods, so that we recovered a little from the extreme cold before we reached the house. The land appears to be quite impoverished; the fences and gates are in bad order; much of the road was swampy, and the poor young lambs, shivering in the biting wind, seemed to look round in vain for shelter and care. The conservatories were almost in ruins, scarcely a single pane of glass being unbroken; and the house looked as if it had not been painted on the outside for years. Little negroes peeped at us from behind the pillars of the piazza as we drove up. We alighted in silence, most of us being probably occupied with the thought of who had been there before us; what crowds of the noble, the wise, the good, had come hither to hear the yet living voice of the most unimpeachable of patriots. As I looked up I almost expected to see him standing in the doorway. My eyes had rested on the image of his remarkable countenance in almost every house I had entered; and here, in his own dwelling, one could not but look for the living face with something more than the eye of the imagination. I cared far less for any of the things that were shown me within the house than to stay in the piazza next the garden, and fancy how he here walked in meditation, or stood looking abroad over the beautiful river, and pleasing his eye with a far different spectacle from that of camps and conventions.

Many prints of British landscapes, residences, and events are hung up in the apartments. The ponderous key of the Bastile still figures in the hall, in extraordinary contrast with everything else in this republican residence. The Bible in the library is the only book of Washington's now left. The best likeness of the great man, known to all travellers from the oddness of the material on which it is preserved, is to be seen here, sanctioned thus by the testimony of the family. The best likeness of Washington happens to be on a common pitcher. As soon as this was discovered, the whole edition of pitchers was bought up. Once or twice I saw the entire vessel locked up in a cabinet, or in some such way secured from accident; but most of its possessors have, like the family, cut out the portrait and had it framed.

The walk, planned and partly finished during Washington's life, the winding path on the verge of the green slope above the river, must be very sweet in summer. The beauty of the situation of the place surprised me. The river was nobler, the terrace finer, and the swelling hills around more varied than I had imagined; but there is a painful air of desolation over the whole. I wonder how it struck the British officers in 1814, when, in passing up the river on their bandit expedition to burn libraries and bridges, and raze senate chambers, they assembled on deck, and uncovered their heads as they passed the silent dwelling of the great man who was not there to testify his disgust at the service they were upon. If they knew what it was that they were under orders to do, it would have been creditable to them as men to have mutinied in front of Mount Vernon.

The old tomb from which the body of Washington has been removed ought to be obliterated or restored. It is too painful to see it as it is now, the brickwork mouldering, and the paling broken and scattered. The red cedars still overshadow it, and it is a noble resting-place. Every one would mourn to see the low house destroyed, and the great man's chamber of dreamless sleep made no longer sacred from the common tread; but anything is better than the air of neglect which now wounds the spirit of the pilgrim. The body lies, with that of Judge Washington, in a vault near, in a more secluded but far less beautiful situation than that on the verge of the Potomac. The river is not seen from the new vault, and the erection is very sordid. It is of red brick, with an iron door, and looks more like an oven than anything else, except for the stone slab, bearing a funeral text, which is inserted over the door. The bank which rises on one side is planted with cedars, pines, and a sprinkling of beech and birch, so that the vault is overshadowed in summer, as the places of the dead should be. The president told me that the desolation about the tomb was a cause of uneasiness to himself and many others; and that he had urged the family, as the body had been already removed from its original bed, to permit it to be interred in the centre of the Capitol. They very naturally clung to the precious possession; and there is certainly something much more accordant with the spirit of the man in a grave under the tiles of his own home than in a magnificent shrine; but, however modest the tomb may be--were it only such a green hillock as every rustic lies under--it should bear tokens of reverent care. The grass and shade which he so much loved are the only ornaments needed; the absence of all that can offend the eye and hurt the spirit of reverence is all that the patriot and the pilgrim require.

Before we reached the crazy bridge, which it had been difficult enough to pass in the morning, the sweet Potomac lay in clear moonshine, and the lights round the Capitol twinkled from afar. On arriving at our fireside, we found how delightful a total change of mood sometimes is. Tea, letters, and English newspapers awaited us; and they were a surprising solace, chilled or feverish as we were with the intense cold and strong mental excitement of the day.

MADISON.

"For neither by reason nor by her experience is it impossible that a
commonwealth should be immortal; seeing the people, being the
materials, never die; and the form, which is motion, must, without
opposition, be endless. The bowl which is thrown from your hand, if
there be no rub, no impediment, shall never cease; for which cause
the glorious luminaries, that are the bowls of God, were once thrown
for ever."--HARRINGTON'S _Oceana_.

While I was at Washington I received a kind invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Madison to visit them at their seat, Montpelier, Virginia. I was happy to avail myself of it, and paid the visit on my way down to Richmond. At six o'clock in the morning of the 18th of February my party arrived at Orange Courthouse, five miles from Montpelier; and while two proceeded to Charlottesville, where we were to join them in three or four days, a friend and I stopped, first to rest for a few hours, and then to proceed to Mr. Madison's. After some sleep, and breakfast at noon, we took a carriage for the five miles of extremely bad road we had to travel. The people of the inn overcharged us for this carriage, and did not mention that Mr. Madison had desired that a messenger should be sent over for his carriage as soon as we should arrive. This was the only occasion but one, in our journey of ten thousand miles in the United States, that we were overcharged; while, I suspect, the undercharges, where any literary reputation is in the case, are more numerous than can be reckoned.

It was a sweet day of early spring. The patches of snow that were left under the fences and on the rising grounds were melting fast. The road was one continued slough up to the very portico of the house. The dwelling stands on a gentle eminence, and is neat and even handsome in its exterior, with a flight of steps leading up to the portico. A lawn and wood, which must be pleasant in summer, stretch behind; and from the front there is a noble object on the horizon, the mountain-chain which traverses the state, and makes it eminent for its scenery. The shifting lights upon these blue mountains were a delightful refreshment to the eye after so many weeks of city life as we had passed.

We were warmly welcomed by Mrs. Madison and a niece, a young lady who was on a visit to her; and when I left my room I was conducted to the apartment of Mr. Madison. He had, the preceding season, suffered so severely from rheumatism, that, during this winter, he confined himself to one room, rising after breakfast, before nine o'clock, and sitting in his easy-chair till ten at night. He appeared perfectly well during my visit, and was a wonderful man of eighty-three. He complained of one ear being deaf, and that his sight, which had never been perfect, prevented his reading much, so that his studies "lay in a nutshell;" but he could hear Mrs. Madison read, and I did not perceive that he lost any part of the conversation. He was in his chair, with a pillow behind him, when I first saw him; his little person wrapped in a black silk gown; a warm gray and white cap upon his head, which his lady took care should always sit becomingly; and gray worsted gloves, his hands having been rheumatic. His voice was clear and strong, and his manner of speaking particularly lively, often playful. Except that the face was smaller, and, of course, older, the likeness to the common engraving of him was perfect. He seemed not to have lost any teeth, and the form of the face was therefore preserved, without any striking marks of age. It was an uncommonly pleasant countenance.

His relish for conversation could never have been keener. I was in perpetual fear of his being exhausted; and at the end of every few hours I left my seat by the arm of his chair, and went to the sofa by Mrs. Madison on the other side of the room; but he was sure to follow and sit down between us; so that, when I found the only effect of my moving was to deprive him of the comfort of his chair, I returned to my station, and never left it but for food and sleep, glad enough to make the most of my means of intercourse with one whose political philosophy I deeply venerated. There is no need to add another to the many eulogies of Madison; I will only mention that the finest of his characteristics appeared to me to be his inexhaustible faith; faith that a well-founded commonwealth may, as our motto declares, be immortal; not only because the people, its constituency, never die, but because the principles of justice in which such a commonwealth originates never die out of the people's heart and mind. This faith shone brightly through the whole of Mr. Madison's conversation except on one subject. With regard to slavery he owned himself almost to be in despair. He had been quite so till the institution of the Colonization Society. How such a mind as his could derive any alleviation to its anxiety from that source is surprising. I think it must have been from his overflowing faith; for the facts were before him that in eighteen years the Colonization Society had removed only between two and three thousand persons, while the annual increase of the slave population in the United States was upward of sixty thousand.

He talked more on the subject of slavery than on any other, acknowledging, without limitation or hesitation, all the evils with which it has ever been charged. He told me that the black population in Virginia increases far faster than the white; and that the licentiousness only stops short of the destruction of the race; every slave girl being expected to be a mother by the time she is fifteen. He assumed from this, I could not make out why, that the negroes must go somewhere, and pointed out how the free states discourage the settlement of blacks; how Canada disagrees with them; how Hayti shuts them out; so that Africa is their only refuge. He did not assign any reason why they should not remain where they are when freed. He found, by the last returns from his estates, that one third of his own slaves were under five years of age. He had parted with some of his best land to feed the increasing numbers, and had yet been obliged to sell a dozen of his slaves the preceding week. He observed that the whole Bible is against negro slavery; but that the clergy do not preach this, and the people do not see it. He became animated in describing what I have elsewhere related[12] of the eagerness of the clergy of the four denominations to catch converts among the slaves, and the effect of religious teaching of this kind upon those who, having no rights, can have no duties. He thought the condition of slaves much improved in his time, and, of course, their intellects. This remark was, I think, intended to apply to Virginia alone, for it is certainly not applicable to the southwestern states. He accounted for his selling his slaves by mentioning their horror of going to Liberia, a horror which he admitted to be prevalent among the blacks, and which appears to me decisive as to the unnaturalness of the scheme. The willing mind is the first requisite to the emigrant's success. Mr. Madison complained of the difficulty and risk of throwing an additional population into the colony, at the rate of two or three cargoes a year; complained of it because he believed it was the fault of the residents, who were bent upon trading with the interior for luxuries, instead of raising food for the new comers. This again seems fatal to the scheme, since the compulsory direction of industry, if it could be enforced, would be almost as bad as slavery at home; and there are no means of preventing the emigrants being wholly idle, if they are not allowed to work in their own way for their own objects. Mr. Madison admitted the great and various difficulties attending the scheme, and recurred to the expression that he was only "less in despair than formerly about slavery." He spoke with deep feeling of the sufferings of ladies under the system, declaring that he pitied them even more than their negroes, and that the saddest slavery of all was that of conscientious Southern women. They cannot trust their slaves in the smallest particulars, and have to superintend the execution of all their own orders; and they know that their estates are surrounded by vicious free blacks, who induce thievery among the negroes, and keep the minds of the owners in a state of perpetual suspicion, fear, and anger.

Footnote 12: "Society in America," vol. ii., p. 160.

Mr. Madison spoke strongly of the helplessness of all countries cursed with a servile population in a conflict with a people wholly free; ridiculed the idea of the Southern States being able to maintain a rising against the North; and wondered that all thinkers were not agreed in a thing so plain. He believed that Congress has power to prohibit the internal slavetrade. He mentioned the astonishment of some strangers, who had an idea that slaves were always whipped all day long, at seeing his negroes go to church one Sunday. They were gayly dressed, the women in bright-coloured calicoes; and, when a sprinkling of rain came, up went a dozen umbrellas. The astonished strangers veered round to the conclusion that slaves were very happy; but were told of the degradation of their minds; of their carelessness of each other in their nearest relations, and their cruelty to brutes.

Mrs. Madison's son by a former marriage joined us before dinner. We dined in the next room to Mr. Madison, and found him eager for conversation again as soon as we had risen from table. Mrs. M. is celebrated throughout the country for the grace and dignity with which she discharged the arduous duties which devolve upon the president's lady. For a term of eight years she administered the hospitalities of the White House with such discretion, impartiality, and kindliness, that it is believed she gratified every one and offended nobody. She is a strong-minded woman, fully capable of entering into her husband's occupations and cares; and there is little doubt that he owed much to her intellectual companionship, as well as to her ability in sustaining the outward dignity of his office. When I was her guest she was in excellent health and lively spirits; and I trust that though she has since lost the great object of her life, she may yet find interests enough to occupy and cheer many years of an honoured old age.

Mr. Madison expressed his regret at the death of Mr. Malthus, whose works he had studied with close attention. He mentioned that Franklin and two others had anticipated Malthus in comparing the rates of increase of population and food; but that Malthus had been the first to draw out the doctrine, with an attempt at too much precision, however, in determining the ratio of the increase of food. He laughed at Godwin's methods of accounting for the enormous increase of population in America by referring it to emigration, and having recourse to any supposition rather than the obvious one of an abundance of food. He declared himself very curious on the subject of the size of the Roman farms, and that he had asked many friends where the mistake lies in the accounts which have come down to us. Some Roman farms are represented as consisting of an acre and a quarter, the produce of which would be eaten up by a pair of oxen. The estate of Cincinnatus being three times this size, he could scarcely plough after having lost half of it by being surety. Either there must be some great mistake about our notion of the measurement of Roman farms, or there must have been commons for grazing and woods for fuel, the importation of grain from Sicily and other places not having taken place till long after. He asked by what influence our corn-laws, so injurious to all, and so obviously so to the many, were kept up, and whether it was possible that they should continue long. He declared himself in favour of free trade, though believing that the freedom cannot be complete in any one country till universal peace shall afford opportunity for universal agreement.

He expressed himself strongly in favour of arrangements for the security of literary property all over the world, and wished that English authors should be protected from piracy in the United States without delay. He believed that the utterance of the national mind in America would be through small literature rather than large, enduring works. After the schools and pulpits of the Union are all supplied, there will remain an immense number of educated sons of men of small property who will have things to say; and all who can write, will. He thought it of the utmost importance to the country, and to human beings everywhere, that the brain and the hands should be trained together; and that no distinction in this respect should be made between men and women. He remembered an interesting conversation on this subject with Mr. Owen, from whom he learned with satisfaction that well-educated women in his settlement turned with ease and pleasure from playing the harp to milking the cows.

The active old man, who declared himself crippled with rheumatism, had breakfasted, risen, and was dressed before we sat down to breakfast. He talked a good deal about the American presidents and some living politicians for two hours, when his letters and newspapers were brought in. He gayly threw them aside, saying he could read the newspapers every day, and must make the most of his time with us, if we would go away as soon as we talked of. He asked me, smiling, if I thought it too vast and anti-republican a privilege for the ex-presidents to have their letters and newspapers free, considering that this was the only earthly benefit they carried away from their office.

I will not repeat his luminous history of the nullification struggle; nor yet his exposition, simple and full, of the intricate questions involved in the anomalous institution of the American Senate, about its power of sanctioning appointments to office, and whether its weight should be increased by making its sanction necessary to removal from office; to which increase of power he was decidedly opposed. This part of his conversation, though very instructive to me at the time, would be uninteresting to the English reader in this connexion.

He declared himself perfectly satisfied that there is in the United States a far more ample and equal provision for pastors, and of religious instruction for the people, than could have been secured by a religious establishment of any kind; and that one of the greatest services which his country will be hereafter perceived to have rendered to the world, will be the having proved that religion is the more cared for the more unreservedly it is committed to the affections of the people. He quoted the remark of Voltaire, that if there were only one religion in a country, it would be a pure despotism; if two, they would be deadly enemies; but half a hundred subsist in fine harmony. He observed that this was the case in America, and that so true and pregnant a remark as this ought to be accepted as an atonement for many that would die of untruth. He went on to notice the remarkable fact that creeds which oppose each other, and which, in concatenation, would seem to be most demoralizing, do, by virtue of some one common principle, agree in causing the moral elevation of those who hold them. He instanced Philosophical Necessity, as held by Hume, Kaimes, Edwards, and Priestley. He told me how he had once been prejudiced against Priestley, and how surprised he was, when he first met the philosopher at Philadelphia, to find him absolutely mild and candid.

The whole of this day was spent like the last, except that we went over the house looking at the busts and prints, which gave an English air to the dwelling, otherwise wholly Virginian. During all our conversations, one or another slave was perpetually coming to Mrs. Madison for the great bunch of keys; two or three more lounged about in the room, leaning against the doorposts or the corner of the sofa; and the attendance of others was no less indefatigable in my own apartment.

The next morning we found our host in fine spirits. He described, with much vivacity, the variety of visits from strangers that he was subject to, saying that some were taxes and others bounties. He laughed about the ludicrous effect sometimes produced by an utter failure of sympathy in matters of grave pursuit; and told us of a ride he took with a young English geologist who was on a visit to him, and who spurred up to him in a fit of transport, holding a stone almost into his eyes, and exclaiming, "Graywacke, sir! graywacke, graywacke!" the host all the time being quite unable to understand or sympathize with this vehement rapture.

I glanced at the newspapers when they came in, and found them full of the subject of the quarrel with France, the great topic of the day. Mr. Madison gave me an account of the relations of the two countries, and of the grounds of his apprehensions that this quarrel might, in spite of its absurdity, issue in a war. This is all over now, but some of his observations remain. He said it would be an afflicting sight if the two representative governments which are in the van of the world should go to war; it would squint towards a confirmation of what is said of the restlessness of popular governments. If the people, who pay for war, are eager for it, it is quite a different thing from potentates being so who are at no cost. He mentioned that George the Fourth, as prince regent, was a large gainer in the last war, from his share of the Droits of the Admiralty, amounting to 1,000,000_l._ per annum; a pretty premium, Mr. Madison observed, to pay a king for going to war. He told me about the formation of the philosophical and humane agreement between Franklin and Frederic of Prussia, that merchant ships, unarmed, should go about their business as freely in the war as in peace. The Salem merchants, who were formerly in favour of war, and who suffered from captures in the course of it, were, on the present occasion, petitioning against war and for reprisals.

Franklin was near seventy when Mr. Madison first knew him. He went to the Hall of Congress in a sedan, and sat all the time, writing what he had to say, and getting it read, because he could not stand. He was soon afterward bedridden, when Madison was his frequent visiter. He had much self-command; and, when seized by severe pain, soon roused himself to converse almost as if it did not exist. One of the most striking points about him was his dislike of argument. He would listen to his adversary, and then overthrow him with an anecdote.

After avowing a very unfashionable admiration of Darwin's poetry, and declaring that the splendour of the diction put his imagination into a very gay state, Mr. Madison went into a speculation about what would eventually become of all existing languages and their literature; declaring that he had little hope of the stability of languages when terms of even classical derivation are perpetually changing their meanings with time. Then, by some channel, now forgotten, we got round to the less agreeable subject of national debts and taxation, when, as might be expected, Mr. Madison expressed his horror of the machinery necessary under a system of indirect levy, and his attachment to a plan of moderate expenditure, provided for by direct taxation. He remarked upon Pitt's success in obtaining revenue when every other man would rather have surrendered his plans than used the means he employed. He observed that king, lords, and commons might constitute a government which would work a long while in a kingdom no bigger than Great Britain, but that it would soon become an absolute government in a country as large as Russia, from the magnitude of its executive power; and that it was a common but serious mistake to suppose that a country must be small to be a republic, since a republican form, with a federal head, can be extended almost without limits, without losing its proportions, becoming all the while less, instead of more, subject to change. In a small republic there is much noise from the fury of parties; while in a spreading but simply working republic, like that of the Union, the silent influence of the federal head keeps down more quarrels than ever appear.

We were compelled to leave Montpelier while our intercourse was thus in full flow. Mr. Madison would not say farewell seriously, he was so confident that we should visit him again on our return from the South and West. I need not say that we earnestly wished to do so; but we never saw him again, not having an opportunity in the summer to diverge from our route so as to approach his residence. We heard excellent reports of him from time to time; of his vigour and cheerfulness, and of his application to political and literary pursuits. In the spring of the following year, however, he declined, and died on the 28th of June, 1836.

I have written of him under a strong desire to say nothing that he would have objected to have repeated, suppressing whatever he dropped relating to private persons or to public men yet living, while attempting to afford what gratification I could to the strong interest felt in England about this virtuous statesman. It is something that, living under institutions framed by the few for the subordination of the many, the English feel the interest they do about such men as Jefferson and Madison; men inspired by the true religion of statemanship, faith in men, and in the principles on which they combine in an agreement to do as they would be done by. This political religion resembles personal piety in its effect of sustaining the spirit through difficulty and change, and leaving no cause for repentance, or even solicitude, when, at the close of life, all things reveal their values to the meditative sage. Madison reposed cheerfully, gayly, to the last, on his faith in the people's power of wise self-government. As for Jefferson, he has left, in his last letter to Madison, a few sentences which we may be thankful for, as golden links added to the chain by which the glorious memories of these two good men are indissolubly connected:--