the governments of the states, and the states in which they were parties to the Constitution; between the rights of the parties, in their concurrent and in their individual capacities; between the several modes and objects of interposition against the abuses of power, and especially between interpositions within the purview of the Constitution, and interpositions appealing from the Constitution to the rights of nature paramount to all constitutions; with an attention, always of explanatory use, to the views and arguments which were combated, the Resolutions of Virginia, as vindicated in the Report on them, will be found entitled to an exposition, showing a consistency in their parts, and an inconsistency of the whole, with the doctrine under consideration.

"That the Legislature could not have intended to sanction such a doctrine, is to be inferred from the debates in the House of Delegates, and from the address of the two Houses to their constituents, on the subject of the Resolutions. The tenor of the debates, which were ably conducted, and are understood to have been revised for the press by most, if not all, of the speakers, discloses no reference whatever to a constitutional right in an individual state, to arrest by force the operation of a law of the United States. Concert among the states for redress against the Alien' and Sedition Laws, as acts of usurped power, was a leading sentiment; and the attainment of a concert, the immediate object of the course' adopted by the legislature, which was that of inviting the other states to concur in declaring the acts to be unconstitutional, and to co-operate by the necessary and proper measures in maintaining unimpaired the authorities, rights, and liberties reserved to the states respectively, and to the people.' That by the necessary and proper measures to be concurrently and co-operatively taken, were meant measures known to the Constitution, particularly the ordinary control of the people and legislatures of the states, over the Government of the United States, cannot be doubted; and the interposition of this control, as the event showed, was equal to the occasion.

"It is worthy of remark, and explanatory of the intentions of the Legislature, that the words 'not law, but utterly null, void, and of no force or effect,' which had followed, in one of the resolutions, the word ' unconstitutional,' were struck out by common consent. Though the words were in fact but synonymous with unconstitutional;' yet to guard against a misunderstanding of this phrase as more than declaratory of opinion, the word 'unconstitutional' alone was retained, as not liable to that danger.

"The published Address of the Legislature to the people, their constituents, affords another conclusive evidence of its views. The address warns them against the encroaching spirit of the General Government, argues the unconstitutionality of the Alien and Sedition Acts, points to other instances in which the constitutional limits had been overleaped; dwells upon the dangerous mode of deriving power by implication; and in general presses the necessity of watching over the consolidating tendency of the Federal policy. But nothing is said that can be understood to look to means of maintaining the rights of the states, beyond the regular ones, within the forms of the Constitution.

"If any further lights on the subject could be needed, a very strong one is reflected in the answers to the resolutions, by the states which protested against them. The main objection of these, beyond a few general complaints of the inflammatory tendency of the resolutions, was directed against the assumed authority of a State Legislature to declare a law of the United States unconstitutional, which they pronounced an unwarrantable interference with the exclusive jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the United States. Had the resolutions been regarded as avowing and maintaining a right, in an individual state, to arrest, by force, the execution of a law of the United States, it must be presumed that it would have been a conspicuous object of their denunciation.

"With cordial salutations,

"JAMES MADISON."

23

JAMES MONROE.

THE early years of the life of JAMES MONROE, fifth President of the United States, were passed at the place of his nativity, on the banks of the Potomac, in the county of Westmoreland, in what was, at that period,. called the colony of Virginia. It is somewhat remarkable that this state, where the traveller thinks that he beholds the feudal splendor of a former age, and is entertained with a magnificent hospitality, to be found in no other part of the union, and where, in the language of the British Spy, "here and there a stately aristocratic palace strikes the view, while all around, for many miles, no other buildings are to be seen but the little smoky huts and log cabins of poor, laborious, ignorant tenants," should have produced four of the chief magistrates of this republic. Old Virginia, besides the crown of her glory, Washington-her Jefferson, her Madison, and her Monroe-enrols upon her archives the name of another illustrious and venerable patriarch of freedom, which is a consecrated word upon the lips of every lover of his country. Who would not write with me, on the scroll which American liberty displays to the world, under the name of General Washington, that of his biographer? Venerated by all men, of all parties, is the present Chief Justice, John Marshall.

JAMES MONROE was born in September, 1759. His ancestors had for many years resided in the province in which he was born, and one of them was among the first patentees of that province. That this ancestor possessed some of those noble and generous qualities of the heart which distinguished his descendant, will be apparent from the following anecdote. At some warmly contested election, when Madison and Monroe were opposing candidates, the friends of both parties used the most strenuous exertions to bring every voter to the polls. When, by reasons of poverty, old age, or bodily infirmities, any voters were unable to be present, they were sent for and brought in carts and wagons, to the place of the election. The friends of Mr. Madison had succeeded in transporting from a considerable distance a very aged man. He was set down at the building in which the votes were to be cast, and soon began to hear some conversation about the candidates. The name of James Monroe at last struck his ear, and he inquired of the speaker if the man whom he had mentioned was the son of that Monroe who lived and died in the province many years before. Upon being informed that James was a grandson of that individual, the old man instantly exclaimed, "Then I will vote for James Monroe. His grandfather befriended me when I first came into the country, fed me, and clothed me, and I lived in his house. I do not know James Madison. I will vote for James Monroe !" So Mr. Monroe

received the old man's suffrage, though Mr. Madison's supporters had borne the trouble and expense of a long journey. The same noble spirit of benevolence, which prompted the grandfather to receive within his door a helpless stranger, may be traced in the actions of his illustrious descendant, who pledged the whole of his property for the credit of the nation, and was untiring in his efforts to reward revolutionary patriots.

Mr. Monroe was, at seventeen years of age, in the process of completing his classical education at the College of William and Mary, when the colonial delegates assembled at Philadelphia, to deliberate upon the unjust and manifold oppressions of Great Britain, declared the separation of the colonies, and promulgated the declaration of Independence. Had he been born ten years before, it is highly probable, that, instead of reading about the rise and fall of the Grecian republics, he would have been one of the signers of that celebrated instrument. His youth precluded him from taking any part in the controversies, which had agitated the country from the first promulgation of the stamp act. Indeed, his birth may be said to have been simultaneous with the faint dawn of American freedom; for he was only in his fifth year, when, upon the publication of that odious paper, the fires of resistance flashed, like beacons, from mountain to mountain. The British government continued to add new fuel to the flame, till on the fourth of July, 1776, the conflagration became universal. Upon the first formation of the American army, young Monroe-at that period eighteen years of age-left his college, and, repairing to General Washington's headquarters at New-York, enrolled himself in the army as a cadet in the regiment commanded by Colonel Mercer. He joined the army when every thing looked hopeless and gloomy. The number of deserters increased from day to day. The invading armies came pouring in; and the tories, a numerous class, now entirely extinct among us, not only favored the cause of the mother country, but disheartened the new recruits, who were sufficiently terrified at the prospect of contending with an enemy whom they had been taught to deem invincible. The besiegers continued to receive new accessions, while the besieged were almost reduced to the necessity of a dissolution. To such brave spirits as James Monroe, who went right onward undismayed through difficulty and danger, the United States owe their political emancipation. The young cadet joined the ranks, and espoused the cause of his injured country, with a firm determination to live or die with her strife for liberty. The fortitude of such a determination will be appreciated by those who reflect that our country, like the infant Hercules, was to strangle the serpents, or perish in the attempt.

Mr. Monroe shared all the defeats and privations which attended the footsteps of the army of Washington, through the disastrous battles of Flat Bush, Haerlem Heights, and White Plains. He was present at the succeeding evacuation of New-York and Long Island, at the surrender of Fort Washington, and the retreat through the Jerseys; "till," in the eloquent language of his great eulogist, "on the day devoted to celebrate the birth of the Savior of mankind, of the same year on which independence was proclaimed, Washington, with the houseless heads and unshod feet of three thousand new and undisciplined levies, stood on the western

bank of the Delaware, to contend in arms with the British lion, and to baffle the skill and energy of the chosen champions of Britain, with ten times the number of his shivering and emaciate host; the stream of the Delaware forming the only barrier between the proud array of thirty thousand veteran Britons and the scanty remnant of his dissolving bands." Mr. Monroe, after having participated in the adversities of the gallant defenders of their country, now rejoiced with them in their great and unanticipated success. At the battle of Trenton he led the vanguard, and, in the act of charging upon the enemy, he received a wound in his left shoulder. This wound, the scar of which remained till his death, was inflicted in the same battle where the life-blood of many a noble soldier streamed. The commander of his regiment, Colonel Mercer, 'fell. Haselet, and Porter, and Neal, and Fleming, and Shippen, were also, upon that memorable day, martyrs to the holy cause of freedom.

As a reward for his bravery, Mr. Monroe was promoted a captain of infantry; and, having recovered from his wound, he rejoined the army. He, however, receded from the line of promotion, by becoming an officer in the staff of Lord Sterling. During the campaigns of 1777 and 1778, in the actions of Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth, he continued aid-de-camp; but, becoming desirous to regain his position in the army, he exerted himself to collect a regiment for the Virginia line. This scheme, which was recommended by General Washington to the legislature of Virginia, by whom Captain Monroe was commissioned to act, failed, owing to the exhausted condition of the state. Upon this failure, he entered the office of Mr. Jefferson, at that period Governor, and pursued, with considerable ardor, the study of the common law. He did not, however, entirely lay aside the knapsack for the green bag; but, in the invasions of the enemy, served as a volunteer, during the two years of his legal pursuits. After the fall of Charleston, in 1780, he was appointed by Governor Jefferson a military commissioner, to examine into the condition of the southern army under De Kalb, as well as the situation of the states, and to determine, from the result of his observation, the probability of rescuing them from the enemy. Upon his return, the Governor and Executive Council were well pleased with his execution of such an important trust.

The time at length arrived, when, having endured the burden and heat of the day as a soldier, he was to enter upon a different field of action, as the supporter of a system of laws, in a government which he had fought and bled to establish. In 1782, he was elected from King George county a member of the legislature of Virginia, and by that body he was elevated to a seat in the Executive Council. He was thus honored with the confidence of his fellow-citizens at twenty-three years of age; and, having at this early period, displayed some of that ability and aptitude for legislation, which were afterwards employed with unremitting energy for the public good, he was, in the succeeding year, chosen a member of the Congress of the United States, on the ninth of June, 1783. On the thirteenth of December, he took his seat in the continental Congress, assembled at Annapolis, and on that day saw the illustrious leader of the victorious revolutionary army resign his commission into the hands of