Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/200

182 MADISON park of 13 acres, is a rather imposing but hybrid edifice of white limestone crowned by a central dome rising 200 feet above the level of the basement; it was originally built in room of an earlier capitol in 1860, at a cost of $400,000, and has since been greatly enlarged. About a mile to the west of the capitol stand, on the high grounds known as College lull, the buildings of the Wisconsin university, an institution dating from 1850, and attended by about eight hundred students. Other buildings of note are tlie United States post-office and court-house, the soldiers orphans home, and at some distance from the city tb.3 State lunatic asylum. The Wisconsin Historical Society has a library of 58,000 volumes. Various lines belonging to the Chicago and North-Western Railway and to the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St Paul Railway meet at Madison ; and the city has not only a good general trade, but manufactures ploughs and other agricultural implements, waggons, woollen goods, and flour. The population, which was only 1525 in 1850, appears in the three later censuses as 6611, 9176, and 10,325. When the site was selected (1836) for the capital of the territory of Wisconsin it was altogether unoccupied. MADISON, JAMES (1751-1836), fourth president of the United States, was born in King George county, Virginia, on the 16th of March 1751, during a temporary visit of his mother to her relatives. His father was the owner of large landed estates in Orange county, Virginia, and was a man of distinction in the county. In 1769 Madison entered Princeton College in New Jersey, and graduated as B.A. in 1771 ; but he remained another year at Princeton study ing under the direction of President Witherspoon. His close application to study had seriously impaired his health, which continued delicate for many years. Pieturning to Virginia in 1772, he pursued his reading and studies, how ever, with the same zeal as before, the subjects chosen being particularly those of philosophy, theology, and law. Madison had as yet taken no active part in the exciting politics of the time. In 1775, however, he was chairman of the committee of public safety for Orange county, and in the spring of 1776 he was chosen a delegate to the new Virginia convention, which formed a constitution for the State. Failing to be re-elected in 1777, he was chosen in that year a member of the council of State, in which he took a prominent part until the end of 1779, at which time he was elected a delegate to the Continental Congress, later the Congress of the Confederation. It was in this assembly that Madison first displayed those powers which ultimately made him the founder of the constitution of the United States. He was in Congress during the final stages of the revolutionary war, and one year after the establishment of peace, at a time when the confederation was in a chronic "state of collapse, occasioned by the neglect or the refusal of the States to cespond to the requisitions of Congress for supplies for the federal treasury, Madison was among the first to advocate the granting of additional powers to Congress. In 1781 he favoured the amendment of th.3 articles of confederation, giving to Congress the power to enforce its requisitions ; and in 1783 he zealously advocated the proposed plan by which the States should grant to Congress for a period of twenty-five years the authority to levy an impost duty. Accompanying this plan was an address to the States drawn up by Madison. This address is one of the ablest of his state papers, and with others of this period placed him in the front rank of American statesmen. In November 1783, the constitutional limit of his term as deputy having expired, Madison returned to Virginia, and the next year he again took a seat in the legisla ture of that State. As chairman of the judiciary committee, he was particularly instrumental in revising the statute laws of the State. He opposed the further issue of paper money by the State, and tried to induce the legislature to repeal the law confiscating British debts. As a member of the legislature of Virginia, Madison did not lose sight of the interests of the confederacy. He looked beyond mere local interests, believing that the highest good of the State would best be advanced through a respected central Government. Virginia and Maryland possessing a common jurisdiction over the waters of the Potomac river and the Chesapeak Bay, it became necessary to come to some agreement between them as to the com merce and navigation upon those waters. On Madison s proposal, commissioners of the two States met at Mount Vernon in March 1785. Maryland having proposed to- invite the States of Pennsylvania and Delaware to join in the arrangement, Madison saw an opportunity for a more extended and general concert in regard to commerce and trade, and proposed that all the States should be invited to send commissioners to take into consideration the trade of the United States. This resolution was adopted by the legislature of Virginia; and thus was inaugurated the move ment which led to the meeting at Annapolis in 1786, and later to the convention at Philadelphia in 1787. The palpable defects in the government of the confederation had led Madison to make an extended study of con federacies, ancient and modern. Among his papers was found one bearing the title Notes on Confederacies, but he gave the results of these researches more at length in Nos. 17, 18, and 19 of The Federalist. His conclusion was that no confederacy could be long successful which acted upon States only, and not directly upon individuals. As the time for the meeting of the convention approached, he drew up an outline of a new system of government to take the place of the articles of confederation. As expressed in a letter to General Washington of the 16th of April 1787, it was in substance that the individual sovereignty of the States is totally irreconcilable with the aggregate sovereignty, and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it was unattainable. He sought therefore some middle ground, which might at once support a due supremacy of the national authority and not exclude the locnl authorities when ever they might be subordinately useful. He proposed, to this end, to change the basis of representation in Congress from States to the population. The national government should have authority in all cases requiring uniformity. In addition to this positive power, the national government should have a negative on all State laws " as heretofore exercised by the kingly prerogative." This negative, lie thought, would best be vested in the senate, which should be a comparatively permanent body. The national supremacy should extend to the judiciary depart ment and to the militia. The legislature should be composed of two branches one, the more numerous, elected for a short term, the other, few in number, for a longer term. A national executive should be provided for, and the States should be guaranteed against both internal and external dangers. The right of coercion should be expressly declared. "But the difficulty and awkwardness of operating by force on the collective will of a State rendered it desirable that the necessity of it should be precluded." He thought the negative on State laws might answer the purpose. This was a weak point in Madison s theory of government. He thought, with Jefferson, that there could be found some means of governing without resorting to force. Lastly, to give the new system its proper validity and energy, a ratification must be obtained from the people, and not merely from the legislatures." These ideas, somewhat modified and extended in details, formed the Virginia plan of government, presented in the convention by Edmund Randolph ; and this plan, again, became the basis of the extended deliberations in the con vention which resulted in the constitution adopted in that body on the 17th of September 1787. In the convention, as a delegate from Virginia, Madison took a leading part in the debates, of which he kept notes which were afterwards published by order of Congress. It was his influence which largely shaped the form of the final draft of the constitution.

But f he labour was not finished with this draft ; the con-