Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/229

JAMES MADISON 185 tioned "nullification" as the suitable remedy, and one that any state might employ. In the Virginia resolutions there was neither mention nor intention of nullification as a remedy. Mr. Madison lived to witness South Carolina s attempt at nullification in 1832, and in a very able paper, written in the last year of his life, he conclusively refuted the idea that his resolutions of 1798 afforded any justification for such an attempt, and showed that what they really contemplated was a protest on the part of all the state governments in common. Doubtless such a remedy was clumsy and imprac ticable, and the suggestion of it does not deserve to be ranked along with Mr. Madison s best work in constructive statesmanship; but it certainly con tained no logical basis for what its author unspar ingly denounced as the "twin heresies" of nullifica tion and secession. In 1799 Mr. Madison was again elected a mem ber of the Virginia assembly, and in 1801, at Mr. Jefferson s urgent desire, he became secretary of state. In accepting this appointment, he entered upon a new career, in many respects different from that which he had hitherto followed. His work as a constructive statesman, which was so great as to place him in the foremost rank among the men that have built up nations, was by this time sub stantially completed. During the next few years the constitutional questions that had hitherto occu-