as the
message was restored to its original form by the President when its
possible interpretation was pointed out to him, it is impossible now to
judge whether Madison may not have been quite innocent of the intention
imputed to him. It is plain enough, however, that Hamilton was sore and
disappointed at Madison's conduct, and that he was quick to seize upon
any incident that justified him in saying, "The opinion I once
entertained of the candor and simplicity and fairness of Mr. Madison's
character has, I acknowledge, given way to a decided opinion that it is
one of a peculiarly artificial and complicated kind." To justify this
opinion, and as an evidence of how bitter Madison's political and
personal enmity toward him had become, he refers in the same letter to
Madison's relation to Freneau and his paper, "The National Gazette." "As
the coadjutor of Jefferson," he wrote, "in the establishment of this
paper, I include Mr. Madison in the consequences imputable to it."

The story of Freneau need not be repeated here at length, having been
already told in another volume of this series of biographies. If there
were anything in that affair, however, for which Jefferson could be
fairly called to account, Madison may be held as not less responsible.
When the charge was made that he had a sinister motive in procuring for
Freneau a clerkship in the State Department, and in aiding him to
establish a newspaper, Madison frankly related the facts in a letter to
Edmund Randolph. He had nothing to deny except to repel with some
indignation the charge that he had helped to establish the journal in
order that it might "sap the Constitution," or that there was the
slightest expectation or intention on his part of any relation between
the State Department and the newspaper. Freneau was one of his college
friends, a deserving man, to whom he was attached, and whom he was glad
to help. There was nothing improper in commending one well qualified to
discharge its duties for the post of translator in a government office;
and as those duties, for which the yearly salary was only two hundred
and fifty dollars, were light, there was no good reason why the clerk
should not find other employment for leisure hours.

If Mr. Madison, having said this, had stopped there, his critics would
have been silenced. But when he added that he advised his friend with
another motive besides that of helping him to start a newspaper, then,
as the expressive mod