ould hear of it, for he was not a man who made idle threats. He was
sometimes arrogant and overbearing in manner, was always ready for a
fight, which he rather preferred to quietude, and had little disposition
to spare an enemy. These were not conciliating qualities likely to
temper the asperities of political warfare, and they may have provoked
even Madison, mild-mannered and almost timid as he was, to unusual heat.

All this, of course, is aside from the question whether the party, to
which Mr. Madison had given his allegiance, was right or wrong. On that
point there may be an honest difference of opinion. It is apart also
from the question whether a man may not honestly change sides in
politics, notwithstanding the suspicion that always follows him who runs
from one side to the other, when in neither has there been any change
in principles or measures. It is quite possible that he may be governed
by the most sincere convictions; and if he obeys them and abandons old
friends for new ones, or consents to be friendless, it is the strongest
proof the statesman or politician can give of a moral courage which
ought to gain for him all the more respect. But whether that respect
must be denied to Mr. Madison, because he was governed by other and
lower motives, is the question. There had been no change of political
principles either in the party he had left or the party he had joined;
but each was striving with all its might to adapt the old doctrines to
the altered condition of affairs under the new Union. The change was
wholly in Mr. Madison. That which had been white to him was now black;
that which had been black was now as the driven snow. Why was this? Had
he come to see that in all those years he had been wrong? Or had he
suddenly learned, not that he was wrong, but that he had mistaken a
straight and narrow path for the broad road which would lead to the goal
he was seeking? These are not pleasant questions. He had served his
country well; one does not like to doubt whether it was with a selfish
rather than a noble purpose. But of any public man who changed front as
he changed, the question always will be, What moved him? Not to ask it
in regard to Madison is to drop out of sight the turning-point of his
career; not to consider it is to leave unheeded essential light upon
one side of his character. For his own fortunes the choice he made was
judicious, if to "gain the whole world" is always the wisest and best
thing to