om your business and
philosophical amusements.... You will make them respect and admire you
more by showing your indignation at their follies, and by keeping them
at a becoming distance." It was his loss, however, and our gain. He was
one of the men the times demanded, and without whom they would have been
quite different times and followed by quite different results. The
sombre hue of his life was due partly, no doubt, to natural temperament;
partly to the want of health in his earlier manhood, which led him to
believe that his days were numbered; but quite as much, if not more than
either, to a keen sense of the responsibility resting upon those to whom
had fallen the conduct of public affairs.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 4: The members of Congress were paid, at that time, by the
States they represented. Virginia allowed her delegates their family
expenses, including three servants and four horses, house rent and fuel,
two dollars a mile for travel, and twenty dollars a day when in
attendance on Congress. The members were required to render an account
quarterly of their household expenses, and the State paid them when she
had any money.]

CHAPTER III

IN CONGRESS

Madison had grown steadily in the estimation of his colleagues, as is
shown, especially in 1783, by the frequency of his appointment upon
important committees. He was a member of that one to which was intrusted
the question of national finances, and it is plain, even in his own
modest report of the debates of that session, that he took an important
part in the long discussions of the subject, and exercised a marked
influence upon the result. The position of the government was one of
extreme difficulty. To tide over an immediate necessity, a further loan
had been asked of France in 1782, and bills were drawn against it
without waiting for acceptance. It was not very likely, but it was not
impossible, that the bills might go to protest; but even should they be
honored, so irregular a proceeding was a humiliating acknowledgment of
poverty and weakness, to which some of the delegates, Mr. Madison among
them, were extremely sensitive.

The national debt altogether was not less than forty million dollars. To
provide for the interest on this debt, and a fund for expenses, it was
necessary to raise about three million dollars annually. But the sum
actually contributed for the support of the confederate government in
1782 was only half a million dollars. Th