t ever lived." This is the testimony of an intelligent man whose
opportunities of knowing the personal qualities of him of whom he was
speaking were more intimate than those of any other person could be
except Mrs. Madison. "He was guilty," says Hildreth, "of the greatest
political wrong and crime which it is possible for the head of a nation
to commit." One saw the private gentleman, always conscientious and
considerate in his personal relations to other men; the other judged the
public man, moved by ambition, entangled in party ties and supposed
party obligations, his moral sense blinded by the necessities of
political compromises to reach party ends. It is not impossible to
strike a just balance between these opposing estimates, though one is
that of a servant, the other that of a learned and judicious historian.

Mr. Madison left a legacy of "Advice to My Country," to be read after
his death and to "be considered as issuing from the tomb, where truth
alone can be respected, and the happiness of man alone consulted." It is
the lesson of his life, as he wished his countrymen to understand it.
"The advice," he said, "nearest to my heart and deepest in my
convictions is, that the Union of the States be cherished and
perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her
box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with his
deadly wiles into Paradise." The thoughtful reader, as he turns to the
first page of this volume to recall the date of Mr. Madison's death,
will hardly fail to note how few the years were before these open and
disguised enemies, against whom he warned his countrymen, were found
only in that party which he had done so much, from the time of the
adoption of the Constitution, to keep in power.

FOOTNOTE:

[Footnote 15: Paul Jennings, who was a slave and the body servant of Mr.
Madison, says in his _Reminiscences_: "It has often been stated in
print, that when Mrs. Madison escaped from the White House, she cut out
from the frame the large portrait of Washington (now in one of the
parlors there) and carried it off. This is totally false. She had no
time for doing it. It would have required a ladder to get it down. All
she carried off was the silver in her reticule, as the British were
thought to be but a few squares off, and were expected every moment.
John Suse (a Frenchman, then doorkeeper, and still [1865] living), and
Magraw, the President's gardener, took it down and se