responding with the expectations of Mr. Madison when he charged the first of these works with those legacies, have evidenced that their publication could not be engaged in by me, without advances of funds and involving of risks, which I am not in a situation to make or incur.

"Under these circumstances, I have been induced to submit for your consideration, whether the publication of these Debates be a matter of sufficient interest to the people of the United States to deserve to be brought to the notice of Congress. And should such be the estimation of the utility of these works by the representatives of the nation, as to induce them to relieve me individually from the obstacles which impede it, their general circulation will be insured, and the people be remunerated by its more economical distribution among them. "With high respect and consideration,

"To the PRESIDENT of the UNITED STATES."

"D. P. MADISON.

On the 8th December, immediately after the meeting of Congress, the President transmitted the preceding correspondence to the Senate and House of Representatives with the following message:

"WASHINGTON, December 6, 1836.

"To the Senate and House of Representatives:

"I transmit herewith to Congress, copies of my correspondence with Mrs. MADISON, produced by the resolution adopted at the last session by the Senate and House of Representatives, on the decease of her venerated husband. The occasion seems to be appropriate to present a letter from her on the subject of the publication of a work of great political interest and ability, carefully prepared by Mr. MADISON'S Own hand, under circumstances that give it claims to be considered as little less than official.

B

"Congress has already, at considerable expense, published, in a variety of forms, the naked journals of the Revolutionary Congress, and of the Convention that formed the Constitution of the United States. I am persuaded that the work of Mr. MADISON, considering the author, the subject matter of it, and the circumstances under which it was prepared-long withheld from the public, as it has been, by those motives of personal kindness and delicacy that gave tone to his intercourse with his fellow-men, until he and all who had been participators with him in the scenes he describes have passed away-well deserves to become the property of the nation, and cannot fail, if published and disseminated at the public charge, to confer the most important of all benefits on the present and succeeding generations, accurate knowledge of the principles of their Government, and the circumstances under which they were recommended and embodied in the constitution, for adoption. "ANDREW JACKSON."

The message of the President was referred to the Joint Library Committee, who, on the 24th January, 1837, reported a resolution authorizing that committee "to contract for and purchase, at the sum of thirty thousand dollars, the manuscripts of the late Mr. MADISON, referred to in the letter from Mrs. MADISON to the President, dated 15th November, 1836, and communicated in his message of the 6th December; conceding to Mrs. MADISON the right to use copies of the said manuscripts in foreign countries, as she might think fit."

In the Senate, on the 18th February, Mr. ROBBINS of Rhode Island advocated the passage of the resolution in the following remarks:

"I consider this work of Mr. MADISON, now proposed to be given to the world under the patronage of this Government, as the most valuable one to mankind that has appeared since the

days when Bacon gave to the world his Novum Organon. That produced that revolution in analytics, which has occasioned the immense superiority of the moderns over the ancients in the knowledge of Nature, and in the improvement of the condition of human life-the fruit of that knowledge. With Bacon it was a mere theory; a theory, however, which he fondly cherished, and confidently believed wonld be prolific, as it has been, of the most magnificent results; but in the hands of Newton, and of his other disciples and followers, it became a practical guide to those astonishing discoveries which, in their consequences, have, among other things, converted those elements of Nature, before supposed only to be controlled by the same Almighty hand which formed them, into the ministers and agents of man, obedient to his will and subservient to his use. It has enabled man to draw the veil from the face of Nature; to inspect her mechanism; and to avail himself of her principles for the augmentation of his own power. It has given him power after power; and is still going on to give him power upon power, as his researches go on in exploring her boundless fields, and in making discovery upon discovery; and to this growing increase of human power, no human being can now assign the possible limits. True, it has not enabled man, as it was fabled of him by the poets of old, to steal the fire from the heavens; but it has enabled him to do more and better-it has enabled him to become an humble pupil in the school of the Divine Artist; and, by studying his models, to copy his agencies, though at the immeasurable distance which separates a finite from the Infinite Being.

"As this Organon of Bacon has been the beacon-light of mankind to guide him to true philosophy, and to the improvement of his physical condition, so will this work of MADISON, as I trust and predict, be his beacon-light to guide

him to the true science of free government, and to the im. provement of his political condition;-the science of free government; the most difficult of all the sciences, by far the most difficult, while it is the most important to mankind; of all, the slowest in growth, the latest in maturity. Not the science which has penetrated the causes and explained to mankind the phenomena of the heavens is so difficult; that has been found of easier and more rapid attainment. Indeed the difficulties to be overcome in evolving this science are so great, that we are to wonder less at its tardy advances, than at its final success. In the first place, it requires the deepest and most perfect insight into the nature of man: of man not only in his general nature, but as modified by society, which every where has superinduced and clothed him with a second nature denominated habit; and that as diversified as the country he inhabits. Then it requires that faculty of comprehensive combination, which is the rarest of all the gifts of God to man, and which, whenever and wherever it appears, seems destined to produce an era in human affairs; a faculty of combining into a whole, where the elements to be combined are so various as to be almost infinite; a whole, perfect in relation to all its parts, and its parts perfect in relation to the whole. Besides, the perfect model of a free government is not like the perfect model of any other science. Of every other science, the perfect model any where is the perfect model every where, and every where alike is perfect. The perfect watch at Washington, for instance, is the perfect watch at Canton, and so all over the globe; but not so the perfect model of a free government: in that, though the principles are the same every where, the form varies as the circumstances vary, of the people by whom it is established; to which circumstances it must always be adjusted and made to conform.

"Here, with us, the difficulties to be overcome in this achieve. ment, from the nature of the elements to be combined, were stupendously great. In looking back to those difficulties, that they were overcome at all, appears to me now little less than a prodigy; and it still fills me with astonishment. For here a combination was required that would produce a structure perfectly anomalous in the history of human governments; and such a structure was produced, and as perfect as it was novel. Here were a people, spread and spreading over a vast territory, stretching and to stretch almost from the rising to the setting sun-this scattered and countless multitude were to be ruled in freedom as one people, and by the popular will— that will was to be uncontrolled in itself, and controlling every thing. Such an achievement, the most enlightened friends of freedom and human rights, in all countries, and in all ages, had deemed to be morally and physically impossible. Besides, here were thirteen States, and all the other States to be formed out of that vast territory, without being destroyed as States, to be so combined as to form, in the general aspect, but one simple government, with all the unity and energy of one simple government; powerful alike to assert and maintain all their rights as a nation against all other nations, and the rights of every individual, all over this boundless domain, against every aggressor; that is, a government equally fitted and efficient for all the purposes of peace and war. Such an achievement, often before, and under much more favourable circumstances, because upon a much more limited scale, had been attempted, but never before accomplished; as is but too well attested by the histories and the destinies of all the confederacies that before had ever existed on the earth.

"Those confederacies had all proved signal failures as effective Governments, both in war and peace; and entirely