214 JAMES MADISON 



urgent desire, he became Secretary of State. In accept- 

 ing this appointment, he entered upon a new career, in 

 many respects different from that which he had hitherto 

 followed. His work as a constructive statesman 

 which was so great as to place him in the foremost 

 rank among the men that have built up nations was 

 by this time substantially completed. During the 

 next few years the constitutional questions that had 

 hitherto occupied him played a part subordinate to 

 that played by questions of foreign policy, and in this 

 new sphere Mr. Madison was not, by nature or train- 

 ing, fitted to exercise such a controlling influence as 

 he had formerly brought to bear in the framing of our 

 federal government. As Secretary of State, he was an 

 able lieutenant to Mr. Jefferson, but his genius was 

 not that of an executive officer so much as that of a 

 lawgiver. He brought his great historical and legal 

 learning to bear in a paper entitled " An Examination of 

 the British Doctrine which subjects to Capture a Neu- 

 tral Trade not Open in the Time of Peace." But the 

 troubled period that followed the rupture of the treaty 

 of Amiens was not one in which legal arguments, 

 however masterly, counted for much in bringing angry 

 and insolent combatants to terms. In the gigantic 

 struggle between England and Napoleon, the com- 

 merce of the United States was ground to pieces as 

 between the upper and the nether millstone ; and in 

 some respects there is no chapter in American history 

 more painful for an American citizen to read. The 

 outrageous affair of the Leopard and the Chesapeake 

 was but the most flagrant of a series of wrongs 

 and insults, against which Jefferson's embargo was 

 doubtless an absurd and feeble protest, but perhaps at 



