ife he drank no wine at
all." Consideration for his own health, always feeble, may have led him
to this abstinence; but it is rather remarkable that a man of his
position should have held, fifty years ago, the advanced notions which
he certainly did upon this question, and that the doubt only of the
possibility of enforcing laws for prohibiting the manufacture and sale
of spirits seems to have withheld him from proposing them.

Social as well as moral questions he discussed with evident interest and
without passion or prejudice. Aside from the party meaning of the term,
he belonged to that school of democracy, now extinct, which believed
that the highest object of human exertion is to improve man's condition,
and to secure to each the rights which belong to all. He did not agree
with Robert Owen as to methods; but neither did he reject his schemes as
inevitably absurd because they were new and untried. One would not
gather from his correspondence with Frances Wright that this was the
notorious Fanny Wright whom the world chose to consider, as its way is,
a disreputable and probably wicked woman, inasmuch as she proposed some
radical changes in its social relations which she thought would be a
gain. He gave much attention to popular education, and all the influence
he could command was devoted, through all the later years of his life,
to the establishment and well-being of the University of Virginia.
Education, he maintained, was the true foundation of civil liberty, and
on it, therefore, rested the welfare and stability of the republic. It
is probable that he would have drawn a line at difference of color then,
simply because of the difference of condition implied by color. But he
made no such distinction in sex. Sixty-three years ago he saw his way
quite clearly on a question which is a sore trial now to many timid
souls. The capacity of "the female mind" for the highest education
cannot, he said, "be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by
its works of genius, of erudition, and of science." The capacity, he
assumed, carried with it the right. In short, he was ready always to
consider fairly questions relating to the well-being of society which
since his time have deeply agitated the country; and he approached them
all much in the spirit of the reformer who hopes to leave the world a
little better and happier because he has lived in it.

"Mr. Madison, I think," says Paul Jennings, "was one of the best men
tha