11 the New York state legislature assembled, and Hamilton, who was a candidate for membership of Congress, was involved in a political campaign akin to the modern senatorial election. These joint occupations necessarily made such drafts upon his time that he could not continue The Federalist, and that there should be no break in it Madison assumed the entire task of carrying it on. The term of the court ended on January 25, and on February 22 Hamilton was elected to the Continental Congress. We therefore have the choice of inferring that Hamilton at once resumed his work' on The Federalist or else that he resumed it when Madison went south.'

Turning from these extraneous facts to those which can be drawn from the essays themselves, the first point deserving consideration relates to a condition implied by joint authorship. A moment's thought will suggest that a work produced in this manner must force upon each writer a little difficulty in maintaining in a nominally consecutive work an appearance of homogeneity. Where an essay was to follow one written by the same author sequence was possible, but when it was to succeed one he had not written or read, the task was not easy. Necessarily then, one would expect a certain disjointedness of connection, and this is the very thing discovered on examining the points where a new writer assumed the pen. Thus No. 10, by Madison, is an essay on faction, yet though the preceding letter was on the same subject, it

author be right he must be too much engaged to make a rapid progress in what remains. The Court of Chancery and the Circuit Court are now sitting." Turning to The Federalist we find at this very point a gap of over two months in the publication of a number.

No. 48 was published on February 2: Madison began his southern journey on March 4.

'A very valuable piece of evidence on this question of authorship has been buried from sight by the mistakes of Hamilton's two editors in labeling a paper printed in both editions as a "Brief of Argument on the Constitution of the United States," though the manuscript of the paper bore no heading whatsoever. Study of it should have clearly indicated that it is a preliminary outline of The Federalist from the point that Hamilton was interrupted in his composition by his legal and political occupations, and it was presumably drawn up as a guide for Madison in his continuance of the task. See post.

does not continue the first, but is a distinct essay. Following this are three essays on the defects of the confederation, by Hamilton, and then comes No. 14, by Madison, which is really a continuation of No. 10, and is therefore an absolute break in the subject of both the letters which precede and follow it. If the authorship of these six numbers were not known it would be possible to decide, from internal evidence, at what points a different writer undertook the labor. Nor does the obvious difference between a man opening an essay which follows one by himself or one by another, fail to show itself at every change of writer that is known to have occurred. By examining the opening phrases of Nos. 10, 14, 18, and 37, in which Madison began his contributions, the disconnection with the preceding numbers is obvious, and the same is true of Nos. 2 and 64 in which those by Jay began. But most marked of all are the opening sentences with which Hamilton resumed his part, and as they are of value, in the present consideration, they are quoted here:

6. The last three numbers of this work have been dedicated to an enumeration of the dangers". . .

II. The importance of the union in a commerical light".

15. "In the course of the preceding papers, I have endeavored"...

21. Having, in the last three numbers, taken a summary review"

Here, then, in three cases, are evident attempts to attach new subjects to previous essays so as to imply a sequence that was absent in the subjects and treatment. With this as a clew, if we run through the letters from Nos. 37 to 63 (after which there is no dispute), but two natural breaks are to be found-at Nos. 47 and 52, which severally begin:

47. "Having reviewed the general form of the proposed government"

52.

From the more general inquiries pursued in the preceding four last papers

If the analogy of the previous openings is allowed as evidence, it is at one of those two points, then, that we should conclude that a new writer had begun.

With these facts to work upon, an examination of the five essays, Nos. 47 to 51, shows them to be a discussion of the apportionment of the powers of government among the three departments. The general extent of these powers had been already discussed in the immediately preceding numbers, and a more minute survey of their relation to the three departments is the subject of the remaining essays almost to the end. They can, therefore, be considered as belonging to either. From Madison himself, however, we get a clew, for in No. 41 he distinctly assigns them to the second series. But whether this is accepted as proof, an examination of the five forces the inference that they were all written by one

man.

The authorship of Nos. 37 to 48 is given to Madison by every known list, so it is difficult to avoid concluding that the apparent break between Nos. 46 and 47 merely represent the beginning of a new subject by the same pen, and not a change of writer. Furthermore we have the excellent authority of James Kent for the statement that "Mr. Hamilton told me that Mr. Madison wrote 48 and 49, or from Pa. 101 to 112 of Vol. 2d." No. 50 was almost surely written by the

"The constitution proposed by the convention may be considered under two general points of view. The First relates to the sum or quantity of power which it vests in the government, including the restraints imposed on the states. The Second, to the particular structure of the government, and the distribution of this power, among its several branches.

"Under the first view of the subject two important questions arise: 1. Whether any part of the powers transferred to the general government be unnecessary or improper? 2. Whether the entire mass of them be dangerous to the portion of jurisdiction left in the several states?"— Opening paragraphs of No. 41.

Yet

One curious fact, to which attention has never been called, is that Taylor, in his New View of the Constitution (1823)" divides the authorship at No. 46, giving No. 47 and all that follow to Hamilton. though he was the friend and correspondent of Madison, and though this book was a well-known one to the latter, neither publicly nor privately, so far as is known, did Madison correct Taylor's conclusion.

same hand which penned No. 49, and No. 51 was certainly composed by the writer of No. 50. In addition these essays discuss the powers from the purely historical and theoretical standpoint, views for which Madison had strong predilections. A candid survey of the facts, therefore, will, we think, lead every unbiased student to assign them to one author, and the balance of evidence certainly points to James Madison.'

But the same internal evidence shows that with No. 52, a minute and homogeneous examination of the structure of the government is begun, in which the three departmėnts are analyzed point by point. That one man wrote Nos. 52 to 58, that a second contributed Nos. 59 to 61, that then the original writer resumed his work in Nos. 62 and 63, and that finally the task was again assumed by the second writer, and completed by him, the essays themselves give no evidence. With the exception of the insertion of one essay (No. 64, on the treaty making power of the Senate, which was given to Jay, because of his diplomatic experience), it is difficult to resist the conviction that the whole remainder of the letters are the work of one writer and one prone to take the practical rather than the theoretical view of things.

1 One rather singular piece of evidence contradictory to the above conclusion is furnished by the comparative length of the different essays. When examining in the newspapers the original text of The Federalist my attention was called to the fact that the letters contributed by Hamilton rarely overran a column and a half, while those by Madison seldom filled less than three columns. I therefore carefully estimated the lengths of each man's work, to find that the average length of the fifty essays unquestionably written by Hamilton is 1800 words; of those certainly written by Madison, 3000 words. Madison wrote in the undoubted numbers (No. 10, 14, 37-46,) but two essays of less than 2300 words, and Hamilton but once wrote one of 3000 words, except in the last five, when an evident attempt was made to finish the series up quickly. Testing Nos. 49 to 58 and Nos. 62 and 63, the average length is found to be 1800 words. No. 47 contains 2700 words; No. 48, 1800; No. 49, 1600 words; No. 50, 1100 words; No. 51, 1800 words; No. 52, 1700 words. It is needless to add, to anyone who has studied the writings of the two men, that the differences between the two styles in this very respect is most noticeable. Madison is wordy and seems to have little ability to express an idea with brevity. Hamilton is direct and compact to an extent which made him a famous draftsman in his day, and few men have ever equaled him in his power of stating a thing tersely.

Examining Nos. 52 to 58 and 62 and 63, in detail, we find several small facts which throw light on the question of authorship. In Nos. 52, 56, 57, 58, and 63, are citations of examples in English history, like references being numerous in many of Hamilton's essays, but only two passing references to Great Britain are to be found in any of those written by Madison The same difference is noticeable in the papers prepared by the two writers for use in the federal convention-Hamilton's "Brief" of his speech, and Madison's "Notes," the first citing British example frequently, the latter not once."

In Nos. 53, 54, and 56, are paragraphs discussing taxation, and the first and last of these letters also discuss the militia, both of which subjects Hamilton had familiarized himself with, and which he had made his own topics in the earlier essays.

No. 54 is a discussion of slave representation, written nominally from the Southern point of view, but really from the Northern. Not once did Madison allude to this famous clause in the Virginia convention, but Hamilton spoke a résumé of this essay in that of New York. The cause for this is obvious: the "federal number" needed no defense in Virginia; in New York, the contrary was true. But an even greater reason for Hamilton's taking up this particular point was the fact that on February 7, 1788, there had appeared in the New York Journal a letter entitled "The Expositor," savagely attacking the slave compromise and charging of Hamilton himself that "The delegate from this state acceded to it alone on the part of this state," and adding, "I cannot help thinking it a most daring insult offered to the freemen and freeholders of this State, besides being an unparalleled departure from his duties to this state as well as to the United States." Necessarily this attack could not

'I omit here the résumé in No. 47, because from what has already been shown, this number cannot be positively ascribed to Madison. In Madison's supplementary notes, prepared for use in the Virginia convention, he cites British example, but this was after The Federalist had called his attention to the value of the material.