Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/171



THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 151

particular friend, and finally to Mr. Gideon." Hamilton's lapse of memory he attributes partly to " the period of time,

not less than. years, between the date of the Federalist

and that in the memorandum." {Writings^ IV, 176-177.) All this is decisively against the unsupported hypothesis that Madison did not draw up his list until twelve years had elapsed.

Mr. Ford tries to fix the date of the earliest Hamilton statement of the authorship, that given to Chancellor Kent, by concluding that " as he is spoken of in the memoranda as 'General Hamilton,' it must have been made while he held that rank, or in the years 1798 or 1799." But the fact that Chancellor Kent calls Hamilton "General" fixes the date only in one direction, ^. e., Kent would not have called Ham- ilton " General " at a date prior to his holding that rank ; nor would he, on the other hand, cease to call him so after he had left the army. Such titles stick to men the rest of their lives. Dawson, for example, in his Introduction, styles Hamilton "General," but that does not indicate that Daw- son wrote in 1798 or 1799.

The passage just quoted from Madison's letter to Walsh gives the probable reason why he did not enter the discussion earlier.

In regard to Mr. Ford's next point, relating to the sub- division of the work, I will refer to my previous discussion of that matter (pp. 117-119).

Mr. Ford tries to show that it was his professional engage- ments that led Hamilton to suffer Madison to write twelve consecutive numbers, but Madison was early invited to take part, and the real question is not why he wrote so many after No. 37, but why he wrote so few in the first part (see above, p. 117). Jay did not write more because of his illness during that winter. Mr. Ford's parallel example in April is not well taken, for the reason that although no more numbers were published in the journals for over two months, the rest of the numbers were written in April or possibly earlier. May 4, Hamilton wrote Madison: "The second \i, e.,