Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/175



THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE FEDERALIST 155

necessary to outline for Madison the line of argument to be followed in defending the details of a Constitution which he more than any one else had made, and in the making of which Hamilton had taken little active part. It is doubtful if Mad- ison would have accepted any such subordinate position. John C. Hamilton {Republic^ III, 519) identifies this piece as the draft of the latter part of Hamilton's speech of July 13. Inasmuch as the things to be discussed in a speech de- fending the Constitution and in The Federalist are the same, the heads to be taken up would necessarily be almost identical. To fit this "Brief" to his hypothesis, Mr. Ford rearranges the heads or topics. Even then the likeness is noteworthy in only a part of the topics. The decisive argument against Mr. Ford's conjecture is the fact that some of the heads reproduce the topics of some of Hamilton's earlier numbers. Compare, for example, "D" of the "Brief" with The Fed- eralist^ No. 9; also. Powers II. with No. 22, and Powers I. with No. 23. Second, while the historical examples of re- publics cited by Madison in No. 39 could not be very different from those which Hamilton might cite, owing to the limited number of well-known republics, yet the similarity between the two documents is mainly in the use of this common material. The portion of 39 which has been so frequently quoted is the analysis of the federal and national elements of the Constitution, and of this famous analysis there is not a vestige in Hamilton's "Brief."

The question, however, is absolutely settled by the fact this syllabus reproduces in skeleton form an argument elaborated in one of the earliest Madison papers. No. 14, published Nov. 30. Toward the end of the syllabus we find these apparently meaningless figures under the caption :

u

Exaggerated ideas

of extent :"

"N.

45

42

S.

31 14

31 11

438

973

764i

mean 868f by