Page:Federalist, Dawson edition, 1863.djvu/50

xlviii "'All the rest by Mr. .'

"A corresponding key has long been in the possession of several gentlemen here; furnished, soon after The Federalist appeared in volumes, by Mr., a man of letters and a political writer, since dead, but at that time in habits of intimacy with Gen. , and all the principal men of that day, and who asserted, on his personal knowledge, that it was correct.

"From this it appears that the Washington list is incorrect as to every one of the writers named: For instance: No. 64 was claimed by Mr. which certainly belonged to Mr., who was long denied to have written more than four papers: Nos. 18, 19, and 20, were claimed by him, although thus proved to belong jointly to himself and Mr. ; and no less than twelve entire papers, namely, from 49 to 55, and 62, 63, also claimed by , were solely written by . The result of this investigation was immediately published in this paper, and the substance of it copied into most of the other papers in the United States. A little dissatisfaction was manifested in the National Intelligencer, at the time, with a promise that the subject should be resumed at some future day, when the ' indisputable authority' should return from the South. The next we hear worth attention, is from the article in the Washington City Gazette, above quoted, and copied into The Commercial Advertiser; in which, the editor, without taking the least notice of the errors which had been detected by gen. papers, to which Mr. friend had expressly appealed, and by which he was consequently forever concluded, undertakes to repeat that he will put the question in dispute, forever at rest, by giving a list 'furnished by a [nameless] gentleman [at second hand] who received it from Mr. himself,'