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.[1] 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[2] 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. - ↑ 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. Yet 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,
