numbers written by Mr. Madison" were "corrected by himself," this insertion of Hamilton's was retained.
From the preceding facts, in which, so far as possible, all evidence that is of value has been included, without regard to whether it told for or against a particular man, it appears that Madison probably wrote Nos. 49 to 51, and Hamilton Nos. 52 to 58 and Nos. 62, 63, of those essays of which we find their testimony in direct contradiction. Accordingly they are in this edition assigned as above, but since the evidence cannot be termed conclusive, a question mark has been placed before the name attached to each disputed number.
But to whomever the disputed numbers are assigned, or whether they are left in doubt, the value and power of The Federalist were due to its undertaker, and not to his assistants. It is asserted that Hamilton requested the insertion of the sentence in the preface of the edition of 1802 to the effect that the contributions of Madison and Jay were "not unequal in merit to those which are solely from the pen of General Hamilton." In this opinion Hamilton was probably singular, for the few essays of Jay, and Madison's dry-bones on long dead confederacies, and his "theoretic" arguments, would have long since been forgotten, but for their inclusion in the essays written by Hamilton. No one who has carefully read the essays can fail to agree with George Ticknor Curtis when he asserted that "it was from [Hamilton] that The Federalist derived the weight and the power which commanded the careful attention of the country," and with the Hon. James Bryce, when he wrote: "Of these writers Hamilton must be deemed the leading spirit, not merely because he wrote by far the larger number of letters, but because his mind was more independent and more commanding than Madison's."
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The Federalist has been many times reprinted, and an elaborate catalogue of these editions is given in Ford's "Bibliography and Reference List of the History and
