learning of scholars, their productions are greatly inferior to his. The papers of Hamilton in The Federalist are marked by nearly the same superiority, both as to richness, elegance and force, which is exhibited by those of Addison in the Spectator. He wrote the whole work, except Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 54, which are from the pen of Mr. Jay; Nos. 10, 14, and 37 to 48 inclusive, from that of Mr. Madison; and Nos. 18, 19, and 20, in the composition of which he and Mr. Madison were associated.[1] Had he never been the author of any other work, his fame as a writer would have been conspicuous and durable. For, although it must be acknowledged that he has, in various instances, in The Federalist, violated the rules of classical composition, that production would, notwithstanding, have done honour to the pen of Bolingbroke or Burke."
As may readily be supposed, this paragraph immediately arrested the attention of the friends of Mr. Madison; and by them it was generally and openly condemned. At length one of them appealed to the public, through the columns of the newspaper press; and in the following letter he joined issue with Mr. Delplaine and the friends of General Hamilton:—
"To the editors:—
"In looking over Delaplaine's Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans, I dis-
- ↑ In Volume II. of the Repository, (page 173,) Mr. Delaplaine contradicted this statement concerning the authorship of The Fœderalist, as well as the two statements which General Hamilton had left respectively in his own copy of the work and in the office of Judge Benson. It is evident that while the material employed in the first volume had been received from the friends of General Hamilton, that used in the second was obtained from Mr. Jáy or his friends; and that the difference arose from the imperfect recollection of one of those gentlemen concerning the authorship of "No. 64."
