amount of unsuspecting credulity than has fallen to ordinary men to believe that the systematic mind of Colonel Hamilton ever led him and his readers into such great confusion; and the existence of that confusion confirms, if confirmation were needed on that subject, the testimony which has been received of the resolute firmness with which, to his latest days, the principal author of The Fœderalist maintained the sole authority of the original text of that work.
It remains only, in this connection, to notice the assumed authority under which the several alterations from the original text of The Fœderalist, were made by the editor of this edition of that work.
This work had been written by three persons and addressed to a particular, specified body-politic, for the purpose of inducing that body to do that which it had previously declared, informally, through the greater number of its members, individually, it would not do; and terms had been submitted, through the arguments and statements of The Fœderalist, by which it was hoped that community might become reconciled to "the new system," and approve, instead of reject, the proposed Constitution. The terms, it is said, had been accepted; the reconciliation of many members of that body-politic, it is admitted, had been effected; and "The People of the State of New York," to some extent at least, taking the interpretation, by "Publius," of that Constitution, as the true one, had determined to acquiesce in its establishment between itself and the other States of the Union. At the date of the publication of these volumes, therefore, The Fœderalist was no longer within the control of the authors themselves, much less within that of any other person. It was no longer an executory writing; it had been executed, in spirit if not in fact; and as well might the five distinguished men, or any of them, who had reported the Declaration of Inde-
