Page:Essays in Historical Criticism.djvu/174

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knowledge that an intelligent man would acquire in a few months' residence. Furthermore there are similar references to several other States in No. 57.

As for the insertion of an additional paragraph in No. 56 when it was republished in the edition of 1788, the conclu- sions Mr. Ford draws are by no means so sure as they seem to him. When I wrote my article I took it for granted that Lodge was right when he said the insertion was first made in the 1802 edition, but the fact, first brought out by Mr. Ford, that it was made in 1788 puts a different face on the matter. The number was published Feb. 19, and Madison did not leave New York till March 4. According to the announce- ment made March 22, a part of the second volume at least was already in the hands of the printers. It is not at all improbable that that insertion may have been made with Madison's assent, or by him at Hamilton's suggestion. We are informed that Hamilton was very scrupulous not to make changes in numbers not his own when the edition of 1802 was prepared, but any changes in Madison's numbers for the 1788 edition could have been made with his consent. In any case, with this possibility, the argument of Mr. Ford falls far short of conclusiveness. If the change were made with Madison's consent, the retention of the insertion by Madison in 1818 is explained.

Finally, Mr. Ford assumes that a memorandum found among Hamilton's papers and identified by Lodge (I, 497) as a " Brief of Argument on the Constitution of the United States," was in reality a syllabus of The Federalist, and he prints it as such in his edition. He goes further, and sug- gests that it was probably drawn up "as a guide for Madi- son," and concludes that it is a valuable piece of evidence as to the authorship of the disputed numbers.^ These assump- tions will not stand examination. They reveal very clearly that some of Mr. Ford's conclusions are mere haphazard con- jectures, and not based on sound critical method. It is in- trinsically improbable that Hamilton would have thought it 1 See pp. xxxiii and xliii-xlvii.