moral and classical, have been within his reach. The path of the Farewell Address was almost severely straight, and the deviations by Hamilton to give it flexure, without too wide a departure, have been managed with great skill. Perhaps this impression of the paper is partly the effect of early association, having read it as a college senior with infinite delight, within a week probably after its first publication; and perhaps also it is as much a moral as a literary judgment, for it is a paper of infinite discretion, as well as of great political wisdom, which I admit it owes as much to Washington as to Hamilton, though perhaps as to perfect discretion, not primarily. But regarding it only as a work of composition, the general opinion both of educated men and of statesmen seems to be, that it is not only very able, but that in the category of state papers it ought to be regarded as classical. Such a paper would have caused a most reasonable curiosity to know the author, if it had been written suppositiously, and would have made the fortune of the writer if he had been discovered.

But the paper is not seen in its greatest magnitude, when regarded merely as a literary performance. It rises to an elevation higher than most kinds of literature, in commanding a view of the relations of all the parts of this country to each other, and of the whole to foreign nations, and in carrying the eye to the distant future, as the witness and proof of its counsels and admonitions. In this aspect, it is both a platform and a prophecy, a rule for administration, and a warning to the whole country; and it owes this extensively to Hamilton, though primarily and fundamentally to Washington. Its large and pointed references to the spirit of party, and especially in the sectional or State relation, seem

to have been written with a special apprehension of what is now unfolding before us, though it must be admitted that there is one present and most dangerous aspect of that spirit, which the universal love of freedom then prevalent in the country, kept back from the contemplation of either Washington or Hamilton, as it did from that of the citizens of the United States generally, until many years afterwards.

There is one point of great political concernment which, at least in appearance, is passed over by both Washington and Hamilton,—the point of that drying and wilting interpretation of the Constitution, which has assumed the name of STATE RIGHTS,-that portion of the doctrine, I mean, which requires express words in the Constitution, or necessary implication, to carry power to the Government of the United States-the same jealous disposition in those who favor that rule of construction, which kept us out of a Federal Constitution for five years after the public enemy had left us free to make one; and seems to be exhausting by desiccation, legislative and judicial, the best blood the Constitution possesses, and which, as the Constitution of a Public State and United Nation, it ought to possess, for the nourishment of its powers of internal government,-a doctrine by which no one of the States has gained anything, nor can gain anything that will not be counterpoised by the gain of

* For a clear and very interesting account of the struggle between State Rights and a comprehensive and effective Union, I refer to "The History of the Republic of the "United States of America, as traced in the writings of Alexander Hamilton and his Cotemporaries, by John C. Hamilton,”- -a noble and fearless tribute of filial reverence, in the form of authentic history, to a most able, frank, honest, and honorable man, and one of the great men of his AGE, and of the WORLD.

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other States, and by which the true Federal strength of all the States is, and ever must be, seriously impaired.

The Farewell Address does not notice the point explicitly; but it is there nevertheless. It must be recollected that this kind of interpretation was the occasion of sharp controversy in Washington's first cabinet, and that the views of Hamilton in regard to it, in opposition to Jefferson and the Attorney-General, Randolph, obtained Washington's sanction, after long and deliberate consideration; and as Washington was aware that Hamilton had been represented as being desirous in the Convention to bring on a consolidation of the States, though with no justice whatever, and most certainly with less justice than Madison might have been, he probably deemed it best to take no explicit notice of the point in his Farewell Address, and Hamilton, as his representative, only glanced at it, by referring to the debility of the Government, of which he probably regarded this jealous interpretation as one of the principal promoters. Yet there is one clause in the Address which we may infer from strong evidence was introduced by Washington himself, that may have been intended to cover this ground, and was substituted by him for a clause in Hamilton's original draught, a little altered in Hamilton's revision. The three clauses will be cited presently.

Having now exhibited the direct proofs which bear upon the formation of the Farewell Address, I proceed to notice a great and perhaps conclusive indirect proof, which by a remarkable oversight, has been for some years thought by many persons to show, that the labor of bringing this great paper into the world, was the travail of Washington alone, who has proved his own composition of it by manifold marks

in the autograph copy, which was handed to the printer, by whom it was published in September, 1796. It is a copy of this document, with its erasures or cancellations restored and placed at foot, first printed under the direction of Mr. Lenox, the proprietor, for private distribution, and recently published in the Appendix to the fifth volume of Mr. Irving's Life of Washington, which enables me to bring together in this place a notice of the alterations on the face of the autograph copy, and of some of the opinions which have been expressed upon the question of authorship, in the belief that they are corroborated by those alterations.

Mr. Sparks's remark in view of these alterations, is, I submit, a misapprehension. After making a general statement of facts in regard to the preparation of the Address by Washington, and to Hamilton's agency in correcting and improving it, a statement which he believed to include all that was known with certainty upon the subject, Mr. Sparks proceeds to say: "It proves that an original draught was "sent by Washington to Hamilton; that the latter bestowed "great pains in correcting and improving it; that during "this process several communications passed between them; "and that the final draught was printed from a copy," by which I understand him to mean a copy of Washington's draught so corrected, " containing numerous alterations in "matter and style, which were unquestionably made by "Washington." Washington's Writings, vol. xii, p. 396.

Mr. Sparks does not appear to have seen Hamilton's original draught, or Hamilton's correction and revision of that draught, nor to have become aware of them, before he wrote this paragraph, or before he completed the paper in his Appendix, upon Washington's Farewell Address. I

should infer, also, that at that time he had not seen the whole correspondence between Washington and Hamilton on that subject; though he certainly had access to General Hamilton's letters, which were among Washington's papers. He appears to have had no knowledge of any draught by Hamilton, or of anything from Hamilton, but his corrections and improvements of Washington's draught, the specific character of which draught he had previously remarked, there were no means of ascertaining. It is due to him to state these circumstances; because independently of them, it will be found impossible to comprehend the process by which he arrived at the conclusion, that the numerous alterations in matter and style of that copy from which the Address was printed, "were unquestionably made by Washington;" unless he used this language with a meaning which few readers would apprehend from it.

It has been made perfectly clear already, that the autograph copy of the Farewell Address was not made from a copy of Washington's draught corrected and improved. The letter of 25th August, 1796, from Washington to Hamilton, proves that Washington selected Hamilton's draught in preference to his own, whether in the original or in the corrected form; and it will be made equally clear, that the alterations made by the autograph copy, of the anterior draught from which it was taken, are not "numerous "alterations in matter or style" by Washington, in the ordinary sense of these words, but are, to nearly the whole extent of the change, a mere abridgment, by cancellation of certain paragraphs of Hamilton's exemplar, from which the autograph copy was made. The judgment of Mr. Sparks was founded, no doubt, upon a state of the facts as they were