hereafter refer to as the preserved paper, is described by Mr. Sparks, in the Appendix to the twelfth volume of Washington's Writings, at page 391, as follows: "It is certain, "however, that it was Washington's original idea to embody "in the Address the substance and the form of Mr. Madi"son's draught, and to make such additions as events and the change of circumstances seemed to require. A paper of "this description has been preserved, in which is first in"serted Mr. Madison's draught, and then a series of memoran"da or loose hints, evidently designed to be wrought into the "Address. These are here printed as transcribed from the original manuscript:" and then follows a succession of

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paragraphs, with the heading HINTS OR HEADS OF TOPICS, filling about two, pages and a half of the Appendix.

Mr. Sparks's imperfect knowledge of some of the papers I have referred to, which were not published until after the completion of his edition of Washington's Writings, and perhaps something in the very considerable dissimilitude, at least in form, between the preserved paper and the published Farewell Address, induced him, probably, to regard it as uncertain whether this paper was the same which Washington showed, and afterwards sent, to Hamilton, as his draught of the Address. In this state of doubt or disbelief, he omitted to print the entire paper in extenso. Some remarks in the initial part of it, introductory of Madison's draught, might have given some pain to the surviving family of Mr. Madison; and if the paper was in reality, what Mr. Sparks seems to have thought it was, a speculative paper, or a paper containing mere memoranda or hints of topics for an address, and not a definite presentment of Washington's thoughts and language, it may seem to have come

within the discretion of an editor, either to select it or not, for publication. But the publication of several papers on the subject of the Address, since that edition of Washington's Writings, particularly Hamilton's original draught, and Washington's letters to Hamilton, having made it not probable merely, but morally certain, that this preserved paper is the very draught which was sent by Washington to Hamilton, by a letter of the 15th May, 1796, Mr. Sparks, upon request, immediately supplied to Mr. John C. Hamilton copies of the beginning and conclusion of the paper, and has always, I learn, been ready so to communicate copies of such of these papers as were in his possession, on this subject; and by means of them the whole draught has been completed, and appears in the Appendix to this Inquiry. There can be no reasonable doubt that the preserved paper at large, is the original draught of Washington, which his letter to Hamilton refers to. It was also, in some degree, a completed paper, as far as Washington personally meant to go. It begins with a formal address to the people, by the description of "Friends and Fellow-Citizens;" and it concludes with Washington's signature in the usual form, but without date. Its identity is specially established by an alteration on the first page of it, which is noticed in Washington's letter to Hamilton, and is made by a line drawn. through certain expressions, and through a name at the foot? of the first page. As the whole matter is now, at least, historical, there can be no propriety in leaving any part of a writing incomplete, which is so manifestly a principal hinge of the main question. The alteration in the paper has become, also, a matter of complete insignificancy, in the personal relation, to Mr. Madison or to any one else, even if,

under any circumstances, the contrary aspect of it can be thought to justify a departure from the right line of history, in regard to the acts of great public men, who have left the records of them for inspection.

There are one or two particulars in which Mr. Sparks, by his omission to print the concluding paper, and by remarks upon a part of it which he does print, has unintentionally done some injustice to Washington. Nothing could have been further from his intention.

From the concluding part of the preserved paper, Hamilton has taken some rather touching thoughts of Washington, in regard to his long life of service, and to the affection which he bore to the land that had been his birthplace, and the birthplace of his ancestors for four generations. He also has taken from it his reference to the Proclamation of Neutrality, and other matters. A considerable portion of the conclusion, Hamilton, with Washington's approbation, has omitted; because, as a public paper, looking to distant posterity, as well as to the time present, it was thought best to turn away from the temporary causes of irritation, which Washington, with some animation, had referred to as a party injustice to him. One ought not to question what two such judgments as Washington's and Hamilton's finally approved. But the concluding part of Washington's draught appears to be of the greatest importance to his personal biography. It will enable the public to know him, even better than he is generally known, and neither to love nor to honor him less. It may show us, that like Achilles, he was vulnerable in one part, not, however, in a lower part of his nature, but in the sensitive tegument of the higher; and that the arrows of party had just so far raised the skin, that his arm was up,

and had given the wave of defiance to his enemies, preparatory to a blow, which his deep love of the whole country arrested. It was magnanimous as well as wise in Hamilton, who was a copartner and sufferer in the conflict, to exclude this portion of the paper from the Farewell Address; but it colors Washington to the life, and with the colors of a grand and noble nature, not the less impressive because it was human nature.

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In another particular, Mr. Sparks's remarks deserve reconsideration. Being made, probably, under the apprehension that the preserved paper was a mere study by Washington for a larger work, Mr. Sparks has regarded the second or principal division which he has printed in his Appendix, as being "a series of memoranda or loose hints, evidently designed to be wrought into the Address:" whereas they contain the great body of Washington's contribution to the Farewell Address, and are the basis of Hamilton's expansions, on the most important points. The thoughts, and sometimes the language, appear in their appropriate places in Hamilton's draught; and with Madison's draught, or rather Washington's letter to Madison, from which that draught was framed, they are the entire contribution of Washington, except as he may have added to the copy of Hamilton's original draught, after its final revision and return to him. I am compelled to differ from Mr. Sparks on this point as well as on one or two others; but nevertheless, I trust, with all becoming deference to his opinions.*

*There is a fine tone of criticism in a most able and interesting work, now near its completion, Rawlinson's Translation of Herodotus, with Appendices containing Essays on important epochs and topics in Ancient History. It is not for the appropriateness

That portion of the preserved paper to which the remarks of Mr. Sparks are applied, and which is indicated in his

of any of these dissertations to the subject of this Inquiry, but for the author's manly freedom of dissent from opposite opinions, without the least bitterness, and for his discriminating praise without flattery, that I extract a portion or two of his remarks upon passages in the two best English histories of Ancient Greece. I wish them to be regarded as exhibiting my own state of feeling in any dissent I may express from the opinions of Mr. Sparks, or of any other writer upon the subject of the Farewell Address.

When speaking of the extent to which Mr. Grote supposes that the institutions of Solon permitted all the free inhabitants of Attica except actual aliens, to vote for Archons and Senators, and to take part in the annual decision of their accountability, whether these inhabitants were or were not members of the four tribes, Mr. Rawlinson says, "To me it seems that the admission of these persons to citizenship at this time, "is highly improbable, and that if it had been a part of the Solonian scheme, we must "have found distinct mention of it."-" Mr. Grote, in his account of the Clisthenic "legislation, seems to admit all that is here contended for; but his statements in that place appear to me to be wholly inconsistent with those contained in his account "of the Solonian Constitution:" and then, in a note, the author cites the inconsistent passages.-3 Rawlinson's Herodotus, 406. But soon after, in speaking of his own notes on the modern portion of the history of Athens, the author says, "Those who require more, are referred to the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters of Mr. Grote's history, "which contain the most accurate digest of the ancient authorities, and the most philo"sophical comments upon them, to be found in the whole range of modern literature.” -Ibid. 412.

So also as to Bishop Thirlwall's history. "If the democratic character of the Solonian "Constitution has been insufficiently apprehended by some of our writers, by others "it has been undoubtedly exaggerated to a greater extent. To ascribe to Solon (as 'Bishop Thirlwall does) the full organization of the Heliæa, as it appears in the time "of the orators, the institution of the Heliastic oath, of the Nomothets and Syndics, "and of that bulwark of the later constitution, the graphe paranomon, is to misunder"stand altogether his position in Athenian constitutional history, and to fail in dis "tinguishing the spirit of his legislation from that of Clisthenes."-Ibid. 405. On the other hand, when the author is speaking of the internal changes in the Constitution of Sparta, which grew out of the first Messenian war and conquest, he says, “Perhaps "there are scarcely sufficient data to reconstruct the true history of the period; but the "view taken by Bishop Thirlwall of the changes made, and of the circumstances "which led to them, is at once so ingenious and so consistent with probability, that "it well deserves at least the attention of the student."-" Mr. Grote, without ex