metaphor or figure of speech, which is not a perfectly familiar one, that it might not be accused of artifice or insincerity. It is perfectly accurate, in the best style of an elevated state paper, its general propositions everywhere so qualified, in a natural and easy manner, as to make them irrefutable, and without a sentence that is dogmatical, or is averred upon personal authority,-every proposition being sustained by both reason and persuasion, the conscience of the writer going on step by step to the end, in union with his intellect. If Hamilton had not deeply loved and respected Washington, he could not have so clothed his abstract with his draught. But this is not all the merit or the claim.

If this is not authorship, in some sense, I know not what authorship is, and it covers the entire paper, Washington's thoughts, and Madison's thoughts, and all. It seems, indeed, to be rather a case of complex and skilful authorship in Hamilton, as we think it must be conceded to be by every man who has tried his pen in composition, to make a regular work from irregular or unconnected materials, to expand them into new forms, and to give them bearing throughout upon one great and cardinal point, the union of the people: the only object for which it was worth Washington's while to give his counsels to the country, all else in the Address being ceremony and valediction. It may not have been so difficult for Hamilton to do this, as it might have been for others; for Washington's materials were not irregular to the eye or the mind of Hamilton. They were all incorporated in his own mind in their just order and bearing; and his work was to exhibit their order, rather than to form it. But it is his great praise that he did it with simplicity, fidelity, and affection; and it will be no deduction from the praise of

Washington, if the memory of Hamilton shall live forever in the work.

But we have had in view another object. In the progress of this question about the authorship of the Farewell Address, it has been thought useful by Mr. Sparks to suggest, that as a mere literary performance, though able and excellent, it is neither extraordinary, nor such as if disconnected from the name of Washington, would have excited much curiosity about the author, nor in any degree superior to many other papers known to be written by each of the persons named.

There would be some difficulty, perhaps, in proving the postulate that is implied in this last comparison. No writings so known have been vouched to its aid. From the positive part of the averment, I hope it is not presumption to express my dissent. If state papers, or great public papers like this, are to be classed among works of literature at all, and doubtless they sometimes may be, they must be subject to those laws of taste which particularly respect the end or object to be attained, in connection with a rather didactic manner of attaining it. There is necessarily some compression in this method; and making due allowance for this, or rather looking at the whole work of the Farewell Address in this direction, the general judgment of men has, in this dissent, probably concurred. Its simplicity, its purity, its grouping, its light and shade, the elevation of its tone, and its perfect transparency of meaning, make it a work of extraordinary literary merit in the order or class to which it belongs. We are not to compare it with papers, where the fields of imagination and of illustrative fact have been wide open to the writer, and embellishments from every quarter,

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.

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