and then cancelled by Washington, and are now seen restored at the foot of the pages in the printed copy of the autograph. Some of these are, probably, the paragraphs which Washington, in his letter of 25th August, told Hamilton that he should expunge. “I shall expunge,”—not that he had expunged them,-as being "unimportant," &c. &c. One of them is a long paragraph, so marked in the printed copy of the autograph. Hamilton had retouched them all in his corrected and amended copy, or in his revision of the original draught, just as he had retouched other paragraphs of that draught, and had left Washington to expunge them, if he should see fit; but Washington had not touched a word before expunging them, but in two instances, to be noticed hereafter. It looks as if Washington had subsequently intended to retain them, but had afterwards cancelled them, in conformity with his first intention.

All the appearances in the autograph-and some of them will be further corroborated-show that it was Hamilton's revision of his amended copy of the original draught that Washington first copied in extenso, and then proceeded to alter and to cancel. This, I repeat, is only presumption. The main question will not be disturbed by its not being well founded; though, if it be well founded, it becomes demonstrative of the whole question.

The gentleman who is the present proprietor of the autograph, and whose remarks upon it are printed as a preface to the copy in Mr. Irving's work, after seeing the original draught of Hamilton, and reading certain letters between Washington and Hamilton, in the possession of Mr. John C. Hamilton, has expressed, with caution and modesty, the following opinion: "It seems probable that this "—namely,

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the autograph copy of Washington-" is the very draught "sent to General Hamilton and Chief Justice Jay, as related "in the letter of the latter." And again: "It appears from "these communications,”—the letters between Washington and Hamilton,—“that the President, both in sending to him a rough draught of the document, and at subsequent dates, "requested him to prepare such an address as he thought "would be appropriate to the occasion; that Washington "consulted him particularly and most minutely on many points connected with it; and that, at different times, "General Hamilton did forward to the President three

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draughts of such a paper. The first was sent back to him, "with suggestions for its correction and enlargement; from "the second draught, thus altered and improved, the manu"script now printed may be supposed to have been prepared by Washington, and transmitted for final examination to "General Hamilton and Judge Jay; and with it the third draught was sent to the President, and may, probably, yet "be found among his papers."-The concluding remark of this gentleman is all that we shall further extract: “The "comparison of these two papers"-Hamilton's original draught, which the writer speaks of as "probably the "second of these draughts," compared with Washington's autograph-" is exceedingly curious. It is difficult to con"ceive how two persons could express the same ideas, in "substantially the same language, and yet in such diversity "in the construction of the sentences and the position of the "words."

I entirely agree with this gentleman in a part of these remarks. It has been shown to be my supposition, that the autograph copy of Washington was prepared from the

amended or corrected copy of Hamilton's original draught, altered and improved by his second, which I have called his revision. The differences between the original draught and Washington's autograph copy-noticed in this gentleman's closing remark just quoted—are easily explained, upon the theory that Washington adopted Hamilton's revision, and not Hamilton's original draught, as the exemplar of the autograph copy.

But I am compelled to express my dissent from the other remarks and suggestions of the proprietor of the autograph. The material fact, as he states it, is, in my opinion, rightly stated; but the history of Hamilton's agency, and the transmission of the autograph copy to Hamilton and Jay, or of any copy of the Farewell Address prepared by Washington, after Hamilton's amended and revised copy had been sent to him, are matters which I think this gentleman would have regarded differently, if he had had all the letters and papers in his own hands, for deliberate consideration and comparison. It is a patient and minute review of the whole of them, side by side, including Mr. Jay's letter to Judge Peters, that has obliged me to adopt the opinion, that the supposed transmission is not only negatived by the correspondence, but that it disregards the dates of the letters, the course of the transaction as it is shown by the letters, and, most of all, the statement of Mr. Jay himself.

The first draught sent by Hamilton to Washington was not sent back to Hamilton, "with suggestions for its correction and enlargement." Washington's letters of the 10th and 25th of August are decisive to the contrary. Instead of suggesting enlargement of that draught, the letter of the 10th August was only apprehensive of its being too large as

it was; and instead of suggesting correction,-though the paper was sent back, at Hamilton's request, for revision,the letter of 25th August says that Washington “should "have seen no occasion himself for its undergoing a re"vision." It says that he should expunge all that was marked in the paper as unimportant, &c., and called attention to some marginal notes with a pencil, to obtain Hamilton's mature consideration of the sentiments referred to. With these very limited qualifications, the letter was a full adoption of Hamilton's draught in all points.

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It is also a misapprehension to suppose that Hamilton's "second draught," from which "the manuscript now printed may be supposed to have been prepared by Washington," was "transmitted for final examination to General Hamilton "and Jay."

There was no such transmission. The letters and dates are plainly to the contrary. Time alone considered, there was not sufficient time. The draught was sent back to Washington, with a letter from Hamilton dated the 6th of September, and the Farewell Address was copied with Washington's own pen, and was signed and dated for the gazette and for recording in the Department of State, the 17th of September, 1796.

It must be recollected, that fifteen years after Mr. Jay had been consulted about the corrections and emendations of "the "President's draught," and the only time, so far as his letter imports, that he ever was consulted in regard to any draught of the Farewell Address, he speaks in his letter of its having been some time before the Address appeared; and we know that the Farewell Address appeared on the 19th September, 1796, in a public gazette of Philadelphia. The interval had

impressed Mr. Jay's memory. It was long enough to have made an impression which had lasted nearly fifteen years. It is not conceivable that any interval whatever would have been impressed as a distinct fact upon Mr. Jay's memory, between the time of conference upon an autograph paper, the exemplar of which was received by Washington on the 7th of September at the earliest, copied with his own pen after that, and then transmitted to Hamilton and Jay, reviewed, corrected, and amended by Hamilton, a day fixed for an interview with Jay to consult about it, and that subsequent day given to the reading and approval of the emendations, and after that review returned to Washington and more fully corrected by him, before the 17th September. Steam speed is not equal to this. I say nothing of Mr. Jay's omitting to write a word of its being an autograph of Washington, which he would have known and noticed as soon as any one, nor of Hamilton's saying in the interview, that he had thought it "best to write the whole over with amendments," &c. We cannot under such suggestions abandon Hamilton's letter of 10th August.

But further: from the 6th of September, there was no letter from Washington to Hamilton, but one of the same date, which requested Hamilton to send the paper by Mr. Kip, if not sent before, until the 2d November, six weeks after the Farewell Address had been printed.* Mr. Jay's

* It is in this letter of 2d November, 1796, from Washington to Hamilton, a letter of three pages, referring to the case of the minister of France, Adet, and asking Hamilton's opinion on the course the Government should take in regard to him, that Washington thus speaks of his unrestrained confidence and freedom of correspondence with Hamilton: "As I have a very high opinion of Mr. Jay's judgment, candor, honor, and "discretion (though I am not in the habit of writing so freely to him as to you), it would