dress was identically Washington's draught corrected by Hamilton. But in volume as well as plan, the original draught of Hamilton, and the corrected draught of Washington, were entirely unlike; and some long passages which Hamilton may have left in the corrected draught of Washington, are excluded altogether from his own, particularly those on the subject of political calumny and party abuse, which squared better with parts of Washington's plan than they did with his own, and which are therefore excluded from it.

There were few wiser men in this country, and no purer man anywhere, than John Jay. There is a halo round his venerable head, which we recollect, that makes it exceedingly painful to represent him as having erred so capitally in his conclusions, from the partial evidence before him; especially as his professional astuteness, and the wariness of his judgment, in judicial or quasi-judicial cases of importance, was one of his eminent characteristics. Something, perhaps, in Judge Peters's letter to Mr. Jay may have tended to narrow the scope of his inquiry, or a little to surprise his accurate judgment in this matter; but I have looked in vain to the Life of Mr. Jay by his son, and elsewhere, for further elucidation of the subject.

It is from this letter, perhaps,-probably from Judge Peters's exhibition of it, or repetition of its contents, at a day several years before the publication of Mr. Jay's Life by his son,—that has arisen the uncomfortable feeling I have adverted to, in regard to the authorship of the Farewell Address, and with it the opinion or sentiment of Mr. Sparks, that in some way it concerned the honor of Hamilton, to destroy all traces of his connection with it.

160 HAMILTON'S COURSE IN REGARD TO HIS ROUGH ORIGINALS.

There is not the least evidence in the world that the obliteration of such traces ever entered into the heart or mind of Washington; and no man of understanding who shall carry or trace back such a thought to its root or principle, can fail to perceive that it will infer a weakness in Washington, that is out of keeping with his whole life, and with the explicit language of the Farewell Address itself.

Hamilton appears to have preserved the abstract and original rough draught, because there was no motive to destroy them. He could not have destroyed them with the supposed motive, without feeling his own respect for Washington in some degree impaired by the motive. He kept them, as he kept the original draughts of some of the clauses he had prepared for Washington's speeches, as a record of his own sentiments, and as a part of the transactions of his political life. He kept no copy of his corrections of Washington's draught, nor of the amended copy of his own draught, nor of the revision of that draught, nor of any of his letters to Washington on this subject, nor indeed of any thing in regard to it, for the two papers he left behind him were not copies, but the rough originals. This was all that Hamilton did. He did not destroy them; that is all. Privacy at the time was material, as the correspondence shows, because the purpose of Washington to retire, was intended to be held in reserve, for public reasons, until the last moment. Hamilton expressly advised him to this effect. It is from this cause, perhaps, that no more copies were taken. Hamilton's own engagements and want of health prevented his making them, and the employment of a clerk would have endangered a disclosure of Washington's purpose. The originals of Washington's letters he preserved, as he probably did or

ought to have done, all that had ever been addressed to him by that venerated hand. And this was the extent of his provision. After Hamilton's lamented death,-I place implicit confidence in the family tradition-it was not any of his family who discovered the rough original draught, but it was an eminent public man, to whom access to Hamilton's political papers was allowed, and who found it in one of the pigeon-holes of his cabinet. And thus it came to the world.

Such reserve and delicacy as Hamilton observed in regard to the assistance, Washington may have expected, and it is commonly expected in like cases. He may have expected, that, for the time then present, and perhaps while he was living, publication would not afford occasion of gossip or invidious party criticism, and become an instrument in the hands of party to weaken the influence of his counsels, by attributing them to the management of others; which, those who lived in that day may remember, there were men enough, high and low, well disposed to insinuate, without any proof or shadow of proof. A reserve of this kind may have been patriotically desirable, without the least infusion of vanity; and something of this nature may constitute the true limitation of reserve in all cases of like assistance by a minister or friend to a public chief, expressing his sentiments in his own name, whether officially or unofficially, to any part of the country, or to the people at large. I cannot, I think, be mistaken in the sentiment, that if Washington had desired more than this, it would have been a weakness; and that if Hamilton had practised more than this, it would have been a derogatory suspicion. To annex the pains of dishonor to the preservation of a paper by the assisting party, would not

only in this case misconceive the views of the party assisted, as they will immediately appear, but would in all cases encircle the office of a friend with thorns, which might fatally wound his character, whether a paper was accidentally or intentionally preserved by him; and would end in depriving all public chiefs of such aid, by surrounding it with insufferable penalties. Whatever may be thought of the general rule or principle, however, Washington's own course demonstrates infallibly the existence of an exception in this case, which he was competent to establish, and did establish, comprehending and justifying the course of Hamilton, whether it was accidental or intentional. And this is shown by a species of evidence quite irresistible.

Washington preserved copies and originals of all the papers and correspondence, on the subject of the Farewell Address, from his first application to Mr. Madison, in 1792, down to the publication of that Address, in 1796.

He preserved a copy of his letter to Mr. Madison, and the original of Madison's letter of 20th June, 1792, in reply. Either Washington preserved them, or Madison the counterparts, the original of Washington's letter, and a copy of the reply; for it is only from one or both of these sources that Mr. Sparks can have obtained them for his paper on the Farewell Address. Washington preserved the original of Madison's draught, the original of his own draught, the original of Hamilton's correction of it, the originals of all Hamilton's letters, and we presume, -for this was his habit,-copies of the letters he had written to Hamilton, touching the same matter. He preserved, we have no doubt, the revision of Hamilton, as he preserved all the other papers; for it is morally certain that from Washing

ton's cabinet it must have come, directly or indirectly, to the certain person in Mr. Jay's letter, if there was accuracy in Judge Peters's statement. Washington was even anxious to keep copies of all these papers; for he urged upon Hamilton the safe-keeping and return of his own draught, because he had no copy, except of the "quoted part,” which was Madison's; and of this he had the original. There is no difficulty, moreover, in suggesting why he was so tenacious of that draught, and so desirous of its being returned to him,-namely, that by it would be at all times shown what was his own, and what the contribution of another, to the Farewell Address. Washington preserved all these papers until his death, with his usual and very remarkable care; and he left them at his death to the inspection of affection or curiosity, which he knew to be unlimited in regard to all that concerned him. Nay, further: this care of papers, in relation to a subject vastly more interesting to affection and curiosity than any paper he ever published, must be, to every one who reflects upon it, a most persuasive proof of a foregone determination or conclusion on the part of Washington, that the full history of the Farewell Address, from the beginning to the end, including all the parties, and all their specific contributions, should be known at his death. One of his noble motives for this,—not looking to himself at all, but to the friend whose public virtues he knew, as well as his high-toned fidelity,-may not improbably have been, to show by them Hamilton's part in the preparation of the Address, and his more than accordance with its sentiments; that in this way, by Washington's agency, might be put down, the inveterate misrepresentations of a rising party, by the heads of which Hamilton was calumniated as hostile to