respective admirers of the two claimants, by rejecting as less trustworthy the testimony of one or the other set of lists. For example, George Bancroft[1] is as sure that Madison wrote the numbers as John C. Hamilton[2] is that his father was the author.
In such a juncture the obvious step is to call in a new set of witnesses; in other words, to examine the papers themselves for internal evidence and not to acquiesce in a negative conclusion until every resource has been exhausted. It is hardly likely that two men of such different individualities as Hamilton and Madison, however similar their political experience, and however sincerely working together in the same cause, could write extensively in its behalf without their respective contributions bearing some mark of their authors. Fixed ideas, pet phrases, habitual modes of expression, characteristic political theories, will occur again and again, not only in the essays in question, but elsewhere in the works of the writers. The weight of such evidence is cumulative. Every additional example strengthens one side and proportionally weakens the other. Internal evidence is often inadequate to determine the author of an anonymous work when there are many possibilities. In the case before us all that is required of it is to turn the balance decidedly one way or the other between two even contestants, for such they seem to the student after Mr. Lodge's discussion.
In fact hardly as much as this is necessary, for the case was made to appear an even one by unfairly discrediting Madison's testimony as compared with that of Hamilton. Without such studied disparagement the external evidence is far stronger for Madison's authorship. Mr. Lodge's process is a curious one and starts with rejecting a specific statement of Madison's which can be substantiated beyond any doubt. In the Hamilton lists, he writes, there are "two errors as to two numbers, while in the Madison lists there are twelve errors as to six numbers. Tried, therefore, by the list of
