admitted errors, Hamilton's authority is shown to be six times as good as that of Madison." Passing by the crudeness of this method of expressing relative degrees of probability, it is to be noted that eight of these twelve "errors" in the Madison lists are made up as follows: Nos. 18 and 19 are three times, and No. 20 twice, attributed to Madison alone. These "errors" are in the earlier Madison lists. After the publication of the Hamilton lists which attributed Nos. 18, 19, and 20 to "Madison and Hamilton jointly," Madison explained the discrepancy in a note to No. 18 in Gideon's edition of 1818. "The subject of this," he writes, "and the following numbers happened to be taken up by both Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison. What had been prepared by Mr. Hamilton, who had entered more briefly into the subject, was left to Mr. Madison, on its appearing that the latter was engaged upon it, with larger materials, and with a view to a more precise delineation, and from the pen of the latter the several papers went to press."
In the fuller statement of Madison, in Bancroft's History of the Constitution, II, 337, he says: "It is possible, though not recollected, that something in the draught [i. e., Hamilton's draught] may have been incorporated into the numbers as printed. But it was certainly not of a nature or amount to affect the impression left on the mind of J. M., from whose pen the numbers went to the press, that the numbers were of the class written by him." Then follows a simple and natural explanation of how Hamilton might have regarded them as joint work. Mr. Lodge, however, without giving this explanation of the facts, says that Madison in Gideon's edition of 1818 "concedes 18, 19, and 20 to be the joint work of Hamilton and himself." With all respect to Mr. Lodge, it may be asserted that he made no such concession. In the Gideon editions those numbers are ascribed to Madison alone, and the explanation quoted above is given in a footnote. That explanation beyond doubt can be shown to be true to the letter, and in such a way as greatly to increase one's confidence in Madison's memory and his
