With respect to his Farewell Address, to the authorship of which, it seems, there are conflicting claims, I can state to you some facts.  He had determined to decline a re-election at the end of his first term, and so far determined, that he had requested Mr. Madison to prepare for him something valedictory, to be addressed to his constituents on his retirement.  This was done:  but he was finally persuaded to acquiesce in a second election, to which no one more strenuously pressed him than myself, from a conviction of the importance of strengthening, by longer habit, the respect necessary for that office, which the weight of his character only could effect.  When, at the end of this second term, his Valedictory came out, Mr. Madison recognised in it several passages of his draught; several others we were both satisfied were from the pen of Hamilton, and others from that of the President himself.  These he probably put into the hands of Hamilton to form into a whole, and hence it may all appear in Hamilton’s hand-writing, as if it were all of his composition.

I have stated above, that the original objects of the federalists were, 1.  To warp our government more to the form and principles of monarchy, and 2.  To weaken the barriers of the State governments as co-ordinate powers.  In the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal spirit of the nation, that they have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours, and under the pseudo-republican mask, are now aiming at their second object, and strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from our ranks, are advancing fast towards an ascendancy.  I have been blamed for saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution.  I answer by asking, if a single State of the Union would have agreed to the constitution, had it given all powers to the General Government?  If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State, of being subjected to the other States, in matters merely its own?  And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then, to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided?

You request me confidentially, to examine the question, whether the Supreme Court has advanced beyond its constitutional limits, and trespassed on those of the State authorities?  I do not undertake it, my dear Sir, because I am unable.  Age, and the wane of mind consequent on it, have disqualified me from investigations so severe, and researches so laborious.  And it is the less necessary in this case, as having been already done by others with a logic and learning to which I could add nothing.  On the decision of the case of Cohens vs.  The State of Virginia, in the Supreme Court of the United States, in March, 1821, Judge Roane, under the signature of Algernon