“ ceding. I should almost be tempted to conjecture a change of translator. sentences incomplete, false syntax, want of perspicuity, and sometimes a suspected mistranslation will require from yourself a rigorous revisal of these packets, with the original in your hand, to enable it to meet the public approbation. it would be a subject of much regret that a work so distinguished for perspicuity, and a critical choice of words, should appear disadvantageously exactly in these particulars: and the more as there will be no original to recur to for correction or explanation. the translation being now advanced to the 364 ^th. page, we may ask when the printing will begin? you must be so good as to set me down as a subscriber for ten copies, to be sent me, except one, in boards; the others being destined for friends in countries where bound books are prohibited.”

This draft of the preface is now in the Jefferson Papers in the Library of Congress. The text is precisely the same as that printed at the beginning of the book. It is headed

The Author

to his fellow citizens of the United States of America. I am a Frenchman by birth and education. I was an early friend to the revolution of France, and continued to support it, until those entrusted with it’s helm, had evidently changed its direction. Flying then from the tyrannies of the monster Robespierre, I found, and still enjoy, safety, freedom, & hospitality, among you. I am grateful for these boons, and anxious to shew that gratitude, by such services as my faculties and habits enable me to render . . .

With regard to the translation and printing Duane wrote to Jefferson on January 25, 1811: “I have just received yours of the 18 ^th. and the copy accompanying it--you will be good enough never to attribute my not writing immediately to want of respect or to indifference--my avocations are so many and the pressure of them so constant, that it requires some dexterity to get thro’ them. I shall now explain the hastiness of the last sheets--you will perceive they are all transcribed by myself--the person who began has translated the whole, but it was not well done tho’ he is capable--I am not perfectly competent to translate it myself, tho’ I can very well judge both of the French & English whether it is well done--I therefore made the work a practical essay for myself, as well to enjoy the gratification it afforded me as to make my knowledge of the French better, and thus I have not merely transcribed but I have as it were made the version throughout. This much will explain why I did not send the French original, and why I shall with your leave keep it to refer to, till the work is printed, which will be now very soon--It will be necessary, and since you approve of the manner, I shall be able with more confidence to remedy the defects of the latter part, of which I was conscious, but being anxious to hurry the whole on to you--and having no assistant of any kind to write or aid me in my paper at this critical time--and the foreman in the Aurora office who by knowing my mind was able to decypher all I wrote however hurried--and besides sound in the reading of proofs, of which I feel the labor as much as the celebrated Bayle--I have hurried the whole on depending too much on the translator, or rather not having time sufficient to chasten and arrange the language. I bespoke 5 months since from Binny & Ronaldson a fount of types to print the work elegantly--they have not yet sent them in--These men are among the instances of fortunes caprices, they have acquired fortune by industry, and it has ruined them as men. I never new [sic] men more estimable for simplicity & probity--they are now the reverse. I have applied to Mr Carr, the best printer in this city to undertake the printing for me of this work--for I was fool enough to empty all my half worn types into a heap and send them to B. & Ronaldson when type metal was scarce, and now I have no type of the size to print it upon--so that necessity on one hand and a desire to push the work out soon has induced me to do this; I have not had his answer yet; but I shall if he cannot get it done by some one Else. ”