“. . . Mr. Warden, a son arrivée ici, a remis de votre part a Mr le G ^nl. la fayette un exemplaire de la traduction du commentaire sur Montesquieu qui venoit de parôitre au moment de son depart. il m’a dit moi meme, sans savoir tout le plaisir qu’il me faisoit, que vous estimez cet ouvrage et que vous avez pris beaucoup d’interest a sa publication; et en meme tems il m’a donné votre lettre du 26 janvier 1811. qui a mis le comble à ma satisfaction et à ma reconnoissance.”

Duane tried to get the book reviewed by the Edinburgh Review . On February 14, 1813, he wrote to Jefferson concerning his account with the Review of Montesquieu, and added: “. . . I have some copies remaining which I sell now and then at 2$ allowing the bookseller who rents my store, the usual discount. I have made various efforts to have the book reviewed in Boston, N. York, and here without success; and even a copy which Mr Ronaldson deposited in the hands of the Edinburg Reviewers Editor, has had no better success . . .”

Jefferson replied on April 4: “ . . . I wish you may succeed in getting the Commentary on Montesquieu reviewed by the Edinburgh Reviewers. I should expect from them an able & favorable analysis of it. I sent a copy to a friend in England in the hope he would communicate it to them; not however expressing that hope, lest the source of it should have been made known. but the book will make it’s way, and will become a standard work. a copy which I sent to France was under translation by one of the ablest men of that country . . . ”

For a time it was rumored that Jefferson was the author of the book. Dupont de Nemours ascribed to Jefferson the authorship and immediately began to translate the book into French.

D. B. Warden, in a letter to Jefferson from France on November 1, 1812, mentioned: “. . . The Senator [i.e. Destutt de Tracy] is much pleased with the Commentary on Montesquieu--I lent my copy to Mr. Marbois, who also speaks of it in the highest terms; and I have heard him observe, that you must be the author--I lent mine to Dupont de Nemours who is translating it into french . . .”

On November 28, 1813, Jefferson wrote to Destutt de Tracy: “ . . . the MS. of the first work [i.e. A Commentary and Review on Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws] has been carefully recalled and deposited with me . . .

" If unmerited praise could give pleasure to a candid mind I should have been highly exalted in my own opinion on the occasion of the first work. one of the best judges and best men of the age [i.e. Dupont de Nemours] has ascribed it to myself; and has for some time been employed in translating it into French. it would be a gratification to which you are highly entitled, could I transcribe the sheets he has written me in praise, nay in rapture with the work; and were I to name the man, you would be sensible there is not another whose suffrage would be more encouraging. but the casualties which lie between us would render criminal the naming any one. in a letter which I am now writing him, I shall set him right as to myself, and acknolege my humble station far below the qualifications necessary for that work: and shall discourage his perseverance in retranslating into French a work the original of which is so correct in it’s diction that not a word can be altered but for the worse: and from a translation too where the author’s meaning has sometimes been illy understood, sometimes mistaken, and often expressed in words not the best chosen. indeed when the work, thro’ it’s translation becomes more generally known here, the high estimation in which it is held by all who become acquainted with it, encorages me to hope I may get it printed in the original. I sent a copy of it to the late President of W ^m and Mary college of this state, who adopted it at once as the elementary book of that institution. from these beginnings it will spread and become a political gospel for a nation open to reason, & in a situation to adopt and profit by its results, without a fear of their leading to wrong . . . ”

Jefferson wrote to Dupont de Nemours the next day, November 29: “ In answering the several very kind letters I have recieved from you, I owe to yourself and to the most able and estimable author of the Commentaries on Montesquieu ”