“ 1796. were little better. both unworthy of the history of Tom thumb. you can have them better & cheapter printed any where North of Richmond. accept my salutations & assurances of respect. ”

On February 4 Hening wrote: “. . . On the receipt of your letter of the 14 ^th. ul ^to. I wrote to our friend Dabney Carr Esq ^r stating my wish to engage some person, who would be perfectly agreeable to you, to transcribe the manuscript acts at Monticello.--His answer is inclosed; together with a letter from M ^r. Fletcher. My engagements with any person, must depend entirely on your approbation . . .”

Enclosed with this letter were the letters from Dabney Carr, recommending Mr. Fletcher for the copying, “ he is a good scribe, & will be unemployed--he is a federalist to be sure, but then, he’s a decent man--& I should hardly suppose his politics would be an objection with the President ” and from Thomas C. Fletcher expressing his willingness to do the work. Both letters are dated January 31.

On February 27 Jefferson wrote from Washington: “ It has not been in my power sooner to acknolege your letter of Feb. 4. after repeating that my printed collection of laws, which are in strong bound volumes, are at your service, I must observe as to the Manuscript volumes, that several of them run into one another in point of time, so that the same act will be found in several volumes, and will require a good deal of collating. but what presents a greater difficulty is, that some of these volumes seem to have been records of the council, and to contain interspersed copies of some laws. these volumes are in a black letter, illegible absolutely but to those habitated [ sic -- Ed. ] to it and far beyond the competence of an ordinary scribe. I have never myself searched up the acts which these volumes contain. I have always expected they would fill up som [ sic -- Ed. ] of the lacunae in the list I sent to m( ^~ r) Wythe. as this compilation can be made but once, because in doing it the originals will fall to pieces, my anxiety that justice shall be done it, obliges me to say that it cannot be done till I become resident at Monticello. there I will superintend it myself, freely giving my own labour to whoever undertakes to copy & publish, whether on public or private account. the copyist must probably live with me during the work, & of course I must take some part in his choice. seeing no inconvenience in publishing first the edited, & secondly the inedited laws, I am in hopes that you will think the former may at once be entered on . . . ”

Almost a year later, on February 7, 1808, in writing to Jefferson on behalf of the Judges of the Court of Appeals to request for their use a copy of an act passed in April 1691, Hening added: “. . . I have the pleasure of informing you that the legislature have at length become sensible of the importance of preserving all such of our laws both of a public & private nature as are now extant. For this purpose an act passed during the present session authorising me to publish a collection comprising all the acts of the General Assembly from the earliest period of our legislative proceedings; and directing the mode in which they should be authenticated. I must now avail myself [of] the offer which you have very obliglingly ma[de of] the use of your collection. Having procured many of the MS & printed laws myself, I shall only have occasion to trouble you, in relation to those which I do not possess. Judges Tucker & Nelson have offered me the whole of their collections, which are in good preservation, and may safely be transported any where. It only remains for me to arrange with you the time & manner in which I shall be able to obtain a transcript of such MSS in the Monticello library as can no where else be had.”

Jefferson replied from Washington on February 26: “ . . . I am much pleased that the legislature has authorised you to publish all our laws, manuscript as well as printed. for this purpose you shall have the free use of my collection. what it contains you can know with great exactness from a letter of mine to m ( ^~ r) Wythe which he had printed & dispersed. I have no copy of it here. I do not know how we can make arrangements for availing you of them unless your business should be leading you to the neighborhood of Monticello in the spring, and you could accomodate the particular time to my visit to that place soon after ”