“ presumtuous--in suggesting this subject for consideration. In doing so I am solely actuated by a desire to see a work reissued in a new dress, which I think would be honourable to the State of Virginia, and valuable to the American Community. In case you should think favourably of the suggestion my own services are offered because I think that my arrangements are such that I can do more justice in the editorial department of a Geographical & Statistical work than any other publisher in this Country.”

To this Jefferson replied on December 10: “ . . . You propose to me the preparation of a new edition of the Notes on Virginia. I formerly entertained the idea, and from time to time noted some new matter, which I thought I would arrange at leisure for a posthumous edition. but I begin to see that it is impracticable for me. nearly forty years of additional experience in the affairs of mankind would lead me into dilatations ending I know not where. that experience indeed has not altered a single principle. but it has furnished matter of abundant developement. every moment too, which I have to spare from my daily exercise and affairs is engrossed by a correspondence, the result of the extensive relations which my course of life has necessarily occasioned. and now the act of writing itself is becoming slow, laborious and irksome. I consider therefore the idea of preparing a new copy of that work as no more to be entertained. the work itself indeed is nothing more than the measure of a shadow, never stationary, but lengthening as the sun advances, and to be taken anew from hour to hour. it must remain therefore for some other hand to sketch it’s appearance at another epoch . . . ”

In 1823 Hugh Paul Taylor of Lewisburg, Greenbrier, Virginia, was considering writing a book on Virginia, and on September 23 wrote to Jefferson for permission to use his material: “When I was at Monticello, in August last, I took up an impression from what you said, that you were in possession of a collection of documents relative to the history, antiquities, and first settlements of Virginia and the N. Western states, in manuscript, which had never been published: and that you had declined the intention of publishing them, either as an addition to the “Notes on Virginia” or otherwise: and that you would have no objections to their being published by any other person who would wish to use them for that purpose.

"If this be the case, perhaps you will allow me the pleasure and the honour of using them for publication: for which I would feel myself extremely obliged and honoured by you. I would embody them with the collection of information to be appended to the New Map of Virginia: agreeable to the enclosed interrogatories, as Mr. H: Boye and myself are now collecting documents for that purpose . . .”

Jefferson replied from Monticello on October 4: “ You must, I think, have somewhat misunderstood what I may have said to you as to manuscripts in my possession, relating to the antiquities, and particularly the Indian antiquities of our country. the only manuscripts I now possess are some folio volumes. two of these are the proceedings of the Virginia company in England; the remaining 4. are of the Records of the Council of Virginia from 1622. to 1700. the account of the two first volumes you will see in the preface to Stith’s history of Virginia . . . I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country. that I have not been remiss in this, while I had youth, health and opportunity, is proved otherwise, as well as by the materials I furnished towards m ( ^~ r) Hening’s invaluable collection of the laws of our country. but there is a time, and that time is come with me, when these duties are no more, when age, and the wane of mind & memory, and the feebleness of the powers of life pass them over, as a legacy, to younger hands. I write now slowly, laboriously, painfully. I am obliged therefore to decline all correspondence which some moral duty does not urgently call on me to answer. I always trust that those who write them will read their answer in my age and silence, and see in these a manifestation that I am done with writing letters. I am sorry therefore that I am not able to give any aid to the work you contemplate, other than my best wishes for it’s success . . . ”