“ rate work & called ‘Medecine for Monarchists’,” Jefferson continued: “ the ‘Intercepted letters’ a later English publication of great wit and humor, has put them to their proper use by holding them up as butts; for the ridicule and contempt of mankind, yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed, & even made to deify their old king because he is only a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great & flourishing empire, added 900 millions sterling to their debt, for which the fee simple of the whole island would not sell, if offered farm by farm at public auction, and increased their annual taxes from 8. to 70 millions sterling, more than the whole rentroll of the island. what must be the dreary prospect from the son when such a father is deplored as a national loss. but let us drop these odious beings and pass to those of an higher order, the plants of the field . . . ”

The index, on the last two leaves of this edition, is headed by an Advertisement: “The American publisher of the ‘Intercepted Letters,’ conjecturing that they might not, in their original shape, be fully intelligible in this country, has obtained from an adequate source, the following Index to such of the allusions and abbreviated names, as it were deemed material to explain.”

This Index includes a few entries of special interest to this catalogue, among which are:

Page xiii.	‘St--ph--ns,’ Stephens, author of ‘War in disguise’ and a very ardent speaker.
Page 5	‘Qu--ns best repeater,’ see ‘The Book.’ There is an allusion here to the part which the Queen is said to have taken against the Princess of Wales.
Page 31	‘L--ac--gt--en and Co.’ Lackington and Co. celebrated booksellers.

Thomas Moore, 1779-1852, Irish poet. Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Postbag consists of a number of metrical lampoons on the Prince Regent and his favourites, which had circulated for some time before being collected and printed in 1812. The work soon ran into seventeen editions in England.