“ your leisure, to procure for me a copy, if you can . . .”

Jefferson replied from Washington on October 27: “ When I recieved your letter of the 16 ^th. I thought I had not a copy of my Report on Measures, weights & coins, except one bound up in a volume with other reports. but on carefully searching a bundle of duplicates, I found the one I now inclose you, being the only detached one I possess. it is defective in one article. the report was composed under a severe attack of periodical head ach which came on every day at Sunrise, & never left me till sunset. what had been ruminated in the day under a paroxysm of the most excruciating pain was committed to paper by candlelight, & then the calculations were made. after delivering in the report it was discovered that in calculating the money unit § 5. pa. 49. there was a small error in the 3 ^d. or 4 ^th. column of decimals, the correction of which however brought the proposed unit still nearer to the established one. I reported the correction in a single leaf to Congress. the copy I send you has not that leaf . . . ”

It was probably to this volume of tracts that John Quincy Adams had reference in writing to Jefferson that he was preparing a new Report on the subject of weights and measures [October 11, 1817]: “. . . I have found in the Library which was yours, a valuable collection of Tracts on the general subject, which I have no doubt will prove useful to me . . .”

Jefferson replied from Monticello on November 1 with a long and informative article on the subject, and mentioned: “ The volume of tracts which you have noted in the Library of Congress contains every thing which I had then been able to collect on this subject . . . ”

Although this volume of tracts is no longer in the Library of Congress, a copy which belonged to Jefferson, bound for him with other tracts, was acquired by the Library at a later date. This volume has an inscription on the fly-leaf: John Bailey From the Library of Th. Jefferson purchased at auction Wash ⁿ. 3 March 1829 It includes a copy of Jefferson’s Proceedings of the Government of the United States . . . against the intrusion of Edward Livingston [q.v. no. 3501] with manuscript notes by Jefferson.

In October 1800 M. L. and W. A. Davis wrote to Jefferson with regard to printing in New York an edition of the Notes on the State of Virginia . Jefferson replied from Washington on December 21: “ . . . With respect to the Notes on Virginia which you propose to reprint it is not in my power to add to, or alter them at present. the subject would require more time & enquiry than are within my power. the most correct edition is the one originally published at Paris. Stockdale’s London edition is tolerably correct. I know nothing of the American editions, not possessing any of them. I think it might be of some use to publish with them a Report of mine on Weights & Measures, made to Congress in 1790. it was printed in N. York by Childs & Swaine. I have no copy of [ it] here or I would have inclosed it. by getting abroad it might prepare the public mind for adopting something more certain & convenient than the present system of weights & measures. ”

A copy was presumably not obtained, for the Report is not printed with Davis’s edition. Jefferson’s Notes on the Establishment of a Money Unit , q.v. no. 3755, was printed with the first edition of the Notes on the State of Virginia.

Several years later, on November 10, 1811, Jefferson wrote concerning his ideas of a fixed standard of measures, weights and coins, to Dr. Robert Patterson. The letter contained ten closely written pages, and began: “ Your favor of Sep. 23. came to hand in due time, and I thank you for the Nautical almanac it covered for the year 1813. I learn with pleasure that the Philosophical society has concluded to take into consideration the subject of a fixed standard of measures weights and coins; and you ask my ideas on it: insulated as my situation is, I am sure I can offer nothing but what will occur to the Committee engaged in it, with the advantage, on their part, of correction by an interchange of sentiments and observations among themselves. I will however hazard some general ideas, because you desire it, and if a single one be useful, the labor will not be lost . . . ”