“ sentiments of enlightened toleration, liberal policy, & universal benevolence, which have been no less strikingly evinced in your practice, than energetically recommended & enforced in your public addresses to the great & increasing Nation over which you so deservedly preside.”

On June 8, 1806, Jefferson received the following letter from E. Bronson, Philadelphia, written June 6: “I have this day received from Mr. Roscoe of Liverpool a letter dated the 4th of June 1805 accompanying two copies of his Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth, one of which he presents to me, and requests me to forward the other to “His Excellency Thomas Jefferson President of the United States by the earliest conveyance.” By some accident the package containing the books and the letter has lain in the custom house ever since August last without my knowledge . . .”

This letter was acknowledged by Jefferson and one from him despatched to General Muhlenberg, the Collector of Customs for Philadelphia, on the same day, June 9, from Washington: “ Since writing my letter of yesterday I learn from m( ~r) Bronson that there was lodged some time ago in the custom house of Philadelphia, a book from m( ~r) Roscoe of Liverpool intended for me but sent under cover to m( ~r) Bronson, who has left it with you for me. as I presume it is too bulky to come by post, I will pray you to send it with the wines & place it’s duty on the same account . . . ”

On July 1 Jefferson wrote to Roscoe (under cover to Mr. Maury, United States Consul) at Liverpool: “ By some accident which has not been explained to me your letter of June 4. 05. & the copy of your history of the Pontificate of Leo X. which you were so kind as to destine for me have laid in one of our custom houses near a twelvemonth. the letter is now recieved, & the book expected by the first conveyance. I pray you to recieve my thanks for this mark of your attention, and I anticipate with pleasure the reading of a work which, for it’s taste and science, will, I doubt not stand worthily on the shelf with the Life of Lorenzo de Medici. and both will continue to mark honorably the age we live in . . . ”

Mr. Maury acknowledged from Liverpool on October 22, 1806, the receipt of the letters and his “great pleasure in the execution of the commission.” He supplied Jefferson with an account of Mr. Roscoe, explaining that he, “besides being an author, is also (what you would hardly suppose) a banker, and happens to be mine . . .”

Roscoe wrote concerning the delay on April 25, 1809 (received by Jefferson on August 6): “It was with great concern that I found from the Letter with which you some time since honour’d me, that the volumes of the Life of Leo X. had been so long in arriving at their destination. If however they should have the good fortune to afford you any amusement, and particularly if the sentiments on political & moral subjects, which unavoidably obtruded themselves in its composition, should meet with your assent, it will much more than compensate me for the bigotted censures & illiberal remarks of those who assume to themselves the same intolerance as they condemn in the Church of Rome . . .”