Beschreibung:

Notes on the Establisment of a Money Unit, and of a Coinage for the United States [caption title].
Paris, 1785]. 14 pp. Octavo (8x5 inches, 200x127 mm). Later paper wrappers. jefferson's very rare separately-printed proposal to the continental congress for a coinage system. The issue of coinage had first been brought to the attention of Congress by Robert Morris who proposed that each unit be divided into 1440 parts (based on a fraction of silver to be found in common in the penny from each state). Realizing the diminutive and difficult nature of this division, Jefferson authored this counter-proposal on 9 April 1784 while at Annapolis. He suggested that the unit of currency be based on the dollar and divisible on a decimal basis. Before leaving to serve as Minister to France he sent manuscript versions of his Notes on the Establisment of a Money Unit to Morris and Charles Thomson Secretary of the Continental Congress. Soon after arriving in Paris, he began work on the publication of the privately-printed first edition of Notes on the State of Virginia . In June 1785, with the issue of coinage still unresolved, Jefferson decided to print his manuscript response to Morris and sent Thomson 100 copies for distribution to Congress, writing him on 14 July 1785: “Printing is so cheap here (they cost me but a guinea) that I thought it worth while to print as many copies as would enable you to put one into the hands of every member of Congress when they should enter on the subject…It will not be necessary for you to say they came from me.” (Jefferson Papers viii, p. 295). By the time members of Congress received this pamphlet they had in fact already approved Jefferson's system based on the manuscript proposal left with Morris and Thomson. Thus, Jefferson became the father of the coinage system in America. Having printed more than the 100 copies he sent to Thomson (the exact number however, not known), Jefferson had the remainder bound in as an appendix to copies of Notes on the State of Virginia that had not already been distributed, along with two other separately-printed papers on the Virginia constitution and on religious freedom. As these three separately-printed appendices were issued after work on Notes on the State of Virginia had been completed, they are not found in all copies (and not all copies contain the same number). See Coolie Verner's Mr. Jefferson Distributes his Notes (New York, 1952) for a census of copies with these additions. Both the copies distributed to Congress and the copies bound in to Notes on the State of Virginia are excessively rare. Although 100 copies of the former were issued, far fewer have survived due to the ephemeral nature of this brief pamphlet issued without a title page. Fewer than 20 copies of the latter are extant, suggesting that approximately 120 only were printed. We could locate only two copies of this seminal early American financial work appearing at auction in the last quarter century. Evans 18541; Sabin 35910 (both incorrectly ascribing it as an American imprint).