Beschreibung:

JEFFERSON, THOMAS, President . Autograph letter signed ("Th:Jefferson") as President, to "Citizens, President and Secretaries" of the Institute National de France, Washington, D.C., 14 November 1802. One full page, 4to, bound with portraits and transcript in dark blue morocco gilt, blue-watered silk doublures and endpages, g.e., binding slightly rubbed. The letter in very fine condition. PRESIDENT JEFFERSON BECOMES THE FIRST AMERICAN MEMBER OF THE INSTITUT NATIONAL DE FRANCE Jefferson's elegant and appreciative acceptance of a signal honor: he had been elected the first American associé étranger of the prestigious Institut National de France in the class of moral and political sciences. Addressing himself to the "Citizens, President and Secretaries" of the Institute, Jefferson writes in his most careful, ceremonial cursive hand. "I have received the letter wherein you have been pleased to announce to me that the National institute of sciences and arts had elected me a foreign associate for the class of moral and political sciences: and I receive it with that sensibility which such an expression of respect from a body of the first order of science, is calculated to inspire. Without pretensions to those qualifications which might do justice to the appointment, I accept it as an evidence of the brotherly spirit of Science, which unites into one family all its votaries of whatever grade, and however widely dispersed through the different quarters of the globe. "Accept, Citizens, President and Secretaries, for yourselves and your associates, the assurance of my high consideration and respect...." Malone, Jefferson's recent biographer, analyzes the importance this honor represented for the President: "If Jefferson's own words may be taken at face value, what he enjoyed most, with the single exception of intimate family relationships, was the pursuit of knowledge. Again and again he lamented that public affairs had deflected him from the path of study and inquiry....His political talents...were never so effectively employed as during his early years as President, but, by the same token, his tasks as the head of state and of his party left him little time to contribute personally to the advancement of knowledge on which, more than anything else save freedom, he based his hopes for the progress and increased happiness of mankind. From the beginning of his presidency, though, he occupied a pre-eminent position in his country as a patron of science and learning, such a position as was held by only Benjamin Franklin before him" (D. Malone, Jefferson the President: First Term, 1801-1805, 1970, p. 177). Jefferson was elected to membership in the Institut on 26 December 1801 and is believed to have first received unofficial news of the honor in a letter from Du Pont de Nemours in February. Official notification arrived later. "The only person ahead of him on the list [of new members] was Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society in England; and the likelihood is that, insofar as the choice of Jefferson was not based on his own intellectual achievements, it was due to his presidency of the American Philosophical Society...Nor did the Institute grant its honors to Madison, Monroe, or John Quincy Adams....Indeed, during his lifetime, it elected no other person who was American by both birth and residence. A signal honor was conferred on him as the most noted American intellectual of his generation, and he probably cherished it as he did no public office" ( ibid. , p.179). Institut membership was by classes; Jefferson was elected to the class of moral and political sciences. (In 1803 that class was abolished and his membership transferred to the class of history and literature.) Other Americans who were accorded membership include the scientist Joseph Priestley (English born, but resident in Pennsylvania since 1794, elected in 1802), Benjamin Thompson Count von Rumford (American-born, resident in England and Germany, elected in 1802) an