[ 182 ] BOOK BEVIEWS definition in a volume such as this, but to emphasize, as the subtitle does, that these are "Unpublished Papers, 1745-1780" goes a bit far. On page 530 there is a brief note to the minister from France, Conrad-Alexandre Gerard. It is in the hand of Charles Thomson, secretary of Congress, but signed by Jay as president. True, this particular copy of the letter has never been printed before; the provenance reveals it came from archives in Paris. But the provenance does not indicate that the identical letter with only minor variations appears in Edmund C. Burnett's Letters of the Members of the Continental Congress (vol. 4, p. 32) and also in The New-York Historical Society Collections: Deane Papers (vol. 3, p. 256). Indeed, a considerable number, if not a majority, of the letters Jay wrote while in Congress appear in Burnett, though often in truncated form. It should be added that it is satisfying to have the excisions replaced; Burnett's definition of "significant" was not always wise. It is difficult to judge the quality of the editing without recourse to the manuscripts. A comparison of some fifteen letters that appear here and also in Burnett turned up no substantial differences but a number of minor discrepancies. Take, for example, a letter from Edward Rudedge, dated June 29, 1776. There are some ten variations in capitalization and paragraphing between the two renderings, yet both editors used the same manuscript—a transcript in the Bancroft Collection of the New York Public Library. There are differences over words—"represented" in Burnett becomes "unpre- sented" in Morris—and over phrases. Where the Morris edition has "must be useful" it is given as "must be highly useful" by Burnett, who adds a footnote indicating that "Lacunae in the text as printed in the Corresp. and Pub. Papers of John Jay have been supplied from the Bancroft copy!' The most disturbing feature of this volume is the index. The glorious indexes of the new editions of the Adams and Franklin papers make those volumes useful to anyone interested in eighteenth-century America. Whatever gold lies buried in the 838 pages of the Jay papers is spread throughout an index in which the favorite word that parades through its 27 pages is "mentioned!' Look for "Continental Congress, 2d" under which the opening subheading is "mentioned!' followed by fifteen lines of mind-boggling page numbers. Under "slavery, mentioned" no one could guess that hidden on pages 544-45 lies an interesting letter from Anthony Benezet. The biographical sketch of Benezet on page 545 is also listed under "mentioned" in the index. On page 448 the reader learns that John Jay's son has survived the ordeal of inoculation, but one would never learn this from the index, where "inoculation" does not appear. Reader, beware before you launch upon your journey through the Jay papers: make your own index as you go along. DAVID FBEEMAN HAWKE, Lehman College, City University of New York