And to these opinions of these two eminent jurists of the value of these Annals, and the qualifications of the publishers for their task, and the merits of their work, is to be added the encouraging opinion of Mr. Madison, given at the commencement of the enterprise, in the year 1818,--near forty years ago,--when, in a letter to _Messrs._ Gales and Seaton, he said:
"The work to which you have turned your thoughts, is one which justly claims for it _my_ favorable wishes. A legislative history of our country is of too much interest not to be at some day undertaken; and the longer it is postponed, the more difficult and deficient the execution becomes. In the event of your engaging in it, I shall cheerfully contribute any suggestions in my power as to the sources from which materials may be drawn; but I am not aware, at present, of any not likely to occur to yourselves."
Such is the value which these eminent men place upon these annals of our earlier Congresses, and these annals embrace the whole period during which our Government was presided over by those who helped to make it--the whole period from Washington to Monroe inclusive--a period of thirty-five years, and covering more than half the time that our Government has existed. The two Justices of the Supreme Court who gave their opinion of the work, and who were then (as one of them still is) in the actual discharge of great public duties, have declared the personal benefit which they derived from the compilation--one of them (Mr. Justice Story) going so far as to say that his own work--the Commentaries upon the Constitution--(deemed faultless by others)--would have been "more accurate, full and satisfactory," if the Annals had been published before them. With such opinions in favor of the Annals, no more need be said to show their value to the rising generations; and in abridging them, the author feels that he is only making accessible to the community what is now inaccessible to it, on account of quantity and price; and useless (nearly), if accessible, on account of the obsolete or irrelevant matter which overlays and buries the useful. As late as the year 1840, the publishers of the Annals say, in a Memorial to Congress, that they had sold to individuals but twenty sets of their work; and the present enterprising and faithful publisher of the Congress Debates, (Mr. John C. Rives,) says he sells but some three or four sets a year of his valuable and voluminous work;--and these, not to individuals, but to institutions. It is the Congress subscription alone, that has enabled the publishers of all these works to bring them out; and no public money was ever more worthily applied: but still Congress cannot supply the community.