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JEFFERSON, THOMAS Letter signed ("Th: Jefferson"), to the Bristol (England) mercantile house of Farell and Jones, regarding the... 9 1/2 x 7 3/8 inches (24 x 18.75 cm); 4 pp., about 1800 words on a bifolium (now separated into two leaves) the text written in a neat and formal clerical hand, Charles City, Virginia, 9 July 1773, integral address at foot of last page in Jefferson's hand; accompanied by a document signed ("Th: Jefferson"). 8 1/2 x 7 1/4 inches (21.5 x 18.5 cm); 1 p., this headed in Jefferson's hand "Invoice of goods to be sent to the Executor of John Wayles." The three leaves above are housed with collateral materials (a transcription etc.) in a half blue morocco folding-case, red morocco spine labels. Usual folds, the bifolium now separated into two leaves at central fold, with expert repairs to the horizontal fold separations. Some fading to spine of case . Jefferson outlines to creditors his plans for settling his father-in-law's estate. Jefferson was demonstrably no friend to the English traders and merchants, to whom the Virginia planters were, as a class, hugely indebted. He felt, not without justification, that they entrapped planters by manipulating tobacco crop prices to ensure that debts persisted, sometimes for generations. However, in the case of his father-in-law's estate, a large portion of the debts came from costs associated with the importation of 150 slaves, the cargo of the slave ship The Prince of Wales , a transaction from which Farell and Jones appear to have in fact made no profit, a point which Jefferson underlines in these pages. The unfortunates on that vessel had been sold by Wayles's partner Richard Randolph to planters and slave merchants, from whom the collection of payments became extremely difficult during the American Revolution. In this extraordinarily detailed and lawyerly letter, possibly dictated to one of the clerks at his law practice (which in 1773 was still very much extant), Jefferson composes an extensive exposition of the circumstances surrounding the estate, and his proposals for settling it. "Your favors of April 23 1773 came to hand a few days after the death of Mr. Wayles an event of which I doubt not Mr. Evans had before advised you. We are assured that you sympathize on this occasion with his family and friends here, as a correspondence kept up, and we hope approved thro' a long course of years must have produced on your part some degree of that friendship which we know him to have expressed and felt for you the favors received at your hands he spoke of with particular warmth to the hour of his death, a very few days before which he added a codicil to his will almost solely to secure to you a proper return. the words of it, relating to yourselves, are as follows. 'Messieurs Farrell and Jones have on every occasion acted in a most generous manner to me. I shall therefore make them every grateful return in my power. I therefore direct that my estate be kept together and that the whole tobacco made therein be shipped unto the said Farrell and Jones of Bristol until his debt and interest shall be fully and compleatly paid and satisfied unless my children find it to their interest to pay and satisfy the same in a manner that may be agreeable to the said Farrell and Jones.'" This matter of settling the estate fell on Jefferson and his two brothers-in-law, Francis Eppes and Henry Shipwith, both of whom are named in the letter. Wayles had died on 28 May 1773, with extensive landholdings but equally extensive debts. Jefferson goes on to write that "some part of Mr. Wayles's lands were so poor and unprofitable that, had there been no debt, we should have thought them not worth keeping. These herefore we have determined to sell and apply the produce of the sale towards lessening your debt, and we think ourselves within bounds when we expect that produce will (on giving a credit suited to the present situation of our country) be at least 4000£ sterl. to this are to b