Positive reconstruction · reader-scoped, not an inferred-absence lacuna
This reconstruction covers the readable fraction of Thomas Jefferson's formation -- attested reading and writing only, not the whole of a life.
Thomas Jefferson and An Enquiry into the Principles of our Government
Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to An Enquiry into the Principles of our Government.
Thomas Jefferson is attested as having read this work by John Taylor.
Evidence ledger
- First-person reading testimony (First-person partial-reading claim on a work titled in-passage and authored by the addressee: 'I found here the copy of your Enquiry into the Principles of our Government... have not yet permitted me to give to the whole a thorough reading; yet... I was impatient, and availed myself...' - an in-progress reading of Taylor's Enquiry. Catalogue carries Taylor's Arator and Gavelkind but not the Enquiry, so proposed as a new Work.). Self-report reliability discount 0.7: Flattery-context discount (thanking the author directly for a gift copy) and the engagement is expressly PARTIAL ('letters... have not yet permitted me to give to the whole a thorough reading'); strengthened by the candid qualification and his declared impatience to engage with its fundamentals.