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 Tract on penal jurisprudence
Thomas Jefferson's attested relationship to Tract on penal jurisprudence.
Thomas Jefferson is attested as having read this work by William Roscoe.
Evidence ledger
- First-person reading testimony (Explicit first-person completed reading: 'The treatise on penal jurisprudence I read with great pleasure.' The tract and its author (the addressee, of Liverpool) are identified in-passage; proposed as a new Work. NOTE: the Beccaria reference implies familiarity with Beccaria - unclaimed, recorded here.). Self-report reliability discount 0.8: Explicit reading with pleasure, addressed to the author (flattery-context discount), but strengthened by substantive placement of the work against Beccaria ('Beccaria had demonstrated general principles, but practical applications were difficult... the great light you have thrown on the subject') - comparative judgement presupposes reading.