HISTORICAIv RESEARCH JAMESON. 189 



ican materials in the respective archives. There have been many partial 

 skimmings or deflorations of them by American searchers or agents of States, 

 But the partial or casual quality of their data makes it impossible to bring 

 them by supplementary efforts up to the full measure of what vje want, and 

 great stores of material are now thrown open that in former days were 

 excluded. We must first find out what there is, by thorough and orderly 

 search, proceeding through every division of the archive, not with a view to 

 the production of one book or to the illustration of the history of one State, 

 but with an eye to the interests of all present and future workers in American 

 history, in whatever topic, region, or State they may be interested. Acting 

 upon this plan of procedure, my predecessor instituted three elaborate projects 

 of research. Prof. C. M. Andrews, of Bry-n Mawr, undertook the prepara- 

 tion of a guide to the materials for American history prior to 1783 to be 

 found in the archives of Great Britain. Prof. W. R. Shepherd, of Columbia 

 Universit}", undertook a similar guide, but not limited chronologically, to the 

 three principal archives of Spain. Mr. L. M. Perez was sent to examine the 

 archives of Cuba. It was natural that England and Spain should be first 

 undertaken. In course of time we ought to complete the work there, by 

 bringing our English inventory down from 1783, by embracing the minor 

 national repositories in Spain, and in both countries by furnishing similar 

 guidance to the materials for American history in provincial and local, in 

 ecclesiastical, nobiliary, and other private archives in England, Scotland, Ire- 

 land, and Spain. But a more pressing need is for guides to the documents 

 for United States history in the main archives of France and Mexico. These 

 two countries have the first claim upon our attention, France because of the 

 high importance of her relation to the history of the Mississippi Valley and 

 to that of American diplomacy; Mexico, because (with the possible exception 

 of the Vatican archives) no archive of similar importance to our history has 

 been so little explored. Of the archives of the Dominion of Canada, on the 

 other hand, that great storehouse of historical material, one of the most 

 ample in the western hemisphere, we may say with some confidence that no 

 large archive has ever so fully made known in print its contents. An inven- 

 tory of what it contains for the history of the States may therefore without 

 harm be deferred, especially as it is at the beginning of a new administration, 

 with large ideas of development which, we may hope, will be so well sus- 

 tained as soon to make obsolete any handbook that we might prepare. Mean- 

 while, through the cordial relations which subsist between the archivist of the 

 Dominion and this office, we may hope shortly to possess all needed informa- 

 tion as to what the lesser archives of Canada possess that has value for our 

 historians. 



After France and Mexico should come the archives of Rome. The extent 

 of the Roman archives, their state of preservation, and the ecclesiastical rela- 

 tions which subsisted between the Roman curia and especially the French 



