l88 REPORTS OX INVESTIGATIONS AND PROJECTS. 



Association, and a dozen other States have special commissions of their own 

 engaged in the preparation of similar reports. ]\lost of our older large cities 

 have, in some degree, made similar provision. So far as the main records in 

 the central archives of the States are concerned, what is most important is in 

 a fair way to be executed, either by such agencies or by the historical socie- 

 ties, which in this country are exceptionally rich and influential. Yet all the 

 older of these archives contain great quantities of historical material which 

 are no part of their regular series of legal records, which relate rather to the 

 history of other States or of the Union than to that in which they are found, 

 or which lack significance till combined with materials found elsewhere. In 

 work upon documents of this class the department has a large field, and 

 another, of indefinite magnitude, in dealing with those which still remain in 

 private possession. 



Moreover, to exploit the unprinted materials for American history which 

 are to be found in archives outside the United States is not only an appro- 

 priate task for such an organization as this department, but one of the most 

 imperative and immediate. In the first place, the American colonies having 

 been under the control of various European governments during all their 

 formative period, there are many cases in which America contains only sec- 

 ondary or derivative records of transactions, of which the primary or funda- 

 mental documents are in Europe. Lacking these, we shall often miss the 

 central threads of colonial administration. Secondly, since not simply the 

 colonial governors and governments, but also the emigrants themselves, came 

 from Europe, it is as true of the history of American social institutions as it 

 is of American constitutional and political history, that it is vain to attempt 

 to write it without the aid of materials to be found in Europe rather than in 

 America. Thirdly, even for the period since the attainment of American 

 independence, there is a large branch of our history which can never be ade- 

 quately treated by means of American materials alone, namely, our diplomatic 

 history. To attempt to base this on purely American materials, without 

 taking into account the documents which exhibit the European side of the 

 same transactions, would be neither reasonable nor scientific. It would 

 amount to shutting out half the light. Finally, if needful, a quantitative and 

 pragmatical argument might be adduced. It is probable that, for the portion 

 of American history prior to 1815, there is a greater amount of original docu- 

 ment in Europe than in America. Moreover, of that which is in America, it 

 is certain that a larger portion has been printed than of the corresponding 

 masses of American material in Europe, for in the eyes of European govern- 

 ments and other printing agencies such material has naturally borne a wholly 

 secondary importance in comparison with materials bearing directly on their 

 own history, while to American governments it has seemed fundamental. 



Here also, as in the case of American archives, the first step is properly 

 that of preparing summary descriptions or general inventories of the Amer- 



