192 LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF THE [1786 



If yoii are clear as to the proposed price I have no objection. 



It now becomes a matter of serious consideration, whether we shall 

 avail ourselves of the copyright, for which (as I am told by a gentleman 

 interested on these subjects) there are laws lately passed in other States, 

 making ten States in all. I think the mode of doing it should be for 

 Messrs. Hall and Sellers to enter it in their names, first executing to us 

 an acknowledgment of trust, and so leaving the matter to the next Con- 

 vention, which may order a conveyance of the right to the several cor- 

 porations for widows, etc. 



I will send you by the next post my opinion of the manner in which 



we should proceed in regard to the sale of the books; and shall only at 



present say on that head, that as the Maryland Convention is the first, 



all the copies that can be got ready for their use shall be devoted to 



them in preference to any demands on the spot. 



I am, yours, etc., 



Wm. White. 

 Rev. Dr. Smith. 



P. S. — I shall carefully and with pleasure observe your desire respect- 

 ing preserving your letters; but had I foreseen you would have be- 

 stowed the same attention on mine, I should not have sent you such 

 hasty scrawls. 



Bev, Dr. Smith to Rev. Dr. White. 



Dear Sir : I am happy to find that yours of the 8th instant leaves 

 me nothing to write by this post, except to repeat my solicitations that 

 the printers may be pressed to use all the dispatch possible with the re- 

 mainder of the book; otherwise it will come too late for our Maryland 

 Convention; and it is of considerable consequence that it should have 

 a ready reception, with the sanction of the Church at large in this State 

 upon its first appearance. Send me by this post as many of the remain- 

 ing sheets and proofs, as you can get from the press. 



I imagined that in my last I had given what you would consider as a 

 sufficient answer to your "important questions" concerning the calen- 

 dar, on which subject you had also written in some former letters. The 

 arranging the calendar in the manner you mention, and which I had 

 approved of when I saw you last in Philadelphia, is a work of great 

 labor, requiring the reading over almost the whole Bible, and many 

 collations and comparisons of different portions thereof. You had 

 taken that labor upon you and I am assured have bestowed much atten- 

 tion and judgment upon it, while I have been either engaged in some 

 other parts of the work, or called from home, as I have been for the 

 greatest part of the past winter. Unless, therefore, I could have time 

 to read all the proposed portions of Scripture, with the same attention 

 which you have bestowed (for which time is not left, even if I had an 



