Report on Acts of Congress, 10 March 1793
Report on Acts of Congress
The Secretary of state, according to the requisition of the President of the US. of the 8th. instant has examined the laws passed during the late session of Congress and
Reports
That none of those laws relate to, or require the immediate or special agency of the President, except the ‘Act regulating foreign coins and for other purposes,’ (a copy of which is hereto annexed) whereupon it would be proper to give in charge to the Director of the Mint to take measures for collecting samples of foreign coins, issued in the year 1792, of the species which usually circulate within the United States, to examine by assays at the Mint whether the same are conformable to the respective standards required, and to report the result, that the same may be made known by proclamation.
Th: Jefferson
Mar. 10. 1793.1
RC (DNA: RG 59, MLR); endorsed by Tobias Lear. PrC (DLC); partially overwritten in a later hand. FC (Lb in DNA: RG 59, SDR). Tr (Lb in same, SDC). Entry in SJPL: “Th:J. to G.W. on laws requiring his agency.” Enclosure: An Act regulating Foreign Coins, and for other purposes [Philadelphia, 1793], dated 9 Feb. 1793, specifying the rates at which certain European gold and silver coins were to be legal tender effective 1 July 1793, and providing that foreign coins issued after 1 Jan. 1792 were to become legal tender only after “samples thereof shall have been found, by assay, at the Mint of the United States, to be conformable to the respective standards required, and proclamation thereof shall have been made by the President of the United States” (printed act in same, MLR).
On this day TJ submitted this report to the President, who on the following day directed Attorney General Edmund Randolph to “examine the laws & report respectg. them” (, 84).
1. Last digit reworked by TJ from “2.”