James Madison Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/03-03-02-0593

To James Madison from William Lambert, 29 October 1811

From William Lambert

City of Washington, October 29th. 1811.

Sir,

Permit me to submit the inclosed to your perusal, as the copy of a communication to several members of Congress, on their arrival in this city;1 and at the same to assure you, that while this mark of confidence and respect is offered, it is not expected or wished, that you should take any step in my favor incompatible with the strictest propriety. I have the honor to be, with great respect, Sir, Your most obedient servant,

William Lambert.

RC (DLC). Docketed by JM.

1Lambert apparently enclosed some extracts (DLC; 3 pp.) from the “collection of precedents” he had been authorized to compile under the terms of resolutions approved by the House of Representatives on 26 Apr. 1810 and 16 Feb. 1811 (see Annals of Congress description begins Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States … (42 vols.; Washington, 1834–56). description ends , 11th Cong., 2d sess., 1987; ibid., 3d sess., 973). These, in turn, were part of a larger work published by Lambert as A Collection of Precedents, Consisting of Proceedings and Decisions on Questions of Order and Appeals, in the House of Representatives … from the First Session of the First Congress, to the End of the Third Session of the Eleventh Congress (Washington, 1811; Shaw and Shoemaker description begins R. R. Shaw and R. H. Shoemaker, comps., American Bibliography: A Preliminary Checklist for 1801–1819 (22 vols. to date; New York, 1958—). description ends 23174). Lambert suggested changes to the record of the House journal on some points of order that had occurred during the third session of the Eleventh Congress. He concluded that the cases he had listed “ought … to be stated on the journal in a different manner than they have been. It is not pretended, that the substitutes I have offered, are the best that could have been proposed; but it is believed, that the sense of the House would be as well expressed by them, as in the entries which now make part of their record.”

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