"I give all my personal estate ornamental as well as useful, except as herein after otherwise given, to my dear Wife; and I also give to her all my manuscript papers, having entire confidence in her discreet and proper use of them, but subject to the qualification in the succeeding clause. Considering the peculiarity and magnitude of the occasion which produced the Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, the Characters who composed it, the Constitution which resulted from their deliberations, its effects during a trial of so many years on the prosperity of the people living under it, and the interest it has inspired among the friends of free Government, it is not an unreasonable inference that a careful and extended report of the proceedings and discussions of that body, which were with closed doors, by a member who was constant in his attendance, will be particularly gratifying to the people of the United States, and to all who take an interest in the progress of political science and the course of true liberty. It is my desire that the Report as made by me should be published under her authority and direction."[3] [3] Orange County, Va., MSS. records. This desire was never consummated, for Mrs. Madison's friends advised her that she could not herself profitably undertake the publication of the work, and she accordingly offered it to the Government, by which it was bought for $30,000, by act of Congress, approved March 3, 1837. On July 9, 1838, an act was approved authorizing the Joint Committee on the Library to cause the papers thus purchased to be published, and the Committee intrusted the superintendence of the work to Henry D. Gilpin, Solicitor of the Treasury. The duplicate copy of the journal which Mrs. Madison had delivered was, under authority of Congress, withdrawn from the State Department and placed in Mr. Gilpin's hands. In 1840 (Washington: Lantree & O'Sulivan), accordingly, appeared the three volumes, _The Papers of James Madison Purchased by Order of Congress_, edited by Henry D. Gilpin. Other issues of this edition, with changes of date, came out later in New York, Boston, and Mobile. This issue contained not only the journal of the Constitutional Convention, but Madison's notes of the debates in the Continental Congress and in the Congress of the Confederation from February 19 to April 25, 1787, and a report Jefferson had written of the debates in 1776 on the Declaration of Independence, besides a number of letters of Madison's. From the text of Gilpin a fifth volume was added to Elliot's _Debates_ in 1845, and it was printed in one volume in Chicago, 1893.