The MS was copied out by multiple people (possibly a group of students) before being bound as a single volume. Included in the commonplace book are excerpts from:

• C.A. Demoustier’s Cours de Morale (1804)
• Esprit Fleicher’s Oraison funèbre de Monsieur de Turenne (1676)
• Chateaubriand’s Martyrs (1809)
• The Gazette de France (9 April 1808)
• Voltaire
• Jean-Baptiste Massillon
• Fréderic César de La Harpe
• Marie Jeanne Riccoboni
• Jacques Necker
• François de Neufchâteau
• Jean-François Marmontel
• Marquis de Bonnay
• The letters of Catherine the Great
• Hayley’s Recette de faire une Tragédie moderne (undated).

Voltaire encourages the recipient to read a letter from Turgot, Contrôleur général des Finances to Louis XVI concerning the 30,000 pounds that had been set as the price for the Pays de Gex’s future immunity from taxation. Voltaire notes that Turgot’s letter shows he fought bitterly for this figure to be reduced and expresses his annoyance that the recipient did not keep him informed of their own negotiations over this price, negotiations Voltaire felt had jeopardised his own attempts to reduce the sum. He then turns to salt, a commodity that had been proposed as an alternative to taxation, stating that this idea had never come to fruition.