The MS was originally catalogued with the shelfmark: Supplément français 4302.

The speech was printed in the same year as it was delievered, 1746, and later in the ‘Suite des mélanges de littérature’ in the Collection complette des oeuvres de M. de Voltaire (Geneva, 1770), vol.vi, p.179-200.

Reflected in the collection are his early years as a Swiss immigrant, his life on the Pennsylvania frontier, his service as a Senator and Congressman from that state from 1784 to 1801, his work as Secretary of the Treasury during 1801-1814, and his later career as a diplomat. There is also genealogical material on the Gallatin family, including source documents. Topics given coverage in the collection include Pennsylvania and United States politics, U.S. foreign policy and treaties, revolution in Geneva, roads and canals, land speculation, banking, tariff, Americans in Europe, Indian languages and affairs, U.S. expansion, the Northeastern boundary settlement, and the slave trade. Among the numerous correspondents found in the collection are John Quincy Adams, Jean Badollet, Susanne Gallatin-Vaudenet, Voltaire, Catherine Pictet, James W. Nicholson, Alexander Dallas, Thomas Worthington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Tench Coxe, John Randolph, John Jacob Astor, James Monroe, Comte de Romanzoff, Lord Ashburton, Henry Clay, W.H. Crawford, Hannah Nicholson Gallatin, Marquis de Lafayette, Madame de Stael, G.W. Erving, Duc de Richelieu, Richard Rush, J.C. Hottingeur, John Forsyth, Etienne Denis de Pasquier, Baron Hyde de Neuville, French foreign minister Chateaubriand, Peter Stephen Du Ponceau, Nicholas Biddle, H.U. Addington, George Canning, David Gelston, Albert Rolaz Gallatin, David Shriver, Jr., A.R. Gallatin, and A.H. Gallatin.

Also included are autograph manuscript notes and news clippings regarding the Voltaire centennial, including a speech by Victor Hugo, translated by Parton, and French newspapers of the event. Parton was an American biographer. His The life of Horace Greeley : editor of “The New-York tribune”, from his birth to the present time was published in 1872 and his Life of Voltaire was published in 1881.