"THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THE AMERICAN AFFAIRS.
"In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than that he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day.
"Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy from different motives, and with various designs; but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms, as the last resource, must decide the contest; the appeal was the choice of the king, and the continent hath accepted the challenge.
"It has been reported of the late Mr. Pelham (who, though an able minister, was not without his faults), that on his being attacked in the House of Commons, on the score, that his measures were only of a temporary kind, replied "they will last my time." Should a thought so fatal and unmanly possess the colonies in the present contest, the name of ancestors will be remembered by future generations with detestation.
"The sun never shone on a cause of greater worth. 'Tis not the affair of a city, a county, a province, or a kingdom, but of a continent—of at least one-eighth part of the habitable globe. 'Tis not the concern of a day, a year, or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and they will be more or less affected even to the end of time, by the proceedings now. Now is the seed-time of continental union, faith, and honor. The least fracture now will be like a name engraved with the point of a pin on the tender rind of a young oak; the wound will enlarge with the tree, and posterity read it in full grown characters.
"By referring the matter from argument to arms, a new era for politics is struck; a new method of thinking hath arisen. All plans, proposals, etc., prior to the nineteenth of April, i.e., to the commencement of hostilities, are like the almanacs of last year; which, though proper then, are superseded and useless now. Whatever was advanced by the advocates on either side of the question then terminated in one and the same point, viz., a union with Great Britain. The only difference between the parties was the method of effecting it; the one proposing force, the other friendship; but it hath so far happened that the first has failed, and the second has withdrawn her influence.
"As much hath been said of the advantages of reconciliation, which, like an agreeable dream, hath passed away and left us as we were, it is but right that we should examine the contrary side of the argument, and inquire into some of the many material injuries which these colonies sustain, and always will sustain, by being connected with and dependent on Great Britain. To examine that connection and dependence, on the principles of nature and common sense, to see what we have to trust to, if separated, and what we are to expect, if dependent.
"I have heard it asserted by some, that as America has flourished under her former connection with Great Britain, the same connection is necessary toward her future happiness, and will always have the same effect. Nothing can be more fallacious than this kind of argument. We may as well assert that because a child has thrived upon milk, that it is never to have meat, or that the first twenty years of our lives is to become a precedent for the next twenty. But even this is admitting more than is true, for I answer roundly, that America would have flourished as much, and probably much more, had no European power had any thing to do with her. The articles of commerce by which she has enriched herself, are the necessaries of life, and will always have a market while eating is the custom of Europe.
"But she has protected us, say some. That she hath engrossed us is true, and defended the continent at our expense, as well as her own, is admitted, and she would have defended Turkey from the same motives, viz., for the sake of trade and dominion.
"Alas! we have been long led away by ancient prejudices, and made large sacrifices to superstition. We have boasted the protection of Great Britain, without considering that her motive was interest, not attachment; and that she did not protect us from our enemies on our account, but from her enemies on her own account, from those who had no quarrel with us on any other account, and who will always be our enemies on the same account. Let Britain waive her pretensions to the continent, or the continent throw off the dependence, and we should be at peace with France and Spain, were they at war with Britain. The miseries of Hanover, last war, ought to warn us against connections.
"It hath lately been asserted in Parliament that the colonies have no relation to each other, but through the parent country, i.e., that Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, and so on for the rest, are sister colonies by the way of England. This is certainly a very roundabout way of proving relationship, but it is the nearest and only true way of proving enemyship, if I may so call it. France and Spain never were, nor perhaps ever will be, our enemies as Americans, but as our being the subjects of Great Britain.
"But Britain is the parent country, say some. Then the more shame upon her conduct. Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their families; wherefore, the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach. But it happens not to be true, or only partly so; and the phrase parent, or mother country hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low, papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster; and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their descendants still.
"In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three hundred and sixty miles—the extent of England—and carry our friendship on a larger scale. We claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.
"It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount local prejudices, as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in England divided into parishes, will naturally associate most with his fellow-parishioners—because their interests, in many cases, will be common—and distinguish him by the name of neighbor; if he meet him but a few miles from home, he drops the narrow idea of a street, and salutes him by the name of townsman; if he travel out of the county, and meets him in any other, he forgets the minor division of street and town, and calls him countryman—i.e., countyman; but if, in their foreign excursions, they should associate in France, or any other part of Europe, their local remembrance would be enlarged into that of Englishmen. And, by a just parity of reasoning, all Europeans meeting in America, or any other quarter of the globe, are countrymen; for England, Holland, Germany, or Sweden, when compared with the whole, stand in the same places on the larger scale which the divisions of street, town, and county do on the smaller one—distinctions too limited for continental minds. Not one-third of the inhabitants, even of this province, are of English descent. Wherefore, I reprobate the phrase of parent, or mother country, applied to England only, as being false, selfish, narrow, and ungenerous.
"But, admitting that we were all of English descent, what does it amount to? Nothing. Britain, being now an open enemy, extinguishes every other name and title; and to say that reconciliation is our duty, is truly farcical. The first King of England, of the present line—William the Conqueror—was a Frenchman, and half the peers of England are descendants from the same country; wherefore, by the same method of reasoning, England ought to be governed by France.
"Much hath been said of the united strength of Britain and the colonies—that, in conjunction, they might bid defiance to the world. But this is mere presumption; the fate of war is uncertain, neither do the expressions mean anything; for this continent would never suffer itself to be drained of inhabitants to support the British arms in either Asia, Africa, or Europe.
"Besides, what have we to do with setting the world at defiance? Our plan is commerce, and that, well attended to, will secure us the peace and friendship of all Europe, because it is the interest of all Europe to have America a free port. Her trade will always be a protection, and her barrenness of gold and silver secure her from invaders.
"I challenge the warmest advocate for reconciliation to show a single advantage that this continent can reap by being connected with Great Britain. I repeat the challenge; not a single advantage is derived. Our corn will fetch its price in any market in Europe, and our imported goods must be paid for, buy them where we will.
"But the injuries and disadvantages which we sustain by that connection are without number; and our duty to mankind at large, as well as to ourselves, instructs us to renounce the alliance, because any submission to, or dependence on, Great Britain, tends directly to involve this continent in European wars and quarrels, and sets us at variance with nations, who would otherwise seek our friendship, and against whom we have neither anger nor complaint. As Europe is our market for trade, we ought to form no partial connection with any part of it. It is the true interest of America to steer clear of European contentions, which she never can do; while, by her dependence on Britain, she is made the make-weight in the scale of British politics.
"Europe is too thickly planted with kingdoms to be long at peace; and whenever a war breaks out between England and any foreign power, the trade of America goes to ruin, because of her connection with Britain. The next war may not turn out like the last, and, should it not, the advocates for reconciliation now will be wishing for separation then, because neutrality, in that case, would be a safer convoy than a man-of-war. Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of Nature, cries, ''Tis time to part!' Even the distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America, is a strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other was never the design of Heaven. The time, likewise, at which the continent was discovered, adds weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was peopled increases the force of it. The reformation was preceded by the discovery of America, as if the Almighty graciously meant to open a sanctuary to the persecuted in future years, when home should afford neither friendship nor safety.
"The authority of Great Britain over this continent is a form of government which, sooner or later, must have an end; and a serious mind can draw no true pleasure by looking forward, under the painful and positive conviction that what he calls 'the present constitution,' is merely temporary. As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to insure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity; and by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it—otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years further into life. That eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight.
"Though I would carefully avoid giving unnecessary offense, yet I am inclined to believe that all those who espouse the doctrine of reconciliation may be included within the following descriptions:
"Interested men, who are not to be trusted; weak men, who can not see; prejudiced men, who will not see; and a certain set of moderate men, who think better of the European world than it deserves; and this last class, by an ill-judged deliberation, will be the cause of more calamities to this continent than all the other three.
"It is the good fortune of many to live distant from the scene of sorrow. The evil is not sufficiently brought to their doors to make them feel the precariousness with which all American property is possessed. But let our imaginations transport us a few moments to Boston; that seat of wretchedness will teach us wisdom, and instruct us forever to renounce a power in whom we can have no trust. The inhabitants of that unfortunate city, who, but a few months ago, were in ease and affluence, have now no other alternative than to stay and starve, or turn out to beg—endangered by the fire of their friends if they continue within the city, and plundered by the soldiery if they leave it. In their present situation they are prisoners without the hope of redemption, and in a general attack for their relief, they would be exposed to the fury of both armies.
"Men of passive tempers look somewhat lightly over the offenses of Britain, and, still hoping for the best, are apt to call out, 'Come, come; we shall be friends again for all this.' But examine the passions and feelings of mankind, bring the doctrine of reconciliation to the touchstone of nature, and then tell me whether you can hereafter love, honor, and faithfully serve the power that hath carried fire and sword into your land? If you can not do all these, then you are only deceiving yourselves, and, by your delay, bringing ruin upon your posterity. Your future connection with Britain, whom you can neither love nor honor, will be forced and unnatural, and, being formed only on the plan of present convenience, will, in a little time, fall into a relapse more wretched than the first. But if you say you can still pass the violations over, then I ask, hath your house been burnt? Hath your property been destroyed before your face? Are your wife and children destitute of a bed to lie on, or bread to live on? Have you lost a parent or a child by their hands, and yourself the ruined and wretched survivor? If you have not, then are you not a judge of those who have. But if you have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover; and, whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant.
"This is not inflaming or exaggerating matters, but trying them by those feelings and affections which nature justifies, and without which we should be incapable of discharging the social duties of life or enjoying the felicities of it. I mean not to exhibit horror for the purpose of provoking revenge, but to awaken us from fatal and unmanly slumbers, that we may pursue determinately some fixed object. It is not in the power of Britain or of Europe to conquer America, if she does not conquer herself by delay and timidity. The present winter is worth an age if rightly employed; but if lost or neglected, the whole continent will partake of the misfortune; and there is no punishment which that man will not deserve, be he who, or what, or where he will, that may be the means of sacrificing a season so precious and useful.
"It is repugnant to reason and the universal order of things, to all examples from former ages, to suppose that this continent can longer remain subject to any external power. The most sanguine in Britain do not think so. The utmost stretch of human wisdom can not, at this time, compass a plan short of separation, which can promise the continent even a year's security. Reconciliation is now a fallacious dream. Nature hath deserted the connection, and art can not supply her place. For, as Milton wisely expresses, 'Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.'
"Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers have been rejected with disdain; and only tended to convince us that nothing flatters vanity or confirms obstinacy in kings more than repeated petitioning—nothing hath contributed more than this very measure to make the kings of Europe absolute. Witness Denmark and Sweden. Wherefore, since nothing but blows will do, for God's sake let us come to a final separation, and not leave the next generation to be cutting throats under the violated, unmeaning names of parent and child.
"To say they will never attempt it again is idle and visionary. We thought so at the repeal of the stamp act; yet a year or two undeceived us. As well may we suppose that nations, which have been once defeated, will never renew the quarrel.
"As to government matters, it is not in the power of Britain to do this continent justice. The business of it will soon be too weighty and intricate to be managed with any tolerable degree of convenience by a power so distant from us and so very ignorant of us; for if they can not conquer us they can not govern us. To be always running three or four thousand miles with a tale or a petition, waiting four or five months for an answer, which, when obtained, requires five or six more to explain it in, will in a few years be looked upon as folly and childishness. There was a time when it was proper, and there is a proper time for it to cease.
"Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island. In no instance hath nature made the satellite larger than its primary planet; and as England and America, with respect to each other, reverses the common order of nature, it is evident that they belong to different systems: England to Europe—America to itself.
"I am not induced by motives of pride, party, or resentment to espouse the doctrine of separation and independence. I am clearly, positively, and conscientiously persuaded that it is the true interest of this continent to be so; that every thing short of that is mere patchwork; that it can afford no lasting felicity; that it is leaving the sword to our children and shrinking back at a time when, going a little further, would have rendered this continent the glory of the earth.
"As Britain hath not manifested the least inclination toward a compromise, we may be assured that no terms can be obtained worthy the acceptance of the continent, or any ways equal to the expense of blood and treasure we have been already put to.
"The object contended for ought always to bear some just proportion to the expense. The removal of North, or the whole detestable junto, is a matter unworthy the millions we have expended. A temporary stoppage of trade was an inconvenience which would have sufficiently balanced the repeal of all the acts complained of, had such repeals been obtained; but if the whole continent must take up arms, if every man must be a soldier, it is scarcely worth our while to fight against a contemptible ministry only. Dearly, dearly do we pay for the repeal of the acts if that is all we fight for; for, in a just estimation, it is as great a folly to pay a Bunker-hill price for law as for land. I have always considered the independency of this continent as an event which sooner or later must take place, and, from the late rapid progress of the continent to maturity, the event can not be far off. Wherefore, on the breaking out of hostilities, it was not worth the while to have disputed a matter which time would have finally redressed, unless we meant to be in earnest; otherwise, it is like wasting an estate on a suit at law to regulate the trespasses of a tenant whose lease is just expiring. No man was a warmer wisher for a reconciliation than myself before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775,[A] but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever; and disdain the wretch that, with the pretended title of father of his people, can unfeelingly hear of their slaughter and composedly sleep with their blood upon his soul.
"But admitting that matters were now made up, what would be the event? I answer, the ruin of the continent. And that for several reasons.
"1st. The powers of governing still remaining in the hands of the king, he will have a negative over the whole legislation of this continent. And as he hath shown himself such an inveterate enemy to liberty, and discovered such a thirst for arbitrary power, is he, or is he not, a proper person to say to these colonies, 'You shall make no laws but what I please?' And is there any inhabitant of America so ignorant as not to know that, according to what is called the present constitution, this continent can make no laws but what the king gives leave to? and is there any man so unwise as not to see that (considering what has happened) he will suffer no law to be made here but such as suits his purpose? We may be as effectually enslaved by the want of laws in America as by submitting to laws made for us in England. After matters are made up (as it is called), can there be any doubt but the whole power of the crown will be exerted to keep this continent as low and humble as possible? Instead of going forward, we shall go backward, or be perpetually quarreling or ridiculously petitioning. We are already greater than the king wishes us to be, and will he not hereafter endeavor to make us less? To bring the matter to one point, is the power who is jealous of our prosperity a proper power to govern us? Whoever says No to this question is an independent, for independency means no more than this, whether we shall make our own laws, or whether the king, the greatest enemy which this continent hath or can have, shall tell us, 'There shall be no laws but such as I like.'
"But the king, you will say, has a negative in England; the people there can make no laws without his consent. In point of right and good order, it is something very ridiculous that a youth of twenty-one (which hath often happened) shall say to several millions of people, older and wiser than himself, I forbid this or that act of yours to be law. But in this place I decline this sort of reply, though I will never cease to expose the absurdity of it; and only answer that, England being the king's residence and America not makes quite another case. The king's negative here is ten times more dangerous and fatal than it can be in England; for there he will scarcely refuse his consent to a bill for putting England into as strong a state of defense as possible, and in America he would never suffer such a bill to be passed.
"America is only a secondary object in the system of British politics—England consults the good of this country no further than it answers her own purpose. Wherefore, her own interest leads her to suppress the growth of ours in every case which doth not promote her advantage, or in the least interferes with it. A pretty state we should soon be in under such a secondhand government, considering what has happened! Men do not change from enemies to friends by the alteration of a name; and in order to show that reconciliation now is a dangerous doctrine, I affirm that it would be policy in the king at this time to repeal the acts, for the sake of reinstating himself in the government of the provinces; in order that he may accomplish by craft and subtlety, in the long run, what he can not do by force in the short one. Reconciliation and ruin are nearly related.
"2dly. That as even the best terms which we can expect to obtain can amount to no more than a temporary expedient, or a kind of government by guardianship, which can last no longer than till the colonies come of age, so the general face and state of things, in the interim, will be unsettled and unpromising. Emigrants of property will not choose to come to a country whose form of government hangs but by a thread, and which is every day tottering on the brink of commotion and disturbance; and numbers of the present inhabitants would lay hold of the interval to dispose of their effects and quit the continent.
"But the most powerful of all arguments is, that nothing but independence, i.e., a continental form of government, can keep the peace of the continent and preserve it inviolate from civil wars. I dread the event of a reconciliation with Britain now, as it is more than probable that it will be followed by a revolt somewhere or other, the consequences of which may be far more fatal than all the malice of Britain.
"Thousands are already ruined by British barbarity. (Thousands more will probably suffer the same fate.) Those men have other feelings than us who have nothing suffered. All they now possess is liberty; what they before enjoyed is sacrificed to its service, and, having nothing more to lose, they disdain submission. Besides, the general temper of the colonies toward a British government will be like that of a youth who is nearly out of his time—they will care very little about her. And a government which can not preserve the peace is no government at all, and in that case we pay our money for nothing; and pray what is it that Britain can do, whose power will be wholly on paper, should a civil tumult break out the very day after reconciliation? I have heard some men say, many of whom I believe spoke without thinking, that they dreaded an independence, fearing that it would produce civil wars. It is but seldom that our first thoughts are truly correct, and that is the case here; for there is ten times more to dread from a patched up connection than from independence. I make the sufferer's case my own, and I protest that, were I driven from house and home, my property destroyed, and my circumstances ruined, that as a man sensible of injuries, I could never relish the doctrine of reconciliation or consider myself bound thereby.
"The colonies have manifested such a spirit of good order and obedience to continental government, as is sufficient to make every reasonable person easy and happy on that head. No man can assign the least pretense for his fears on any other grounds than such as are truly childish and ridiculous, viz.: that one colony will be striving for superiority over another.
"Where there are no distinctions there can be no superiority; perfect equality affords no temptation. The republics of Europe are all (and we may say always) in peace. Holland and Switzerland are without wars, foreign or domestic. Monarchical governments, it is true, are never long at rest; the crown itself is a temptation to enterprising ruffians at home, and that degree of pride and insolence, ever attendant on regal authority, swells into a rupture with foreign powers in instances where a republican government, by being formed on more natural principles, would negotiate the mistake.
"If there is any true cause of fear respecting independence, it is because no plan is yet laid down. Men do not see their way out. Wherefore, as an opening into that business, I offer the following hints, at the same time modestly affirming that I have no other opinion of them myself than that they may be the means of giving rise to something better. Could the straggling thoughts of individuals be collected, they would frequently form materials for wise and able men to improve into useful matter:
"Let the assemblies be annual, with a president only. The representation more equal. Their business wholly domestic, and subject to the authority of a continental congress.
"Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten convenient districts, each district to send a proper number of delegates to congress, so that each colony send at least thirty. The whole number in congress will be at least three hundred and ninety. Each congress to sit ——, and to choose a president by the following method: When the delegates are met, let a colony be taken from the whole thirteen colonies by lot, after which let the congress choose (by ballot) a president from out of the delegates of that province. In the next congress, let a colony be taken by lot from twelve only, omitting that colony from which the president was taken in the former congress, and so proceeding on till the whole thirteen shall have had their proper rotation. And, in order that nothing may pass into a law but what is satisfactorily just, not less than three-fifths of the congress to be called a majority. He that will promote discord, under a government so equally formed as this, would have joined Lucifer in his revolt.
"But, as there is a peculiar delicacy from whom, or in what manner, this business must first arise, and as it seems most agreeable and consistent that it should come from some intermediate body between the governed and the governors—that is, between the congress and the people—let a Continental Conference be held, in the following manner, and for the following purpose:
"A committee of twenty-six members of congress, viz.: two for each colony; two members from each house of assembly, or provincial convention, and five representatives of the people at large, to be chosen in the capital city or town of each province, for and in behalf of the whole province, by as many qualified voters as shall think proper to attend from all parts of the province for that purpose; or, if more convenient, the representatives may be chosen in two or three of the most populous parts thereof. In this conference, thus assembled, will be united the two grand principles of business—knowledge and power. The members of congress, assemblies, or conventions, by having had experience in national concerns, will be able and useful counselors, and the whole, being empowered by the people, will have a truly legal authority.
"The conferring members being met, let their business be to frame a Continental Charter, or Charter of the United Colonies (answering to what is called the Magna Charta of England); fixing the number and manner of choosing members of congress and members of assembly, with their date of sitting, and drawing the line of business and jurisdiction between them (always remembering that our strength is continental, not provincial); securing freedom and property to all men, and, above all things, the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; with such other matter as it is necessary for a charter to contain. Immediately after which, the said conference to dissolve, and the bodies which shall be chosen conformable to the said charter to be the legislators and governors of this continent for the time being: whose peace and happiness may God preserve. Amen.
"Should any body of men be hereafter delegated for this or some similar purpose, I offer them the following extract from that wise observer on governments, Dragonetti: 'The science,' says he, 'of the politician consists in fixing the true point of happiness and freedom. Those men would deserve the gratitude of ages who should discover a mode of government that contained the greatest sum of individual happiness, with the least national expense.'
"But where, say some, is the king of America? I'll tell you, friend: he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of Britain. Yet, that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the Word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know that, so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the king is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other. But, lest any ill use should afterward arise, let the crown, at the conclusion of the ceremony, be demolished, and scattered among the people, whose right it is.
"A government of our own is our natural right; and when a man seriously reflects on the precariousness of human affairs, he will become convinced that it is infinitely wiser and safer to form a constitution of our own in a cool, deliberate manner, while we have it in our power, than to trust such an interesting event to time and chance. If we omit it now, some Massanello may hereafter arise, who, laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and the discontented, and, by assuming to themselves the powers of government, finally sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge. Should the government of America return again into the hands of Britain, the tottering situation of things will be a temptation for some desperate adventurer to try his fortune; and, in such a case, what relief can Britain give? Ere she could hear the news the fatal business might be done, and ourselves suffering, like the wretched Britons, under the oppression of the Conqueror. Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do: ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keeping vacant the seat of government. There are thousands, and tens of thousands, who would think it glorious to expel from the continent that barbarous and hellish power, which hath stirred up the Indians and negroes to destroy us. The cruelty hath a double guilt—it is dealing brutally by us, and treacherously by them.
"To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to have faith, and our affections, wounded through a thousand pores, instruct us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of kindred between us and them; and can there be any reason to hope that, as the relationship expires, the affection will increase, or that we shall agree better when we have ten times more and greater concerns to quarrel over than ever?
"Ye that tell us of harmony and reconciliation, can ye restore to us the time that is past? Can ye give to prostitution its former innocence? Neither can ye reconcile Britain and America. The last cord now is broken; the people of England are presenting addresses against us. There are injuries which nature can not forgive—she would cease to be nature if she did. As well can the lover forgive the ravisher of his mistress, as the continent forgive the murders of Britain. The Almighty hath implanted in us these unextinguishable feelings for good and wise purposes. They are the guardians of his image in our hearts, and distinguish us from the herd of common animals. The social compact would dissolve, and justice be extirpated from the earth, or have only a casual existence, were we callous to the touches of affection. The robber and the murderer would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain provoke us into justice.
"Oh, ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been haunted round the globe. Asia and Africa have long expelled her. Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. Oh! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind."
ORIGINAL DECLARATION.[B]
I now place before the reader the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, as it was presented by Jefferson. I have placed in brackets the matter struck out or amended by Congress.
It will be remembered that Mr. Jefferson was chairman of the committee to draft the document; Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, and R. R. Livingston, being the other four of the committee; that they changed but a word or two in it; and that John Adams became its champion in Congress, and fought manfully for every word of it. Jefferson said nothing, as he scarcely ever spoke in public:
[1.] "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
[2.] "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with [inherent and] inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, [begun at a distinguished period, and] pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferings of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to [expunge] their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain, is a history of [unremitting] injuries and usurpations, [among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all have] in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, [for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.]
[3.] "He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
[4.] "He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
[5.] "He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
[6.] "He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
[7.] "He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly [and continually] for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
[8.] "He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.
[9.] "He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
[10.] "He has [suffered] the administration of justice [totally to cease in some of these states], refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
[11.] "He has made [our] judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
[12.] "He has erected a multitude of new offices [by a self-assumed power], and sent hither swarms of new officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
[13.] "He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies [and ships of war] without the consent of our legislatures.
[14.] "He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.
[15.] "He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions, and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting by a mock trial from punishment, any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all ports of the world; for imposing taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses; for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these [states]; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
[16.] "He has abdicated government here [withdrawing his governors and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection].
[17.] "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
[18.] "He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries, to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
[19.] "He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
[20.] "He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of the frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of [existence].
[21.] ["He has excited treasonable insurrection of our fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.]
[22.] ["He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.]
[23.] "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injuries.
[24.] "A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people [who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom.]
[25.] "Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts, by their legislature, to extend [a] jurisdiction over [these, our States.] We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here, [no one of which would warrant so strange a pretention. These were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or strength of Great Britain; that in constituting, indeed, our several forms of government, we had adopted one common king, thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them; but that submission to their Parliament was no part of our constitution, nor ever in idea, if history may be credited; and] we appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, [as well as to] the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which [were likely] to interrupt our connection and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity; [and when occasions have been given them, by the regular course of their laws, of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony, they have, by their free election, reëstablished them in power. At this very time, too, they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries, to invade and destroy us. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them,] and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind—enemies in war, in peace friends. [We might have been a free and a great people together; but a communion of grandeur and of freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it. The road to happiness and to glory is open to us, too. We will tread it apart from them, and] acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our [eternal] separation.
[26.] "We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, do, in the name and by the authority of the good people of these [States, reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the King of Great Britain, and all others who may hereafter claim by, through, or under them; we utterly dissolve all political connection which may heretofore have subsisted between us and the people or Parliament of Great Britain; and, finally, we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independent States;] and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
"And for the support of this declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor."
[A] Massacre at Lexington.
ANALYSIS.
We have to do with the original draft, and to let the reader see the hand of a master, I will analyze it.
"I love method," said Mr. Paine. The method of the piece stands as follows, and, for the sake of elucidation, I have numbered the paragraphs in the original;
I. Introduction, viz:—Paragraph [1].
II. Bill of Rights—Paragraph [2].
III. Indictment—under three general charges: Usurpation, Abdication, and War, as follows:
USURPATION.
Par. [3], [4], [5]—Laws usurped, and hereunder:
a. Negatived.
b. Forbidden and neglected.
c. Refused, unless rights are surrendered.
Par. [6], [7], [8], [9]—Legislation usurped, and hereunder:
a. Legislative bodies meet at the wrong place.
b. Legislative bodies dissolved.
c. Refused to have them elected.
d. Obstructing legislation for naturalization.
Par. [10], [11], [12]—Judiciary powers usurped, and hereunder:
a. Destroyed by his negative.
b. Made the judges dependent on his will,
c. And erected new offices by his own will.
Par. [13], [14]—Military powers usurped, and hereunder:
a. Established without consent of legislatures.
b. Made superior to civil power.
Par. [15]—Jurisdiction usurped, and hereunder:
a. Troops, the quartering of.
b. Trial, of a mock nature.
c. Trade, the cutting off.
d. Taxes, without consent.
e. Trial, depriving of.
f. Transportation, to be
g. Tried, for pretended offenses.
h. Laws, abolishing the English.
i. Charters, the taking of.
j. Laws, abolishing special ones.
k. Constitutions, altering form of.
l. Legislatures, suspension of.
m. Power, to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
ABDICATION.
Par. [16]—Declaring us out of his allegiance and protection.
WAR.
Par. [17]—Warfare begun, and hereunder:
a. Seas plundered.
b. Coasts ravaged.
c. Towns burnt.
d. Lives destroyed.
Par. [18]—Invasion.
Par. [19]—Pressing of seamen.
Par. [20]—Indian massacres.
Par. [21]—Insurrection.
Par. [22]—Waging war against human nature.
IV. Peaceful Method of Redress, viz: Petitioning—Paragraph [23].
V. Necessity of Separation—declared in Paragraphs [24], [25].
VI. Powers of an Independent State Declared To the World—in Paragraph [26].
ARGUMENT.
Let us now examine Articles III, IV, V, and VI. As they form the piece proper, namely, the indictment and the declaration thereunder, let us compare them with reference to the following:
In the conclusion of Common Sense Mr. Paine wrote: "Should a manifesto be published and dispatched to foreign courts setting forth—
I. "The miseries we have endured; [This is Art. III of the Declaration.]
II. "The peaceful methods which we have ineffectually used for redress; [This is Art. IV of the Declaration.]
III. "Declaring at the same time that, not being able any longer to live happily or safely under the cruel disposition of the British court, we had been driven to the necessity of breaking off all connection with her; [This is Art. V of the Declaration.]
IV. "At the same time assuring all courts of our peaceful disposition toward them, and of our desire of entering into trade with them." [This is Art. VI of the Declaration.]
Here are, in their order, the directions for producing the four last articles of the famous document, and which constitute, as a special instrument, all there is of it. Did Mr. Jefferson study this production of Thomas Paine's so closely as to get the exact order, without transposing an article? A cursory reading would not do this, and if he did not study it for this purpose, then the same peculiar mind belonged to Jefferson that belonged to Thomas Paine; and in writing the Declaration a greater special miracle was performed than any recorded of Jesus of Nazareth.
In the above there is a striking coincidence of documentary facts, in the same order, and it is safe to say there is not one man in a million who, in reading Common Sense, would remember this order, unless he read it with such special purpose. But it is known Jefferson never consulted a book or paper upon the subject, nor for the purpose of producing it. Here is what Bancroft says, and I have found him to be a truthful historian as to current facts touching on the subject:
"From the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book, Jefferson drafted the Declaration; he submitted it separately to Franklin and John Adams, accepted from each of them one or two verbal unimportant corrections," etc.—Hist., vol. viii, p. 465.
The above history is doubtless taken from the reply of Mr. Jefferson to attacks on the originality of the Declaration, which is as follows: "Pickering's observations and Mr. Adams' in addition, 'that it contained no new ideas; that it is a common-place compilation; its sentiments hackneyed in Congress for two years before, and its essence contained in Otis' pamphlet,' may all be true. Of that I am not to be the judge. Richard Henry Lee charged it as copied from Locke's Treatise on Government. Otis' pamphlet I never saw; and whether I had gathered my ideas from reading, I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it."—Works, vol. vii, p. 305.
This was written when he was eighty years old.
But it seems that Mr. Jefferson had never read the pamphlet, Common Sense, as the following gross error in regard to it will show. Speaking of Mr. Paine, he says: "Indeed, his Common Sense was for awhile believed to have been written by Dr. Franklin, and published under the borrowed name of Paine, who had come over with him from England."—Works, vol. vii., p. 198.
In the above sentence there are two historic errors. First, Common Sense was not published under the name of Paine; and, second, Mr. Paine did not come over with Franklin from England. He preceded Franklin six months.
That Mr. Paine did not attach his name to the pamphlet, Common Sense, there is abundance of evidence to prove. The author of a pamphlet, subscribed Rationalis, in answer to Common Sense, says: "I know not the author, nor am I anxious to learn his name or character, for the book, and not the writer of it, is to be the subject of my animadversions."
But we have Mr. Paine's own testimony, in the second edition of Common Sense, direct to the point. In a postscript to the Introduction, he says: "Who the author of this production is, is wholly unnecessary to the public, as the object for attention is the doctrine, not the man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say that he is unconnected with any party, and under no sort of influence, public or private, but the influence of reason and principle."
An examination of all the earliest editions which can be seen in the Congressional Library at Washington will satisfy any one on this subject.
If Mr. Jefferson had read Common Sense before the writing of the Declaration, he would never have erred so in regard to this fact. This goes to show he had not even read it, much less studied it. How, then, was the exact order followed, in writing the Declaration, which Mr. Paine laid down in Common Sense?
My first proposition, then, I have proven, namely: that Thomas Paine wrote a work for the sole purpose of bringing about a separation and making a Declaration of Independence. I have proven, also, that he therein submitted the subject-matter in the order in which it was afterwards put. This much on the positive side. On the negative side, I have shown that Mr. Jefferson did none of these things, for it was produced from "the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book."
But if Mr. Bancroft be a truthful historian, there is already great doubt thrown on Jefferson's authorship of it, and it would have been better to have made Jefferson a close student and thorough reader for this special purpose. This is the view, in fact, taken of the question of authorship in the New American Cyclopedia (article Thomas Jefferson), and I will give an extract therefrom, to show how historians differ. Speaking of the Declaration, the Cyclopedia says: "Two questions have, however, arisen as to its originality: the first, a general one upon the substance of the document; the second, in regard to its phraseology in connection with the alleged Mecklenburg declaration of May, 1775. It is more than probable that Jefferson made use of some of the ideas expressed in newspapers at the time, and that his study of the great English writers upon constitutional freedom was of service to him. But an impartial criticism will not base upon this fact a charge of want of originality. It should rather be regarded as the peculiar merit of the writer that he thus collected and embodied the conclusions upon government of the leading thinkers of the age in Europe and America, rejecting what was false, and combining his material into a production of so much eloquence and dignity."
This does not sound much like Bancroft. The two historians have placed Mr. Jefferson in a sad dilemma. The one, to make him an original in the production of the Declaration, says he did not consult one single book, but produced it from the fullness of his own mind. The other, to defend him from the charge of want of originality, says he made use of the newspapers, collected and embodied, etc. But the single fact which I have brought from the conclusion of Common Sense destroys the first hypothesis, and the last hypothesis, in being contradictory in itself destroys itself. How the reader will fathom this labyrinth of contradictions, and reconcile this conflict of historic opinion, is a question which does not trouble me, and I pass on to something more important.
STYLE.
The style of the Declaration of Independence is in every particular the style of Mr. Paine and Junius; and it is in no particular the style of Thomas Jefferson. This I now proceed to prove.
That equality in the members of the periods, which gives evenness and smoothness, and the alliteration which gives harmony in the sound, and which together render the writings of Mr. Paine so stately and metrical, are qualities so prominent that no one can mistake the style. And what renders the argument in this regard so strong, is the entire absence of these qualities in Mr. Jefferson's writings. In fact, if Mr. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he never before nor since wrote any thing like it, in the same style, order, or spirit; or produced any thing which evinced genius, or the hand of a master in literature. What I have already said on style, in the former part of this work, will render this readily understood by the reader; but I will now make a few comparisons, and first with Junius, and then Paine and Jefferson.
Junius wrote two declarations, or rather pieces, after the very same style and manner, namely, the first and the thirty-fifth Letters. They can be thrown into the same synoptical form in which I have put the Declaration. But to show the rythm, and alliteration, and peculiar style, I give the following:
"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."—Declaration.
"When the complaints of a brave and powerful people are observed to increase in proportion to the wrongs they have suffered; when, instead of sinking into submission, they are roused to resistance, the time will soon arrive at which every inferior consideration must yield to the security of the sovereign and to the general safety of the state. There is a moment of difficulty and danger at which flattery and falsehood can no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled."—Junius.
"When the tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection; or when those who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes; when the yearly revenue shall scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise and embitter the remembrance of former follies."
The above three extracts are from the Declaration, Junius, and Crisis, viii. There is in them the same stately measure or tread; the same harmony of sounds; the same gravity of sentiment; the same clearness of diction; the same boldness of utterance; the same beauty and vivacity; in short, the same spirit and the same hand.
Now an extract from Jefferson will be in place, and I give it from one of his most impassioned pieces, the "Summary View." I do this for two reasons: first, because it is the only piece, up to the writing of the Declaration, which he ever produced worthy of note; and second, because it is his best. I give also the best of this piece, the exordium:
"Resolved, That it be an instruction to the said deputies, when assembled in General Congress, with the deputies from the other states of British America, to propose to the said Congress that an humble and dutiful address be presented to his Majesty, begging leave to lay before him, as Chief Magistrate of the British empire, the united complaints of his Majesty's subjects in America; complaints which are excited by many unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted to be made by the legislature of one part of the empire upon the rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all. To represent to his Majesty that these, his states, have often individually made humble application to his imperial Throne to obtain through its intervention some redress of their injured rights, to none of which was ever even an answer condescended. Humbly to hope that this, their joint address, penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility which would persuade his Majesty that we are asking favors, and not rights, shall obtain from his Majesty a respectful acceptance; and this his Majesty will think we have reason to expect, when he reflects that he is no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers to assist in working the great machine of government, erected for their use, and consequently subject to their superintendence, and in order that these our rights, as well as the invasions of them, may be laid more fully before his Majesty, to take a view of them from the origin and first settlement of these countries."
It will be observed in the above extract from Mr. Jefferson, that there is no proportion between the members of the sentences. We have them of all lengths, interlarded with phrases, and thrown into a confused mass. Hence, there is no harmony. Mr. Paine's periods are almost faultless in this regard; the members of the periods follow each other like the waves of the ocean, which gives evenness of "tread" and majesty of expression. While the style of Mr. Jefferson is absolutely devoid of all harmony, for the members of the periods move on like the rumbling of a government wagon over a rough and stony road.
This peculiarity of style is one of mental constitution. It is an effect of nature which education can never remedy. No art can reach it, for no mental training can annul a law of nature. It may be said of the writer in this regard as of the poet: "He is born, not made." It is herein nature made these two men entirely unlike. Paine was a poet; Jefferson was not. The former had the most lively imagination; the latter had none at all. It is this quality of the mind—imagination—which adorns language with the figure.
In the proper use of the figure Mr. Paine can not be excelled. Mr. Jefferson makes but infrequent use of figures of speech, and when he goes out of the ruts of custom, he almost always fails in his efforts. Two or three examples will suffice. In vol. i, p. 58, he says: "I never heard either of them speak ten minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which was to decide the question. They laid their shoulders to the great points, knowing that the little ones would follow of themselves." In this men are arguing the points of a question. But Mr. Jefferson says they "laid their shoulders" to them, instead of their tongues. In vol. i, p. 358, he says: "The Emperor, to satisfy this tinsel passion, plants a dagger in the heart of every Dutchman, which no time will extract." Perhaps these planted daggers will take root. He speaks also about "confabs" and "swallowing opinions."
Let us look now, for a moment, at the grand requisites of style, Precision, Unity, and Strength.
Of the first, I would say, I have never yet seen an ambiguous sentence in Paine's works. Mr. Jefferson's style is confused, labored, and prolix. There is no paragraph he ever wrote, especially in the first half of his life, but will bear me out in the assertion, that he uses a great many words to express a few ideas. The above quotation I cite on this point. It could all have been put into one-fourth of the space, and thus have been rendered clear and distinct. His style, however, grew better as he grew older. He is diffuse, which at once destroys Unity of expression. He puts subject after subject into one period, often into one sentence. The consequence is, there is no order in his style, and his ideas tumble over each other in the greatest confusion; and the consequence of this is, there is no Strength to his style.
That the reader may see all these faults, I will make a brief analysis of the Introduction to the "Summary View," quoted above:
FIRST PERIOD.
1. Instruction, to deputies.
2. When assembled in Congress.
3. With other deputies.
4. To propose to Congress.
5. To present an address to his Majesty.
6. Begging leave to lay before him complaints.
7. Complaints excited.
8. By encroachments and usurpations.
9. By the legislature of a part of the empire.
10. On the rights which God and the laws have given
11. Equally to all.
This is the first sentence. In it he has put the Introduction, the Bill of Rights, the Indictment, a proposition to Congress to go a begging before his Majesty, and several other particulars. But let us continue with the next sentence:
SECOND PERIOD.
12. To represent to his Majesty.
13. That his states.
14. Humble application.
15. To Imperial Throne.
16. To get redress of injured rights.
17. No answer.
Here there is no relation between the beginning of the sentence and the conclusion.
THIRD PERIOD.
18. Humbly to hope.
19. By joint address.
a. Penned in truth.
b. Divested of terms of servility.
20. Would persuade his Majesty.
21. That we ask no favors.
22. But rights.
23. Shall obtain a respectful acceptance.
24. His Majesty will think.
25. We have reason to expect.
26. When he reflects.
a. That he is only the chief officer.
b. Appointed by law.
c. Circumscribed with powers.
d. To assist in working the great machine of government.
e. Erected for their use.
f. Are therefore subject to their superintendence.
27. And that these our rights.
28. As well as invasions.
29. May be laid before his Majesty.
a. To take a view of them.
b. From their origin.
c. And first settlement of these countries.
It is only necessary to remark on the above, that thirty or forty subjects can hardly be handled successfully in three periods. How different is this from the Declaration, or, in fact, from any production of Mr. Paine's.
In the three great requisites of style, Precision, Unity, and Strength, where Mr. Paine is so perfect, we see great defects in Jefferson; and in the fourth, Harmony, a complete failure.
If we now take the "Summary View," and submit it to the same critical analysis as I have the Declaration of Independence, we will find the same defects in it, as a whole, that we find in the first paragraph, which I have just analyzed. There is a complete mixture of all subjects. But this I leave to the reader, should he question the truth of my assertion.
If we now turn to the synopsis of the Declaration, we will find an exhibition of the most perfect order. The Introduction is short, to the point, and complete. The Bill of Rights contains the first principles. These apply to mankind universally. It then proceeds as a specialty. The Indictment is divided into three grand divisions, Usurpation, Abdication, and War, and the separate counts are stated, clearly containing but one subject. Nowhere do we find a mixing up of different subjects. We do not find a count of war under the head of usurpation, nor one of usurpation under the head of war.
There is also seen the passion for alliteration throughout the whole instrument, and especially in the following passages: "Fostered and fixed in principles of freedom." Paragraph 22 is filled with examples. But in paragraph 15 it seems he uses this power of the mind to aid him in itemizing counts. He takes t for the letter under which he marshals this army of charges: "Troops," "trial," "trade," "taxes," "trial," [No. 2,] "transportation," "tried." Here are seven words comprising as many charges following in succession. He follows it with others, but never uses the t again. This shows a passion for order and alliteration. I presume there is no other document in the world with these peculiarities so marked, and I presume there is no writer in the world who ever exhibited to such a remarkable degree these peculiarities of style, as did Thomas Paine. [See on this subject Junius Unmasked, p. [107].] Now, these peculiarities are almost entirely wanting in Thomas Jefferson, and without them it is absolutely impossible for him to be the author of the Declaration of Independence.
I wish now to call attention to the word "hath." It is found but once in the Declaration, and is in paragraph 2, in the following connection: "And accordingly all experience hath shown." It is put in here for the sake of harmony and force in sound, for if we substitute the word has, there will be a halting at shown, and a disagreeable hissing sound. At the time this was written Mr. Paine frequently used the word, and it may have slipped in unnoticed, on account of sound, or he may have put it in so that the critic could track him. I have never seen the word in any of Jefferson's writings.
SPECIAL CHARACTERISTICS.
I have heretofore shown that Mr. Paine had the Declaration of Independence in view in the production of Common Sense, and that he sketched therein the outlines in the same order in which they afterward appeared. I have shown its architecture and plan, and also its style, to be that of Mr. Paine's, and not Mr. Jefferson's. I have shown this somewhat in detail, but not more than the subject demanded. Herein I have given the grand outlines and general features, but I shall now review the whole, to point out its special characteristics, that, in the multitude of small things all tending one way, it will be made conclusive to the mind of the reader that it is Mr. Paine's, and not Jefferson's. In this I shall be compelled, some times, to refer to propositions already proven in the first part of this work, to shorten the argument, not wishing to go over the same ground twice. In the demonstration of a theorem in geometry, what has been proven is made to aid what shall come after. I shall proceed with the same method, and not be guilty of taking any thing which Mr. Paine may have written afterward, to prove something which has gone before. But mental characteristics may be taken wherever we can find them. I am confined to Common Sense, and shall use also Junius as aiding, but never to entirely prove a point. In my references to Common Sense, I shall be compelled to refer to the page. I use the political works of Mr. Paine as published by J. P. Mendum, Boston, as they are most generally known and read in this country. With these explanations, the reader can not go wrong.
I now take up the original Declaration, beginning with the Introduction; and, as I have numbered its paragraphs, I shall use the figures to denote them, proceeding in their numerical order:
Paragraph 1. "Political bonds." The same figure is found on page 64, Common Sense.
"To assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them." Here the crowning thought is that God, through his natural laws, and by natural proofs, designed a separation. Thus Mr. Paine, in Common Sense, page 37, says: "The distance at which the Almighty hath placed England and America is a strong and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other was never the design of Heaven."... "Every thing that is right or natural pleads for separation."
Note also above the phrase, "separate and equal station." The writer of the Declaration considered England and America equal, and thus Mr. Paine says, above: "It is proof that the authority of the one over the other was never the design of Heaven."
"A decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." Note hereunder the phrase, "decent respect." Thus, in his introduction to his first Letter, which was an indictment and declaration of principles also, Junius says: "Let us enter into it [the inquiry] with candor and decency. Respect is due to the station of ministers, and, if a resolution must at last be taken, there is none so likely to be supported with firmness as that which has been adopted with moderation."
The above are perfect parallels in idea, and in the expression of the prominent thought, "decent respect." But the thought is expanded from the narrow confines of the British nation to the whole world, and if Mr. Paine wrote both, as they strongly indicate, to make the conclusion good we must find this change or mental growth in Mr. Paine to coincide therewith. Here it is: "In this extensive quarter of the globe, we forget the narrow limits of three hundred and sixty miles (the extent of England), and carry our friendship on a larger scale. We claim brotherhood with every European Christian, and triumph in the generosity of the sentiment.
"It is pleasant to observe by what regular gradations we surmount local prejudices as we enlarge our acquaintance with the world. A man born in any town in England," etc. I wish the reader to read the whole of the paragraph I have begun. See Common Sense, pages 35 and 36. See also Crisis, viii, near its close; a noble passage on the same subject. Mr. Paine frequently takes the pains to tell us how he outgrew his local prejudices, and how he at last considered the "world his country." He undertook, also, for America what he calls "the business of a world."—Common Sense, page 63.
Paragraph 2. "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights." Compare from Common Sense, pages 24, 25, and 28, as follows: "Mankind being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could not be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance."... "The equal rights of nature." ... "For all men being originally equals," etc. So, also, Junius says: "In the rights of freedom we are all equal." ... "The first original rights of the people," etc. To show that he believes these rights to be inalienable, he says: "The equality can not be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance."
"Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Junius uses the terms, "Life, liberty, and fortune."—Let. 66. And Mr. Paine frequently, "Life, liberty, and property." But these terms were in quite common use with many writers.
"To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men." What is said on government in this paragraph is paraphrased or condensed from page 21, Common Sense. It is a concise repetition of Mr. Paine's pet theme and political principles, first given to the world in Junius, and then elaborated in Common Sense.
"Prudence indeed will dictate." This word prudence is ever flowing from the pen of Mr. Paine. See an example on page 21, Common Sense. It is quite common in Junius. The same may be said, also, of the word experience.
"And accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." Compare Common Sense, page 17, as follows: "As a long and violent abuse of power is generally the means of calling the right of it in question, and in matters, too, which might never have been thought of, had not the sufferers been aggravated to the inquiry," etc.
"Forms." That is, the "forms of the constitution." See Junius, Let. 44, where he says: "I should be contented to renounce the forms of the Constitution once more, if there were no other way to obtain substantial justice for the people." And here the Declaration is renouncing the forms.
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States." Paine says on tyranny: "Ye that oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do, ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny, by keeping vacant the seat of government." ... "Ye that dare oppose not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth." Common Sense, p. 47.
"To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith, yet unsullied by falsehood." The above sentence is very peculiar, and I will show wherein. The last member of the sentence which I have italicised was stricken out of the original draft by Congress. The peculiarity in it is that "the truth of a fact" is affirmed, and its falsehood implied. Now a fact is always true. There can be no false facts. What is here meant, is, that we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood, that the statements are true. Not that the facts are true, but that they are facts. It is the passion (if I may so express it) for conciseness, to speak of facts being true or false. Now this is a peculiarity of Junius. In Let. 3 he says: "I am sorry to tell you, Sir William, that in this article your first fact is false." It is thus Mr. Paine frequently sacrifices both grammar and strict definition to conciseness; but never to obscure the sense. An example from the publicly acknowledged pen of Mr. Paine ought to be here produced; I, therefore, give one from his letter to the Abbe Raynal, which is as follows: "His facts are coldly and carelessly stated. They neither inform the reader, nor interest him. Many of them are erroneous, and most of them are defective and obscure." Here "erroneous facts," "false facts," and "facts for the truth of which we pledge a faith unsullied by falsehood," are evidence of the same head and hand. It is thus an author puts some peculiar feature of his soul on paper unwittingly; and it lies there a fossil, till the critic, following the lines of nature, gathers it up to classify, arrange, and combine with others, and then to put on canvas, or in marble bust. It may be well to remind the reader that the above peculiarity I can nowhere find in Jefferson's writings.
I now call attention to the sentence: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations [begun at a distinguished period, and pursuing invariably the same object] evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
I have placed in brackets what has been interpolated by Jefferson. I conclude this from the following reasons:
1. It breaks the measure.
2. It destroys the harmony of the period, and the sentence is complete and harmonious without it.
3. "Begun at a distinguished period," is indefinite.
4. It refers to time, and is mixed up with other subject matter, and is therefore in the wrong place.
5. It is tautology, for two sentences further on it is all expressed in its proper place, in referring to the history of the king.
In all of these particulars it is not like Mr. Paine, for he is never guilty of such a breach of rhetoric. But in all of the above particulars it is just like Mr. Jefferson.
The above two paragraphs comprise the Introduction and the Bill of Rights, and are the foundation of the Declaration. It is a basis fit and substantial, because one of universal principles, so that whatever special right may be enunciated, it will rest firmly on this foundation; or whatever special denunciation of wrongs, it will have its authority therein.
I now pass to consider the indictment under its three divisions—Usurpation, Abdication, and War.
If the reader will now turn back to page [223], he will find from paragraphs 3 to 15, inclusive, the whole charge of usurpation included therein. But, separately, we find paragraph 3 to be a charge of the abuse of the king's negative; and he concludes in paragraph 15 with the climax, "suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves [the king and parliament] invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever." Now, if the reader will turn to page 41, Common Sense, which is page [213] of this book, he will find Mr. Paine beginning the first of his "several reasons" as follows:
"1. The powers of governing still remaining in the hands of the king, he will have a negative over the whole of this continent."
It will be observed, in a general view, that the reasons given by Mr. Paine cover the whole thirteen paragraphs; and it will be observed specially that he begins the reasons the same as he does the indictment—namely, with the king's negative. Mr. Paine was violently opposed to the king's negative, and all through life he never fails to attack it, when the opportunity offered itself. This would weigh most heavily on his mind, and be most naturally uttered first. On page 59 of Common Sense will also be found reasons for independence, which come within this part of the indictment. But pages 41, 42, 43 of Common Sense cover nearly, or quite all of it. But they are stated generally for the sake of argument—not specially for the sake of indictment.
Paragraph 16. "He has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection." Compare with this the following, to be found on page 61 of Common Sense: "The present state of America is truly alarming to every man who is capable of reflection. Without law, without government, without any other mode of power than what is founded on and granted by courtesy. Held together by an unexampled occurrence of sentiment, which is, nevertheless, subject to change, and which every secret enemy is endeavoring to dissolve. Our present condition is legislation without law, wisdom without a plan, a constitution without a name."
I now take up the third part of the indictment—War.
Paragraph 17. "He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people."
Paragraph 18. "He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation."
On the above two counts, which charge war and invasion, I submit from Common Sense, page 62, as follows: "It is the violence which is done and threatened to our persons, the destruction of our property by an armed force, the invasion of our country by fire and sword, which conscientiously qualifies the use of arms; and the instant in which such mode of defense became necessary, all subjection to Britain ought to have ceased, and the independence of America should have been considered as dating its era from, and published by the first musket that was fired against her."
Under the above, also, may be classed paragraph 19.
Paragraph 20. "He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence." Compare Common Sense, page 47, as follows: "There are thousands and tens of thousands who would think it glorious to expel from the continent that barbarous and hellish power which hath stirred up the Indians and negroes to destroy us."
Paragraph 21. "He has excited treasonable insurrection," etc. Compare Common Sense, page 61, as follows: "The tories dared not have assembled offensively, had they known that their lives, by that act, were forfeited to the laws of the State. A line of distinction should be drawn between English soldiers taken in battle and inhabitants of America taken in arms: the first are prisoners, but the latter traitors—the one forfeits his liberty, the other his head."
The above paragraph and the following one, it will be remembered, were stricken out by Congress.
I now come to the closing paragraph of this part of the indictment, and, as it is the most important of all, the author kept it for a climax, and he throws his whole soul into it. I will transcribe it here:
Paragraph 22. "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty, in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce; and, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them; thus paying off former crimes, committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."
The capital words in the above are his own. Let us begin with the last sentence, and go backward. The substance of the last sentence is, that by exciting the negroes to rise on the people of this continent, the king was guilty of a double crime, both against the liberties of the negroes and the lives of the American people. Compare Common Sense, page 47, as follows: "He hath stirred up the Indians and negroes to destroy us; the cruelty hath a double guilt—it is dealing brutally by us and treacherously by them." This is the same complex idea, well reasoned out, and expressed almost in the same language—certainly in the same style. But Jefferson "never consulted a single book," so original was the Declaration to his own mind and habits of thought!
Let us now take the sentence: "This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain." The antithesis above between infidel and Christian, falls upon the mind with such stunning weight; with such boldness of religious sentiment; with such emphasis in expression, and with such withering sarcasm toward the king, that it becomes an epitome of Mr. Paine himself, and a concise record of his whole life, up to that period. The reader can not fail here to see the pen of Junius, and to recall the great power of antithesis in all his Letters. This peculiarity of style is absolutely wanting in Jefferson.
The first sentence in the paragraph, is in every phrase so like Mr. Paine, the reader must think it superfluous to comment upon it. The expressions, "cruel war," "against human nature," "sacred rights," "life and liberty," "in the persons of," and especially "prostituted," are all to be found in Common Sense and Junius. For the phrase "in the persons of," see it repeated three times on page 22 of Common Sense.
Thus ends the indictment. It is Article I, of Mr. Paine's Manifesto, heretofore pointed out. I now proceed with Article II of the Manifesto, which he states to be "the peaceful methods which we have ineffectually used for redress." See Common Sense, p. 56. It is as follows:
Paragraph 23. "In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injuries." Compare Common Sense, pp. 39-40, as follows: "Every quiet method for peace hath been ineffectual. Our prayers hath been rejected with disdain, and only tended to convince us that nothing flatters vanity or confirms obstinacy in kings more than in repeated petitioning."
Paragraph 24. "A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. Future ages will scarcely believe, that the hardiness of one man, adventured within the short compass of twelve years only, to lay a foundation so broad and so undisguised for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom."
The first sentence pronounces the king a tyrant, and is so often repeated heretofore by Mr. Paine, it is useless to cite any thing in proof. The second sentence was stricken out of the Declaration by Congress, and contains new matter which must be attended to. And
First, "Future ages will scarcely believe that." This phrase is peculiar to Mr. Paine, for his mind was continually dwelling on the future. So Junius says: "Posterity will scarce believe that."—Let. 48. And Mr. Paine says: "Mankind will scarcely believe that."—Rights of Man, p. 94.
I parallel this phrase not so much to show a verbal construction as to show a mental characteristic which must express itself in the same language.
Second, "That the hardiness of one man adventured." Compare with this from Common Sense, page 41: "No man was a warmer wisher for reconciliation than myself, before the fatal nineteenth of April, 1775; but the moment the event of that day was made known, I rejected the hardened, sullen-tempered Pharaoh of England forever," etc. How different is this language in the Declaration, from that used by Mr. Jefferson in the "Summary View," when speaking of the king. Jefferson used the word majesty, as though he was speaking to a god; and seems to delight in the repetition of it. See p. [236].
Third, "Within the short compass of twelve years only." The Declaration was dated July 4th, 1776. Twelve years would take it back to 1764. This was the year the stamp act passed, and made an era in colonial troubles. Now, if Mr. Paine had been speaking of the troubles of the English people, he would have used the same expression, with the exception of adding a year; for, as before stated in the first part of this work, Mr. Paine dated the miseries, oppressions, and invasions on the rights of the English people from the close of the Seven Years' War, or the beginning of 1763. And the time was estimated in round numbers as follows:
Junius says, in the beginning of 1769: "Outraged and oppressed as we are, this nation will not bear after a six years' peace," etc.; and, also, in the beginning of 1770: "At the end of seven years we are loaded," etc. Mr. Paine, at the close of the year 1778, says to the English people: "A period of sixteen years of misconduct and misfortune," etc. These round numbers all refer back to the beginning of 1763, and the expression in the Declaration, "within the short compass of twelve years only," is not, as it appears, inconsistent with this peculiarity, for the English era with him was 1763, and the American 1764. Nowhere do I find this mental characteristic in Jefferson. This is strong proof—it goes beyond proof, it is demonstration. Mr. Jefferson, nor any man living, could steal this fact; it is one of mental constitution, stamped there and pointing with fingers of truth both backward and forward to Thomas Paine, and at right angles to the character of Thomas Jefferson.
The figure "compass" is often found in Mr. Paine's writings, as "compass a plan," and the like. But I call attention to the perfect similarity in style between the Declaration and every passage from Common Sense.
Paragraph 25. "Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time," etc. It is the peculiarity of Mr. Paine to hold up a warning to the sense. See on this point, page [103] of this work.
"We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here." Compare Common Sense, p. 35, as follows: "This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from every part of Europe. Hither have they fled, not from the tender embraces of the mother, but from the cruelty of the monster, and it is so far true of England, that the same tyranny which drove the first emigrants from home pursues their descendants still." Thus, also, says the Declaration (and note the style): "These were affected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or strength of Great Britain; that in constituting indeed our several forms of government we had adopted one common king."
I call attention to the phrases, "common king," "common blood," and "common kindred," in the same paragraph. Mr. Paine was never guilty of calling England the "parent" or "mother" country, but the "common" country. (See Common Sense, p. 36.) Junius in Let. 1 says: "A series of inconsistent measures has alienated the Colonies from their duty as subjects, and from their natural affection to their common country." Jefferson uses "parent" and "mother" country, both before and after the writing of the Declaration.
In connection with the above sentence from Junius, I subjoin the same sentiment in regard to natural affection from the Declaration a few sentences further on, as follows: "These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them, and hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends." Compare with this, Common Sense, p. 47, as follows: "To talk of friendship with those in whom our reason forbids us to have faith, and our affections wounded through a thousand pores instruct us to detest, is madness and folly. Every day wears out the little remains of kindred between us and them." In regard to the phrase "renounce forever" above, as quoted from the Declaration, compare Common Sense, p. 38, as follows: "That seat of wretchedness [speaking of Boston] will teach us wisdom and instruct us to forever renounce a power in whom we can have no trust." See also Common Sense, p. 37, as follows: "And our duty to mankind at large, as well as to ourselves, instructs us to renounce the alliance."
The expression "forever" will not be mistaken, for it runs through Junius' and all of Mr. Paine's writings as a common expression.
The figure "to stab" is one which Mr. Paine adopted in Junius and carried through his whole life. Thus he talks about "stabbing the Constitution," and "to stab the character of the nation." The former is found in Junius, the latter in his Letter to the Abbe Raynal.
The italicised phrases in the following expression, "These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection, and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever," etc., are so very like Mr. Paine, and so entirely unlike Mr. Jefferson, that the cursory reader, with the commonest understanding, would not fail to pronounce in favor of the former being the author.
I now call attention to a striking peculiarity in regard to the mention of the Scotch. It is found in the same paragraph, and is as follows: "At this very time, too, they [our British brethren] are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood, but Scotch and foreign mercenaries, to invade and destroy us." The word mercenaries is used once before in the Declaration.
The writer of the Declaration is speaking of the "British brethren," whom he designates as "of our common blood," but excludes the Scotch therefrom. Now, we know Mr. Paine to have been an Englishman, and that in Junius he often inveighed bitterly against the Scotch. The reader will remember what he said of Mr. Wedderburn, on page [195] of this work. Mansfield was a Scotchman, and this fact embitters Junius. He speaks of the Scotch "cunning," "treachery," and "fawning sycophancy," of "the characteristic prudence, the selfish nationality, the indefatigable smile, the persevering assiduity, the everlasting profession of a discreet and moderate resentment." It is quite evident that the writer of the Declaration did not consider the Scotch as included in the term "British brethren," whom he warned, as he called them "mercenaries;" nor as having the like origin, nor as being of the same race as the term "common blood" indicates. These are facts which speak out of the Declaration, and as such Jefferson could not have written them, for two reasons:
1. He had no antipathy to the Scotch, but rather a liking. This is seen in the selection of his teachers, both by his parents and himself. At nine years of age he studies Latin, Greek, and French under the Rev. Mr. Douglas, a Scotchman, living with the minister at the same time. At fourteen, and after his father's death, he goes away to attend the school of Mr. Murray, a Scotchman; and when he goes to college at Williamsburg, being then a young man grown, he becomes strongly attached to one Professor Small, a Scotchman. In short, Jefferson was peculiarly attached to the Scotch, and why?
2. Because he was nearer related to them by "common blood" than to the English. He was of Welsh origin—a perfect Celt, and not a Briton. Now, the Cimbri of Wales and the Gael of Scotland are of the same blood, build, habits, and instincts. Jefferson, on Scotch soil, would have been taken, from personal appearance, to be a red-headed Scotchman, and a fine specimen at that. From "common blood," then, he could not consistently have written it, if he knew any thing about his origin, or comprehended what he was writing.
But there is an argument in this connection, which goes toward the whole instrument, showing that Mr. Jefferson could not possibly be the author of it. In a special commentary of Mr. Jefferson's on this phrase, "Scotch and foreign mercenaries," he misquotes the Declaration, which he would not be likely to do if he wrote it. In volume viii, page 500, of his works, he says: "When the Declaration of Independence was under the consideration of Congress, there were two or three unlucky expressions in it, which gave offense to some members. The words, 'Scotch and other foreign auxiliaries' excited the ire of a gentleman or two of that country." In the phrase "Scotch and other foreign auxiliaries," Jefferson is trying to quote the words "Scotch and foreign mercenaries." There is a vast difference between the two words "auxiliaries" and "mercenaries." But the former expresses the real spirit of Jefferson, the latter of Paine. Entirely different sentiments produced the two expressions. The style, also, is changed from Paine's to Jefferson's, by putting in the word "other." It is thus changed from the concise to the diffuse. Mr. Jefferson says this expression was "unlucky;" and it still proves to be, near the close of a century.
Now, the word mercenaries, which, with the author of the Declaration, means prostituted hirelings, is used twice in the instrument, but auxiliaries, which would mean honorable allies, is not used once. It is not strange that he should forget, for the sentiment is foreign to his own character; and I had written my argument, and given my reasons above why Mr. Jefferson could not possibly be the author of that sentiment, a month before I found that Jefferson had misquoted the Declaration. I reason from first principles, which rest on established facts, the silent language of nature, compared with which the vain babblings of men amount to nothing. For example, John Adams says that he and Mr. Jefferson met as a sub-committee to draft the Declaration; that he urged Jefferson to do it; that afterward they both met, and conned it over, and he does not remember of making or suggesting a single alteration. This Mr. Jefferson denies. He says there was no sub-committee; that Adams has forgotten about it; that he [Jefferson] drew it, and turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it, and that Adams did correct it.—Jefferson's Works, vol. vii, pages 304, 305. Here are two men, one eighty and the other eighty-eight, on whose words history rests, differing materially about historic facts. The one who can not quote an important passage correctly, as to fact or language which he says he wrote himself, accuses the other of forgetting about a committee which never existed. The reader must judge.
"Be it so." Let us find the feeling which produced this expression. It is peculiar to Junius. See Letters 18, 34, and 44, where the sentence is used. And now let me remark, that the reader may be led to a just criticism, and not ramble after vague and unmeaning expressions, the spirit of the writer must be found, the prominent sentiment of the heart must be felt, the cause must be seen which shall give utterance to the expression, "Be it so." How trifling it appears to the cursory reader! But let me arrest your attention. Junius uses the expression three times, and every time in connection with the sentiment of dignity. So, also, in the Declaration. It is only produced in him by a feeling, and the peculiar and particular feeling of dignity, in antithesis to contempt, littleness, disrepute, or meanness. I will now give the context. In Let. 18 he says: "You seem to think the channel of a pamphlet more respectable, and better suited to the dignity of your cause, than a newspaper. Be it so."
In Let. 34 he says: "We are told by the highest judicial authority that Mr. Vaughan's offer to purchase the reversion of a patent place in Jamaica amounts to a high misdemeanor. Be it so; and if he deserves it, let him be punished. But the learned judge might have had a fairer opportunity of displaying the powers of his eloquence. Having delivered himself with so much energy upon the criminal nature and dangerous consequences of any attempt to corrupt a man in your grace's station, what would he have said to the minister himself, to that very privy counselor, to that first commissioner of the treasury, who does not wait for, but impatiently solicits the touch of corruption, who employs the meanest of his creatures in these honorable services, and forgetting the genius and fidelity of the secretary, descends to apply to his housebuilder for assistance?"
In Let. 44 he says: "There may be instances of contempt and insult to the House of Commons, which do not fall within my own exceptions, yet, in regard to the dignity of the house, ought not to pass unpunished. Be it so."
In the Declaration, paragraph 25, we read: "We might have been a free and a great people together, but a communication of grandeur and freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. Be it so, since they will have it."
So much for the trifling little trinity of words made up of six letters, when traced to their mental origin. The reader will see an aura of dignity always darting out from the sentence when used by Mr. Paine. It might never have this connection in the soul of any other man. This closes paragraph 25, and I proceed to the conclusion.
Paragraph 26. Here the nation is named. "The United States of America," are declared "free and independent States."... "And for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." Compare Common Sense, conclusion, as follows: "Wherefore, instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissension. Let the name of whig and tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the rights of mankind, and of the Free and Independent States of America."
I have now gone through with the Declaration, both in a general and special manner. In the former regard I have found it to be the soul's image of Mr. Paine, in style, order, and construction, and, in the latter, a complete synopsis of Common Sense. I have fully and conclusively shown that the substance of every paragraph is found in Common Sense, with much of the language the same, and also that many special, mental peculiarities, common to Mr. Paine, and wanting in Mr. Jefferson, are found there. Now, Mr. Jefferson never before, nor since, ever produced any thing like it in any of these particulars. If we take a hasty review, we will find that in as many particulars as the Declaration has, in just so many there is a reproduction of Mr. Paine. In no single fact does the Declaration disagree with Mr. Paine. It does with Mr. Jefferson in very many. I have shown also that it would be impossible for Mr. Jefferson to steal it, for he would have to steal the very soul of Mr. Paine, and write under its influence. This is above proof, it is demonstration.
But I will hold the reader to history. It is a fact, well established, that he did not consult one single author thereon. He says so himself. Mr. Bancroft, the great American historian, says so. If I had found him mistaken in this statement, I would have shown wherein. He is correct, and it is unnecessary for me to add any thing to support his fame. But will he change his conclusions, and will he re-write his own history to support the statement that Mr. Jefferson produced it, not from "the fullness of his own mind," but from the fullness of Common Sense? I would not cast an aspersion, by the remotest insinuation, upon the faithfulness of Mr. Bancroft as a historian. He penned the truth in regard to a historic fact, but founded a conclusion thereon not warranted by the fact. This will prove a lesson to the historian, and, therefore, I will further remark, that a scientific method has also dawned upon history. Voltaire struck the principle when he brought history within the realm of natural causes, and Mr. Buckle began to develop the method in an able manner, but his life was too short to complete it. That he has erred in some particulars, may be true, but he has traveled far out on the highways of nature, and, in the main, he is right. In this age the historian has no business to write unless he travels the same road. In fact, he would not be a historian, unless he did, but merely the chronicler of events. There is a vast distance in the realm of mind between the high station of a historian, and the low office of a chronicler. But, with this remark I pass on with my argument.
Is it at variance with nature and the general order of things that Mr. Jefferson should reproduce Common Sense, in all its small particulars, as well as grand outlines, observing the same order in its construction, a perfect epitome thereof, without studying it. But if he did study it, and thus reproduce it, the theft would be too monstrous, and there is not in human nature an impudence so audacious as to do such a thing under the very eye of its author. It would have been a literary piracy too disgraceful for human nature to commit or to endure. It would have been a robbery too easy of detection by Mr. Paine, and there could not be found on earth a man so devoid of shame, or of all personal honor, or of self-respect as to have committed it. Now if Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, never was man more disgraced in the literary world. But on the other hand, as chairman of a committee of five to whom collectively belong the duty to produce it or procure it, and who collectively shall share its honor, for him as such chairman, to receive from the hand of Mr. Paine, as a gift to the nation, the document which the country needed, there would be no dishonor connected with it. It was nobody's business who wrote it. Mr. Paine and Jefferson understood it, and none but themselves could be wronged. History records that Mr. Paine and Jefferson were ever after bound heart and hand together. Jefferson confided in the most faithful heart of the world. But after Mr. Paine died, it was wrong for Mr. Jefferson to take advantage of the silence of death and claim the document. It was the wickedness of vanity and a narrow mind that would direct to be carved on his tombstone, "The author of the Declaration of Independence." For his own name's sake, it ought to be struck out with some friendly chisel. It is as painful for me to write this as it would be to receive the news of the death of a dear friend, who had died with some curse upon his character. But while we look with compassion, let us tell the truth.
At first, Mr. Jefferson did not write himself down the author of the Declaration, and there seems to be a growth in this like all other things. Here are the different stages:
1. Notes written on the spot, as events were passing, for the truth of which he pledges himself to Heaven and earth. He writes as follows:
"It appearing in the course of these debates that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina, were not yet matured for falling into the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait awhile for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1st. But that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a Declaration of Independence. The committee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and myself. This was reported to the House on Friday, the 28th of June, when it was read and ordered to lie on the table." Works, vol. i, page 118.
There is no acknowledgment at this time. This is July, 1776. Mr. Paine is in Philadelphia. Had Mr. Jefferson been the author, this would have been the time for him to have recorded it, as he has not failed to record all his other public acts. He is now thirty-three years old.
2. Eleven years afterward, when in Paris, he writes to the editor of the Journal de Paris as follows, in regard to the history of the Declaration: "I was on the spot and can relate to you this transaction with precision. On the 7th of June, 1776, the delegates from Virginia moved, in obedience to instructions from their constituents, that Congress shall declare the thirteen united colonies to be independent of Great Britain, and a confederation should be formed to bind them together, and measures be taken to procure the assistance of foreign powers. The House ordered a punctual attendance of all their members the next day at ten o'clock, and then resolved themselves into a committee of the whole and entered on the discussion. It appeared in the course of the debate that seven states, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, were decided for a separation; but that six others still hesitated, to-wit: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina. Congress desirous of unanimity, and seeing that the public mind was advancing rapidly to it, referred the further discussion to the first of July, appointing in the meantime, a committee to prepare a Declaration of Independence; a second, to form articles for the confederation of the states; and a third, to prepare measures for obtaining foreign aid. On the 28th of June, the Declaration of Independence was reported to the House, and was laid on the table."—Works, vol. ix, pp. 310, 311.
There is no acknowledgment that he was the author of it yet. This is August, 1787. Mr. Paine is in Paris, just on the eve of starting for London. Jefferson is forty-four years old.
3. In September, 1809, in answer to a proposition to publish his writings, after mentioning many of them, he says: "I say nothing of numerous drafts of reports, resolutions, declarations, etc., drawn as a member of Congress, or of the legislature of Virginia, such as the Declaration of Independence, Report on the Money Mint of the United States, the Act of Religious Freedom, etc., etc. These having become the acts of public bodies, there can be no personal claim to them." This is nearly three months after the death of Mr. Paine.—Works, vol. v, p. 466. And here he says he makes no personal claim to it. He is now sixty-six years old.
4. In May, 1819, he gives the same account as first above given. Mr. Paine has been dead about ten years. He makes no acknowledgment yet that he was the author of it, but in the same account pledges himself to Heaven and earth for the truth of the statement.—Works, vol. vii, page 123. He is now seventy-six years old.
5. In January, 1821, he indirectly acknowledges himself to be the author, but with a great deal of ambiguity. He takes the same account as given first and third above, but interpolates into it a clause, which I have placed in brackets in the passage which I give, as follows: "It appearing, in the course of these debates, that the colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina were not yet matured for falling into the parent stem, but that they were fast advancing to that state, it was thought most prudent to wait awhile for them, and to postpone the final decision to July 1st; but, that this might occasion as little delay as possible, a committee was appointed to prepare a Declaration of Independence. The committee were John Adams, Dr. Franklin, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, and myself. [Committees were also appointed at the same time to prepare a plan of confederation for the colonies, and to state the terms proper to be proposed for foreign alliance. The committee for drawing the Declaration of Independence desired me to do it. It was accordingly done, and, being approved by them, I] reported [it] to the House on Friday, the 28th of June, when it was read, and ordered to lie on the table."—Works, vol. i, pages 17 and 18. This is the first insinuation. I say insinuation, for the sentence, "It was accordingly done, and I reported it," is not frank and outspoken, as it ought to be, if he meant to say he drafted it. Mr. Paine has been dead almost twelve years, but Mr. Jefferson has dropped the pledge to Heaven and earth for the truth of it, which he has heretofore been careful to put in. He is now seventy-eight years old.
6. In August, 1823, he now comes forward, and says: "The committee of five met; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draft. I consented. I drew it."—Works, vol. vii, page 304. John Adams had said there was a sub-committee of two, viz., Jefferson and himself, appointed by the other three. But Jefferson says there was not—"that John Adams had forgotten about it." Query: Can a person forget about something which never was? To this statement there is no "pledge to Heaven and earth." He is eighty years old.
7. In the year 1825 he says once that he wrote it, and once that he drafted it; but no "pledge to Heaven and earth" as before.
Now, he never acknowledged that he was the author of it in any of his works before the death of Mr. Paine. He gave several full accounts of the whole transaction, and calls on Heaven and earth to witness the truth of his statements. About the time Mr. Paine dies he says he can make no personal claim to it. Ten years after Mr. Paine's death, he very ambiguously claims it, as if his pen refused to write it, and drops his oath. But twelve years after Mr. Paine's death, and he now in his eightieth year, he first says he drew it. Was he too modest to affirm it till he had got into his dotage? The reader must answer. It is with painful feelings I record the above facts. "But they are too true, and the more is the pity." But to proceed.
Mr. Jefferson could not have followed so closely Common Sense in the production of the Declaration of Independence, if he had studied it for a whole year with this special purpose in view. For, the style he could not have imitated; the figures of speech he could not have adopted; the impassioned eloquence would have stuck to the dry leaves; the exact order would have been missed; the fine shades of sentiment would have been blotted out; the complex ideas he would have failed to grasp; its architectural plan he could not have idealized; and its construction would never have arisen from the chaos of scattered materials which he would have gleaned. And, above all, the personal character of Mr. Paine would have been left out. He would have failed in every one of these things. And why? Want of mental similarity thereto. This, and nothing else.
I will sum up his mentality as I find it in his writings. I have given you Mr. Paine's already. In this I shall be brief, speaking only of those powers which would be incompatible with, or necessary to, the production of the Declaration.
Mr. Jefferson was a zealous partisan. Mr. Paine was a consummate statesman. Here was the great difference between the two men. Those qualities of the mind which produce the former are very unlike those which produce the latter. The former mind must be narrow and selfish, the latter broad and generous. This will take in the whole world, that but a small portion of it. The partisan has an understanding subject to the vice and discipline of cunning; the statesman has an understanding subject to the noblest and most generous affections. It was this which made Mr. Jefferson such a grand success as a party leader, and that, too, which perhaps saved the nation from passing into the hands of the monarchists. Without these consummate powers of the partisan, it would have been impossible for Mr. Jefferson to have taken command of the people, to have organized his party, to have marshaled his forces, and with his army of followers to have put royalty under his heel. How unlike Washington and John Adams, who preceded him. Hamilton, who would toast a president of America and give three cheers for George the Third of England, ruled Washington and governed the nation. John Adams, who was so beguiled with royalty and the British constitution, could not heartily sympathize with the people; the dupe of his own passions, he was unfit to be the ruler of a free people. But Jefferson, while secretary under Washington, began to form his party and draw his party lines. Through Freneau he drove Washington to cry out: "By God, I had rather be in my grave than in my present situation!" And, afterward, the party he was marshaling made John Adams, then president of the United States, desert his post for seven months, at the most trying crisis of this government. But the cold, unfeeling partisanship of the great democrat saved the nation.
The other crowning difference between the two men is, Mr. Paine had extraordinary genius, Mr. Jefferson had not; and by genius I mean a lively constructive and comprehensive mind, one that can generalize facts and deduce principles therefrom, one that can idealize and build in the imagination what it would put into material shape or on paper. If this comparison be true (and the reader is at liberty to bring facts to contradict it), then Mr. Jefferson could not produce the Declaration for want of capacity.
The Declaration is the work of a master. It is the work of one with great experience in the art of composition, one who produced the whole in the ideal before he touched pen to paper, and one who followed plan and specifications with unerring precision. It is a work of the most finished rhetoric, and produced with such skill as to defy adverse criticism. It shows vast labor and time bestowed upon its execution. In its mechanism I have never seen its equal in all my reading and study. It is the most masterly work of genius I ever saw in composition. It stands alone in the world of letters. There is nothing its equal which has come down to us from the ages, and I know of no one save Thomas Paine capable of producing it. That he was a master in the art of composition, no one can dispute, and he frequently takes pains to give the principles which reveal his success; here is one of them, to be found in his Letter to the Abbe Raynal: "To fit the powers of thinking and the turn of language to the subject, so as to bring out a clear conclusion that shall hit the point in question, and nothing else, is the true criterion of writing," See a fine passage on this point in the introduction to the same letter. Now Jefferson had not the genius to produce the Declaration.
If we look also at several passages in the Declaration we can only feel their full force after knowing the previous career of Mr. Paine as Junius in England. Take for example the two paragraphs, 24 and 25, the one of the king and the other of the "British brethren." We see in the one the proud disdain and haughty contempt for the tyrant; in the other that tender sympathy for the English people, with a sly thrust at the Scotch, and then the wounded affection which comes from betrayal of friendship—"the last stab to agonizing affection." And then regathering himself from the affliction of a broken heart, he exclaims, "Manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren." But no, this can not be done, and in the next breath he says, "we must endeavor to forget our former love for them;" and then comes the wail of anguish in the loss of his native country, "We might have been a great and a free people together, but a communication of grandeur and of freedom it seems is below their dignity. Be it so." He now bends beneath the hand of fate and cries out, "I acquiesce in our eternal separation," but persist in denouncing it. This is the very picture of Mr. Paine's own heart. It is a pitch of enthusiasm and anguish which Mr. Jefferson had neither circumstance in his life nor capacity in his soul to work himself up to. It is neither art nor contrivance, it is the recorded beating of his own heart, the sequel to his previous life.
Take again the passage on human slavery. "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself." It is well known that Mr. Paine, before he wrote Common Sense, attracted the eyes of the world to him by denouncing human slavery in the most impassioned eloquence. This piece he termed "Serious Thoughts," etc. Herein he hopes when the Declaration is made that "our first gratitude to the Almighty may be shown by an act of Continental legislation, which shall put a stop to the importation of negroes, soften the hard fate of those already here, and in time procure their freedom." And he says, long afterward, to the French inhabitants of Louisiana who wished the power to import and enslave Africans, "Dare you put up a petition to Heaven for such a power without fearing to be struck from the earth by its justice?" But the person who wrote the passage on slavery in the original draft of the Declaration could never have kept a slave in bondage, if any thing can be gathered from the nobility, the manliness, the justice, and the philanthropy of its spirit. But Jefferson, while he has left on record his opposition in words to slavery, has left also on record his acts to contradict both them and the Declaration. I here draw the veil over Jefferson as a slaveholder.
While Mr. Jefferson was far above the average mind, yet from his mental make-up, either in his head, heart, character, or capacity, he could not be the author of the Declaration of Independence. Neither in the circumstances of his previous life nor personal history, neither in the heart nor the head, can we find a foundation for the famous document. I know of but one man American born, at that day, with sufficient genius to write it—Benjamin Franklin—and he would have failed in the style and language, and especially in those fine strokes of the affection.[A]
For Mr. Paine to write the Declaration and be ready to hand it to the chairman of the committee, is characteristic of the man. He did the same thing at the "Thatched House" tavern meeting in England in 1791. Mr. Horne Tooke who signed the Address and Declaration as chairman of the meeting, received the document privately from the hand of Mr. Paine, and had Mr. Tooke not afterward disclaimed the authorship of it when charged upon him, Mr. Paine would never have revealed the secret. It was revealed in this manner: Mr. Tooke having spoken in commendation of the Declaration which he signed "was jocularly accused of praising his own work, and to free him from this embarrassment [says Mr. Paine], and the repeated trouble of mentioning the author, as he has not failed to do, I make no hesitation in saying, I drew up the publication," etc. Now, Mr. Paine was never guilty of praising his own work, and nowhere can I find that he ever praised the Declaration of Independence as a work, or that he ever mentioned Junius but once. [B]Had Mr. Jefferson been the author of the Declaration, Mr. Paine no doubt would have called it "A masterly performance."
And thus it is, his hand is seen, though not publicly acknowledged, in all those first principles upon which the fabric of our government rests. And it was the peculiarity of this great man to do the work, and let others carry off the honors.
"But truth shall conquer at the last;
For round and round we run,
And ever the right comes uppermost,
And ever is justice done."
Note A.
Truly speaking, there is no original Declaration in existence. There are several "original" Declarations extant, all differing somewhat. John Adams had one, Benjamin Franklin, it is said, had one in England. Richard Henry Lee and others had "originals," all in manuscript. The one I have followed may be found in Marshall's Life of Washington, and does not differ, only in a few minor respects, from the one in Jefferson's works, Washington edition. The real original was destroyed as soon as copied, and we have only nature to guide us in the study of one which is almost a faithful copy.
Note B.
In 1787, with regard to the Scotch and the Hanover succession, Paine says: "The present reign, by embracing the Scotch, has tranquillized and conciliated the spirit that disturbed the two former reigns. Accusations were not wanting at that time to reprobate the policy as tinctured with ingratitude toward those who were the immediate means of the Hanover succession." This policy is what so embittered Junius toward the Scotch. See his letter to the king (No. 35), in which he says: "Nor do I mean to condemn the policy of giving some encouragement to the novelty of their affections for the House of Hanover." Now, Paine says, in connection with the above quotation, which parallels with Junius: "The brilliant pen of Junius was drawn forth, but in vain. It enraptured without convincing; and though in the plentitude of its rage it might be said to give elegance to bitterness, yet the policy survived the blast." Fifteen years had obliterated the prejudice of Paine toward the Scotch.
For this mention of the Scotch by Mr. Paine, in his Prospects on the Rubicon, which had escaped my notice, I am indebted to the critical eye of Wm. Henry Burr, of Washington City.
[A] Since writing the above criticism, I sent for and obtained Theodore Parker's work entitled Historic Sketches. Previous to this I had not read a word of the work. With this explanation I will give two extracts from the work, pp. 281, 282: "Mr. Jefferson had intellectual talents greatly superior to the common mass of men, and for the times his opportunities of culture in youth, were admirable."
"But I can not think his mind a great one. I can not point out any name of those times, which may stand in the long interval [of capacity] between the names of Franklin and John Adams. In the shorter space between Adams and Jefferson there were many. There was a certain lack of solidity; his intellect was not very profound, not very comprehensive. Intelligent, able, adroit as he was, his success as an intellectual man was far from being entire or complete. He exhibited no spark of genius, nor any remarkable degree of original, natural talent."
This so coincides with what I had written, I add it to excite the reader to an investigation, for I know full well, the intellectual fame of Mr. Jefferson will not bear looking into.