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.