THE bold Resolution offered in the Continental Congress, by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, on the 7th of June, 1776, which declared the American colonies FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, was, as we have observed,' debated for three days, when the further consideration of it was postponed until the first of July, and a committee was appointed to draw up an accompanying Declaration. On the day specified, the motion was brought up in the committee of the whole House, Benjamin Harrison, of Virginia (father of the late President Harrison), in the chair. The draft of a Declaration of Independence was reported at the same time, and for three consecutive days, it was debated by paragraphs, seriatim. Many alterations, omissions, and amendments were made. The following is a copy of the original draft, from the pen of Thomas Jefferson, before any amendments were made in committee of the whole. The passages omitted by Congress are printed in italics, and the substitutions are given in notes at the bottom of the page:"

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John Adams, in his autobiography, gives the following reasons why Mr. Jefferson was chosen to write the Declaration: "Mr. Jefferson had been now about a year a member of Congress, but

A Declaration by the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in general Congress assembled:

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands 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 to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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 or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation 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

had attended his duty in the House a very small part of the time, and when there had never spoken in public. During the whole time I sat with him in Congress, I never heard him utter three sentences together.

"It will naturally be inquired how it happened that he was appointed on a committee of such importance. There were more reasons than one. Mr. Jefferson had the reputation of a masterly pen; he had been chosen a delegate in Virginia in consequence of a very handsome public paper which he had written for the House of Burgesses, which had given him the character of a fine writer. Another reason was, that Mr. Richard Henry Lee was not beloved by the most of his colleagues from Virginia, and Mr. Jefferson was sent up to rival and supplant him. This could be done only by the pen, for Mr. Jefferson could stand no competition with him, or any one else, in elocution and public debate.

"The committee had several meetings, in which were proposed the articles of which the Decla ration was to consist, and minutes made of them. The committee then appointed Mr. Jefferson and me to draw them up in form, and clothe them in a proper dress. The sub-committee met, and considered the minutes, making such observations on them as then occurred, when Mr. Jefferson desired me to take them to my lodgings and make the draft. This I declined, and gave several reasons for so doing:

"1. That he was a Virginian, and I a Massachusettensian. 2. That he was a Southern man, and I a Northern one. 3. That I had been so obnoxious for my early and constant zeal in promoting the measure, that every draft of mine would undergo a more severe scrutiny and criticism in Congress than one of his composition. 4. And lastly, and that would be reason enough, if there were no other, I had a great opinion of the elegance of his pen, and none at all of my own. I therefore insisted that no hesitation should be made on his part. He accordingly took the minutes, and in a day or two produced to me his draft."

On the 8th of July, four days after the amended Declaration was adopted, Mr. Jefferson wrote the following letter, and sent it, with the original draft to Mr. Lee, who was then at his home in Virginia, with his sick wife:

"PHILADELPHIA, July 8, 1776.

"DEAR SIR-For news, I refer you to your brother, who writes on that head. I inclose you a copy of the Declaration of Independence, as agreed to by the House, and also as originally framed; you will judge whether it is the better or the worse for the critics. I shall return to Virginia after the 11th of August. I wish my successor may be certain to come before that time; in that case, I hope I shall see you, and not Wythe, in convention, that the business of government, which is of everlasting concern, may receive your aid. Adieu, and believe me to be your friend and servant, "THOMAS JEFFERSON."

"TO RICHARD HENRY LEE, ESQ."

1 Certain unalienable

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 sufferance 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.

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

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 neglected utterly* to attend to them.

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.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative Houses repeatedly and continually, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions of the rights of the people.

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 mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.

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.

He has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these States, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made our judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies and ships of war, without the consent of our Legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to cur 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 them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States;

For cutting off our trade with all parts 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 the 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 into 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.

He has abdicated government here, withdrawing his governors, and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

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.

He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence; he has excited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property.

5

He has constrained others, 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.

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 By

In many cases

2 Colonies.

4 Scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally

Our fellow-citizens

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 dye, 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 upon whom he 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.*

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 injury. 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 scarce believe that the hardiness of one man adventured, within the short compass of twelve years only, to build a fouudation, so broad and undisguised, for tyranny over a people fostered and fixed in principles of freedom.

Nor have we been wanting in attentions 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 could warrant so strange a pretension; that these were effected at the expense of our own blood and treasure, unassisted by the wealth or the 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, re-established 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

*It has been asserted that this paragraph was expunged because it was not palatable to those delegates who were slaveholders, and that it was stricken out lest it should cause them to cast a negative vote on the question. There is no proof that such selfish motives actuated any member of that assembly. It was a sacred regard for truth which caused it to be stricken out. No such charge as the paragraph contained could justly be made against George III., then under arraignment. The slave-trade was begun and carried on long before the reign of any of his house, and it is not known that he ever gave his assent to any thing relating to slavery, except to abolish it, and to declare the trade a piracy. By a resolution offered by Charles F. Mercer, of Virginia, and adopted by Congress in 1817, the slave-trade was declared "a piracy." Mr. Jefferson was the first American statesman, and probably the first writer of modern times, who denounced that infamous traffic as a piratical warfare."-See Life of Richard Henry Lee, i., 176. Free people

4 Have

2 An unwarrantable

And we have conjured them by

• Would inevitably Dr. Witherspoon, who was a Scotchman by birth, moved the striking out of the word Scotch.