New-York declared they were for it themselves, and were assured their constituents were for it; but, that their instructions having been drawn near a twelvemonth before, when reconciliation was still the general object, they were enjoined by them to do nothing which should impede that object. They therefore, thought themselves not justifiable in voting on either side, and asked leave to withdraw from the question; which was granted them. In this state of things, the Committee rose and reported their resolution to the House. Mr. Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina, then requested the determination might be put off to the next day, as he believed his collegues, though they disapproved of the resolution, would then join in it for the sake of unanimity. The ultimate decision by the House, was accordingly postponed to the next day, July 2d, when it was again moved, and South Carolina concurred in voting for it. In the mean time, a third member had come post from the Delaware counties, and turned the vote of that Colony in favor of the resolution. Members of a different sentiment attending that morning, from Pennsylvania, her vote also was changed; so that the whole twelve Colonies, who were authorised to vote at all, gave their voice for it; and within a few days, July 9th, the Convention of New-York approved of it, and thus supplied the void occasioned by the withdrawal of her Delegates from the question.

It should be observed that these oscillatory proceedings and final vote, were upon the original motion, to declare the Colonies independent.

Congress proceeded the same day, July 2d, to consider the Declaration of Independence, which had been reported the 28th of June, and ordered to lie on the table. The debates were again renewed with great violence—greater than before. Tremendous was the ordeal through which the title-deed of our liberties, perfect as it had issued from the hands of its great artificer, was destined to pass. Inch by inch, was its progress through the House disputed. Every dictum of peculiar political force, (and it was crowded with such,) and almost every sentence, were made a subject of acrimonious animadversion, by the anti-revolutionists. On the other hand, the champions of Independence contended, with the constancy of martyrs, for every tenet and every word of the precious gospel of their faith. Among the latter class, the Author of the Declaration himself, has assigned to John Adams the pre-eminent station of

primus inter pares. Thirty-seven years afterwards, he declared that "Mr. Adams was the pillar of its support on the floor of Congress, its ablest advocate and defender against the multifarious assaults it encountered." At another time, he said "John Adams was our Colossus on the floor. Not graceful, not elegant, not always fluent in his public addresses, he yet came out with a power, both of thought and of expression, which moved us from our seats.” The grandeur, and the terror of that scene transcend the boundaries of conception. On the result of their deliberations, hung the fate of America, and the political salvation of the world. Their coun cils, their speeches, their emotions, their countenances, have been celebrated, in ceaseless multiplication, in prose and in verse, from that day to the present; but the representations have fallen, and must forever fall, infinitely short of the realities. Through the long, doubtful, and incessant conflict, sat Mr. Jefferson, a silent, though not an unimpassioned, witness of the furnace of disquisition, which was trying the product of his own mind. To a man of ordinary sensibilities, the spectacle must have been painful; to him it was peculiarly so.

*

The debates were continued with unremitting heat, through the 2d, 3d, and 4th days of July, till on the evening of the last,-the most important day, politically speaking, that the world ever saw,—

The ready and good-humored Dr. Franklin, sitting near Mr. Jefferson, and seeing him agonising under the severity of the strictures, related in his ear, by way of comfort, the following anecdote:

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I have made it a rule, whenever it is in my power, to avoid becoming the draughtsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. I took my lesson from an incident which I will relate to you. When I was a journeyman printer, one of my companions, an apprentice hatter, having served out his time, was about open a shop for himself. His first concern was to have a handsome signboard, with a proper inscription. He composed it in these words: " John Thompson, Hatter, makes and sells hats for ready money,?' with the figure of the hat subjoined But he thought he would submit it to his friends for their amendments. The first he showed it to, thought the word 'hatler, tautologous, because followed by the words makes hats,' which shows he was a hatter. It was struck out. The next observed, that the word makes,' might as well be omitted, because his customers would not care who made the hats; if good, and to their minds, they would buy, by whomsoever made. Ile struck it out. A third said he thought the words 'for ready money,' were useless, as it was not the custom of the place to sell on credit: every one who purchased expected to pay. They were parted with, and the inscription now stood, John Thompson, sells hats.' 'Sells hats!' says his next friend; why, nobody will expect you to give them away. What, then, is the use of the word?' It was stricken out; and 'hats' followed, the rather, as there was one painted on the board; so his inscription was reduced, ultimately, to John Thompson,' with the figure of the hat subjoined."

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they were brought to a close. The principle of unanimity finally preponderated; and reciprocal concessions, sufficient to unite all on the solid ground of the main purpose, were generously laid at its feet. Some of the most splendid specifications, however, in the American Charter, were surrendered, in the spirit of compromise. On some of these, too, it is well known the Author set the highest value, as recognising principles to which he was enthusiastically partial, and which were almost peculiar to him. His scorching malediction against the traffickers in human blood, is pointedly among the lat ter. The light in which he viewed these depradations upon the original, may be gathered from the following memorandum of the transaction; in which, too, he betrays a fact in relation to New England, that is not generally known.

"The pusillanimous idea that we had friends in England worth keeping terms with, still haunted the minds of many. For this reason, those passages which conveyed censures on the people of England, were struck out, lest they should give them offence. The clause too, reprobating the enslaving the inhabitants of Africa, was struck out, in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it. Our northern brethren also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures; for though the people had very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others."

For the purpose of comparing the original, with the amended, form, the Declaration will be presented, as it came from the hands of the Author. The parts stricken out by Congress are printed in Italics, and inclosed in brackets; and those inserted by them are placed in the margin. The sentiments of men are known by what they reject, as well as by what they receive, and the comparison, in the present case, will discover corroborative proof of the singular forwardness of one mind, on certain great points of principle.

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 re

quires, 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 certain 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 a people to alter or 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 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 the 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 repeated and usurpations, [among which appears no solitary fact to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, but all all having 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 utterly neglected 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 depository of

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obstructed

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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 on 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 natural. ization 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 dependant 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 new 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 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 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 in many without our consent; for depriving us [ ]of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; 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 incolonies to these [states]; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally

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