Mr. Adams wrote that he and Jefferson were appointed a sub-committee to draft the declaration, and that he induced Mr. Jefferson, by several reasons, to write the paper and submit it to him, which was done, and which he did not see fit to change in any way; and Mr. Jefferson stated forty years afterwards that there was no sub-committee, that the committee of the whole selected him to make the draft, which he did in his lodgings at Graaf's, the bricklayer's, in Philadelphia, and that he submitted it to Franklin and Adams, who made some verbal changes, when it was submitted to the Committee, adopted, underwent some little changes, which he did not approve, in the Congress, and was then adopted. The discrepancies in the two statements are not very material, but the vivid description given by Mr. Adams of the passage between him and Mr. Jefferson as to who should write the paper, and as to the steps in the whole affair, can hardly be placed to the account of his volatile imagination. The scene which he represents as taking place between Mr. Jefferson and himself might have occurred before the whole Committee, and not in a committee of two. The point is of very little moment, and the disputes about it are hardly sustainable on the statements of these two old men, made so long subsequent to the occurrence. One thing is certain, that Mr. Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and Mr. Adams defended every word of it, and other members of the Committee or of the Congress had little to do with it, and that this work alone would entitle Mr. Jefferson to the everlasting respect of his countrymen.

On the 1st of July, 1776, nine States, by their representatives in the Congress, adopted the Declara

tion of Independence, Pennsylvania and South Carolina voting against it. But the final vote being withheld, on the following day South Carolina agreed to stand by the Declaration, and the new representatives of Pennsylvania coming in, that State's vote was changed, and in a few days afterwards New York and Delaware were brought into line, and their delegates allowed to sign the instrument, as it had been finally agreed to and adopted on the 4th of July.

Of the Pennsylvania delegates, John Dickinson would not sign the Declaration, and not until the 20th did that State send in her new members, who then added their names. Robert Morris, who had been absent, was allowed to put his name at the head of the Pennsylvania nine. The New York members did not sign until the 15th, and Dr. Mat. Thornton, of New Hampshire, did not affix his name until the 4th of November. Nor did Virginia's large delegation of seven all sign on the 4th of July.

The Declaration of Independence as presented to the Congress contained an article on the African slave trade. This Congress omitted, greatly to the displeasure of its author, and mainly then to gratify South Carolina and Georgia. It was in the following terms:

"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, by murdering the people on whom he also intruded 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."

Neither did this nor the omissions made by the Congress from Mr. Jefferson's original draft improve it more than in mere verbal corrections. The following is the Declaration as it now stands in the history of the country:

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

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 certain 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 powres 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 abolish it, and to institute a 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, 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 gov

ernment, 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 alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

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 operations 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 their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, 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 danger 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 migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made 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, 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, without the consent of our legislature.

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 acknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of troops upon 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 without our consent;

For depriving us, in many cases, 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 into these Colonies;

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the powers 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, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt 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 scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

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.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has en