The original copy of the Declaration of Independence, signed at Philadelphia, is preserved at the Patent Office in Washington. It is not divided into paragraphs, but dashes are inserted. The arrangement of paragraphs here followed is that adopted by John Dunlap, who printed the Declaration for Congress- this printed copy being inserted in the original Journal of the old Congress. The same paragraphs are also made by Jefferson, in the original draught, preserved in the Department of State. The names of the signers are here spelled as in the original. The names of the states do not appear in the original. The names of the signers of each State are, however, grouped together, except the name of Matthew Thornton, which follows that of Oliver Wolcott.

A very full account of the circumstances immediately preceding the Declaration and leading up to it, with special reference to the part taken by Jefferson, is given in Randall's Life of Jefferson, vol. i, chaps. iv an

The discussion of the authorship of the Declaration, in the latter chapter. is particularly interesting and valuable. The following letter from Jefferson to Madison (August 30, 1823), which was drawn out by a very careless and faulty statement of the circumstances by John Adams, is undoubtedly the correct and sufficient word upon this subject:

"MONTICELLO, August 30, 1823.

DEAR SIR,-I received the enclosed letters from the President, with a request, that after perusal I would forward them to you, for perusal by yourself also, and to be returned then to him. You have doubtless seen Timothy Pickerings' fourth of July observations on the Declaration of Independence. If his principles and prejudices, personal and political, gave us no reason to doubt whether he had truly quoted the information he alleges to have received from Mr. Adams, I should then say, that in some of the particulars, Mr. Adams' memory has led him into unquestionable error. At the age of eighty-eight, and forty-seven years after the transactions of Independence, this is not wonderful. Nor should I, at the age of eighty, on the small advantage of that difference only, venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes, taken by myself at the moment and on the spot. He says, 'the committee of five, to wit, Dr. Franklin, Sherman, Livingston, and ourselves, met, discussed the subject, and then appointed him and myself to make the draught; that we, as a subcommittee, met, and after the urgencies of each on the other, I consented to undertake the task; that the draught being made, we, the sub-committee, met. and conned the paper over, and he does not remember that he made or suggested a single alteration.' Now these details are quite incorrect. The committee of five met; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draught. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the committee, I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting their corrections, because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting it to the committee; and you have seen the original paper now in my hands, with the corrections of Dr. Frankl'n and Mr. Adams interlined in their own hand writings. Their alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal. I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the committee, and from them, unaltered, to Congress. This personal communication and consultation with Mr. Adams, he has misremembered into the actings of a sub-committee. Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams' in addition, that it contained no new ideas, that it is a common-place compilation, its sentiments hacknied 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 or reflection I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before. Had Mr. Adams been so restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit of his bold and impressive advocations of the rights of Revolution. For no man's confident and fervid addresses, more than Mr. Adams', encouraged and supported us through the difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. Yet, on the same ground, we may ask what of these elevated thoughts was new; or can be affirmed never before to have entered the conceptions of man? Whether, also, the sentiments of Independence, and the reasons for declaring it, which make so great a portion of the in

strument, had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before the 4th of July, '76, or this dictum also of Mr. Adams be another slip of memory, let history say. This, however, I will say for Mr. Adams, that he supported the Declaration with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly for every word of it. As to myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial judges than I could be, of its merits or demerits. During the debate I was sitting by Doctor Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it was on that occasion, that by way of comfort, he told me the story of John Thompson, the hatter, and his new sign. Timothy thinks the instrument the better for having a fourth of it expunged. He would have thought it still better, had the cther three-fourths gone out also, all but the single sentiment (the only one he approves), which recommends friendship to his dear England, whenever she is willing to be at peace with us. His in-inuations are, that although the high tone of the instrument was in unison with the warm feelings of the times, this sentiment of habitual friendship to England should never be forgotten, and that the duties it enjoins should especially be borne in mind on every celebration of this anniversary.' In other words, that the Declaration, as being a libel on the government of England, composed in times of passion, should now be buried in utter oblivion, to spare the feelings of our English friends and Angloman fellow-citizens. But it is not to wound them that we wish to keep it in mind; but to cherish the principles of the instrument in the bosoms of our own citizens: and it is a heavenly comfort to see that these principles are yet so strongly felt, as to render a circumstance so trifling as this little lapse of memory of Mr. Adams', worthy of being solemnly announced and supported at an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its birthday. In opposition, however, to Mr. Pickering, I pray God that these principles may be eternal, and close the prayer with my affectionate wishes for yourself of long life, health and happiness."

A somewhat famous charge of want of originality, which has been brought against the Declaration of Independence, may here be noticed. A paper, styled

THE MECKLENBURG DECLARATION OF INDEpendence,

said to have been adopted by the Committee of Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, May 20, 1775, the day after the receipt of the news of the battle of Lexington, was first published in the Raleigh (N. C.) Register, April 30, 1819. It was as follows, the phrases coinciding with those of the National Declaration being printed in italics :

"1. Resolved, That whosoever directly or indirectly abetted, or in any way, form, or manner, countenanced the unchartered and dangerous invasion of our rights, as claimed by Great Britain, is an enemy to this Country -to America and to the inherent and inalienable rights of man.

2. Resolved, That we the citizens of Mecklenburg County, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association, with that Nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties - ·and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.

3. Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independ ent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self-governing Association, under the control of no power other than that of our God and

the General Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which in. dependence, we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual cooperation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.

4. Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this County, we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every of our former laws wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.

5. Resolved, That it is also further decreed, that all, each and every military officer in this County, is hereby reinstated to his former command and authority, he acting conformably to these regulations, and that every member present of this delegation shall henceforth be a civil officer, viz. a Justice of the Peace, in the character of a Committee-man,' to issue process, hear and determine all matters of controversy, according to said adopted laws, and to preserve peace, and union, and harmony, in said County, and to use every exertion to spread the love of country and fire of freedom throughout America, until a more general and organized government be established in this province.

This printed copy of the alleged Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, thus given to the public forty-four years after the event, was accompanied by a historical statement purporting to have been written at the time; and presently, much controversy arising, this statement was substantially confirmed by the affidavits of many old citizens of Mecklenburg who remembered such a declaration.

"How is it possible," wrote John Adams to Jefferson (June 22, 1819), "that this paper should have been concealed from me to this day? Had it been communicated to me in the time of it, I know, if you do not know, that it would have been printed in every whig newspaper upon the continent. You know that if I had possessed it, I would have made the hall of Congress echo and reëcho with it fifteen months before your Declaration of Independence. What a poor, ignorant, malicious, short-sighted, crapulous mass is Tom Paine's 'Common Sense' in comparison with this paper. Had I known it, I would have commented upon it from the day you entered Congress till the fourth of July, 1776. The genuine sense of America at that moment was never so well expressed before or since."

Jefferson's interesting reply (July 9, 1819) may be found in the complete edition of Jefferson's Works, vol. vii, p. 128, in Randall's Life of Jefferson, vol. iii, p. 572 (appendix No. 2, on the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence), and elsewhere. He was an "unbeliever in the apocryphal gospel," believed the paper a fabrication "until positive and solemn proof of its authenticity be produced," and made it plain that the alleged declaration could not have been known to himself or to any influential person in the North, in 1776. As to the question of "plagiarism" on Jefferson's part, over which much controversy arose, a little examination would have shown that it was Richard Henry Lee, and not Jefferson, who was really responsible for the introduction of almost all the controverted phrases into the Declaration of Independence. The committee charged with the preparation of the Declaration had been instructed to draw it in conformity with the resolution passed by Congress on the 2d of July, 1776, which resolution, penned by Richard Henry Lee, was as follows: Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States: that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and of right ought to be, dissolved." The pledge of "our lives and fortunes Occurs constantly in the political literature of 1775 and 1776, and was one of the commonplaces of the time.

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In 1838, Mr. Peter Force, the editor of the American Archives, brought to light what most scholars have since regarded as the solution of the matter, viz., a series of resolutions adopted by "the Committee-men " of Mecklenburg County on the 31st of May, 1775, and widely disseminated at the time both in southern and northern newspapers. These resolutions (given in Randall's appendix, and in Graham's and Welling's papers, referred to below) were a virtual declaration of independence, but differed essentially from the declaration alleged to have been drawn up eleven days previously. There may have been a meeting on the earlier day, and certain resolutions may then have been passed; but they were probably not in the terms of the paper which was given to the public in 1819 and which, whenever compiled by its author, was doubtless compiled not with the aid of any written records, but from general recollections, as we know to have been the case in another version, which appeared subsequently. A very thorough and searching article by James C. Welling, taking this position, which is also the position of Mr. Randall, appeared in the North American Review for April, 1874. The authenticity of the Mecklenburg Declaration is ably defended by Hon. William A. Graham, in an address delivered at Charlotte, N. C., February 4, 1875, and since published in book form. This address considers Mr. Welling's article and all the previous important literature on the subject.

"When your lordships look at the papers transmitted us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For myself, I must declare and avow, that in all my reading and observation — and it has been my favorite study- I have read Thucydides and have studied and admired the master states of the world. that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the general congress at Philadelphia. I trust it is obvious to your lordships that all attempts to impose servitude upon such men, to establish despotism over such a mighty, continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract. Let us retract while we can, not when we must. Avoid this humiliating, disgraceful necessity. With a dignity becoming your exalted situation, make the first advances to concord, to peace, and happiness; for that is your true dignity, to act with prudence and justice. That you should first concede is obvious from sound and rational policy. Concession comes with better grace and more salutary effect from superior power. It reconciles superiority of power with the feelings of men, and establishes solid confidence on the foundations of affection and gratitude. Every motive of justice and of policy, of dignity and of prudence, urges you to allay the ferment in America, by a removal of your troops from Boston, by a repeal of your acts of parliament, and by demonstration of amicable dispositions towards your colonies. On the other hand, every danger and every hazard impend to deter you from perseverance in your present ruinous measures. Lord Chatham.

"Whatever might be the importance of American independence in the history of England, it was of unequalled moment in the history of the world. If it crippled for a while the supremacy of the English nation, it founded the supremacy of the English race. From the hour of American Independ