Junius Unmasked Part 24

WAR.

Par. 17--Warfare begun, and hereunder:

_a._ Seas plundered.

_b._ Coasts ravaged.

_c._ Towns burnt.

_d._ Lives destroyed.

Par. 18--Invasion.

Par. 19--Pressing of seamen.

Par. 20--Indian ma.s.sacres.

Par. 21--Insurrection.

Par. 22--Waging war against human nature.

IV. PEACEFUL METHOD OF REDRESS, viz: Pet.i.tioning--Paragraph 23.

V. NECESSITY OF SEPARATION--declared in Paragraphs 24, 25.

VI. POWERS OF AN INDEPENDENT STATE DECLARED TO THE WORLD--in Paragraph 26.

ARGUMENT.

Let us now examine Articles III, IV, V, and VI. As they form the piece proper, namely, the indictment and the declaration thereunder, let us compare them with reference to the following:

In the conclusion of Common Sense Mr. Paine wrote: "Should a manifes...o...b.. published and dispatched to foreign courts setting forth--

I. "The miseries we have endured; [This is Art. III of the Declaration.]

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 a.s.suring 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 doc.u.ment, and which const.i.tute, 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 doc.u.mentary 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.

That Mr. Paine did not attach his name to the pamphlet, Common Sense, there is abundance of evidence to prove. The author of a pamphlet, subscribed Rationalis, in answer to Common Sense, says: "I know not the author, nor am I anxious to learn his name or character, for the book, and not the writer of it, is to be the subject of my animadversions."

But we have Mr. Paine's own testimony, in the second edition of Common Sense, direct to the point. In a postscript to the Introduction, he says: "Who the author of this production is, is wholly unnecessary to the public, as the object for attention is the doctrine, not the man.

Yet it may not be unnecessary to say that he is unconnected with any party, and under no sort of influence, public or private, but the influence of reason and principle."

An examination of all the earliest editions which can be seen in the Congressional Library at Was.h.i.+ngton will satisfy any one on this subject.

If Mr. Jefferson had read Common Sense before the writing of the Declaration, he would never have erred so in regard to this fact. This goes to show he had not even read it, much less studied it. How, then, was the exact order followed, in writing the Declaration, which Mr.

Paine laid down in Common Sense?

My first proposition, then, I have proven, namely: that Thomas Paine wrote a work for the sole purpose of bringing about a separation and making a Declaration of Independence. I have proven, also, that he therein submitted the subject-matter in the _order_ in which it was afterwards put. This much on the positive side. On the negative side, I have shown that Mr. Jefferson did none of these things, for it was produced from "the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book."

But if Mr. Bancroft be a truthful historian, there is already great doubt thrown on Jefferson's authors.h.i.+p of it, and it would have been better to have made Jefferson a close student and thorough reader for this special purpose. This is the view, in fact, taken of the question of authors.h.i.+p in the New American Cyclopedia (article Thomas Jefferson), and I will give an extract therefrom, to show how historians differ.

Speaking of the Declaration, the Cyclopedia says: "Two questions have, however, arisen as to its originality: the first, a general one upon the substance of the doc.u.ment; the second, in regard to its phraseology in connection with the alleged Mecklenburg declaration of May, 1775. It is more than probable that Jefferson made use of some of the ideas expressed in newspapers at the time, and that his study of the great English writers upon const.i.tutional freedom was of service to him. But an impartial criticism will not base upon this fact a charge of want of originality. It should rather be regarded as the peculiar merit of the writer that he thus _collected and embodied_ the conclusions upon government of the leading thinkers of the age in Europe and America, rejecting what was false, and combining his material into a production of so much eloquence and dignity."

This does not sound much like Bancroft. The two historians have placed Mr. Jefferson in a sad dilemma. The one, to make him an original in the production of the Declaration, says he did not consult one single book, but produced it from the fullness of his own mind. The other, to defend him from the charge of want of originality, says he made use of the newspapers, collected and embodied, etc. But the single fact which I have brought from the conclusion of Common Sense destroys the first hypothesis, and the last hypothesis, in being contradictory in itself destroys itself. How the reader will fathom this labyrinth of contradictions, and reconcile this conflict of historic opinion, is a question which does not trouble me, and I pa.s.s on to something more important.

STYLE.

The style of the Declaration of Independence is in every particular the style of Mr. Paine and Junius; and it is in no particular the style of Thomas Jefferson. This I now proceed to prove.

That equality in the members of the periods, which gives evenness and smoothness, and the alliteration which gives harmony in the sound, and which together render the writings of Mr. Paine so stately and metrical, are qualities so prominent that no one can mistake the style. And what renders the argument in this regard so strong, is the entire absence of these qualities in Mr. Jefferson's writings. In fact, if Mr. Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he never before nor since wrote any thing like it, in the same style, order, or spirit; or produced any thing which evinced genius, or the hand of a master in literature. What I have already said on style, in the former part of this work, will render this readily understood by the reader; but I will now make a few comparisons, and first with Junius, and then Paine and Jefferson.

Junius wrote two declarations, or rather pieces, after the very same style and manner, namely, the first and the thirty-fifth Letters. They can be thrown into the same synoptical form in which I have put the Declaration. But to show the rythm, and alliteration, and peculiar style, I give the following:

"When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to a.s.sume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's G.o.d ent.i.tle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."--Declaration.

"When the complaints of a brave and powerful people are observed to increase in proportion to the wrongs they have suffered; when, instead of sinking into submission, they are roused to resistance, the time will soon arrive at which every inferior consideration must yield to the security of the sovereign and to the general safety of the state. There is a moment of difficulty and danger at which flattery and falsehood can no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can no longer be misled."--Junius.

"When the tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present pa.s.sions be succeeded by calm reflection; or when those who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes; when the yearly revenue shall scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise and embitter the remembrance of former follies."

The above three extracts are from the Declaration, Junius, and Crisis, viii. There is in them the same stately measure or _tread_; the same harmony of sounds; the same gravity of sentiment; the same clearness of diction; the same boldness of utterance; the same beauty and vivacity; in short, the same spirit and the same hand.

Now an extract from Jefferson will be in place, and I give it from one of his most impa.s.sioned pieces, the "Summary View." I do this for two reasons: first, because it is the only piece, up to the writing of the Declaration, which he ever produced worthy of note; and second, because it is his best. I give also the best of this piece, the exordium: