Now, the word mercenaries, which, with the author



Hcssdb, Google



INDEPENDENOS. 261

of tlie Declaration, means prostituted hirelings, ia use3
twioe fn tlie itistniment, but auxiliaries, which would
mean lionorabre aliies, is not used once. It is not
strange tliat he should forget, for the sentiment is for-
eign to his own character; and I had written my argu-
ment, and given nay reasons above why Mr. Jefferson
could not possibly be t-he author of that sentiment, a
month before I found that Jefferson had misquoted the
Declaration. I reason from first principles, which rest
on establisiied facts, the dlent language of nature, com-
jKired with which the vain babblings of men amount
to nothing. For example, John Adams says that he
and Mr. Jefferson met as a sub-committee to draft the
Declaration; tliat be urged Jefferson to do it; that
afterward tliey both met, and conned it over, and he
does not remember of making or suggesting a single al-
teration. Tiiis Mr. Jefferson denies. He says there
was rto sub-committee; that Adams has forgotten about
it; that he [Jefferson] drew it, and turned to neither
book nor pamphlet while writing it, and that Adams
did correct it.— Jefferson's Works, vol, vii, pages 304,
305. Here are two men, one eighty and the other
eighty-eight, on whose words history rests, differing
materially about historic facts. The one who can not
quote an important passage correctly, as to fact or lan-
guage which he says be wrote himself, accuses the other
of forgetting about a committee which never existed.
The reader must judge.
