orks. In Philadelphia, after the reading, the late king's coat of
arms was burned in Independence Square; in New York the leaden statue, in
Bowling Green, of George III. was "laid prostrate in the dust," and
ordered to be run into bullets. Virginia had already stricken the king's
name from her prayer-book; and Rhode Island now forbade her people to pray
for the king, as king, under a penalty of one hundred thousand pounds! The
Declaration of Independence, both as a political and literary document,
has stood the test of time. It has all the classic qualities of an oration
by Demosthenes; and even that passage in it which has been
criticised--that, namely, which pronounces all men to be created equal--is
true in a sense, the truth of which it will take a century or two yet to
develop.

V

REFORM WORK IN VIRGINIA

In September, 1776, Jefferson, having resigned his seat in Congress to
engage in duties nearer home, returned to Monticello. A few weeks later, a
messenger from Congress arrived to inform him that he had been elected a
joint commissioner with Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane to represent at Paris
the newly formed nation. His heart had long been set upon foreign travel;
but he felt obliged to decline this appointment, first on account of the
ill health of his wife, and secondly, because he was needed in Virginia as
a legislator. Not since Lycurgus gave laws to the Spartans had there been
such an opportunity as then existed in the United States. John Adams
declared: "The best lawgivers of antiquity would rejoice to live at a
period like this when, for the first time in the history of the world,
three millions of people are deliberately _choosing_ their government and
institutions."

Of all the colonies, Virginia offered the best field for reform, because,
as we have already seen, she had by far the most aristocratic political
and social system; and it is extraordinary how quickly the reform was
effected by Jefferson and his friends. In ordinary times of peace the task
would have been impossible; but in throwing off the English yoke, the
colonists had opened their minds to new ideas; change had become familiar
to them, and in the general upheaval the rights of the people were
recognized. A year later, Jefferson wrote to Franklin: "With respect to
the State of Virginia, in particular, the people seem to have laid aside
the monarchical and taken u