f 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 documentary 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 prec