laration 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 constitutional 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 pass 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