New York deputies, having been properly instructed,
cast the vote of their colony for the resolution also.

Meanwhile, a committee had been appointed to prepare a formal
declaration, setting forth the circumstances and the motives which might
justify them, in the judgment of mankind, in taking this momentous step.
The committee had many meetings to discuss the matter, and, when the
main points had been agreed upon, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were
instructed to "draw them up in form, and clothe them in a proper dress."
Many years afterwards, in 1822, John Adams related, as accurately as he
could, the conversation which took place when these two met to perform
the task assigned them. "Jefferson proposed to me to make the draught. I
said, 'I will not.' 'You should do it.' 'Oh! no.' 'Why will you not?
You ought to do it.' 'I will not.' 'Why?' 'Reasons enough.' 'What can be
your reasons?' 'Reason first--You are a Virginian, and a Virginian ought
to appear at the head of this business. Reason second--I am obnoxious,
suspected, and unpopular. You are very much otherwise. Reason third--You
can write ten times better than I can.' 'Well,' said Jefferson, 'if you
are decided, I will do as well as I can.'" In some such manner as
this it came about that Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of
Independence, no doubt doing, as he said, the best he could.

It is the judgment of posterity that Mr. Jefferson did very well--which
was doubtless due partly to the fact that he could write, if not ten
times better, at least better than John Adams. Yet the happy phrasing of
a brief paragraph or two could scarcely By itself have won so much fame
for the author; and perhaps much Of the success of this famous paper
came from the circumstance That ten years of controversy over the
question of political rights had forced Americans to abandon, step by
step, the restricted ground of the positive and prescriptive rights of
Englishmen and to take their stand on the broader ground of the natural
and inherent rights of man. To have said, "We hold this truth to
be self-evident: that all Englishmen are endowed by the British
Constitution with the customary right of taxing themselves internally"
would probably have made no great impression on the sophisticated
European mind. It was Thomas Jefferson's good fortune, in voicing the
prevailing sentiment in America, to give classic expression to those
fundamental principles of a political faith which was