The above three extracts are from the Declaration, Junius, and Crisis, viii. There is in them the same stately measure or _tread_; the same harmony of sounds; the same gravity of sentiment; the same clearness of diction; the same boldness of utterance; the same beauty and vivacity; in short, the same spirit and the same hand.
Now an extract from Jefferson will be in place, and I give it from one of his most impassioned pieces, the "Summary View." I do this for two reasons: first, because it is the only piece, up to the writing of the Declaration, which he ever produced worthy of note; and second, because it is his best. I give also the best of this piece, the exordium:
{ 236}"_Resolved_, That it be an instruction to the said deputies, when assembled in General Congress, with the deputies from the other states of British America, to propose to the said Congress that an humble and dutiful address be presented to his Majesty, begging leave to lay before him, as Chief Magistrate of the British empire, the united complaints of his Majesty's subjects in America; complaints which are excited by many unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted to be made by the legislature of one part of the empire upon the rights which God and the laws have given equally and independently to all. To represent to his Majesty that these, his states, have often individually made humble application to his imperial Throne to obtain through its intervention some redress of their injured rights, to none of which was ever even an answer condescended. Humbly to hope that this, their joint address, penned in the language of truth, and divested of those expressions of servility which would persuade his Majesty that we are asking favors, and not rights, shall obtain from his Majesty a respectful acceptance; and this his Majesty will think we have reason to expect, when he reflects that he is no more than the chief officer of the people, appointed by the laws, and circumscribed with definite powers to assist in working the great machine of government, erected for their use, and consequently subject to their superintendence, and in order that these our rights, as well as the invasions of them, may be laid more fully before his Majesty, to take a view of them from the origin and first settlement of these countries."