Let us now examine Articles III, IV, V, and VI. As they form the piece proper, namely, the indictment and the declaration thereunder, let us compare them with reference to the following:

In the conclusion of Common Sense Mr. Paine wrote: "Should a manifesto be published and dispatched to foreign courts setting forth—

I. "The miseries we have endured; [This is Art. III of the Declaration.]II. "The peaceful methods which we have ineffectually used for redress; [This is Art. IV of the Declaration.]

III. "Declaring at the same time that, not being able any longer to live happily or safely under the cruel disposition of the British court, we had been driven to the necessity of breaking off all connection with her; [This is Art. V of the Declaration.]

IV. "At the same time assuring all courts of our peaceful disposition toward them, and of our desire of entering into trade with them." [This is Art. VI of the Declaration.]

Here are, in their order, the directions for producing the four last articles of the famous document, and which constitute, as a special instrument, all there is of 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 preceded Franklin six months.That Mr. Paine did not attach his name to the pamphlet, Common Sense, there is abundance of evidence to prove. The author of a pamphlet, subscribed Rationalis, in answer to Common Sense, says: "I know not the author, nor am I anxious to learn his name or character, for the book, and not the writer of it, is to be the subject of my animadversions."

But we have Mr. Paine's own testimony, in the second edition of Common Sense, direct to the point. In a postscript to the Introduction, he says: "Who the author of this production is, is wholly unnecessary to the public, as the object for attention is the doctrine, not the man. Yet it may not be unnecessary to say that he is unconnected with any party, and under no sort of influence, public or private, but the influence of reason and principle."

An examination of all the earliest editions which can be seen in the Congressional Library at Washington will satisfy any one on this subject.

If Mr. Jefferson had read Common Sense before the writing of the Declaration, he would never have erred so in regard to this fact. This goes to show he had not even read it, much less studied it. How, then, was the exact order followed, in writing the Declaration, which Mr. Paine laid down in Common Sense?

My first proposition, then, I have proven, namely: that Thomas Paine wrote a work for the sole purpose of bringing about a separation and making a Declaration of Independence. I have proven, also, that he therein submitted the subject-matter in the order in which it was afterwards put. This much on the positive side. On the negative side, I have shown that Mr. Jefferson did none of these things, for it was produced from "the fullness of his own mind, without consulting one single book."

But if Mr. Bancroft be a truthful historian, there is already great doubt thrown on Jefferson's authorship of it, and it would have been better to have made Jefferson a close student and thorough reader for this special purpose. This is the view, in fact, taken of the question of authorship in the New American Cyclopedia (article Thomas Jefferson), and I will give an extract therefrom, to show how historians differ. Speaking of the Declaration, the Cyclopedia says: "Two questions have, however, arisen as to its originality: the first, a general one upon the substance of the document; the second, in regard to its phraseology in connection with the alleged Mecklenburg declaration 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.