The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1876-07-06

W NC vi earlier uate Than the Declaration
OF Independence. Thus the Virginia
Declaration of Rights was adopted June
18th, 1776. The Constitution of Vir-
ginia was adopted June 80, 1776.
Governor jays address to the people of |
Engl was written and published |
in September, IVA. Judge Drayton's
charge was delivered on the 23d of |
April, 1776, and published in May of |
the same year. And the declaration BY |
the citizens of Mecklenburg County in |
North Carolina, was made on the goth of |
May, 1775.
An attempt has been made to show
that the Constitution of Virginia, or
more properly. the List of Grievances
prefixed to that Document, was written
by Mr.. Jefferson, but there is no proof of
this. Mr.. Tucker says it was written by
Mr.. Jefferson, in Philadelphia, and for
warded to Mr.. Wythe in Virginia. But
on the 1lth of August, 1775, Mr. Jefter-
son was elected delegate to Congress
for one year, by the convention of Vir-
ginia, and on the 20th of June, 1776, was
reelected for another year. The Jour
nails, show US that George Wythe, also,
was elected with Mr.. Jefferson, on both
the occasions referred to; and as the list
of members in the Virginia convention
presents us with the name, at one time,
of Mr.. Edmund Randolph, and at
another, of Mr.. Prentiss, sitting for Mr..
Wythe, we infer that in 1776, when the
Virginia constitution was under con-
sideration, Mr.. Wythe was in Philadel-
phia with Mr.. Jefferson, attending to
his duties in Congress; if this be so, we
do not perceive how this list of griev-
ances could have been transmitted to
him in Virginia. 1t may, indeed, have
been sent to some other friend named
Wythe; or the professor may have mis-
taken the person to whom it was sent
in which case it was plain that the
original letter of Mr.. Jefferson contain
ing these grievances was not before his
biographer. 1t may be a received
opinion, in Virginia, that Mr.. Jefferson
furnished the list of grievances prefxed
to the constitution nor would we be
understood as denying that he did so. If
he did, he only borrowed very largely
from himself; and it is to be lamented
that he has left no explanation of the re-
semblance between the Declaration and
the charter of Virginia while in another
case, of much less moment, he has been
at the pains to account for the likeness
of a Virginia document, which was
penned by himself, to public paper
which he prepared as member of
Congress. If a letter to any one in Vir-
ginia can be produced, from Mr.. Jefer-
sons pen, which contains this list OF
grievances, and if they were thus COM
municated before the goth of June, 1776,
Mr.. Jefferson's friends owe it to his
memory, and, as Americans, they owe it
also to their countrymen, to let the tes-
timony be forthcoming. If there be no
such letter in being, let inferior evidence
be produced, if it exists, to establish the
fact that Mr.. Jefferson wrote both
papers. The respective dates Of the
papers render it important; for, unex-
planned by satisfactory proof, posterity
may accuse Mr.. Jefferson of plagiarism
more extensive than that from the
Mecklenburg document. On the 18th of
May, 1776, the convention of Virginia
appoined the committee to prepare a
Declaration of Rights, and a constitution;
on the 9th of May, the Declaration of
Rights was reported, and on the 11th of
June was adopted ; on the 29th of June,
the. constitution was adopted.
On the 10th of June, Congress ap-
pointed the committee to draw the
Declaration of Independence, only one
day before the Declaration of Rights was
adopted in Virginia and, that this last
named paper, which it is not pretended
he wrote, was used by Mr.: Jefferson IN
preparing the first part of the congress
sional declaration is obvious, upon a
comparison of the two instruments. If
this were sent to him in Philadelphia by
his Virginia friends, as it must have
been, why may not the copy of the pro-
posed constitution, with this very list of
grievances. have also been sent? We
find, from the journals of the Conven-
ton, that it was before that body as
early as the 26th of June, for on that
day it was discussed, and the committee
had been employed on it from the 18th
of the previous May; so that we cannot
tell how long before the 26th of June 1T
| had been in existence in Virginia, if it
originated there; but it is certainly
within the range of possibility, that 1t
/ was pr6pdIeu D6IOI6 GllC 1V1n VI uHO,
when the committee on the national
document was appointed by Congress;
and within the range of probability,
that. if prepared, it was sent with the
Declaration of Rights, which we have
seen was used by Mr.. Jefferson. These
facts render it important, to establish
most satisfactorily the point, that Mr..
Jefferson did prepare this list of griev-
,ances in Philadel phia, and did send them
to Virginia some time between the 10th
of May and the 10Th of June; and if
this point be not sustained, the presump-
ton is against his claim to the author
ship.
1t is not questionable that Mr.. Jeffer-
son did borrow from the Mecklenburg
Declaration of Independence, whatever
may be the truth in regard to the Vir-
ginia constitution, and if he did, DIR.
Hawkes. well asks, was not his letter to
Mr.. Adams something more "unjus-
tifable " than "quiz?" There are not
many so dull as to be able to read the
evidence in the case without believing
Mr.. Jefferson a plagiarist, and few will
doubt that he knew he had used the
Mecklenburg instrument when he wrote
his extraordinary answer to the letter OF
Mr.. Adams.
A Country Parsons Odd Thoughts.