90 HAYS— DRAUGHT OF DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. [Ap. 1, 



•ence, as agreed to by the House, and also as originally framed. 

 You will judge whether it is better or worse for the critics. I shall 

 return to Virginia after the nth of August. I wish my successor 

 may be certain to come before that time : in that case, I shall hope 

 to see you, and not Wythe, in convention, that the business of 

 government, which is of everlasting concern, may receive your aid. 

 Adieu, and believe me to be your friend and servant." 



Jefferson evidently thought that the critics had not improved the 

 document and so Lee understood him ; for in his reply,^ he says : 



*' Chantilly, 21 July, 1776. 

 ^^Dear Sir : 



" I thank you much for your favor and its inclosures by this post, 

 and I wish sincerely, as well for the honor of Congress, as for that 

 of the States, that the manuscript had not been mangled as it is. 

 It is wonderful, and passing pitiful, that the rage of change should 

 be so unhappily applied. However, the Thing is in its nature so 

 good that no Cookery can spoil the Dish for the palates of Freemen. 

 ********* 



'^ It will always make me happy to hear from you because I am 

 sincerely your affectionate friend, 



^* Richard Henry Lee." 



R. H. Lee, Jr., in his Life of his grandfather (p. 175) says of 

 the copy thus enclosed, ''The original was carefully preserved by 

 Mr. Lee, not only for the interest he felt in its history, but for the 

 great respect and warm friendship he felt for Mr. Jefferson. It has 

 been as carefully preserved by his family, and finally committed to 

 the author." 



In this connection it should be recalled that the Virginia 

 Convention, which convened at Williamsburg on the 6th of May, 

 1776, unanimously adopted on the 15th of the same month a pream- 

 ble and resolutions, which were prepared by Pendleton, offered by 

 Thomas Nelson, Jr., and powerfully advocated by Patrick Henry, 

 to whom R. H. Lee wrote from Philadelphia on April 20th, 

 exhorting him to propose in the Convention a separation from 

 the mother country: "Ages yet unborn and millions existing at 

 present," Lee wrote, " may rue or bless that assembly on which 



'^Jefferson'' s MS, Papers, 2^^. series, Vol. 51, 12, Library of Department of 

 : State, Washington. 



