THE CONSERVATIVE REFORMER 155 



nature shrank. He was in no wise lacking in moral 

 courage, but his sympathies were so broad and tender 

 that he could not breathe freely in an atmosphere of 

 strife. 



For such a nature the pen, rather than the tongue, 

 is the ready instrument. As a wielder of that weapon 

 which is mightier than the sword Jefferson was now 

 to win such a place as would have made him immortal, 

 even had he done no more. In June, 1776, as Richard 

 Henry Lee, who had moved the Declaration of Inde- 

 pendence, was called home to Virginia by the illness 

 of his wife, Jefferson was appointed chairman of the 

 committee for drawing up the declaration. The draft 

 as . made by him, with two or three slight changes 

 interlined by Franklin and John Adams, was substan- 

 tially adopted by Congress. There were no interpola- 

 tions worth mentioning, but there were a few omissions, 

 and the most important of these was the passage which 

 denounced George III. for upholding the slave-trade. 

 The antislavery party in Virginia was quite strong at 

 that time. In 1769 the legislature had enacted a law 

 prohibiting the further importation of negroes to be sold 

 into slavery, but at the king's command the governor 

 had vetoed this wholesome act. Jefferson made this 

 the occasion of a denunciation of slavery and the slave- 

 trade, but inasmuch as New England shipmasters 

 combined with South Carolina planters in carrying on 

 this " execrable commerce," Congress remembered that 

 people who live in glass houses should not begin to 

 throw stones, and the clause was struck out. 



Some expressions in the Declaration of Indepen- 

 dence are often quoted in illustration of Jefferson's 

 Gallicism. It begins with a series of generaliza- 



