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his wants became so pressing, that he was obliged to borrow twenty-five thousand pounds of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in order that the recruiting service might not totally cease.[101]
These facts show significantly, that, before the Declaration of Independence, scarcely any progress had been made towards the formation of a national government with definite powers and appropriate departments. In matters of judicature, and in measures requiring executive functions and authority, the Congress were obliged to rely almost entirely upon the local institutions and the local civil machinery of the different colonies; while, in all military affairs, the very form of the revolutionary government was unfavorable to vigor, despatch, and consistent method. There were also causes existing in the temper and feelings of many of the members of that government, both before and after the Declaration of Independence, which, at times, prevented the majority from acting with the decision and energy demanded by the state of their affairs. Many excellent and patriotic men in the Congress of 1775-6, while they concurred fully in the necessity for resistance to the measures of the British ministry, and had decided, or were fast deciding, that a separation must take place, still entertained a great jealousy of standing armies. This jealousy began to exhibit itself very soon after the appointment of the Commander-in-chief, and was never wholly without influence in the proceedings of Congress during the entire period of the war. It led to a degree of reliance upon militia, which, in the situation of the colonies, was too often demonstrated to be a weak and fatal policy.[102]
NOTE TO PAGE 51.
ON THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
The Declaration of Independence was drawn by Thomas Jefferson; and the circumstances under which he was selected for this honorable and important task have been for more than a quarter of a century somewhat in doubt, and that doubt has been increased by the recent publication of a part of the Works of Mr. John Adams. The evidence on the subject is to be derived chiefly from statements made by both of these eminent persons in their memoirs, and in a letter written by each of them. We have seen, in a former note, that in 1822 Mr. Adams declared, that had it not been for a conversation which occurred in 1775, before the meeting of the Congress of that year, between himself and his Massachusetts colleagues and certain of the Philadelphia "sons of liberty," in which the Massachusetts members were advised to concede precedence to Virginia, from motives of policy, and but for the principles, facts, and motives suggested in that conversation, many things would not have happened which did occur, and among them, that Mr. Jefferson never would have been the author of the Declaration of Independence. In regard to the same speculation, concerning the election of Washington as Commander-in-chief, I have ventured, on Mr. Adams's own authority, to suggest doubts whether that election ought now to be considered to have turned upon motives which Mr. Adams made so prominent in 1822. In regard to the authorship of the Declaration of Independence, I shall only endeavor to state fairly and fully the conflicting evidence, in order that the reader may judge what degree of weight ought to be assigned to the cause, without which Mr. Adams supposed Mr. Jefferson would not have been selected to draft it.