_Thomas Jefferson._--On June 21, 1775, Thomas Jefferson took his seat for the first time as a member of the Continental Congress. He had then but recently passed his thirty-second birthday, and was known to be the author of two or three public papers of considerable note. Early in June, 1776, Thomas Jefferson, receiving the largest number of votes, was placed at the head of the committee of illustrious men to whom was assigned the task of preparing a suitable Declaration of Independence, and thereby he became the draftsman of the one American state paper that has reached to supreme distinction in the world, and that seems likely to last as long as American civilisation lasts. Whatever authority the Declaration of Independence has acquired in the world has been due to no lack of criticism, either at the time of its first appearance or since then,--a fact which seems to tell in favour of its essential worth and strength. From the date of its original publication down to the present moment, it has been attacked again and again, either in anger or in contempt, by friends as well as by enemies of the American Revolution, by liberals in politics as well as by conservatives. It has been censured for its substance, it has been censured for its form; for its misstatements of fact, for its fallacies in reasoning, for its audacious novelties and paradoxes, for its total lack of all novelty, for its repetition of old and threadbare statements, even for its downright plagiarisms; finally, for its grandiose and vapouring style. Yet, probably no public paper ever more perfectly satisfied the immediate purposes for which it was sent forth. From one end of the country to the other, and as far as it could be spread among the people, it was greeted in public and in private with every demonstration of approval and delight. To a marvellous degree, it quickened the friends of the Revolution for their great task. Moreover, during the century and more since the close of the Revolution, the influence of this state paper on the political character and the political conduct of the American people has been great beyond all calculation.