George Sand is literary, but wrong, since Marat, Mirabeau, Robespierre, got their arguments directly from Rousseau, and no one I have ever heard made an appeal to Scripture as a defense for murdering thirty thousand men, women and children. Mirabeau quotes this from Rousseau in self-defense: "No true believer can be a persecutor. If I were a magistrate and the law inflicted death on an atheist, I should begin to put it into execution by burning the first man who should accuse or persecute another." Jefferson and Franklin both read the "Social Contract" in the original French, and quoted from it in giving reasons why it was not only right, but the duty, of the Colonies to separate from Great Britain. Rousseau fired the heart and inspired the brain of Thomas Paine to write the pamphlet, "Common-sense," which, more than any other one influence, brought about the American Revolution. Jefferson especially was fascinated by Rousseau, and in his library was a well-thumbed copy of the "Social Contract." marked and re- marked on page and margin. Paine and Jefferson were the only men connected with the strenuous times of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six who had a distinct literary style--who worked epigram and antithesis. And the style of each is identical with the other. That Paine wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence needs no argument for the literary connoisseur--he simply says, "Read it." But while we know that both Paine and Jefferson fed on Rousseau for ten years, it is not so clear that they collaborated. They got their information from the same source--one in England and the other in America--and met with minds mature. As Victor Hugo gave the key to the modern American stylists, so did the stylists--and precious few there were--of Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six trace to Jean Jacques. The man who wrote the "Junius Letters" had only one model. That opening phrase of the Declaration, "We hold these truths to be self-evident." is a literal translation from Jean Jacques. The Reverend Joseph Parker once said to me, "I always begin strong and I end strong, for only your first phrase and your last will be remembered, if remembered at all, by the average listener." Jean Jacques begins strong. The first words of the "Social Contract" are, "Man is born free, but is everywhere enslaved." Does not that remind you of the not-to-be-forgotten opening words of "The Crisis": "These are the times that try men's souls"? Rousseau says, "Every individual who opposes himself to the general will ought to be restrained by the whole body, which signifies nothing else than that they force him to be free." That is, he is no longer fit to receive the benefits of the social contract since he refused to pay the price.