The authorship of this grand charter of rights, vouchsafed to a people who to-day number many millions and are living happily under its benign influence, bears the marks of wisdom the most profound, of statesmanship of the highest order, of foresight akin to inspiration. The question then very naturally arises for eager solution, “Who was the author?” or if more than one, “Who were the authors?” The question has never been, probably never will be, fully and definitely answered to the satisfaction of every inquirer. The claims of Thomas Jefferson, of Nathan Dane, of Dr. Manasseh Cutler have in turn been ably supported by various writers. The truth no doubt is that all these gentlemen, together with Colonel Carrington and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and Arthur St. Clair, the President of Congress, were concerned in its preparation. More importance is attached to the authorship of Articles III and VI, especially of the latter, than to any other portion of the instrument. Religious liberty, the provision for the spread of education, the manner in which the Indians should be treated, and the inhibition of slavery, are its distinguishing features. To whom are we chiefly indebted for their place in the Ordinance? Jefferson has a strong claim upon our gratitude, for it was he who drafted the anti-slavery clause in the inoperative ordinance of 1784, from which the anti-slavery clause (Article VI) of the Ordinance of 1787, no doubt, was copied. The similarity in the phraseology of the two clauses is too striking to admit of a doubt of this, as any one who will carefully read and compare the two will readily perceive. To Jefferson, then, we owe much, but it must be remembered that he was not a member of the last Congress of the old confederation, but was at that time our minister to France. Nathan Dane was the committee’s secretary, and no doubt the original draft is in his handwriting. He had prepared and reported an ordinance in May previous which was not passed, and which contained none of the grand principles that characterized the ordinance under question. If he were the author of any part of the latter, it was an unessential part, as he afterwards, in a letter to Mr. Rufus King published in Spencer’s History of the United States, clearly shows that he had no adequate conception of the grand features of the Ordinance. Moreover he declined to offer the anti-slavery clause as a part of the Ordinance at its first reading because he believed it could not pass, and only presented it the day before the final adoption of the Ordinance, after having learned the feeling of Congress toward the slavery question.