THE source to which naturally we should first apply ourselves for the fullest information on the development of the purpose of independence would be the _Journals of Congress_. But our disappointment would be complete. The same reasons which enjoined on the members secrecy as to the proceedings seem to have deprived the record even of some things that were done and of almost every utterance in debate. We have to look to other sources, the most scattered and fragmentary, to learn the names even of the principal leaders in the debates, and from beginning to end we have not the report, scarcely a summary, of a single speech. Our reasonable inference from such hints is that some ten, or at most fifteen, members were the master-spirits in securing the adoption of measures, while they were opposed by some as earnest as themselves, but not as numerous. But whatever may have been written in the original _Journals_ was subjected to a cautious selection when they were printed by a committee. It is only from Jefferson himself, for instance, that we learn (Randall's _Jefferson_, i. 15) how, somewhat to his chagrin, "the rhetoric" of his draft of the Declaration was toned down. Especially do the _Journals_, as printed, suppress all evidences of strong dissension, of which we have abundant hints in fragments from John and Sam. Adams, Franklin, Dickinson, Galloway, Jefferson, Jay, and Livingston. But the _Journals_ do spread before us at length sundry admirable papers, drawn by able and judicious committees.[689] The reader must turn to the notes appended to chapter i. of the present volume for an examination of some of the leading pamphlets occasioned by the Congresses of 1774 and 1775, and for an examination of their opposing views, with more or less warning of the inevitable issue of independence. One may easily trace in the writings of Franklin, extending through the years preceding the Revolution, and through all the phases of the struggle, seeming inconsistencies in the expression of his opinions and judgment. But these are readily explicable by changes in time and circumstance. We must pause, however, upon the strong statement made by Lecky in the following sentence: "It may be safely asserted that if Franklin had been able to guide American opinion, it would never have ended in revolution."[690]