On September 26, 1776, Congress proceeded to the election of commissioners to the Court of France, and the ballots being taken, Mr. Benjamin Franklin, Mr. Silas Deane, and Mr. Thomas Jefferson were chosen. This was a signal recognition of the prestige of the young author of the Declaration of Independence. An express was sent at once to Jefferson to inform him of his appointment. For the first time he was offered an opportunity to visit the Old World. His desire to go was so strong that he remained undecided for three days before he made up his mind to decline the nomination and to send his refusal to Hancock. In the letter he then wrote, he alleged that "circumstances very peculiar in the situation of my family, such as neither permit me to leave nor to carry it compel me to ask leave to decline a service so honorable and at the same time so important to the American cause."[56] His biographer Randall observes on this occasion that "the private causes" were the precarious situation of his wife's health. The family record contains the following entry: "a son born May 28th, 1777, 10 h. P.M."[57] The true reason, however, is to be found in the "Autobiography", as given before. The very day Jefferson answered Hancock, he was put on several committees, and the next day he obtained leave to bring in a bill "To enable tenants in taille to convey their land in fee simple." The Bill to Abolish Entails was reported on October 14, and after discussion and amendments passed by the House on October 23, and approved by the Senate on November first. The bill was no improvisation and Jefferson intended by it "to strike at the very root of feudalism in Virginia." On August 13, 1776, he had already written to an anonymous correspondent, probably Edmund Pendleton: The opinion that our lands were allodial possessions is one which I have very long held, and had in my eye during a pretty considerable part of my law reading which I found always strengthened it.... This opinion I have thought and still think to prove if ever I should have time to look into books again.... Was not the separation of the property from the perpetual use of lands a mere fiction? Is not it's history well known, and the purposes for which it was introduced, to wit, the establishment of a military system of defense? Was it not afterwards made an engine of immense oppression?... Has it not been the practice of all other nations to hold their lands as their personal estate in absolute dominion? Are we not the better for what we have hitherto abolished of the feudal system?[58]