nd philosophical arguments.
The essential question was "What was the political relation between us
and England?". The answer was a voluntary compact entered into between
the king and his people when they voluntarily left England for America,
a compact which they had never renounced, but which parliament had
broken and the king had not protected. He denied the authority of
parliament even to make laws for trade and navigation and asserted
England was now attempting to take for its own benefits the fruits of a
society wrested from the wilderness by the American colonists. These
colonists, having arrived without assistance, voluntarily formed a
government based on their own natural rights and were entitled to
defend those rights and that government against the repeated incursions
of parliament. Then Jefferson touched upon a very telling point in
understanding the radical shift of the colonists in their allegiance
from 1763 to 1775. He noted that while parliament had passed laws
previously which had threatened liberty, these transgressions had been
few and far between. More recently, however,

[30] Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Little, Brown:
Boston, 1948), 182. His excellent discussion of the Summary View
is on pages 181-190.

Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into
which one stroke of parliamentary thunder had involved us, before
another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of
tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a
series of oppressions, begun at a distinguishable (an identifiable
point in time) period, and pursued, unalterably through every change of
ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan for
reducing us to slavery.

To Jefferson in 1774 the source of this conspiracy to reduce the
colonies to slavery was parliament; by 1776 he would identify the king
as being involved as well.

Too rash, and too radical, for the August convention or even for the
Continental Congress in October 1774, the Summary View would earn for
Jefferson an intercolonial reputation as a brilliant writer and a
foremost patriot. It was this reputation which resulted in his
appointment to the committee in June 1776 which drew up a declaration
of independence.

Virginia and the First Continental Congress

On August 30, Washington, Henry, and Pendleton set out from Mount
Vernon for Philadelphia. There they met the