shed former Senator from
Massachusetts (Mr. Choate) spoke of, as contained in the Declaration of
Independence, one of them at least, about all men being created equal
--was not original with Mr. Jefferson. I recollect seeing a pamphlet
called the Principles of the Whigs and Jacobites, published about the
year 1745, when the last of the Stuarts, called 'the Pretender,' was
striking a blow that was fatal to himself, but a blow for his crown, in
which pamphlet the very phraseology is used, word for word and letter
for letter. I have not got it here to-night. I sent the other day to
the Library to try and find it, but could not find it; it was burnt, I
believe, with the pamphlets that were burnt some time ago.

"That Mr. Jefferson copied it or plagiarized it, is not true, I suppose,
any more than the charge that the distinguished Senator from New York
plagiarized from the Federalist in preparing his celebrated compromising
speech which was made here a short time ago. It was the cant phrase of
the day in 1745, which was only about thirty years previous to the
Declaration of Independence. This particular pamphlet, which I have
read, was published; others were published at the same time. That sort
of phraseology was used.

"There was a war of classes in England; there were men who were
contending for legitimacy; who were contending for the right of the
Crown being inherent and depending on the will of God, 'the divine right
of Kings,' for maintaining an hereditary landed-aristocracy; there was
another Party who were contending against this doctrine of legitimacy,
and the right of primogeniture. These were called the Whigs; they
established this general phraseology in denouncing the divine right and
the doctrine of legitimacy, and it became the common phraseology of the
Country; so that in the obscure county of Mecklenburg, in North
Carolina, a declaration containing the same assertions was found as in
this celebrated Declaration of Independence, written by the immortal
Jefferson.

"Which of us, I ask, is there upon this floor who has not read and
re-read whatever was written within the last twenty-five or thirty years
by the distinguished men of this country? But enough of that.

"As I said before, there ought not have been, and there did not
necessarily result from our form of Government, any irrepressible
conflict between the Slaveholding and the non-Slaveholding States.
Nothing of the sort was necessary.

"Str