27
instrument—the style of its ideas and expressions, I have come to a settled conviction on that point. The same amount of testimony necessary to convince me, that the whitest children of our country are the offspring of the blackest inhabitants, would be required to prove to my satisfaction, that the clear straight forward statements in the body of the document, were the production of the same mind as the verbiage that precedes them. The difference in solidity between ramparts of stone, and the mists of the morning, is but a trifle more conspicuous, than the difference between the thoughts to be expressed and the mode of expressing them, observable in the two parts of this production. The clear, strong-minded and honest man, when he has any thing to declare, takes the method which becomes conspicuous in the document, where it says "The history of the present King of Great Britain, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations," &c.—the man whose mind is forty-nine parts fog, and fifty-one self-conceit will invariably employ the style, mystification and pompous nonsense of the passages we have been reviewing.
Moreover, from many analogies I am inclined to the opinion, that one of these minds had been invigorated by the discipline of a higher latitude; the other enervated by the lassitude of a lower—onc from the land of facts and truth, the other from the land of abstractions and vain philosophy. The mind of the higher latitude begins to manifest itself in the Declaration, as soon as we begin to find any truth in it, or any appreciable idea. The sentences in the second paragraph, following those I have commented on, are intelligible. I think it reasonable to suppose therefore, that no southern mind produced them. This intelligibility increases apace till the composition comes to the recital of facts, when that intelligibility is complete. We come now to statements that carry conviction with them—to ideas that cannot be misunderstood and facts that no man can dispute. Not only what truth or honesty there is in its Declaration; but all the strength, beauty and value lie in this plain, unambitious narrative.
"See how a plain tale will put you down," says a fine writer. He, and those who heard him knowing well, that the force of language consisted in the force of the facts recited; and sublimity in the bravity wherewith the truth is set forth.
