Nor is this all. On the 8th of September, 1775, these same delegates from Mecklenburg united with their colleagues of the provincial congress in the unanimous adoption of an address to the inhabitants of Great Britain, in which they said: "We have been told that independence is our object; that we seek to shake off all connection with the parent state. Cruel suggestion! Do not all our professions, all our actions contradict this?" Could the men from Mecklenburg have said this in September, 1775, if they had joined in a declaration of independence on the 20th of May, 1775? They were Christian men, and they fervently searched the very intents of their hearts in disclaiming disloyalty to the British crown. They said in the same address: "We again declare and we invoke the Almighty Being who searches the recesses of the human heart and knows our most secret intentions, that it is our earnest wish and prayer to be restored with the other colonies to that state in which we and they were placed before the year 1763."

.

But the language which they hold in this address is entirely consistent with the resolutions of May 31st. The address continues: "Whenever we have departed from the forms of the constitution, our own safety and self-preservation have dictated the expedient. As soon as the cause of our fears and apprehensions is removed, with joy will we return these powers to their regular channels; and such institutions, formed from mere necessity, shall end with the necessity which created them." This is a declaration in which the upholders of the resolutions of May 31st could have joined with entire candor and honor.

It is common to allege that the declaration of May 20th was made subject to the control of congress, and that, after congress refused to approve the act, the members from Mecklenburg could candidly say in September, that “all their professions and actions" made the charge of aiming at independence a "cruel suggestion." The plea is submitted without comment.

When a tradition like the Mecklenburg mythus, confessed by its framer to be drawn from "recollections," can be shown at the threshold to be improbable, and not only improbable but incredible, and not only incredible but morally impossible, and yet can find ready believers and zealous champions, we should not be surprised at any amount of facility betrayed in the acceptance of statements which make for the alleged declaration, or at any amount of skepticism displayed in the rejection of statements which make against it. The student of history must make his account with this psychological trait at a thousand points. It is not at all peculiar to Mecklenburg or to North Carolina. But a few illus

trations of this psychological peculiarity spring naturally out of the present discussion.

When General Wilcox writes that in my North American Review article I reasoned myself into the belief that the Mecklenburg declaration was a "fraud," he had before him the words in which that allegation was pronounced unnecessary. Yet nobody will suspect General Wilcox of any intentional misstatement. An orthodox disciple who prefers to have more faith in the authenticity of the Mecklenburg declaration than the author of the recollections concerning it was willing to avow, should not be expected to measure the force of human language when he writes on this topic.

It was long a current tradition of the Brevard family, in North Carolina, after the popular symbolism of the alleged declaration of independence had prevailed over the more prosaic text of the resolutions of May 31st, that their ancestor in writing the "declaration" had been inspired by the "Westminster Confession of Faith." For merely reproducing this tradition, on the published authority of a member of the Brevard family, I have been charged by my friend, the late Governor William A. Graham, with making an "unfounded statement." The charge was not only harsh, as coming from one of the most candid of men, but was also not a little adventurous; for there are very few men who can afford to make their ignorance the boundary of other men's knowledge. Governor Graham did not know, of course, at the time of his writing, that I had in my hands, and still have in my hands, private proof, as well as published proof, from a member of the Brevard family, affirming the literal accuracy of my statement.*

General Wilcox hastens to believe that the reason why Williamson makes no mention of the Mecklenburg declaration in his history was that he "stopped his narrative at 1770." This stoppage of his narrative has not, however, prevented Williamson from recording the discovery of "a subterranean wall in Rowan county" as late as 1794, and from giving the abbreviated statistics of the cotton crop for 1811! The descendants of John McKnitt Alexander were not so easily pacified on this subject. Joseph Wallis, a grandson of the said Alexander, tells us that he saw his father stamp on Williamson's book, on receiving a copy of it, because it made no mention of the "Declaration." Yet there was an excellent

* See National Intelligencer, November 6, 1857. Also, The True Witness (a Presbyterian newspaper of New Orleans), May 26, 1860.

Cf. MS. letter from the Rev. R. E. Sherrill, of Sherman, Texas writing to me from his personal knowledge of the tradition, as derived from a niece of Dr. Ephraim Brevard.

See The National Intelligencer, August 12, 1857.

reason why the book should have contained no hint of the "Declaration;' for it appears from the full and proper certificate of John McKnitt Alexander that Dr. Williamson was favored with a copy of the "records and papers" on this subject before they had been burnt!

Governor Graham in his centennial address lays much emphasis on the fact that General Jackson had in his possession a copy of the Mecklenburg declaration of May 20th, "printed on satin and in a gilt frame." The origin of this "satin copy" was admitted to be unknown, but, from the large space given to it in his address, Governor Graham evidently held it to be of some circumstantial value, at least as showing the faith of General Jackson in the premises. Scarcely had Governor Graham sent to me a copy of his address when I was placed in correspondence with the printer, Colonel Heiskell, of Knoxville, Tenn., who had put that satin copy to the press! "Yes," he said, "I set it myself in 1825, or about that year. You can see our imprint plainly enough on the fac-simile copy: 'Heiskell & Brown, printers. This fac-simile was published in the New York Herald of May 20, 1875, as being the oldest copy of the declaration “yet discovered in print," and as probably dating about the year 1800!

General Wilcox points with satisfaction to the fact that excellent historians, like Hildreth, Washington Irving, Jones, Wheeler, and others have lent credit to the authenticity of the Mecklenburg declaration. But these historians must be confronted with such critical students of history as Bancroft and the late Peter Force, who both remit this story to the limbo of unauthenticated tradition. In the monumental work of Winsor -the Narrative and Critical History of America-it is frankly stated,. after a brief résumé of the controversy, that the opinion of "students. is generally adverse to the authenticity of the alleged declaration.† It is simply as such a student that I have borne a humble part in this discussion, inspired to the task, I hope, by the love of historic truth,. and certainly inspired with a profound veneration for the patriotic men of Mecklenburg, who first struck the key-note of political and civil reconstruction in 1775.

James Welling

* A full account of this "satin copy" is given by the printer of it in the Knoxville (Tenn.)

daily Press and Herald of May 23, 1875.

Winsor Narrative and Critical History, vol. vi., p. 256,

DU PONT DE NEMOURS

The Du Pont family have long been known as the great powder manufacturers of the country. Their works at Wilmington, Delaware, and their branches and business in other places, have given them a commercial reputation hardly equaled in any other calling. During the long period from the beginning of the century down to our own time in which the successive generations of the Du Ponts have carried on their works, many members of the family have gained distinction by their services in the army and navy. In the war of 1812 they were represented, and in the war for the Union Admiral Du Pont and Colonel Henry Du Pont were both men of mark.* As a rule, however, it may be said that the Du Ponts have been a singularly modest race, and even of those still active in business few know the great knowledge or the still greater measure of success that has rewarded their industry. Their firm name, “Du Pont de Nemours," still keeps alive the name of the founder of the family long settled in this country, and an exhaustive memoir of him by G. Schelle, recently published in Paris by Guillaumin, while giving most space to his services as a political economist, also tells the story of his life in a way that cannot fail to interest all who know the name so honorably borne by his descendants in our own day and generation.

Born in Paris, December 18th, 1739, the scion of an old Huguenot family of Rouen, carefully educated by his mother, he was noted already in his twelfth year for his knowledge, tried to get employment in the engineer corps of the army, in the navy, studied medicine, wrote verses and tragedies, drew plans of fortifications, and at twenty submitted to Choiseul a plan for encouraging agriculture, establishing domestic free trade, suppressing taxes, and remodeling the financial system of France. At twentythree he married for love, and the next year, in 1743, on the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, made his first appearance as the author of a pamphlet showing how to adjust national income and expenditure. Voltaire and Voisenon, Quesnay and Mirabeau, all approved the efforts of the young publicist and economist. He took his place at once among the growing school of the French economists, and his next book was dedicated to Madame de Pompadour, who died just before the book reached the pub.

* A fine portrait of Admiral Du Pont was published in this magazine in October, 1885 [Vol. XIV., 329].

lic, thus depriving the young author and his fellow economists of the strong support her influence had given them. It is characteristic of the man that he refused to withdraw the dedication, thus attesting his independence and honesty. He was for a short time the editor of the Journal of Agriculture, the organ of the school of economists to which he belonged, the physiocrats, and earnestly advocated in it many important reforms in French local and national finances and administration. He continued to urge them in a succession of pamphlets and books, which were heartily praised by Turgot and other great authorities. A follower of Quesnay, he advanced from theories to practice, and successfully introduced reforms that anticipated many of the changes finally adopted after the French revolution, and the awful sacrifice of life and treasure in the great wars of Napoleon, thus pointing the way to real national economy. He was then as ever, in the language of Madame de Stael, the most chivalric champion of liberty in France, and successively urged the abolition of slavery, the repeal of the game laws, liberty of the press, relief from the laws controlling labor, suppression of the harsh system of taxation and the feudal services still in force, reform in public charity, a change in the revenue laws, free trade in grain, the abolition of all the internal taxes that prevented the growth of trade and commerce in France, the repeal of the monopolies that enabled the French East and West Indies Companies to crush the colonies of France-all of these were among the subjects of his fertile pen, his acute intelligence, his exhaustless energy.

He found more prompt recognition abroad than at home, and Gustavas Vasa, of Sweden, and the Margrave of Baden, regularly employed him to assist them in governing their kingdoms on the economical basis proposed by him for France. Franklin especially commended Du Pont's economic tables prepared to give the people of Baden some notion of the general rules urged by him as economic truths. A very full statement, examination and discussion of his economic principles may be found in the pages of Schelle's account of him, for Schelle is more of a critic than of a biographer. Du Pont, the man, however, is of more interest than his writings. He had left Paris to live in Baden, and had left Baden to become tutor in the family of the Polish Prince, Czartoryski, when Turgot, made one of the French ministry, recalled him to France, and made him inspector general of manufactures.

From this time, 1774-5, he became an important authority, making real reforms in local, national, and even international commercial relations, and preventing injury being done by the numerous experiments that were then being tried in France and elsewhere. He worked with the