Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit

[David Meury]

Certainly, in composing the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson borrowed some of the wording from
the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776):

***

SECTION I. That all men are by
      nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of
which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any
      compact, deprive or divest their
posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life
      and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property,
and
      pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

***

But I think the accusation of plagerism is overstated.  Rather, I think Jefferson is saluting his fellow
statesman.  The sentiments, in any case, were not particular to George Mason's expression of them
and the founding fathers, despite whatever faults they may have had, were well-read.

A good resource for political literature of the time can be found at:

http://www.constitution.org/liberlib.htm

Apologies if the formatting of this post is screwed up.  Yahoo's new mail system does not designate
line breaks the way the old system did.  In this post, I have used hard breaks instead of letting the
program automatically wrap.  Hope it works so this paragraph does not extend a foot and a half in 
the archives.