[Footnote 7:  The official copy of the Declaration, as engrossed and signed by the members of Congress, is framed and preserved in the Hall over the Patent-Office at Washington.]

[Footnote 8:  See Life and Works of John Adams, Vol.  II. p. 417 et seq.]

[Footnote 9:  On the authorship of this speech, see Note at the end of the Discourse.]

[Footnote 10:  In this Convention he served as chairman of the committee for preparing the draft of a Constitution.]

[Footnote 11:  Upon the organization of this body, 15th November, 1820, John Adams was elected its President; an office which the infirmities of age compelled him to decline.  For the interesting proceedings of the Convention on this occasion, the address of Chief Justice Parker, and the reply of Mr. Adams, see Journal of Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of Delegates chosen to revise the Constitution of Massachusetts, p. 8 et seq.]

[Footnote 12:  For an account of Mr. Webster’s last interview with Mr. Adams, see March’s Reminiscences of Congress, p. 62.]

[Footnote 13:  Mr. Jefferson himself considered his services in establishing the University of Virginia as among the most important rendered by him to the country.  In Mr. Wirt’s Eulogy, it is stated that a private memorandum was found among his papers, containing the following inscription to be placed on his monument.—­“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statutes of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia.”  Eulogies on Adams and Jefferson, p. 426.]

[Footnote 14:  See Letters of John Adams to his Wife, Vol.  I. p. 128, note.]

THE CASE OF OGDEN AND SAUNDERS.

AN ARGUMENT MADE IN THE CASE OF OGDEN AND SAUNDERS, IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY TERM, 1827.

[This was an action of assumpsit, brought originally in the Circuit Court of Louisiana, by Saunders, a citizen of Kentucky, against Ogden, a citizen of Louisiana.  The plaintiff below declared upon certain bills of exchange, drawn on the 30th of September, 1806, by one Jordan, at Lexington, in the State of Kentucky, upon the defendant below, Ogden, in the city of New York, (the defendant then being a citizen and resident of the State of New York,) accepted by him at the city of New York, and protested for non-payment.

The defendant below pleaded several pleas, among which was a certificate of discharge under the act of the legislature of the State of New York, of April 3d, 1801, for the relief of insolvent debtors, commonly called the Three-Fourths Act.