The College of William and Mary, which lies at one end of Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg, Virginia's capital, was the second oldest of the five university colleges in colonial America. And it was here that Thomas Jefferson, with his wealthy, slave-owning background, was a student reading voraciously about Enlightenment philosophy, 17th-century English history, political theory and law. It was also here that he began to form the ideas expressed in the paper that, as a 31-year-old, he would write for consideration by the forthcoming Continental Congress in 1774.
Entitled The Summary View of the Rights of British Americans, it takes the Whig idea that all government ultimately depends on a social contract, entered into by the people in a state of nature, and applies it brilliantly to America.
In Old England, the state of nature was a mere abstraction, albeit a very useful one. But in America – in the endless, rolling acres of Jefferson's native Virginia – it was real. Here, Jefferson points out, his ancestors had come, voluntarily, to a New World; had occupied and cultivated it by their own efforts; had formed their own societies; and had chosen and established their own forms of government.
Therefore, for the British Parliament, which represented only the British people, to presume to legislate for the people of America, who already had their own representatives in their own assemblies, was a gross usurpation. Colonial legislatures and Parliament, he asserted, shared power, and both were responsible for protecting the 'liberties and rights' of the people.
Jefferson had intended The Summary View to act as instructions for Virginia's delegates to the first Continental Congress, which was meeting to consider the colonies' grievances against Britain. Virginia's leaders instead adopted a more legalistic set of instructions, and Jefferson's work was published anonymously as a pamphlet. As his authorship became widely known, however, he moved suddenly into the front rank of American political theorists.
The Declaration of Independence, drafted principally by Jefferson in late June 1776 for the second Continental Congress, would take the implications of The Summary View to their logical conclusion.
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 A Summary View of the Rights of British America, Thomas Jefferson, 1774
www.ashbrook.org/library/18/jefferson/su
mmaryview.html
Jefferson's precursor to the Declaration of Independence.
 Colonial Williamsburg
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
PO Box 1776
Williamsburg, VA 23187-1776
Tel: 001 757 229 1000
Website: www.colonialwilliamsburg.com
Midway between Richmond and Norfolk, Virginia on I-64 (exit 238)
More than 500 restored and reconstructed buildings spread across 301 acres of land, and a staff of 3,500 archaeologists, researchers, historians and historical interpreters.
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