Thanks for finding which paper it was… I have a copy but didn’t feel like finding it and finding the right paper. Call me lazy 🤷♂️
And in the end, they codified what they saw as a natural, inborn, individual right. That wasn’t by accident - Jefferson was very intentional in the words he chose (and they argued over, properly). Knowing the language had to be clear and concise, this is what resulted. It’s pretty clear if you’ve read anything from 1600 onward.
Some of how the writing of the time (and place, Britain) flows is, I suspect, partly an influence of French language that some also knew - “twenty and four years” is clear French construction, not English at all. Keeping in mind that before Shakespeare, the “English language” such as it was, was considered beneath “proper” Brits. Shakespeare marks the beginning of that change, so the French language influence carried on for a long time among the upper classes as a distinction.
It’s pretty interesting to see this same kind of complex construction (from our perspective) in period writings, but also in many science papers today, where complex ideas are strung together in paragraph-long sentences in an attempt to capture the detail and nuance. Medical journals are particularly guilty of this.
