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Show jacks oi f) dependence engrossed on parchment. Three copies of it, according to one tradition, were signed in the Independence chamber, one of which now hangs there, behind the table and chair used by John Hancock Han-cock and George Washington, the former while presiding over the continental congress, the latter over the constitutional convention. The original is preserved in the state department at Washington and lately has shown such indications of crumbling away that President Roosevelt some time ago ordered that it be kept in a locked safe. Many more impressive events and ceremonies took place at Indp pendence hall. The British defiled it with cruelty to American pris oners during the ocupation of Philadelphia by the troops of Gen. Howe. The flags captured by the Americans and French at York-town York-town were received here by congress. The second inauguration of jA. so much vis- ' llM lWj f ltl and so $J:W a. ""1!h writ" m WfA ten about, dW'MU wM ""''" v.-r.v fil JJk little accurate popu- ramwn' SffA lar understanding of MmU mflM (he history of Inde- fi jm pendence hall where f U ullllfj the Declaration of Srifi i m r; Independence was ;;' j II '11! U signed July 4, 1776, - 'MoT I Hill 133 years ago. Mff WSM Itg construction was S-, begun in 1732, about WIM ffll U BO years after the JRrjL lilh first landing of WM I William Penn at the Wf, 1 l' site of Philadelphia, Wlj ' near the house yw II IJ known as the Blue K Uji Anchor tavern. It is 5 'j ascribed sometimes fj I to the working of ill an inscrutable des- y 1 I ' tinh if h ALL WHEREIN THE DECLARATIOI "lOF mDEPENDEtiCE WAS ADOPTED- I though provided with immense chimney-places, and that these stoves cost about 28 provincial j money. The second room pre- pared for regular occupancy was Pjd the western one on the ground floor. The justices of the pro-w pro-w vlncial supreme court who first sat there were John Kinsey, WA Thomas Graeme and William Till. j? A bell, probably brought from r England by William Penn, was hung in a tree near the governor's govern-or's headquarters as early as 1685 and rung when it was desired to bring the people together or upon occasions of solem- Washington as president and that also of John Adams took place in what is now known as Congress hall, adjoining the state house to the west, which was not built until 1787-9. It was here that congress received re-ceived the news of the death of Washington. Much work of restoration has made Independence hall what it is to-day. In general, this work has been directed by careful study of the past. Zealous co-operation of organized or-ganized - bodies and individuals has also brought together in the state house many objects of venerable value as illustrative of the early days of the nation. The stranger naturally desires a succinct, serviceable service-able statement of the things of peculiar pe-culiar interest that the state house nity. It is believed to have been transferred to the cupola of the old court house in High (Market) street about 1697, and afterward aft-erward to have been placed temporarily in the tower of the new state house. In October, Oc-tober, 1751, the memorable me-morable order was sent to Robert contains. The Declaration chamber, where the continental congress and the constitutional convention sat, is, with the exception of a new flooring, substantially in the same state in which it was then. The walls are hung with portraits of many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence Inde-pendence or of the constitution, many of them painted by contemporaneous contem-poraneous artists. A portrait of STATUE OF GEORSE WAStlIHGIOn Washington preserved here Is by peaie. nere are the chair and tables used by the presiding officers of both bodies, Hancock and Washington, and many of the chairs occupied by the members or delegates dele-gates On the president's table is the silver inkstand ink-stand used in signing both the Declaration of Independence In-dependence and the constitution. In the rear portion of the main lobby of the state house is the Liberty bell, useless except as a sacred memorial of the past. It is suspended upon the same framework of timbers which formerly held it in place in the tower, but which now rests on the floor, passing up the grand stairway, some of the most noteworthy portraits in the collection are found upon its walls. Among them are those of Washington, Lafayette, William Penn, Louis XVI., George III., and Gov. James Hamilton, the figures being of full length and heroic size. The Long room, or Banqueting hall, in the second sec-ond story, contains a sofa, chair and pew-bench used by George Washington, the last mentioned in Christ church: West's painting of the treaty-making scene at the great elm tree, portraits of Martha Washington, the British sovereigns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries from and including in-cluding Charles II. to George II., and many notables, both civil and military, of the revolutionary period. The two other rooms on this floor are similarly enriched. ence hall should have been made ready for the oc-cupany oc-cupany of the Provincial assembly and the governor's gov-ernor's council virtually at the exact time when the colonies of Great Britain in America began to feel their growing strength sufficiently to induce in-duce them to insist more than ever before upon the right to be specially mindful of their own interests. in-terests. It was only a quarter of a century after the "old Liberty Bell" was cast by patriotic artisans ar-tisans in this city that it was used to gather the people to hear the proclamation, by order of the continental congress, of the absolute political separation sep-aration of the 13 colonies from the mother country. coun-try. The state house sheltered not only the continental congress during many critical sessions, ses-sions, but also the supreme council of the federation feder-ation of the United States, the constitutional convention con-vention of 1787, the supreme court of the United States and the provincial and state legislature of Pennsylvania in that long period of the conception, con-ception, birth and infancy of the western republic. repub-lic. Every man of any distinction whatever in that great epoch, from Andrew Hamilton and Benjamin Franklin to Lafayette and Pulaski, passed through its portals. It is the silent surviving surviv-ing witness of a stupendous past, so stupendous indeed that hardly anything is more wonderful than the absolute simplicity of the austere stage setting of those dramatic actions which indirectly transformed the whole political world. William Penn's council of state first met in George Guest's unfinished house near the L.juth of Dock creek, afterward called the "Blue Anchor tavern." Settlers at that time were living in caves along the west bank of the Delaware river. riv-er. It is also supposed to have met in the Swedes' church at Wicaco. down the river, and in William Penn's house in Laetitia court, the same which now stands in Fairraount park, until it removed to the new state house in 1747. The Provincial assembly probably sat in the first rough meeting house erected for the worship of Friends shortly after Penn's arrival, and then in the later one on Front street known as the Bank Meeting house. But it also sat elsewhere, sometimes some-times in houses that were erected for private use. It was in January, 1729, that the assembly, awake finally to the need of a suitable provincial capitol. voted 2,000 ($10,000), toward its cost and appropriated the same out of an issue of paper pa-per money which it had just authorized. William Allen, who was afterward one of Phitadelphia's most famous mayors and became a justice of the supreme court, acted as the agent of the province in the purchase of the lots of ground on Chestnut Chest-nut street, from Fifth to Sixth, and extending half-way back toward Walnut street, which formed the chosen site. It was not until 1769 that the remainder of the square was acquired. Dr. Kearsley, the architect of Christ church, aspired also to design the state house, and is said to have been disgruntled because he was not permitted to do so. Thomas Lawrence, Andrew Hamilton and Dr. John Kearsley composed the building committee. com-mittee. The main structure, minus the great tower, which had not yet been built, was in a rough state when, in September, 1736, William Allen, the mayor, gave a banquet and frolic in the Long room in the second story, which was to be the scene of so many later revelries and solemnities as well. Public contractors were dilatory in those days as in these, and it was not until 1745 that the room of the assembly in the state house was com- plefed. It is curious to note that it was heated at that time by means of two open stoves, al-fc al-fc Ik ii, Charles, the provincial agent in London, for a bell of 2,000 pounds weight. The superintendents of the state house, Isaac Norris, Thomas Leech and Edward Warner, wrote: "Let the bell be cast by the best workmen and examined carefully before it is shipped, with the following words well-shaped in large letters round it, viz.: " 'By order of the Assembly of the Province of Pennsylvania, for the State House in the City of Philadelphia, 1752.' "And underneath, , " 'Proclaim Liberty Through All the Land to All the Inhabitants Thereof. Levit., 25:10.'" This bell duly arrived before the end of that year, but in March, 1753, it cracked. It was at first determined to send it back to England to be recast, re-cast, but two artisans, named Pass and Stow, declared de-clared that they could recast it, and they did so, adding some copper alloy to improve the quality of the metal. The enterprise proved a success, except that the tone of the bell was not entirely satisfactory. Pass and Stow were unmercifully teased in public on the score of having used too much alloy. They asked and obtained the privilege privi-lege of again recasting the bell. The result of this second attempt of its kind in America was the historic tocsin which 23 years later was literally lit-erally to "proclaim liberty throughout the land." Another bell was also ordered from England by the assembly, but it did not take the place of the American bell until the latter was cracked again in 1835, while being tolled on the occasion of the death of Chief Justice Marshall. In 1767 came the agitation over the tax on tea and other imported commodities. John Dickinson's Dickin-son's letters of a "Farmer" rubbed this and other object lessons, stupidly given by the British ministry, min-istry, deep into men's minds. The act wTas repealed re-pealed in 1777, except in so far as it related to tea. When news of the Lexington-Concord right in April, 1775, arrived, the bell in the state house steeple again called 8,000 people together, and they unanimously agreed to defend with their arms, their lives, liberty and property.. The climax cli-max of the first period of the struggle was fast approaching. The second continental congress met in the state house on May 10, 1775, the Provincial Pro-vincial assembly having yielded to it the chamber cham-ber that was ever after to be sanctified by its labors. In June, 1776, began the debating of the question of independence. The preliminary resolution reso-lution proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, Vir-ginia, declaring that the colonies "are of right and ought to be free and independent states," was adopted in committee on the night of June 10, but it was not until June 2S that the draft of the Declaration of Independence was submitted to congress. con-gress. On July 1 congress adopted the resolution, resolu-tion, and that day and the three following were devoted to discussion in committee of the whole of the Declaration itself. It was passed on the evening of the Fourth. Not until August 2 was the Declaration of In- |