test for existing and ancestral rights in the exercise of local government. These rights are all assumed in the Declaration; are woven into its whole texture; but they appear under the form of charges and protests against theusurpations" of the King of Great Britain; while the Declaration goes down to the foundation of popular government in the natural rights of man, and in the source of civil government and its proper functions and duties.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Couched in these successive asseverations is the syllogism:

(1.) All men are possessed of certain inalienable rights. (2.) The possessors of these rights form or assent to governments for the protection of the same.

(3.) When government would destroy these rights, their possessors may destroy the government in order to preserve the rights.

Men had read much, thought much, learned much, before they framed these propositions; and their lives were consistent with their logic. We have done justice to their sincerity and heroism: it is their logic that now concerns us; for in that lay the germs of a philosophy that should reconstruct or modify modern society.

In weighing the propositions laid down in the Declaration, one should consider how difficult it is to formulate a principle, and especially to reduce principles of politics and ethics to axioms. In the effort to compress a philosophy into a proverb, or to reduce a science to definitions, the mind is apt to fix itself upon the single truth or truths before it with an intensity of concentration that

excludes correlative or qualifying truths. Hence there is a tendency to over-statement, or one-sided statement, in the first announcement of a discovery, whether in physics, politics, or morals. But one should remember, also, that the progress of knowledge (as, for instance, in theology, in psychology, and in geology) has been largely through a series of over-statements and counter-statements, -one principle pushed with vehemence till it met its corrective, and, by the attrition of controversy, each wore the other down to its just proportions; or until the new truth, entering like a wedge, forced its way into the system of truth by compelling a re-adjustment of the relations of things. So of these doctrines of the Declaration; viewed apart, perhaps over-stated, yet containing truths that required emphasis to gain a hearing, and wedging ideas into the social structure that compelled a re-adjustment of the political elements and order of the world. The fine point of that wedge was this tiny sentence of five words, "All men are created equal:" once that gains entrance, it makes a huge crack in any society that is constructed of privileged orders in Church and State; and, if well driven home, it must reduce all artificial privileges to the level of natural gifts, opportunities, services, attainments. Radical as this may seem in the bald statement of the doctrine, yet the equality set forth in the Declaration of Independence is not a radicalism that any honest man should be afraid of, since it is grounded in the highest moral reason, is directed to the highest personal and social happiness, and fenced about with justice and good-will.

It would be absurd to charge upon the authors of the Declaration of Independence the absurdity of meaning that all men are, or could be, or ought to be, equal in station, in capacity, in claim to consideration, in adaptation to political service or office, or even in the possibility of rising to the same degrees in honor, power, genius, wealth, renown. No community of human beings could exist with such equality, and perform the functions of life. As in the physical universe, so in the universe of mind: "There are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory

of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory."1 Nowhere are men brought into life under equal conditions, and nowhere do men prove themselves of equal calibre and fibre where their surroundings are proximately the same. In France it does not make men equal to paint out the old royal and imperial names of streets and public buildings, and paint over these, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité;" and in the United States it does not make men equal to give them universal suffrage, without respect to nativity, color, race, or condition. Yet there is a profound and far-reaching sense in which the doctrine of the Declaration is true, "that all men are created equal;" and the just perception of this truth gives dignity and strength to the national life. This equality is predicated of men as men, and as created beings that is to say, in the contemplation of the Creator, as rational and moral beings they are of equal worth and right in respect of the use of the powers, and the enjoyment of the means and pleasures, of such existence. In this view, all men are alike "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights;" and "among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Who would dare deny this equality of universal humanity?— the right of every man to live without hinderance or question from others; the right to freedom in the use of his powers of body and mind,- freedom to make as much as lies within him of life and its opportunities, to make the most of himself as a man; and the right to the fair procurement and enjoyment of all the happiness within his reach. By what warrant can any man pretend to be above or distinct from his fellows in the right to live, the right to use his powers of living, the right to enjoy all the good he can fairly attain? These rights inhere in the nature of man, and are "inalienable." To living in a community, or a political society, it is essential that these rights of the individual be in some measure qualified or curtailed for the good of the whole; but this is not because, in these particulars, any of the community can claim a right superior to others to which these must yield, but simply that each may enjoy his own natural rights to the

1 1 Cor. xv. 40, 41.

fullest extent possible, by securing to every other the like equitable enjoyment of his rights; that is, that each may enjoy the largest freedom and happiness possible without encroaching upon the rights of others, or being encroached upon by others, in the pursuit of their equitable freedom and happiness.

In the hour of shipwreck no man can say to another, "The life-boat shall be kept for me; for I have better right to live than thou." And when the boat is tossing in mid-ocean, without food or water, and the dread moment comes when one must die to save the rest, it is not birth, nor rank, nor wealth, nor genius, nor office, but the lot cast among men as equals, that determines who shall live, and who shall die. On board the ship of state, though some are commanding officers, some the paying passengers, and some the working crew, all are equal in these essential rights, to live, to be free, and to be happy. If the ship is laboring, and must be lightened, they will throw overboard what seems to them fittest and handiest,- king, lords, commons, army, church, constitution, plebiscitum; and, if she must go down, sauve qui peut will be the one law and cry of equalized humanity. The equality of men as taught in the Declaration lies deeper than all forms of government. It teaches, that, in the contemplation of the State, all men should be equal as objects of care and of right; that the State should care for all alike, and be just to all alike. So far as human action falls within the scope of civil government, laws should be equal, justice equal, protection equal, opportunity of development equal, for all. In the Declaration, this equality was asserted against the tyrannical usurpations of the king and parliament of Great Britain: in our time it requires to be asserted against the more harsh and inexorable tyranny that is set up for the laws of nature. The tyranny of men can be resisted and overthrown; but the tyranny of nature, once established, can neither be resisted nor evaded. The Declaration proclaims "that all men are created equal," and "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights." Their rights are given by God, and therefore cannot be taken away by men. If, then, the doctrine of materialists is true, if there is no Creator, if man is not the

loved and gifted child of God, then one great pillar of American liberty falls. Agonizing and fecundating forces, contesting or polarizing atoms, give us no such doctrine of the equality of men in the right to be, to act, to enjoy. Whatever may be true of other species, with men the "struggle for existence" does not issue in "the survival of the fittest," but oftener of the violent, the cunning, the cruel. By that law there is no basis for human equality as the defiance of tyranny, the defence of liberty. For this, there is need of the moral perception that sees in the weakest and the lowliest the man, created by God for life, for freedom, and for joy. If superstition has been the handmaid of tyranny, materialism is tyranny itself. I grant that weighty arguments for the rights of men, for freedom of political organization and local government, may be derived from science, philosophy, experience, history; but none of these is so significant, so sweeping, so conclusive, nor are all of them together so weighty and enduring, as this single sentence, "All men are created equal." Let Americans ever stand upon that one sublime declaration, and hold fast the liberty that is there given them by the laws of nature and of nature's God."

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The second proposition of the Declaration is, "that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Here, more especially, must one keep in mind what was before said of one-sidedness of statement in a document intended to justify a particular measure, and to emphasize truths that were the refuge and defence of mankind against despotic power. Thus the Declaration speaks nowhere of duties, but only of rights; for its authors held that the Colonies had discharged their duties as loyal subjects of the crown, until the invasion and threatened annihilation of their rights compelled them to throw off their allegiance. It was rights that were in question, rights that were in jeopardy; and a bold, strong assertion of rights was what the case demanded. In such a document there was no call to qualify the statement of rights by a statement of their correlative duties, which existed in the very reason of things, and would assert themselves in due time.