cure 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 to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute 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.1 By way of comment, it may be premised that the members of the Congress abstained from argument in laying down these truths, which, when stated, they proceed to apply in the form of conclusions rather than as premises to be proved. It is to be observed that, although convinced in their own minds, they are not dogmatic, inasmuch as they do not say, except by way of implication, that the truths they lay down are self-evident, but that they themselves hold them to be self-evident. In any event, they were to be self-evident in the New World, and the States of the New World, to be combined later into a more perfect Union, were to be based upon these truths. It is further to be observed that these rights with which men are endowed by their Creator were, in their conception, inalienable, and that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness were so important as to be singled out as among these, not that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were the only inalienable rights with which men were endowed by their Creator. They were, however, the fundamental as well as inalienable rights, because to secure them governments were instituted among and by men which thus received whatever powers they were to exercise from the consent of the governed; the meaning of which seems to be as plain as words can make it, that States or nations do not confer powers upon the governed, but that the people composing the State or nation confer upon the Government of that State or nation all the powers which it possesses, and therefore may lawfully exercise. In the next clause, taking note of history, it is declared that if, instead of securing to men the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for which governments are instituted, they have proved to be “destructive of these ends," the people have the right to alter or to abolish them, and by implication a duty is raised to institute a new government which shall be based upon such principles, and its powers organized in such form as shall seem to the people composing the State or nation most likely "to effect their Safety and Happiness." There is assuredly here no divine right to govern wrong. The State is composed of men and women grouped together and it only exists for the convenience and security of the people residing within the boundaries thereof. The Government of the State is for the benefit of the people, not the people for the benefit of the governors; and the form of government failing to effect the purpose for which the State exists, and for which the form of government 1 Journals of the Continental Congress, Vol. v, p. 510. has been framed is to be brushed ruthlessly aside if it fail, and to be supplanted by one having a better chance of pleasing the individuals taken together, in whom the sovereignty, elsewhere attributed to the State or nation, resides. Such was the American conception then, such is the American conception today, of the origin of their government and the purpose of government in general. Because of the principles laid down in the preamble, and the grievances specifically stated in the document, the Declaration thus draws in measured and unanswerable terms the consequences of one and the other: We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right, ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connetion between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that, as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred honour.1 Because of these premises and conclusions, the people of the Colonies, by their representatives in Congress assembled, declared the Colonies to be free and independent States, absolving them from allegiance to the British Crown and dissolving the political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, apparently applying the word "State" to Great Britain and erstwhile colony with a like significance. And the free and independent States, no longer spoken of as united or in union, are declared to have "full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do." Monroe's of the The immediate and the proximate results of this Declaration on the part Conception of the Congress, drafted in faultless language by Jefferson, are thus stated by Results James Monroe, a younger contemporary, destined to be an illustrious successor of Jefferson in the Presidency: The first is that in wresting the power, or what is called the sovereignty, from the Crown it passed directly to the people. The second, that it passed directly to the people of each Colony and not to the people of all the Colonies in the aggregate; to thirteen distinct communities and not to one. To these two facts, each contributing its equal proportion, I am inclined to think that we are in an eminent degree indebted for the success of our Revolution.2 1 Journals, Vol. v, p. 514. 2 Views of the Presidents of the United States on the Subject of Internal Improvements Stanislaus Murray Hamilton, The Writings of James Monroe, 1902, Vol. 6, p. 224. See also James D. Richardson, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1897 (1896), Vol. 2, p. 149. A New Our First and And yet, although the colonies were declared by this instrument to be free and independent States, or thirteen distinct communities, in Monroe's gloss, they nevertheless may be considered by the agreement of association or by the Declaration of Independence, or by their mere association, without the agreement of 1774 or the Declaration of 1776, to form a body politic, as they were expressly held to be by a signer of the Declaration of Independence, in the case of Respublica v. Sweers (1 Dallas, 41), decided in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania in 1779, approximately two years before the Articles of Confederation, making of them a perpetual Union, had gone into effect. The facts of this case are very interesting, in that one Cornelius Sweers, a deputy Commissary-General of Military Stores in the armies of the United States of America, was indicted in a Pennsylvania court held in Philadelphia, because the United States did not then possess courts of their own,— in November, 1778, for forgery upon two bills with intent to defraud the United States. On the 14th of April, 1779, he was convicted upon both indictments, and five days later the exceptions taken by his counsel were overruled and sentence pronounced by the court. Mr. Chief Justice McKean said, in overruling the exceptions to the form and substance of these indictments, and in sentencing the defendant, convicted upon both of them: The first exception was, “that, at the time of the offence charged, the United States were not a body corporate known in law." But the Court are of a different opinion. From the moment of their association, the United States necessarily became a body corporate; for, there was no superior from whom that character could otherwise be derived. In England, the king, lords, and commons, are certainly a body corporate; and yet there never was any charter or statute, by which they were expressly so created. After examining certain technicalities of pleading, immaterial to the matter in hand, the Chief Justice thus continued: Upon the whole, we are of opinion, that your conviction has been legal, as well as just; and, therefore, it only remains to pronounce the sentence of the court. The sentence, alike important and interesting both to the defendant and to the reader, is happily expressed in terms of the independence of the United States: Sentence, on the first indictment:- A fine of £70 and imprisonment until the 4th of July, the anniversary of American Independence. Sentence, on the second indictment:- A fine of £1020 and imprisonment until the next annual election for Pennsylvania, and standing in the pillory for one hour. 66 Reverting to the second of the three resolutions introduced by Richard Henry Lee on June 7, 1776, " that it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances," it is sufficient to say, in this connection, that a committee of five was chosen on the 12th in order to prepare a plan of treaties to be proposed to foreign powers, and that Benjamin Franklin, a member of the committee on the Declaration of Independence, was, by the Congress, sent as our first minister to France, with which country he negotiated, on February 6, 1778, in conjunction with Silas Dean and Arthur Lee, an offensive and defensive treaty of alliance, by virtue of which France came to the aid of the United States, resulting in the acquisition of independence of the Colonies then, and today in the cooperation of the armies of these United States upon French soil to preserve inviolate the independence of our first and our only ally. It could be shown, if time and space permitted, that the ideas and the language of the Declaration of Independence came from English philosophers, from Hooker to Locke; that every important phase of the preamble is to be found in one form or another in Locke's two discourses on Civil Government; and that, indeed, the important phrases of the preamble can be found in Locke's exact language. But admitting that to be so, it does not detract from the importance of the document, because Locke spoke as an individual, justifying the Revolution of 1688, whereas the Congress spoke as a political body making the Revolution of 1776. And it is believed that the Second Continental Congress is the first parliament, legislature, or congress that ever adopted and proclaimed these doctrines, and that the United States is the first country which ever put them into effect in the form in which they were stated. Doctrines The doctrines are in truth the doctrines of English liberty. They are not, Origin of the as has been so often asserted, the doctrines of Rousseau. At least, they were not borrowed from him, and if they are to be found in Rousseau's Social Contract, they were taken from Locke, as Rousseau is known to have drawn heavily upon Locke for this little work. The supposed influence of Rousseau is perhaps best stated by two careful and thoughtful investigators and writers. Thus, Sir Henry Sumner Maine says in his Ancient Law: The American lawyers of the time, and particularly those of Virginia, appear to have possessed a stock of knowledge which differed chiefly from that of their English contemporaries in including much which could only have been derived from the legal literature of continental Europe. A very few glances at the writings of Jefferson will show how strongly his mind was affected by the semi-juridical, semi-popular opinions which were fashionable in France, and we cannot doubt that it was sympathy with the peculiar ideas of the French jurists which led him and the other colonial lawyers who guided the course of events in America to join the specially French assumption that "all men are born equal" with the assumption, more familiar to Englishmen, that all men are born free, in the very first lines of their Declaration of Independence. The passage was one of great importance to the history of the doctrine before us. The American lawyers, in thus prominently and emphatically affirming the fundamental equality of human beings, gave an impulse to political movements in their own country, and in a less degree in Great Britain, which is far from having yet spent itself; but beside this they returned the dogma they had adopted to its home in France, endowed with vastly greater energy and enjoying much greater claims on general reception and respect.1 In speaking of the influence of Rousseau and his followers, John Morley said, in his life of Rousseau, first published in 1873, that: It was that influence which, though it certainly did not produce, yet did as certainly give a deep and remarkable bias, first to the American Revolution, and a dozen years afterwards to the French Revolution.2 In The Fortnightly Review for 1879, Mr. Morley, returning to the subject, declared that: Nobody, however, who has examined so much as the mere surface of the question, would now dream of denying that the French theories of society played an important part in the preparation of American independence.3 As a colonist, Jefferson was, in his earlier days, influenced by English liberal writers, for the purpose of the colonists was to show that as Englishmen they were entitled to English liberty as laid down in English writers of repute. The Declaration of Independence naturally and necessarily embodied the views and the conception of government upon which the colonists had made their stand. As a statesman, and especially after his return from France, where he succeeded Franklin as American Minister, Jefferson may, indeed, have been influenced by French ideas and conceptions.* For the body of his countrymen who had not visited, much less resided in France, the French philosophers came with the French troops to America, and remained after the French Army departed, having accomplished its purpose at Yorktown. It is believed that in the matter of philosophy and democratic doctrine, they returned with more than they brought. 1 Sir Henry Sumner Maine, Ancient Law, 10th Edition, 1884, pp. 91-92. In a note to this passage, published in his edition of Ancient Law, p. 409, Sir Frederick Pollock thus states what is believed to be the correct and the prevailing views on this subject: "This is not the place to speak at large of Rousseau's influence on the founders of American independence and the leaders of the French Revolution: but the careful research of American scholars has lately shown that the Principles of 1789 owed more to the American Declaration of Independence and the earlier Bills of Rights of several States than we used to suppose, and less to Rousseau, and that the language of the American constitutional instruments proceeded from the school not of Rousseau but of Locke." (Scherger, The Evolution of Modern Liberty, New York, 1904). 2 John Morley, Rousseau, 1873, Vol. 1, p. 188. 3 John Morley, A Word with Some Critics, The Fortnightly Review, October, 1879, p. 584. It is true that Jefferson afterwards "drank a deep draught from the intoxicating cup of the French Revolution," but we do not think that in 1776 he had felt the French political influence. He was, we know, a student of Locke, and Locke asserted the natural equality of man as strongly as his natural liberty. (W. T. Brantly, Of the Influence of European Speculation in the Formation of the Federal Constitution, 1880, Southern Law Review, New Series, Vol. VI, p. 354.) |