nature, calculated to rouse the feelings. Only in this form they answer to their purpose; it is wrong to take them from another view. All platforms, all addresses of generals to their armies on the battle-field, belong to the same class of literary and oratorical products. If this sentence has a political meaning, it is no other than that the authors of this declaration were of the opinion, that privileged classes, as nobles, possessed of exclusive hereditary rights, as governing, exemption from taxes, etc., are incompatible with justice. And then it was a seasonable fling at the English king and nobility, who opposed the independence of the thirteen colonies, because the people there were BORN SUBJECTS of the English crown. This was especially opposed by Jefferson. In a much later letter, dated Monticello, June 24, 1827, upon an invitation to the anniversary of American Independence, the patriot wrote: May it [our form of government] be to the world what I believe it will be, [to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all], the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. The form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the lights of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God." 66 No better explanation of the true meaning of this much-disputed sentence can be found than that in these lines of the author of the Declaration of Independence. He hated in 1827, as well as in 1776, the men who pretend that they are born expressly to rule mankind. This Jefferson considered wrong, and denied that God ever had created a man for this purpose. So you may never mistake this sentence about the equal creation of men, as so many do, from mere party views, or a too strictly literal interpretation. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 163 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, JULY 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America in Congress assembled. WHEN, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all man are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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 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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that goverments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evil are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world : He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature—a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his meaHe has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the sures. people at large for their exercise the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriation of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws-giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation. For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsover. He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions. DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. 165 In every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts, by their legislature, to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace, friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judges of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the 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 connection 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 honor. LETTER XLIII. Federalist. Hamilton. - Monroe. - Jay. - Washington's Circular Letter to the Governors of the several States. - Articles of Confederation a loose Wickerwork. Enviable National and Political Condition of the Citizens of America. - Civilization. A Compact Indissoluble Union, a Sacred Regard to Public Justice, a Proper Peace Establishment, a Good Friendly Mutual Feeling among the People, the Four Essential Things to the WellBeing, Existence, and Independent Power of the United States. ~ Liberty is the Baisis of the Whole. · Crisis, Political and Monetary. You know from the history of the United States that the first effort to form a government under certain articles of confederation was almost a total failure. To save the country, some distinguished patriots wrote a series of anonymous articles in favor of a better Union, now collected in a book called the Federalist. The authors were Hamilton, Monroe, and Jay. Washington never wrote except in his official duty. But a few productions of his pen may have exercised more sway over the minds of his countrymen than books. They are patterns for official reports, which, in modern times have vastly degenerated. That you may have them at hand I insert here an extract from a circular letter, written by General Washington, as commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States of America, to the governors of the several states, dated, Headquarters, Newburgh, June 18, 1783. In this letter he states, first, that he is preparing to resign and return to that domestic retirement which it is well known he left with the greatest reluctance, and after the great object of his public activity had been accomplished. He further offers, before retiring from public service, his sentiments respecting some important subjects which appeared to him to be intimately connected with the tranquillity of the United States. That he did not give them to the public at large, or to Congress, but laid them before the governors of the young independent states, was a happy hit of that common-sense sagacity of which few men possessed an ampler share than Washington. The people were oppressed by |