Proclaim Liberty! Part 6

And finally "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind"; the first utterance of America is addressed not to the nations of the world, but to the men and women who inhabit them.

_Human--people--Nature--Nature's G.o.d--mankind._

These are the words boldly written across the map of America. A century and a half of change have not robbed one of them of their power--because they were not fad-words, not the catchwords of a revolution; they were words with cold clear meanings--and they destroyed feudalism in Europe for a hundred and sixty years.

The practical application of the preamble is this: whenever we have spoken to the people of other nations, as we did in the Declaration, we have been successful; we have failed only when we have addressed ourselves to governments. The time is rapidly coming when our only communication with Europe must be over the heads of its rulers, to the people. It does not seem practical; but we shall see later that, for us, it has always been good politics.

_The Logic of Freedom_

The next pa.s.sage in the Declaration is the one with all the quotations. There can be little harm in reprinting it:

"_We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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 inst.i.tuted 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 inst.i.tute 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 Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experiences hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils 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, evidence 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 System 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._"

Starting off with a rhetorical device--the pretense that its heresies are acceptable commonplaces, this long paragraph builds a philosophy of government on the unproved and inflammatory a.s.sumptions which it calls "self-evident". The self-evident truths are, in effect, _the terms agreed upon by the signers_. These signers now appear for the first time, they say "_we_ hold", they say that, to themselves, certain truths are self-evident. The first three of "these truths" are some general statements about "all men"; the fourth and fifth tell why governments are established and why they should be overthrown. These two are the objective of the first three; but they have been neglected in favor of adolescent disputation over the equality of men at birth, and they have been forgotten in our adult pursuit of happiness which has often made us forget that life and liberty, no less than large incomes, are among our inalienable rights.

The historians of the Declaration always remind us of John Locke's principle that governments exist only to protect property; when States fail they cease to be legitimate, they can be overthrown; and Locke is taken to be, more than Rousseau, the inspiration of the Declaration.

The Declaration, it happens, never mentions the right to own property; but the argument for revolution is essentially the same: when a government ceases to function, it should be overthrown. The critical point is the definition of the chief duty of a government. The Colonists, in the Declaration, said it is to secure certain rights to all men; not to guarantee privileges granted by the State, but to protect rights which are born when men are born, in them, with them--inalienably theirs.

So the Declaration sets us for ever in opposition to the totalitarian State--for that State has all the inalienable rights, and the people exist only to protect the State.

The catalogue of rights is comparatively unimportant; once we agree that the State exists to secure inherent rights, the great revolutionary stride has been taken; and immediately we see that our historic opposition to Old Europe is of a piece with our present opposition to Hitler. The purpose of our State is not the purpose of the European States; we might work with them, side by side, but a chemical union would result only in an explosion.

There is one word artfully placed in the description of the State; the Declaration does not say that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed. It says that governments inst.i.tuted among men to protect their rights "derive their _just_ powers from the consent of the governed". Always realistic, the Declaration recognizes the tendency of governors to reach out for power and to absorb whatever the people fail to hold. The idea of consent is also revolutionary--but the moment "inalienability" is granted, consent to be governed _must_ follow. The fascist state recognizes _no_ inalienable right, and needs no consent from its people.

It is "self-evident", I think, that we have given wrong values to the three elements involved. We have talked about the "pursuit of happiness"; we have been impressed by the idea of any right being ours "for keeps", inalienable; and we have never thought much about the fundamental radicalism of the Declaration: that it makes government our servant, instructed _by us_ to protect our rights. The chain of reasoning, as the Declaration sets it forth, leads to a practical issue:

All men are created equal--their equality lies in their having rights;

these rights cannot be alienated;

governments are set up to prevent alienation;

power to secure the rights of the people is given by the people to the government;

and if one government fails, the people give the power to another.

So in the first three hundred words of the Declaration the purpose of our government is logically developed.

_Blueprint of America_

There follows first a general and then a particular condemnation of the King of England. This is the longest section of the Declaration.

It is the section no one bothers to read; the statute of limitations has by this time outlawed our bill of complaint against George the Third. But the grievances of the Colonials were not high-pitched trifles; every complaint rises out of a definite desire to live under a decent government; and the whole list is like a picture, seen in negative, of the actual government the Colonists intended to set up; and the basic habits of American life, its great traditions, its good fortune and its deficiencies are all foreshadowed in this middle section. Here--for the sake of completeness--is the section:

"_He has refused his a.s.sent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good._

"_He has forbidden his Governors to pa.s.s Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his a.s.sent should be obtained, and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend them._

"_He has refused to pa.s.s other Laws for the accommodation 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 depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures._

"_He 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 People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within._

Here I omit one "count", reserved for separate consideration.

"_He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his a.s.sent 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 mult.i.tude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to hara.s.s 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 const.i.tution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his a.s.sent 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 depriving us in many cases of the benefits of Trial by jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring 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 whatsoever._

"_He has abdicated Government here by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us._

"_He has plundered our seas, ravished 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 circ.u.mstances 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 friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands._

"_He has excited domestic insurrections amongst 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, s.e.xes and conditions. In every stage of these Oppressions We have Pet.i.tioned for Redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated Pet.i.tions 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 attention 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 circ.u.mstances 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._"

The eighteen paragraphs of denunciation fall into seven general sections:

The King has thwarted representative government;

he has obstructed justice;

he has placed military above civil power;

he has imposed taxes without the consent of the taxed;

he has abolished the rule of Law;

he has placed obstacles in the way of the growth and prosperity of the Colonies;

he has, in effect, ceased to rule them, because he is making war on them.

So the bill of complaint signifies these things about the Founders of our Country: