No one assumes that the Signers foresaw all the temptations[13] and difficulties likely to arise as the nation grew stronger,—that was as impossible as for their wildest dreams to compass its marvellous growth; but they knew full well that the doctrines they asserted would have to meet severe tests and their sublime confidence in the virtue and constancy of the people is the more manifest that they were willing to take the risk of future conditions. If they were wrong in those doctrines, how can we avoid the conclusion that they have been given greater credit for wisdom and foresight than they were justly entitled to, or that the wisdom of all our great statesmen is impugned, who for so many years have asserted and boasted of the truths set forth. What the Revolutionary statesmen urged upon the people as fundamental truths were endorsed as such for more than a century, yet if they were mere phrases or visionary theories, the eloquence and statesmanship of all the great statesmen before our day or in our day, until within a few years, goes for nought.
Rufus Choate, to be sure, in the stress of a political campaign urging the claims to the Presidency of James Buchanan, termed the Declaration “glittering and sounding generalities of natural right;” but this was looked upon as exuberant rhetoric, and the expression was never taken seriously by the country, nor accepted as a matured opinion in contravention of the main doctrines of the Declaration.
More recently men of standing and character have apparently adopted and even extended Choate’s theory,—it has been maintained that governments rest upon the consent of some of the governed, and this is true and not apart from the Declaration if it means that governments rest upon the will of the majority, for that carries with it the right of all to be heard,—but it is absolutely foreign to the Declaration if by “some of the governed” is intended only the more enlightened part of the people,—that is, the minority,—for[14] then it upholds a theory differing not at all from that of an oligarchy, or even a despotism, and does not represent popular government as we have understood it.
It has been said also that the Declaration applied only to civilized peoples, intelligent enough to maintain Republican government, or to those of sufficient capacity to govern themselves and to better themselves by such self-government, or even farther, that the Declaration is untrue as a general proposition and only applied to the existing situation in America in 1776.
No such qualifying phrases can be found in the Declaration itself, and if such were in the minds of the statesmen of the day it is passing strange that men who had the power to express themselves in so lucid and straightforward a way never hinted then or thereafter at any such limitations.
It certainly was not the view of the Continental Congress when at the end of the war it said, “Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature,” and the historic glory of the American Revolution is immensely lessened if we accept the Declaration with qualifications, for on such a theory nothing was established by that war except the ability of the Revolutionists, with the aid of France, to bring the rebellion to a successful conclusion, and to establish here a Republic, the Declaration becoming to the rest of the world of academic interest only as a skilfully worded statement of provincial grievances. We all must desire to ascertain if possible whether those who hold the theories I have stated are correct, and whether our predecessors have been cherishing illusory and transitory principles or eternal truths, for if the former are right our compass now points in a new direction, and we may as well change our course to correspond, even though we reach the well-worn track that European nations have been following since we originally steered away from them.
[15]
There is a prevalent belief, and with some it accounts for the novelty of recent views, that the Declaration prescribed a Republican form of government as essential for every people, but such is not the fact, as is evident from these words in the document:
“Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (referring to the rights and liberties of the people), it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and to constitute a new government, laying its foundations 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 long-established governments should not be changed for light and transient causes.”
Washington expressed this in brief and cogent form as follows: “Every nation has a right to establish that form of government under which it conceives it may live most happy.”
The equality before the law asserted in the Declaration never implied equality of intelligence or opportunity, nor did it necessarily imply universal suffrage as a fixed principle. Between 1776, when the Declaration was issued, and 1789, the time of the adoption of the Constitution, there were in the thirteen States various forms of government, and none of them with universal suffrage. A free people may see fit to restrict or enlarge their own rights; they may confer extreme power upon appointed rulers, or retain all power to themselves,—whichever course is pursued, if it be the people’s unrestricted action, it is in no way inconsistent with the Declaration. Of course this excludes absolutely and forever any idea of a controlling influence by an outside power, or that there can be any such thing as self-government, unless a people are left free to determine for themselves the form and methods of their own government. To those who wrote the Declaration self-government and independence were interconvertible[16] terms, and the burden is upon those who would now distinguish them to invent new definitions. The Declaration did not proclaim that every people in the world were fitted for a Republican form of government,—that form was unquestionably the ideal of the fathers, but the essence of the document was that each nation must determine for itself what form it preferred, and so long as the people were freely consulted, and reserved the right to change when their interests were not properly served, the principles were not infringed upon. This was to be entirely independent of the form adopted; it might be a limited monarchy like England, an armed Republic like France, a Greek, Roman, or South American Republic, a military dictatorship like Mexico, or even a popular despotism like the early days of the Napoleonic empires. The modern idea that fitness was to be determined by some foreign superior nation had not been thought of in 1776.
Take a concrete case like the England of to-day, excluding, of course, her colonies—her ideals may not be the same as ours, but it would be a hazardous statement to make that the rights of the people as set forth in our Declaration are not preserved in England in their full significance quite as well as in our own boss-ridden states and cities. England has a monarchy in form, but a people’s monarchy, and subject to the people’s will, and it may well be questioned whether the people there do not express their will with quite as much facility as here. In many places in this country we have a practical and vulgar despotism under the forms of a Republic,—the people can and do assert themselves when thoroughly aroused, but they are long suffering, and only when the bossism becomes too flagrant and offensive can they be led to enforce that equality before the law and to exhibit that latent power which is necessary to prove that genuine Republicanism still exists.
[17]
In dealing with our Indian tribes the government has proceeded upon the theory that they were nations, they have not been taxed, and although our treatment of them has not been creditable, our theories have been consistent; still, I have no idea that the framers of the Declaration believed that these tribes, or Oriental nations, or any semi-civilized peoples were fitted for a Republic, or that for them such a form would be wise or safe; but the............