Assuming this to be the central idea, let us see how this idea is reached; and for that purpose, let us notice the exact language of the Declaration. The first paragraph reads:
"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 entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
The "causes of separation" are prefaced by a number of propositions determining the nature of the "political bands" by which one people may be "connected with" another. These propositions are all rules of human conduct, and are therefore principles of law, though they are called "self-evident truths." This part of the Declaration reads:
"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 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."
The conception of the universal right of free statehood is reached, in the Declaration, through a series of three propositions, each stated to be self-evident, and yet all forming a sequence. The basal proposition is, that "all men are created equal." Rufus Choate and John James Ingalls have declared this proposition and the succeeding one that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," to be "glittering generalities." Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, in his speech at Gettysburg, at the most solemn and stirring moment in the country's history, declared that the proposition that all men are created equal was the foundation-idea of the nation, to which it was dedicated by the Fathers.
The doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all men as the spiritual offspring of a common Creator, was the doctrine of the Reformation in its broadest form, as declared by Penn. Taking into consideration the religious character of the Americans, as well as the learning and acumen of that most remarkable body of men who constituted the Continental Congress, it seems not only not improbable, but probable, and indeed necessary to conclude, that the proposition that "all men are created equal" was intended to be the epitome of the doctrine of the Reformation, as that doctrine was broadened by the influence of Penn and his followers. As the Governments of Europe were at that time acting on the political philosophy of feudalism and mediævalism, which in its last analysis was based on the proposition that all men are created unequal, or that some are created equal and some unequal, the Declaration, if it be true that it based the American political philosophy upon the broadest doctrine of the Reformation, announced an American System as opposed to the European System.
From the doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all men by a personal Creator to whom all were equally related, it is declared by the Declaration to follow as a 'self-evident' truth that there are certain rights, which are attached to all men by endowment of the Creator as being the correlative of the unalienable needs of all men, and which inasmuch as they arise from the universal limitations which the Creator has imposed, are as unalienable as the needs themselves. These unalienable rights are declared to be the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The doctrine of unalienable rights, necessarily supposes a universal law, for the conception of law must precede the conception of right. This law, as conceived of by the Declaration is a common and universal law. In the first part of the preamble this universal common law is spoken of as "the law of Nature and of Nature's God." Inasmuch as the rights claimed are those which depend for their existence upon revelation as well as reason, it is evident that this common and universal law to which the Declaration appeals, is the "law of nature and of nations," of the scholars of the Reformation, which was conceived of as based on revelation and reason, and as governing every relationship of men, of bodies corporate, of communities, of states and of nations. Out of this conception there had already grown that great division of the law which deals with the temporary relations between independent states, which we now call International Law.
Having thus established the doctrine of unalienable rights, based on a universal common law of nature and of nations, which all men, all bodies corporate, all communities, all governments, all states and all nations were bound to enforce, the Declaration proceeds to a consideration of the forms, methods and instrumentalities by which these unalienable rights are to be secured.
It declares that the primary instrumentality by which these rights are secured, are governments "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Contrary to the usual interpretation, the Declaration does not state that government is the expression of the will of the majority. Governments, it is declared, are instituted to "secure" the "unalienable rights" of individuals. The will of the majority, of course, is quite as likely to destroy as to secure the unalienable rights of individuals. Moreover, the Declaration says merely that "governments are instituted among men"—not that men universally institute their own governments. The whole statement that the governments which are instituted among men to secure the unalienable rights of individuals, universally "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed," is inconsistent with the proposition that governments are the expression of the mere will of the majority, for it is only their "just powers" that governments "derive" from "the consent of the governed," and the will of the majority may be just or unjust. The expression "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," seems to me most probably to be an epitome and summary of the two fundamental propositions of the law of agency—Obligatio mandati consensu contrahentium consistit, a free translation of which is "The powers of an agent are derived from the consent of the contracting parties," and Rei turpis nullum mandatum est, a free translation of which is "No agent can have unjust powers." On this interpretation the meaning of the whole sentence "that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," is, it would seem, that there is a universal right of all communities to have a government of a kind best adapted for the securing of the unalienable rights of individuals, instituted either by their own selection or by the appointment of an external power, and that all governments, however instituted, are universally the agents of the governed to secure these rights. Government is thus declared not to be the expression of the will of the majority, but the application of the just public sentiment justly ascertained through forms best adapted for this purpose.