We discover, then, from an examination of the circumstances surrounding the Declaration of Independence, a most interesting situation. A young nation, separated by a wide ocean from Europe, settled by men who were full of the spirit of the Reformation, deeply convinced, after a national life of one hundred and fifty years, that these principles were of universal application, was suddenly met by a denial of these principles from the European State with which they were most intimately related. This denial was accompanied by acts of that State which amounted to a prohibition of the application of these principles in American political life. This European State was indeed the mother-country of America, and the Americans were bound to their English brethren by every tie of interest and affection. The Americans were only radical Englishmen, who gloried in the fact that England of all the countries of Europe had gone farthest in accepting the principles of the Reformation, and who had emigrated reluctantly from England, because they were out of harmony with the tendency of English political life to compromise between the principles of Mediævalism and the principles of the Reformation. The Declaratory Act of 1766 brought clearly into comparison the political system of America, as opposed to the political system of Europe. It was inevitable from that moment that the American System, based on the principles of the Reformation in their broadest sense and their most universal application and briefly summed up in the proposition that "all men are created equal," must conquer, or be conquered by, the European System, based either on the principles of Mediævalism, summed up in the proposition that "all men are created unequal," or on a compromise between the principles of Mediævalism and the Reformation, summed up in the proposition that "some men are created equal, and some unequal."
In the light of this situation, let us examine the words of the Declaration. The philosophical statements in which we are interested, read:
"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:—
"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.
"Finally we do assert and declare ... that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states,... and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
The most reasonable interpretation, as it seems to me, of the statement that "all men are created equal" is, as I have said, that it is, and was intended to be, an epitome of the doctrine of the Reformation. There will be those who will scoff at the suggestion that a political body like the Continental Congress should have based the whole political life of the nation upon a religious doctrine. But it is to be remembered that the Continental Congress was not an ordinary political body. It was the most philosophic and at the same time the most religious and the most intellectually untrammeled body of men who ever gathered to discuss political theories and measures. Meeting under circumstances where weakness of resources compelled the most absolute justness in their reasons for taking up arms, they must have discussed their position from the standpoint of morality and religion. John Adams tells us that one of the main points discussed at the opening of the Continental Congress, when they were framing the ultimatum which finally took the form of the Fourth Resolution was, whether the Congress should "recur to the law of nature" as determining the rights of America. He says that he was "very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it," and the Resolutions show that he succeeded, for they based the American position on the principles of "free government" and "good government," recognized that the "consent" of the American Colonies to Acts of the British Parliament justly regulating the matters of common interest was a "consent from the necessity of the case and a regard to the mutual interests of both countries," and claimed the rights of "life, liberty and property" without reference to the British Constitution or the American Charters. Jefferson tells us that throughout the period of nearly two years which intervened between the assembling of the Congress and the promulgation of the Declaration the principles of the law of nature and of nations set forth in the preamble were discussed, and that when he wrote the preamble he looked at no book, but simply stated the conclusions at which the Congress, with apparently practical unanimity, had arrived.
But it is not necessary, it would seem, to resort to external evidence to prove that the Declaration is based on the doctrine of the Reformation. In several places it seems to expressly declare that the rights claimed by America are claimed under the law of nature and of nations based on divine revelation and on human reason. In the first sentence, it declares that "the law of Nature and of Nature's God" entitles the Americans,—it having "become necessary" for them "to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with" the people of Great Britain,—to "assume a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth." In the next it declares not only "that all men are created equal," but that they have "unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," not by virtue of any social contract or other form of consent, but by "endowment,"—that is, by voluntary gift and grant—of "their Creator." This doctrine of "endowment" of men with "unalienable rights," by "their Creator," is of course the Christian doctrine. In the concluding part of the Declaration, it is declared not only that the United Colonies, as "the United States of America," are "free and independent states," but that they "of right ought to be" such, and in that paragraph the "connection between them and the State of Great Britain" is not merely declared to be "totally dissolved" but it is also declared that it "ought to be" so dissolved. There was certainly no "right" of the United Colonies, as the United States of America, to be free and independent states and to declare the connection between them and the State of Great Britain to be dissolved except upon principles of some implied common law which was supreme over the Constitution of the State of Great Britain and the Charters and Constitutions of the Colonies, for none of these Constitutions or Charters made provision for the dissolution of the connection on any contingency.
There is necessarily implied in the statement that "all men are created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the conception of the right of human equality as a divine right. But is there any other basis than divine right on which to rest a doctrine of human equality? A doctrine of human equality by human right, is a doctrine of equality by consent. But if a man can consent regarding his equality with another man or with other men, he can, as has been often pointed out, consent himself into a state of permanent inequality, inferiority and slavery, even supposing that a basis can be found for the assumption of an original state of equality arising from consent.
Assuming then, for the sake of argument at least, that the proposition that all men are created equal is and was intended to be a statement of the Reformation doctrine in its broadest and most universal form, a clue is given for the interpretation of the propositions which follow. If politics, as well as religion, assumes as its basis the proposition that all men are spiritual beings in direct and permanent relationship with God, and hence equal as regards one another, then the purpose of both politics and religion is to preserve this equality,—politics by compulsion and religion by persuasion. Because all men are spiritual beings in direct relationship with a common Creator who has established laws under which He is the final judge, which men can ascertain and apply through revelation and reason, men are declared to have rights. Man is thus distinguished from animals, who have no rights because they have no capacity to know the law—a knowledge which must inevitably precede a knowledge of the right. Politics looks at the universal needs of all men,—those needs which each man has in common with all humanity—and from the universal needs assumes a universal unalienable right of each against each other and against all, and a universal duty of each toward each other and toward all, to supply these needs. Religion regards the supplying of these universal needs as a duty toward God. Hence politics adopts as its second self-evident truth, the proposition that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The primary and universal needs of all mankind, regarded as equal creatures of a common Creator, are the need of life, the need of liberty and the need of pursuing happiness. These needs are unalienable. No man can rid himself of them without destroying himself as an equal creature of a common Creator. Consequently the rights and duties corresponding to these unalienable needs are themselves unalienable. There is no denial here of alienable rights and duties. But it is clearly laid down as a fundamental principle of the all-pervasive common law, that rights given by the Creator are unalienable, and that no human being, however emphatically he may declare, or will, or agree to the contrary, may by any possible act of any other human being or of any set of human beings, whether calling themselves a government or not, or by any possible means, deprive himself, or be deprived of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—these being necessarily incidental to the original right of equality.