“The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are parts of one consistent whole, founded upon one and the same theory of government,—that the people are the only legitimate source of power, and that all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed.”—John Quincy Adams.
When Jefferson wrote “all men are created equal”, he did not mean that all infant children have equal capacities for learning or accomplishment, but that all children ought to be given equal opportunities by the government of a republic. He meant that in a republic all children, whether rich or poor, whether of the aristocracy or of the common people, had great opportunities to be good and great men and women. He meant that a poor boy born in the Kentucky mountains and a rail splitter in the woods of Illinois had the opportunity to become President of the United States.
“The Declaration of Independence was not a mere temporary expedient, but is an enunciation of fundamental truths intended for all time.”—William J. Bryan.
“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”—Abraham Lincoln.
“Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be and where liberty is, slavery cannot be.”—Abraham Lincoln.
“Respect for its (the government's) authority, compliance with its laws, acquiesence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true Liberty.”—George Washington.
“Liberty—on its positive side, denotes the fulness of individual existence; on its negative side it denotes the necessary restraint on all, which is needed to promote the greatest possible amount of liberty for each.”—Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Vol. I. p. 217.
“Civil liberty is the liberty belonging to men in organized society. It is liberty defined, regulated and protected by positive law of the State or recognized as existing under customary law.”—Cyclopedia of American Government, Vol. II, p. 347.
The American people are a peculiar people. They are peculiar in their origin, peculiar in their make-up, and due to their sufferings, their persecutions, and their enduring perseverance, they are still a peculiar people. From the first white man to steer his little wooden ship westward across the great Atlantic ocean to the latest arrival among the most recent immigrants, the people coming to America have been different from those people remaining in their European homes. The conditions surrounding the lives of those people in Europe who left their homes and first settled in America were not materially different from the conditions surrounding the lives of thousands of other people who were satisfied and content to remain on their European shores. Many men thought the earth was round long before Christopher Columbus sailed away from that little seaport town in Spain to test his own ideas of finding a shorter route to India. Many people believed in religious liberty long before the Pilgrims and Puritans landed on the bleak New England shores and suffered the hardships of first settlers in a new country in order to worship God as they pleased. Many people seriously and intelligently doubted the divine right of kings, and believed in the rights of the people to govern themselves long before the American colonists adopted the Declaration of Independence. But it was left for these people—these coming Americans—to demonstrate to all the world that America was to be peopled by men and women of different ideals, different hopes, and different ambitions from all the other nations of the world.
A pure democracy would be that form of government in which all people of the age of twenty-one years could actually take part in making the laws and administering the government. A country would need be very small indeed, if all the people above twenty-one years of age could assemble in any one place and organize and conduct a meeting in which all could take part in law-making. No building would be large enough to accommodate all the people and even if all the people assembled out of doors, the number would be so large that those standing or sitting near the outer edge of the assembly would be so far from the speaker that they could not hear what he said when he spoke to them. A pure democracy is a physical impossibility. The nearest form of government to a pure democracy is a representative democracy, or one in which groups of people choose one or more persons to represent them. Then these representatives make laws and carry on the government in the name of all the people whom they represent. Therefore a democracy is that form of government in which all people have equal opportunities, and in which all may take part in the government through their chosen representatives.