THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
BY J. Q. ADAMS.
John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States, was born at Quincy, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767. He died at Washington in 1848.
HE Declaration of Independence! The interest which, in that paper, has survived the occasion upon which it was issued,—the interest which is of every age and every clime,—the interest which quickens with the lapse of years, spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it recedes,—is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the first solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of civil government. It was the corner-stone of a new fabric, destined to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished, at a stroke, the lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced, in practical form to the world, the transcendent truth of the inalienable sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no figment of the imagination, but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the social union.
From the day of this declaration, the people of North America were no longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy from an inexorable master, in another hemisphere. They were no longer children, appealing in vain to the sympathies of a heartless mother; no longer subjects, leaning upon the shattered columns of royal promises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure their rights. They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintained by war, its own existence. A nation was born in a day.
“How many ages hence
Shall this, their lofty scene, be acted o’er,
In States unborn, and accents yet unknown?”