2. The principles heralded through fifteen years of controversy were not forgotten when Independence was declared: and here I come to the national declarations of the Fathers.
It sometimes happens that men fail in support of the cause to which they are pledged, or content themselves with something less than the truth. But not so with our fathers. In declaring Independence they continued loyal to their constant vows. The natural rights of all men, and the consent of the people as the only just foundation of government, which James Otis first announced, which Samuel Adams maintained with severe simplicity, which Patrick Henry vindicated even against the cry of “Treason,” and which had been affirmed by legislative bodies and public meetings, were embodied in the opening words of the Declaration. There they stand, like a sublime overture to the new Republic, interpreting, inspiring, and filling it with transforming power.
“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_.”
Nor did these declarations proceed from the National Congress alone. The States spoke also in their Bills of Rights.
Foremost is the Equality of All Men. Of course, in a declaration of rights, no such supreme folly was intended as that all men are created equal in form or capacity, bodily or mental,--but simply that they are created equal in rights. This is grandest of the self-evident truths announced, leading and governing all the rest. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are among inalienable rights; but they are all in subordination to that primal truth. Here is the starting-point of the whole; and the end is like the starting-point. Announcing that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, the Declaration repeats the same proclamation of Equal Rights. Thus is Equality the Alpha and the Omega, wherein all other rights are embraced. Men may not have a natural right to certain things, but most clearly they have a natural right to _impartial laws_, without which justice, being the end and aim of government, must fail. Equality in rights is the first of rights. Because these self-evident truths, beginning with Equality, had been set at nought by Great Britain, in her relations with our fathers, Independence was declared. To these truths, therefore, was the new Government solemnly dedicated, as it assumed its separate and equal station among the powers of the earth. Do you ask for the definition of Republic? Here it is, by patriot lexicographers, whose authority none of us can question.