Page:Criticism on the Declaration of independence, as a literary document (IA criticismondecla00seld).pdf/24

 companions in glory, had the same year alienated their lives under the ramparts of Quebec, for the same purpose. The patriots, likewise, who were slain at Lexington, had done the same thing. They sleep in their graves, each one with the sweet hope of immortal joy for his bed-fellow; and when they awake, they will find that their smiling companion had awoke before them.

It seems fortunate for the posthumous fame of these glorious old warriors, that they effected this impossible alienation, and secured their renown, a little before the self-evident truth made it evident they could de no such thing.

To pretend a distinction between the right to life, and life itself, is but making darkness visible. The alienation of life, under certain circumstances, has ever been considered one of the most exalted actions n human being is capable of performing. The alienation effected on mount calvary, has attracted the admiration of half mankind, for more than eighteen hundred years. Every battle field, from Marathon to Saratoga; every page of history, every day's experience, furnish us with but too much, and too lamentable testimony, that life is alienable. The assertion therefore that life is an unalienable endowment, is not only not self-evident, but is a specimen of sophistry unsupported by any known fact, and incapable of the shadow of proof.

It is indeed not improper to suppose, that our first parent, when he came from the forming hand of his Creator, was endowed with an unalienable right to life. But he, with that perverseness, common to all his race, succeeded in alienating the affections of his Maker. As a just retribution for his perversity, the glorious endowment of a right to life, was taken away from him, and the endowment of a right to die substituted in its place. This endowment, has clave to his posterity with an unalienability that has never been broken, though every device that the ingenuity of man could invent, has been tried to effect that alienation.

If the author of the Declaration had asserted, that all men were endowed by their Creator with an unalienable right to die, he would have come as much nearer the fact, than he has, by all the distance there is between falsehood and truth.

The second item with which we are endowed by our Creator,