Page:Criticism on the Declaration of independence, as a literary document (IA criticismondecla00seld).pdf/29

 in possession. As dead men tell no tales, I do not know how we are to get any witnesses of a man's right to life after he is dispossessed; so the right to the pursuit of happiness, must be proved by the pursuit, if proved at all. The right, and the possession, must be contemplated as one, if indeed it is a subject concrete enough for contemplation. I shall so treat it from obvious necessity.

Some men's pursuit of happiness consists in picking our pockets; others in taking our lives; a third makes his pursuit of happiness consist in getting the two first convicted of their pursuits; and in getting them alienated of their unalienable rights to liberty and life. Success in the latter pursuit is quite after my notion of what ought to take place. But these antagonist and ever conflicting rights!! Are they divine endowments? Rights! nullifying and devouring each other!!! The rights of the Kilkenny cats to fight till there was nothing left but their tails, were just such rights.

Such, Oh Progressive Democracy! is the length and the breadth, the weight, the superfices, substance and sum-total of the sounding sophistry in this part of the Declaration of Independence. If in our first and most solemn public document we parade such stuff as this if we quote it, utter it, laud it, is it to be wondered at, that other nations should scoff at our pretensions, and mock when our vain-glory cometh! Our patriotic nation seems determined to have a magnificent opinion of itself, at all hazards and in despite every obstacle. No amount of folly in our state papers, or of nonsense in our public speeches and diplomacy, is adequate to alter that opinion. But what views of our sense or sanity, is all this ostentatious setting forth of unintelligible aphorisms and inappreciable generalities, calculated to create in our cotemporaries? Oh that we were endowed with an unalienable disposition to divest ourselves of vanity and lies. I would give more for such an endowment, than for all the abstract rights this side the moon.

The third self-evident truth asserted, is expressed thus—"that to secure these rights" (meaning those we have just been contemplating) "governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," &c. Rights! with which we are endowed by our Creator, and in a manner