Page:Criticism on the Declaration of independence, as a literary document (IA criticismondecla00seld).pdf/37

 sole characteristic of our speech. In the emergency which constrained our leading men at the time of the Declaration, we should suppose they would have pledged all they had to pledge at once; and so they would undoubtedly have done, if left to the promptings of their own good sense; but the document makes them dribble out the items they propose to pledge one by one; and the mind in contemplating the worth of the separate parts, loses sight of the value of the whole.

As a general remark, it may as well be observed here as elsewhere, that after the first paragraph was uttered, a decent respect to common sense required, that the declarers should immediately proceed to a statement of particular facts, in support of the generalities already advanced. But when we expect the fish, in this case, we get the serpent, as we most commonly do when we expect good from a low latitude. So far from a statement of facts or declaration of causes, the author goes into a setting-forth of strange and crude generalities; the contradiction of one part thereof to an other, equalled only by the absurdity of the whole. For how can a man exercise his supposed right to the pursuit of happiness, unless he does as he is a mind to do? The business of a good government is to prevent this pursuit, not secure it. But according to the logic of the Declaration, governments are instituted to secure all men in the divine right of doing just what they please.

It is to be regretted that a document, calculated from the circumstances under which it was published, to become known far and long among the nations of the earth, should have gone forth with the unalienable blemishes our Declaration evidently has. But we console ourselves, as no doubt the northern signers of it did, with the unction, that there are many excellent things in it, and if there were not, there is no help for it now. We must face the scorn these crudities and this sophistry is calculated to procure. I should suppose foreigners would have laughed us out of every checker of longitude on the globe, for all this ostentatious parade of folly; and the fact they have not, is evidence that we have been treated with a forbearance we did not deserve. But perhaps our folly in other particulars has been so great, as