Page:Criticism on the Declaration of independence, as a literary document (IA criticismondecla00seld).pdf/49



Since this criticism has grown to dimensions far exceeding any thing I purposed at the commencement, it has occurred to me, that it would be convenient to the reader, to have the first, and so much of the second paragraph, as I have commented on, inserted in a note. I accordingly subjoin them here, as they stand in the last edition of our statutes.

"When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires, that they should declare the causes, which impel them to the separation."

"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," &c.

This is I believe, verbatim et literatim; except that I have italicized the preposition "to" that its ungrammatical position may be more obvious.

The ideas set forth are these; that necessity obliged them to do a certain act; which act also nature entitled them to perform. That there are such a class of acts is true. Nature entitles us (gives us the privilege) to sleep, to eat, &c., and other acts, cognate, correspondent or correlative. It may be said also, that nature obliges (compels) us to do these things. But acts of this sort are extremely limited. They are such as belong to man as an animal, and not to him as a rational being. A man with a bad cold, is entitled by the laws of nature to sneeze; and as he can not very well help doing it; it may be alledged that necessity obliges him to do it. To go into a declaration of causes why we sleep or eat, or do other cognate or correlavant acts, would appear particularly superfluous in our day; and I can hardly be made to understand, why it was not as much of a superfluity seventy years ago. No decent respect, to the opinions of mankind, would require a declaration of causes for such acts. Nor do I think a decent apology can be made for stating them, if indeed they are causes of a character ascribed to them. The document subsequently goes into a statement of causes, and very good ones they are too, but of a character as different from the one alledged of them by the author, as facts ever are from falsehoods. They are made by the recital, to consist wholly in the magisterial and judicial cruelties of the British government.

When we reduce the rhetoric of the first paragraph to its plain truth, it amounts to about this: the "laws of nature," meant simply a will, to resent certain injuries—the "necessity," a will to do nothing else but resent them.