Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 89.djvu/1374

 89 STAT. 1314

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PROCLAMATION 4408—NOV. 5, 1975

Proclamation 4408

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November 5, 1975

Bill of Rights Day Human Rights Day and Week, 1975

By the President of the United States of America A Proclamation As the United States of America looks forward to the two hundredth anniversary of our Nation's independence next July, it is appropriate that we pause and reflect on the principles of self-government that underlie our society and continue to nourish it. u s e prec title 1.

Embodied in our great national documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—are the imperishable ideas that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that it is the people of the United States themselves who have ordained and established the government which serves us all. The Founding Fathers could not foresee in detail the threats to liberty that might arise as the Republic grew, but they had the wisdom to know that threats would appear and that the people must be protected against them. When the new Constitution was being discussed in 1787, Thomas Jefferson complained in a letter to James Madison of the absence of a Bill of Rights, saying: "Let me add that a bill of rights is what the people arc entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular; and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences." Madison became convinced of the need for a Bill of Rights and wrote Jefferson: "The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free government, and as they become incorporated with the National saitiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion." In the First Congress, Madison, the principal proponent of those amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights, defended them in these words: "If they are incorporated into the constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves in a peculiar manner the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive...." This has truly been our national experience. So also in the international community have we come to respect and rely on the Universal Declara-

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