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Russell, Charles H.
Declaration of Independence
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UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

^. M— — ¦— ^
THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE

ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE RHODE ISLAND
STATE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI, AT THE
STATE HOUSE AT NEWPORT, RHODE
ISLAND, ON JULY 4, 1916

BY
CHARLES ROWLAND RUSSELL

THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE

ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE RHODE ISLAND
STATE SOCIETY OF THE CINCINNATI, AT THE
STATE HOUSE AT NEWPORT, RHODE
ISLAND, ON JULY 4, 1916

BY

CHARLES HOWLAND RUSSELL

NEW YORK
1916

C\D\c\.siq-

r

THE DECLARATION OF
INDEPENDENCE
AT the close of the Seven Years' War in 1763,
L England was the greatest power in Europe.
She was mistress of the seas ; she had succeeded to the
possession of the greater part of the territories of
France upon the North American continent; and the
fear of French attack upon the northern and west
ern borders of the colonies was forever removed. To
these circumstances some historians ascribe the birth
of the United States. One of them^ says : "With the
triumph of Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham began
the history of the United States. By removing an
enemy whose dread had knit the colonists to the
mother country, and by breaking through the line
with which France had barred them from the basin
of the Mississippi, Pitt laid the foundation of the
great republic of the West." It is said that in the
negotiations which resulted in the making of the
treaty of Paris the due de Choiseul, French minister
of foreign affairs, said to the British representative :
"I wonder that your great Pitt should attach so
much importance to the acquisition of Canada, a ter
ritory too scantily peopled ever to become dangerous
to you, and one which in our hands would serve to
1 John Richard Green.

keep your colonies in a state of dependence, which
they will not fail to shake off the moment Canada is
ceded to you." Ajid in England there were many
persons who were solicitous lest the colonies, which
had depended upon the protection of the mother
country against France, should assume an attitude
of hostility, once the fear of France was removed.
The Duke of Bedford wrote to the Duke of New
castle in May, 1761: "I don't know whether the
neighborhood of the French to our North American
colonies was not the greatest security for their de
pendence on the mother country."
Benjamin Franklin, agent of Pennsylvania in
London, was of a different opinion. In "The Can
ada Pamphlet," written in 1760, he said in reference
to the American colonies :
"Their jealousy of each other is so great, that how
ever necessary an union of the colonies has long been,
for their common defence and security against their
enemies, and how sensible soever each colony has
been of that necessity, yet they have never been able
to effect such an union among themselves, nor even
to agree in requesting the mother country to estab
lish it for them. ... If they could not agree to unite
for their defence against the French and Indians,
who were perpetually harassing their settlements,
burning their villages, and murdering their people,
can it reasonably be supposed there is any danger of
their uniting against their own nation, which pro
tects and encourages them, with which they have so
many connections and ties of blood, interest and af
fection, and which, it is well known, they aU love
much more than they love one another? . . . When

5
I say such an union is impossible, I mean, without
the most grievous tyranny and oppression. . . .
While the government is mild and just, while impor
tant civil and religious rights are secure, such sub
jects will be dutiful and obedient."
"For all that you Americans say of your loyalty,"
said Pratt, the attorney-general, better known later
as Lord Camden, to Frankhn, "and notwithstanding
your boasted aflPection, you wiU one day set up for
indejfendence." "No such idea," replied Frankhn sincerely, "is
entertained by the Americans, or ever vdll be, unless
you grossly abuse them."
"Very true," rejoined Pratt; "that, I see, will hap
pen, and wiU produce the event."
Notwithstanding some eminent authorities, it may
well be doubted whether the removal of the danger
of France from their borders led the colonists to
assert rights which they would not in time have as
serted had this danger continued. But the close of
the Seven Years' War undoubtedly is a date of
great importance in the history of America, for as a
direct result followed a series of events which finaUy
brought about the independence of the colonies.
The English settlements upon the North Ameri
can continent were for a considerable time left very
much to themselves. Although the charters varied,
according to the royal or proprietary or more or less
democratic form of the colonial organization, they
each granted a large measure of self-government.
The colonies of Rhode Island and Connecticut
elected their governors. Colonial legislation re
quired the approval of the King, and sometimes was

vetoed; but there was not much to complain of, ex
cept the uncertainty, caused by long delays in com
munication, as to what action the home government
would take in regard to such legislation. The chief
causes of dissatisfaction were commercial and eco
nomic. The fact that the colonists for a long period were
very much left alone was of great benefit to them.
They developed habits of thinking for themselves
and of political self-reliance. The. New England
colonies, particularly, virtually governed them
selves. Long before 1776, the colonists generaUy
had a political education and experience such as their
fellow-subjects in England had not, and they under
stood far better their constitutional rights as British
subjects. Mr. Trevelyan,^ speaking of the colonists
at the time of the repeal of the Stamp Act, describes
them as "all, in a sort, politicians, one as much as
another." In his speech upon ConciUation with
Ajuerica, in 1775, Burke said: "I have been told by an
eminent bookseUer that in no branch of his business,
after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books
as those on the law exported to the plantations. The
colonists have now fallen into the way of printing
them for their own use. I hear that they have sold
nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in
America as in England." There were disputes be
tween some of the colonies and the last Stuart kings
and William III ; but they were very little interfered
with by the home government during the reigns of
George I and George II. Nevertheless, there was
an uneasy feeling in England in regard to the col-
1 The American Revolution.

onists, who showed a desire to be let alone and to
manage their affairs in their own way, a disposition
to disregard the royal authority when it interfered
with their convenience and their interests, and a very
democratic spirit in the view and practice of govern
ment; all of which were considered hardly becoming
in British colonists. But the wars of England with
the Dutch and with France and Spain and other
questions gave the statesmen at home too much to
think of to enable them to bother their heads a great
deal about America. It was said of George Gren-
viUe, who introduced the Stamp Tax bill of 1765,
that he "lost America because he read the American
despatches, which none of his predecessors had
done." The commercial laws were a part of a wide im
perial policy. The act passed in the time of the
Commonwealth, limiting trade with England to
English or colonial ships, was directed by Cromwell
against the Dutch, and only incidentaUy affected and
practically did no harm to the American colonies.
The Navigation Acts of 1660 and subsequent years
limited in many respects the commerce and develop
ment of the colonies. These and other laws were
passed to secure for England a monopoly of the
colonial trade and to prevent the development of
manufactures which might compete with those of
England. The English colonial policy of the period
was one of "conquest and exclusion," and was based
upon the protection of English manufactures, Eng
lish trade and English shipping. The colonies were
of importance and interest primarily in so far as they
contributed to that end. Direct trade with foreign

coimtries being prohibited, the colonies were unable
to procure from France and Spain and Portugal and
from the French and Spanish West Indies certain
goods of which they were in great need, unless they
came from English ports. Consequently there was
a great deal of smuggUng ; and when, after 1763, the
British Government undertook to stop it, disorders
occurred which were among the many surface causes
which led to the final break.
Nevertheless, the colonies prospered, and their in
creasing population found emplojmaent and profit.
But they felt themselves restricted; the system under
which their industrial and commercial development
was subordinated to the interests of the mother coun
try irritated them; and while they were loyal, the
sentiment of loyalty to the person of a king and to a
government three thousand miles away could not in
reason permanently continue upon the part of an
energetic and venturous people who were retarded in
their natural growth and development by a selfish
and unsympathetic policy which prevented them
from that enjoyment of trade with the rest of the
world to which they considered that they were
justly entitled. "In his 'Notes upon England,'
which were probably written about 1730, Mon
tesquieu had dilated upon the restrictive character of
the EngUsh commercial code, and had expressed his
belief that England would be the first nation aban
doned by her colonies."^ In 1760 Turgot compared
colonies to "fruits which remain on the tree only until
they are ripe. When they have become self-sufficing,
they do as Carthage did, as America will one day
1 Lecky, History of England in the Eighteenth Century.

9
do."^ One of the arguments in Thomas Paine's
"Common Sense," the pamphlet which, pubUshed in
January, 1776, won over many doubting minds to
the necessity of a separation, was that unless the
colonies were independent they never could enjoy a
fair and full trade with the rest of the world, such as
was vital to them. By that time there had grown to
be a strong conviction in the colonies that their eco
nomic needs required an unrestricted foreign trade,
which they could not enjoy under the British com
mercial system. There appears to be no doubt of the
effect which these considerations had upon the minds
of the colonists when at last they were brought face
to face with the question of a separation from the
mother country; but most historians appear to have
overlooked them. Professor Channing, referring to
the bibliography of the Revolutionary period, re
marks: "In dealing with the causes and courses of
the Revolution, slight attention was paid to the in
dustrial side of the problem. This is the prevailing
defect of all works on this period."^ Mr. Lecky, the
historian of England in the eighteenth century,
speaks of "the political alienation which was the in
evitable and most righteous consequence" of the
Navigation Acts and of similar laws, and says that
"it is to the antagonism of interests they created,
much more than to the Stamp Act or to any isolated
instance of misgovemment, that the subsequent dis
ruption must be ascribed."
The colonies had never been directly taxed by the
home government, but only by the colonial assem-
1 Guizot, History of France.
2 History of the United States.

10
blies. When such taxation was suggested to Sir
Robert Walpole, prime minister of George II, and
who at the time had some troubles about an English
excise, he said: "I have Old England set against me
by this measure, and do you think I wiU have New
England too?" ; and Macaulay quotes him as saying:
"He who shall propose it will be a much bolder man
than I." There were customs duties upon imported
merchandise; but, although the colonists had often
asserted that they were subject to taxation only by
their own legislatures, they considered that the prin
ciple applied to direct, or, as they were then called,
"internal" taxes, and not to indirect or "external"
taxes, even although the latter might produce reve
nue. That they should have made this distinction
probably is to be explained by their regarding the
customs duties simply as a regulation of commerce ;
and they did not dispute the right of ParUament to
regulate commerce.
The government found it necessary to seek addi
tional revenues to meet the expenses of the empire,
whose territories had been greatly increased by the
long war. It therefore seemed right to it that the
American colonies, as a part of the empire, should
bear some portion of the burden. For this purpose
Parliament in 1765 enacted the Stamp Act, which in
itself, regarded simply as a tax, was not burdensome.
The intense opposition of the colonists to this act, the
riots and disorders which attended the effort to put it
into effect, the general refusal to import English
goods, and the resultant urgency of the English com
mercial classes for the repeal of the act, led Parlia
ment to repeal it; but the repeal was accompanied by

u
a declaration of the power of Parliament "to make
laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to
bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of
the crown of Great Britain, in all cases whatsoever."
The repeal of the Stamp Act therefore was an act of
grace and not an admission of the right of the col
onies to be free from taxation by act of Parliament.
The colonists were grateful for the repeal, and seem
to have regarded the qualifying declaration as a
matter more of form than of substance. But in that
they were mistaken. ParUament had withdrawn
the tax, but had not abandoned its power to tax
the colonies. Later, when customs duties were
imposed upon certain imports (aU of which subse
quently were withdrawn, except the duty on tea,
which was retained as an assertion of the right to
tax), the Americans abandoned their previous dis
tinction between "internal" and "external" taxes, and
assumed the position that, as they were not repre
sented in the British ParUament, that body had no
constitutional power to tax them, and that they could
not be taxed for any purpose except by their respec
tive local legislatures. This was the famous conten
tion of "No taxation without representation." The
principle of taxation without their consent once
being admitted, such taxation might be carried to
any extreme. It appears to have been admitted by
both sides that actual representation of the colonies
in Parliament was impracticable.
The principle of "No taxation without representa
tion" never meant that no one should be compelled
to pay taxes unless he had a vote for a representative
in the legislature which laid the tax, nor that the pay-

12
ment of taxes entitled the taxpayer to vote. The
suffrage in the colonies was limited; but the local
legislature always was regarded as representative of
all the people and of all the interests in the common
wealth. It was their representative body. One of
the great principles of English constitutional law was
that for money to conduct the government the crown
must depend upon grants from the people's represen
tatives ; and the colonists insisted that the only legis
lative bodies in which they were represented, and
therefore the only legislatures which properly could
tax them, were the colonial assemblies. To this the
English answer was that the British ParUament, as
the supreme legislature of the empire, had complete
power of legislation over all British subjects, whether
they lived in the British Isles or elsewhere; that aU
British subjects and all British interests were virtu
ally represented in it; that, whatever power local
assemblies might have in regard to local matters,
there could be but one body to make laws reaching
every part of the empire of which every British sub
ject was a member. There was no difference of
opinion in England as to the power of ParUament
to legislate for the colonies, except upon the single
question of the power to lay direct taxes upon them.
Pitt said: "America, being neither really nor vir-
tuaUy represented in Westminster, cannot be held
legally or constitutionally or reasonably subject to
obedience to any money bill of this kingdom. . . .
In every other point of legislation the authority of
Parliament is like the north star, fixed for the
reciprocal benefit of the parent country and her
colonies. The British Parliament has always boxmd

13
th^m by her laws, by her regulations of their trade
and industries, and even in a more absolute interdic
tion of both. ... If this power were denied, I
would not permit them to manufacture a lock of
wool, or a horse-shoe, or a hob-nail. But I repeat,
this House has no right to lay an internal tax upon
America." But this was not the general opinion.
The judges (with the exception of Lord Camden)
and the lawyers appear to have been of the opinion
that Parliament had the right to tax the colonies.
Moreover, there was great doubt whether any system
of apportionment among the colonies of grants of
aid when asked for by the crown could be devised
which would be accepted by them, and also whether
under any circumstances the colonies could be de
pended upon to make such grants when asked for.
Probably the English position was correct, constitu
tionally and legally, although, as Burke argued and
as time proved, it would have been wiser not to insist
upon it.^ John Morley, in his sketch of Burke, says :
"The great argument of those of the war party who
pretended to a political defence of their position was
the doctrine that the English Government was sover
eign in the colonies as at home ; and in the notion of
sovereignty they found inherent the notion of an in
defeasible right to impose and exact taxes. Having
satisfied themselves of the existence of this sover
eignty, and of the right which they took to be its
natural property, they saw no step between the exist
ence of an abstract right and the propriety of en
forcing it." Macaulay said: "The Stamp Act was
indefensible, not because it was beyond the constitu-
1 Speech upon American Taxation, 1774.

14.
tional competence of Parliament, but because it was
unjust and impolitic; sterile of revenue, and fertile
of discontents."^
Afterward, Great Britain adopted a more liberal
treatment of her colonies. And to-day the wisdom
of the argimients of Burke is proved as we see the
citizens of the great self-governing commonwealths
of Canada and Australia and New Zealand of their
own free will giving their lives and treasure in the
cause of the mother country.
Beneath all the surface causes of dispute and con
flict greater influences were at work. The needs and
the interests of the colonies required that they should
be free to govern themselves. If, consistently with
this, they could retain their connection with the
mother country, unquestionably they sincerely de
sired to do so. The needs and the interests of the
mother country required the enforcement of the im
perial supremacy. The two sets of needs and inter
ests could not be reconciled.
The First Continental Congress met at Philadel
phia on September 5, 1774, to consider the situation.
It is difficult in this day to realize how separated the
colonies were, not only by great distances and diflS-
culties of communication but also by differences of
opinion, by social conditions and commercial inter
ests, and more or less by suspicion and jealousy; and
there had been frequent disputes among them. For
a year or more before the meeting of the Congress,
the "committees of correspondence," under the lead
of Massachusetts and Virginia, had been keeping the
various colonies informed of the progress of events;
1 Essay on the Earl of Chatham.

15
and in this action it was clearly recognized that, how
ever little any one of them might in general be con
cerned in the affairs of another, they all were face to
face with a common danger. The meeting of the
delegates resulted in mutual respect and good-wiU,
although at first the other delegates were somewhat
doubtful about John Adams and Samuel Adams,
whom they suspected of favoring independence,
which none of the others at that time wished. But
the Adamses were prudent; and in due time, in the
Second Congress, a Virginia delegate introduced the
resolution for independence and another Virginia
delegate drafted the Declaration. The meeting of
the First Continental Congress was the beginning
of the American Union. The First Continental Con
gress sat until October 26, 1774 ; the Second met at
Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, after Lexington and
Concord. Before the Declaration of Independence was made
by the Second Continental Congress, the respectful
petitions to the King had been treated with con
tempt; the purpose of the government to force the
colonies into subjection had become clear; a state of
war actually had existed for over a year ; Falmouth
(now Portland) and Norfolk had been destroyed;
and large forces of German soldiers were on their
w^ay to America, hired by the King from their mer
cenary princes to coerce his subjects in a civil war.
From the Fourth of July, 1776, to this day, the
Declaration of Independence has been regarded with
reverence by the people of this country; and yet some
of its statements have been severely criticised by
writers of distinction. The criticisms have been di-

16
rected chiefly against the statements that all men are
created equal, and that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed, and that
the governed can alter or abolish them. But the
criticisms appear to be based upon a misunderstand
ing of the meaning of these statements.
The statement that aU men are created equal refers
to men not as human beings but as citizens, i.e.^
as members of the political community. We know
from experience that men as human beings are
not created equal, and that they are distinguished by
innumerable differences of inheritance, character, in
tellect and capacity. It would be neither according
to nature nor to the advantage of humanity that aU
men should either be created or at any time be equal.
It has been well said: "The law of progress is in
equality." But when men are considered in their
relation to the state, an enlightened and just opinion
regards them all, weak and strong, as having equal
rights before the law, without artificial barriers of
caste or privilege. These rights are not natural
rights, although often so called by the philosophers
of the eighteenth century. There are no such things
as natural rights. Equality before the law and
equality of opportunity have their basis in justice
and in the principles of Christianity.
Negro slavery existed in aU the colonies. In the
North the slaves were chiefly domestic servants, and
their condition was not substantially different from
that of bound apprentices; in the South they were
employed as agricultural laborers upon the planta
tions and in the rice-fields. In general, negro slavery
was considered solely from an economic standpoint.

17
Many New England shipowners were interested in
the slave trade. An act of Parliament passed in
1749 recites that "the slave trade is very advan
tageous to Great Britain." About a year before the
Declaration of Independence, Lord Dartmouth, a
good man and disposed to be a friend of the colonies,
said to a colonial representative : "We cannot aUow
the colonies to check or discourage in any degree a
traffic so beneficial to the nation."
EquaUy in the North and in the South the negro
was not considered the equal of the white man. The
existence of slavery was regarded as natural and
proper, and was justified by philosophers and theo
logians. Certain races were meant to be masters,
and certain races were meant to be slaves. That was
the view of Aristotle, and the studious ariiong the
colonists read his works.
The source of the statements of the Declaration
that all men are created equal and that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the gov
erned is generally understood to be Locke's "Second
Treatise on Government."
It is interesting to note that Locke wrote that the
purpose of men in establishing government was "the
mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and
estates, which I call by the general name property,"
and that the First Continental Congress, in the
Declaration of Rights adopted by it in October, 1774,
resolved "that the inhabitants of the English colonies
in North America, by the immutable laws of nature,
the principles of the EngUsh constitution, and the
several charters or compacts, . . . are entitled to
Ufe, liberty, and property, and they have never ceded

18
to any sovereign power whatever a right to dispose
of either without their consent." The Virginia Bill
of Rights of Jime, 1776, declared "that aU men are
by nature equally free and independent, and have
certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter
into a state of society, they cannot by any compact
deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoy
ment of Ufe and liberty, with the means of acquiring
and possessing property, and pursuing and obtain
ing happiness and safety." Jefferson omitted from
the Declaration the right of property; but the right
of property is the foundation of civilization.
In criticism of the statements that governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the gov
erned and that the governed can alter or aboUsh them,
it has often been asserted that they are simply state
ments of a theory and have no historical basis. But
it was a theory generally approved in the political
philosophy of England and France, and which had
received acceptance and practical application in
England. Hobbes and Locke and other philoso
phers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
notably Rousseau, maintained that government
rested upon the foundation of a social compact, made
in some early time between man and man; and al
though this idea of the origin of government is
treated by modern scholars as false, its enunciation
and almost universal acceptance created a revolution
in European ideas of government and of the mutual
relations of princes and people. It made the good of
the whole community the one great object and end of
government. While Hobbes based upon it his argu
ments for an absolute monarchy, Locke based upon

19
it his arguments for free government. It has been
said: "The political philosophy of Locke, indeed, was
Uttle more than a formal statement of the conclusions
which the bulk of Englishmen had dravra from the
great struggle of the civil war. In his theory the
people remain passively in possession of the power
which they have delegated to the prince, and have the
right to withdraw it if it be used for purposes incon
sistent vdth the end which society was formed to
promote. To the origin of all power in the people,
and the end of all power for the people's good — the
two great doctrines of Hobbes— Locke added the
right of resistance, the responsibility of princes to
their subjects for a due execution of their trust, and
the supremacy of legislative assemblies as the voice
of the people itself."^
The philosophy of Locke received a definite appli
cation in the Revolution of 1688 and the conferring
of the crown upon William III by the act of a repre
sentative convention. No act in the establishment of
the succession to the crown could more clearly have
disregarded the theory of divine right. At a later
period, the English kings of the house of Hanover
could make no claim of a title by divine right. Their
title rested upon an act of Parliament.
The charge of lack of originality has often been
made against these portions of the Declaration. Un
doubtedly they were not original with Jefferson, but
this is no just reproach. It would have been un
wise to make a statement of principles as to which
his fellow-members of the Continental Congress
might disagree. The colonists read Locke and
1 John Richard Green.

20
Hobbes and Hooker and Milton; and Jefferson must
have known well that the principles of civil Uberty
and of govemment which he stated were no un
familiar subject to his feUow-members. Many years
afterward (in 1823) he wrote to Madison: "I did not
consider it as any part of my charge to invent new
ideas altogether and to offer no sentiment which had
ever been expressed before."
It is to be observed that the principle that govern
ments derive their just powers from the consent of
the governed affords no argument in favor of any
particular form of government. The people may, if
they please, consent to be ruled by a king or by an
emperor. But the principle of the people's consent
and of the trust with which rulers are charged for
their benefit is vital. To this extent the fundamental
principle is democratic, whatever the chosen form of
government may be. The Second Empire in France
was established by a popular vote. The Constitution
of the United States, adopted after independence
was achieved, was a compromise of varying views of
men who agreed in desiring to establish a government
which would preserve and safeguard the liberties of
the people, but who differed as to the method of
doing so. It provided for a representative form of
government and a separation of political powers,
with democracy as the foimdation, but with careful
provisions for the orderly and deliberate exercise of
the popular will in any alteration of the fundamental
law. This was the lesson learned from Greece. The
people of Athens, after many experiments in forms
of government, adopted a constitution. Lord Acton
says of this: "Between the sacred lines of the consti-

21
tution, which were to remain inviolate, and the de
crees which met from time to time the needs and
notions of the day, a broad distinction was drawn;
and the fabric of a law which had been the work of
generations was made independent of momentary
variations in the popular will. The repentance of
the Athenians came too late to save the Republic.
But the lesson of their experience endures for all
times, for it teaches that government by the whole
people, being the government of the most numerous
and the most povt^erful class, is an evil of the same
nature as unmixed monarchy, and requires, for
nearly the same reasons, institutions that shaU pro
tect it against itself and shall uphold the permanent
reign of law against arbitrary revolutions of opin

ion."^

The principles asserted in the Declaration of In
dependence, while already familiar to the French
philosophers, by their assertion in the Declaration
and by the subsequent achievement of American in
dependence had great influence in France. But
there is a marked distinction between the French
Revolution and the American. The former was in
tended to destroy the poUtical and social system
which then existed in France, and upon its ruins to
build a new system to assure the liberties of the peo
ple. The purpose of the American Revolution was
not to destroy but to save; and the Declaration of
Independence and the war which followed came only
after the colonies were convinced that in no way
other than by separation from the mother country
could their ancient rights and liberties be secured and
1 Essay on the History of Freedom in Antiquity.

22
be perpetuated. Mr. Morley has said: "The insur
gents, while achieving their own freedom, were in
directly engaged in fighting the battle of the people
of the mother country as well. ... If England
prevails, said Horace Walpole, English and Amer
ican liberty is at an end ; if one fell, the other would
faU with it."* John Fiske said: "From all the his
tory of the European world since the later days of
the Roman Republic, there is no more important les
son to be learned than this : that it is impossible for a
free people to govern a dependent people despoti
cally without endangering its own freedom."'*

The written "Institution" of the Society of the Cin
cinnati by the officers of the Continental Army in
1783 set forth certain "principles," which, it was de
clared, "shall be immutable and form the basis of the
Society." Among them was: "An incessant atten
tion to preserve inviolate those exalted rights and
liberties of human nature, for which they have fought
and bled, and without which the high rank of a ra
tional being is a curse instead of a blessing."
These are serious words. Those brave men knew
that the rights and liberties for which they had fought
and bled were not assured, once and for all, simply
because they had made their country free and inde
pendent. They knew that powerful forces and influ
ences, some open and some hidden, always would be
at war against those rights and liberties. We cannot
too often be reminded that they always are in danger.
1 Burke, by John Morley.
2 The American Revolution.

23
It has been well said that men can reasonably de
fine their rights only in terms of their duties. The
government under which we live, of all forms of gov
emment, makes the greatest demand upon its citi
zens; for the preservation of the rights and liberties
which it was established to secure is dependent upon
the performance, intelligent, faithful, constant and
alert, of the duties of citizenship by its citizens.
"Eternal vigUance is the price of Uberty." And this
is true not only from the point of view of the inter
ests of each citizen but of the interests of all; for the
interests of each and of all cannot be disassociated.
They only are worthy of liberty who use it with self-
restraint and with respect and consideration for the
rights of others. "Where there is no law there is no
freedom." Abraham Lincoln once said: "At what
point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected?
I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up
amongst us ; it cannot come from abroad. If destruc
tion be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and
finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live
through all time, or die by suicide."
Of one thing we may have no doubt ; and it is that
the rights and liberties which our forefathers won
wiU not permanently endure unless those who have
received this priceless heritage prove themselves, by
their lives and deeds, to be worthy of it.

1.^ " JS
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