name of International Law, which treats of the temporary relations between independent states. But the conception of the 'law of nature and of nations' was, as has been said, vastly wider than this. It was a universal law governing all possible forms of human relationship, and hence all possible relations between communities and states, and therefore determining the rights of communities and states which were in permanent relationship with one another. Based on the theory of the equality of all men by reason of their common creation, it recognized just public sentiment as the ultimate force in the world for effectuating this equality, and considered free statehood as the prime and universal requisite for securing that free development and operation of public sentiment which was necessary in order that public sentiment might be just.

While this philosophy of the Reformation was thus extending itself in America, both among the Governments and the people, and in Europe among the people, the Governments of Europe, though not recognizing the existence of any 'law of nature and of nations' whatever, were nevertheless acting on the basis that such a law did exist and was based on the proposition that all men are created unequal, or that some are created equal and some unequal. The alleged superior was sometimes a private citizen, sometimes a noble, sometimes a monarch, sometimes a government, sometimes a state, sometimes a nation. The inferior was said to be "dependent" upon the superior—that is, related to him directly and without any connecting justiciary medium, so that the will of the superior controlled the will and action of the inferior. It was this alleged law of nature and of nations, based on an alleged divine or self-evident right of inequality—an inequality arising from creation—which was the basis of the British Declaratory Act of 1766, which may perhaps be called "The Declaration of Dependence." In that Act, the State of Great Britain declared, (basing itself evidently upon the law of nature and of nations, since there was no treaty,) that the American Colonies "have been, are, and of right ought to be, subordinate unto and dependent upon the Imperial Crown and Parliament of Great Britain," and that the Parliament of Great Britain "had, hath, and of right ought to have, full power and authority 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 expression "of right ought to have" clearly meant "has by the law of nature and of nations." Great Britain was thus declared to be the superior of America, with power according to the law of nature and of nations, to control, by its will, the will and action of America as a "dependent" country, and of each and all of its inhabitants as "dependent" individuals.

We discover, then, from an examination of the circumstances surrounding the Declaration of Independence, a most interesting situation. A young nation, separated by a wide ocean from Europe, settled by men who were full of the spirit of the Reformation, deeply convinced, after a national life of one hundred and fifty years, that these principles were of universal application, was suddenly met by a denial of these principles from the European State with which they were most intimately related. This denial was accompanied by acts of that State which amounted to a prohibition of the application of these principles in American political life. This European State was indeed the mother-country of America, and the Americans were bound to their English brethren by every tie of interest and affection. The Americans were only radical Englishmen, who gloried in the fact that England of all the countries of Europe had gone farthest in accepting the principles of the Reformation, and who had emigrated reluctantly from England, because they were out of harmony with the tendency of English political life to compromise between the principles of Mediævalism and the principles of the Reformation. The Declaratory Act of 1766 brought clearly into comparison the political system of America, as opposed to the political system of Europe. It was inevitable from that moment that the American System, based on the principles of the Reformation in their broadest sense and their most universal application and briefly summed up in the proposition that "all men are created equal," must conquer, or be conquered by, the European System, based either on the principles of Mediævalism, summed up in the proposition that "all men are created unequal," or on a compromise between the principles of Mediævalism and the Reformation, summed up in the proposition that "some men are created equal, and some unequal."

In the light of this situation, let us examine the words of the Declaration. The philosophical statements in which we are interested, read:

The most reasonable interpretation, as it seems to me, of the statement that "all men are created equal" is, as I have said, that it is, and was intended to be, an epitome of the doctrine of the Reformation. There will be those who will scoff at the suggestion that a political body like the Continental Congress should have based the whole political life of the nation upon a religious doctrine. But it is to be remembered that the Continental Congress was not an ordinary political body. It was the most philosophic and at the same time the most religious and the most intellectually untrammeled body of men who ever gathered to discuss political theories and measures. Meeting under circumstances where weakness of resources compelled the most absolute justness in their reasons for taking up arms, they must have discussed their position from the standpoint of morality and religion. John Adams tells us that one of the main points discussed at the opening of the Continental Congress, when they were framing the ultimatum which finally took the form of the Fourth Resolution was, whether the Congress should "recur to the law of nature" as determining the rights of America. He says that he was "very strenuous for retaining and insisting on it," and the Resolutions show that he succeeded, for they based the American position on the principles of "free government" and "good government," recognized that the "consent" of the American Colonies to Acts of the British Parliament justly regulating the matters of common interest was a "consent from the necessity of the case and a regard to the