mutual interests of both countries," and claimed the rights of "life, liberty and property" without reference to the British Constitution or the American Charters. Jefferson tells us that throughout the period of nearly two years which intervened between the assembling of the Congress and the promulgation of the Declaration the principles of the law of nature and of nations set forth in the preamble were discussed, and that when he wrote the preamble he looked at no book, but simply stated the conclusions at which the Congress, with apparently practical unanimity, had arrived.

But it is not necessary, it would seem, to resort to external evidence to prove that the Declaration is based on the doctrine of the Reformation. In several places it seems to expressly declare that the rights claimed by America are claimed under the law of nature and of nations based on divine revelation and on human reason. In the first sentence, it declares that "the law of Nature and of Nature's God" entitles the Americans,—it having "become necessary" for them "to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with" the people of Great Britain,—to "assume a separate and equal station among the powers of the earth." In the next it declares not only "that all men are created equal," but that they have "unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," not by virtue of any social contract or other form of consent, but by "endowment,"—that is, by voluntary gift and grant—of "their Creator." This doctrine of "endowment" of men with "unalienable rights," by "their Creator," is of course the Christian doctrine. In the concluding part of the Declaration, it is declared not only that the United Colonies, as "the United States of America," are "free and independent states," but that they "of right ought to be" such, and in that paragraph the "connection between them and the State of Great Britain" is not merely declared to be "totally dissolved" but it is also declared that it "ought to be" so dissolved. There was certainly no "right" of the United Colonies, as the United States of America, to be free and independent states and to declare the connection between them and the State of Great Britain to be dissolved except upon principles of some implied common law which was supreme over the Constitution of the State of Great Britain and the Charters and Constitutions of the Colonies, for none of these Constitutions or Charters made provision for the dissolution of the connection on any contingency.

There is necessarily implied in the statement that "all men are created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," the conception of the right of human equality as a divine right. But is there any other basis than divine right on which to rest a doctrine of human equality? A doctrine of human equality by human right, is a doctrine of equality by consent. But if a man can consent regarding his equality with another man or with other men, he can, as has been often pointed out, consent himself into a state of permanent inequality, inferiority and slavery, even supposing that a basis can be found for the assumption of an original state of equality arising from consent.

Assuming then, for the sake of argument at least, that the proposition that all men are created equal is and was intended to be a statement of the Reformation doctrine in its broadest and most universal form, a clue is given for the interpretation of the propositions which follow. If politics, as well as religion, assumes as its basis the proposition that all men are spiritual beings in direct and permanent relationship with God, and hence equal as regards one another, then the purpose of both politics and religion is to preserve this equality,—politics by compulsion and religion by persuasion. Because all men are spiritual beings in direct relationship with a common Creator who has established laws under which He is the final judge, which men can ascertain and apply through revelation and reason, men are declared to have rights. Man is thus distinguished from animals, who have no rights because they have no capacity to know the law—a knowledge which must inevitably precede a knowledge of the right. Politics looks at the universal needs of all men,—those needs which each man has in common with all humanity—and from the universal needs assumes a universal unalienable right of each against each other and against all, and a universal duty of each toward each other and toward all, to supply these needs. Religion regards the supplying of these universal needs as a duty toward God. Hence politics adopts as its second self-evident truth, the proposition that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The primary and universal needs of all mankind, regarded as equal creatures of a common Creator, are the need of life, the need of liberty and the need of pursuing happiness. These needs are unalienable. No man can rid himself of them without destroying himself as an equal creature of a common Creator. Consequently the rights and duties corresponding to these unalienable needs are themselves unalienable. There is no denial here of alienable rights and duties. But it is clearly laid down as a fundamental principle of the all-pervasive common law, that rights given by the Creator are unalienable, and that no human being, however emphatically he may declare, or will, or agree to the contrary, may by any possible act of any other human being or of any set of human beings, whether calling themselves a government or not, or by any possible means, deprive himself, or be deprived of the right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—these being necessarily incidental to the original right of equality.

To apply this interpretation to the relationship between ourselves and our brethren of the Insular regions: They are, according to the universal and common law of nature and of nations, as we and all other human beings are, equally creatures of a common Creator and equal with us. Under that all-pervasive law, they, with us, and all other human beings, are created with the unalienable need of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and therefore with corresponding unalienable rights. Under that law we cannot deprive them of these unalienable rights, nor allow them to deprive themselves of their unalienable rights, nor allow a part of them to deprive the others of their unalienable rights. According to the philosophy of the Revolution, every man, every community, every state and every nation is bound to enforce, and cause to be enforced, this law of nature and of nations, which prevents the voluntary or involuntary alienation by any man, any community, any state or any nation of his or its rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The Declaration, having thus described the ends of all government, proceeds to describe the methods by which these ends are accomplished. It declares that "to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Governments, it is declared, are instituted solely to secure to each and every being his and their unalienable rights, as equal creatures of a common Creator, to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Here is a plain denial that government is universally the expression of the will of the majority, for it is matter of common knowledge that in only a few of the most highly civilized countries of the world does the will of the majority, as it is expressed, secure to each and every person his and their unalienable rights of