matter-of-course.

All this is not moving, not propelling, not

warming-it is political, cold water clinic.

Now, was the union-impulse, which moved the democratic masses, the true one in our time? The result of the election says, yes! It was high TIME to settle in the Union by a decisive popular vote the most vexatious business-question: shall the legislation of the late Congress in regard to the equal rights of our citizens in the territories to rule themselves by their own laws, as the rest of us, also in regard to free and bound labor, be conclusive or not? That people in Pennsylvania were not deceived by the liberty agitation, like others, is owing to their steering for this unionresult since 1819, by resolves of their legislature and state democratic committee, an important item in the history of this election.

The plain result of this grand election movement is, then, that the union sentiment is a stronger social impulse than abstract liberty, and justly so, because without a firm harmonious union we could not enjoy our liberty at all. May this sentiment predominate for ever.

I mentioned the year 1860. Then returns the presidential election and a new run for the offices and their emoluments. It may be that pretext, liberty of the slave, will then be again made use of to strengthen the party out of office and power. You will know then what it means, and not be deceived.

LETTER XLII.

Declaration of Independence. - Defining of the Position of the Young Nation. Explanation of the Sentence, "that all men are born equal.". Jefferson's Letter explaining it.^

In this letter I devote a few words to the Declaration of Independence, adopted, after an animated debate, on the 4th of July, 1776, by the Congress. Its author, as you know, was Thomas Jefferson, the most illustrious compeer of Washington. The principal object of this celebrated document was: To define the position of the young nation and its government; to declare why a separation from the government of Great Britain had taken place, and to enlisten the sympathies of the civilized nations and their governments in their favor. This declaration bears the character of the exciting times; it boldly defies the authority of a proud royal master, who could not listen to humble reiterated petitions for relief and remonstrances against arbitrary legislation in small matters, involving, however, important principles. It was, for the time-being, the platform of the young American nation, upon which the war of the Revolution was fought. You may call it an arraignment, an appeal, a challenge, or the "shriek" of an outraged people; but it is no law. It takes high ground, in powerful words, which, when sharply examined, would not always bear criticism. The sentence, that all men are created equal, is not exactly true, both physically and politically. Not two men, even not two children in the same family, are created alike. The same diversity which distinguishes all created things, animate and inanimate, prevails in our race. Politically men are as different as the policies under which they are born. Not two men are politically equal, and never will be. Women and men are never absolutely equal in political regard. There is no absolute equality of civil rights, although every member of society has a right to be treated according to the general principles of justice. Such allocutions to nations, or to masses, meetings, etc., are of a rather poetical

nature, calculated to rouse the feelings. Only in this form they answer to their purpose; it is wrong to take them from another view. All platforms, all addresses of generals to their armies on the battle-field, belong to the same class of literary and oratorical products. If this sentence has a political meaning, it is no other than that the authors of this declaration were of the opinion, that privileged classes, as nobles, possessed of exclusive hereditary rights, as governing, exemption from taxes, etc., are incompatible with justice. And then it was a seasonable fling at the English king and nobility, who opposed the independence of the thirteen colonies, because the people there were BORN SUBJECTS of the English crown. This was especially opposed by Jefferson. In a much later letter, dated Monticello, June 24, 1827, upon an invitation to the anniversary of American Independence, the patriot wrote: "May it [our form of government] be to the world what I believe it will be, [to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all], the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. The form which we have substituted restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened or opening to the rights of man. The general spread of the lights of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few, booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God."

No better explanation of the true meaning of this much-disputed sentence can be found than that in these lines of the author of the Declaration of Independence. He hated in 1827, as well as in 1776, the men who pretend that they are born expressly to rule mankind. This Jefferson considered wrong, and denied that God ever had created a man for this purpose. So you may never mistake this sentence about the equal creation of men, as so many do, from mere party views, or a too strictly literal interpretation.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, JULY 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America in Congress assembled.

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 entitled 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 man 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; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that goverments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evil are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present king of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world :

He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accomodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature -a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the repository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the

people at large for their exercise the state remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states- for that purpose obstructing the laws of naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriation of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies, without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws -giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us; for protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states; for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world; for imposing taxes on us without our consent; for depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury; for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offences; for abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies; for taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering, fundamentally, the forms of our governments; for suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsover.

He has abdicated government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections among us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.