time that I used these terms, I based myself on principles which were those of free statehood, just connection and union, to which I adhere to this day.

Taking the Declaration of Independence, therefore, as the exposition of the fundamental principles on which all American political theory is based, and to which all American policy must conform, let me state briefly the general meaning and purpose of this instrument, as I understand it.

As a result of the discussion for twelve years preceding the Declaration, the doctrine of the extension of the British Constitution to the American Colonies, which from their situation, could never be represented on equal terms in Parliament, was found to be useless for the protection of American rights, political or civil; and the doctrine that their rights were dependent on the Colonial Charters was found to be inadequate, for these Charters, while protecting the civil rights of the Americans to some extent, proceeded on the theory that they held all their political rights at the will or whim of Great Britain. The Americans felt and knew that they were entitled to political, as well as civil rights, and they all firmly believed that each so-called "colony" was a free state and subject to no external control beyond what was necessary to preserve their relationship with Great Britain on just terms to all the parties. This doctrine of free statehood as a universal right is, as I understand it, the central idea of the Declaration.

Assuming this to be the central idea, let us see how this idea is reached; and for that purpose, let us notice the exact language of the Declaration. The first paragraph reads:

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have con

nected 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 entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The "causes of separation" are prefaced by a number of propositions determining the nature of the "political bands" by which one people may be "connected with" another. These propositions are all rules of human conduct, and are therefore principles of law, though they are called "self-evident truths." This part of the Declaration reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men 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."

The conception of the universal right of free statehood is reached, in the Declaration, through a series of three propositions, each stated to be self-evident, and yet all forming a sequence. The basal proposition is, that "all men are created equal." Rufus Choate and John James Ingalls have declared this proposition and the succeeding one that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to be "glittering generalities." Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, in his speech at Gettysburg, at the most

solemn and stirring moment in the country's history, declared that the proposition that all men are created equal was the foundation-idea of the nation, to which it was dedicated by the Fathers.

There are, it is to be believed, many who will be ready and willing to accept as true the statement, which every student of political history must admit to be true, that the philosophy of the American Revolution was a religious philosophy. It is indeed perhaps not too much to say that the period of the American Revolution was the period in which both political and religious thinking reached the highest point, and that there is no question of government which has since arisen which was not either solved by the Revolutionary statesmen or put in the process of solution.

The political philosophy of the American Revolution has long been confused with that of the French Revolution. As matter of fact, they stand at opposite poles. Our philosophy was religious, the French nonreligious.

From the earliest times, the political philosophy of the people of America was directly connected with the religious and political philosophy of the Reformation. The essence of that philosophy was that man was essentially a spiritual being; that each man was the direct and immediate creature of a personal God, who was the First Cause; that each man as such a spiritual creature was in direct and immediate relationship with God, as his Creator; that between men, as spiritual creatures, there was no possibility of comparison by the human mind, the divine spark which is the soul being an essence incapable of measurement and containing possibilities of growth, and perhaps of deterioration, known only to God; that therefore all men, as essentially spiritual beings, were equal in the sight of all

other men. Luther and Calvin narrowed this philosophy by assuming that this spiritual nature and this equality were properties only of professing Christians, but Fox, followed by Penn, enlarged and universalized it by treating the Christian doctrine as declaratory of a universal truth. Penn's doctrine of the universal "inner light," which was in every man from the beginning of the world and will be to the end, and which is Christ, according to which doctrine every human being who has ever been, who is, or who is to be, is inevitably by virtue of his humanity, a spiritual being, the creature of God, and, as directly and immediately related spiritually to Him, the equal of every other man,—marked the completion of the Reformation.

According to this theory, the life of animals who, being created unequal, are from birth to death engaged in a struggle for existence in which the fittest survives, is eternally and universally differentiated by a wide and deep chasm from the life of men, who, being created equal, are engaged in a struggle against the deteriorating forces of the universe in which each helps each and all, and in which each and all labor that each and all may not only live, but may live more and more abundantly.

According to this theory, also, the glaring inequalities of physical strength, of intellectual power and cunning, and of material wealth, which are, on a superficial view, the determining facts of all social and political life, are merely unequal distributions of the common wealth and each person is considered to hold and use his strength, his talents and his property for the development of each and all as beings essentially equal.

According to this theory, also, there is for mankind no "state of nature" in which men are equally independent and equally disregardful of others, which by

agreement or consent becomes a "state of society" in which men are equally free and equally regardful of others, but the "state of nature" and the "state of society" are one and the same thing. Every man is regarded as created in a state of society and brotherhood with all other men, and the "state of nature, man's natural estate and condition,-is the "state of society."

Were anyone asked to sum up in the most concise form possible the ultimate doctrine of the Reformation, he could, perhaps, epitomize it no more correctly than by the single proposition, "All men are created equal." This doctrine of human equality arising from common creation, growing out of Lutheranism and Calvinism through the intellectual influence of Penn, and the broadening effect of life in this new and fruitful land, underlay all American life and institutions.

One of the results of this final theory of the Reformation was the conception, by certain devout men and great scholars, of a "law of nature and of nations," based on revelation and reason, which was universally prevalent, and which governed the relations of men, of communities, of states and of nations. Out of this there had then emerged the conception which has now become common under the 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