pression has agreed with them, or there has been no oppression"; and contrast this with the reverent solemnity with which John Adams speaks of his associates as belonging to "that mighty line of heroes and confessors and martyrs who since the beginning of history have done battle for the dignity of and happiness of human nature against the leagued assailants of both."

John Adams was one of the most hardheaded of the radical leaders, no unbalanced visionary dreaming fantastic dreams, and yet John Adams, in 1775, clearly thought of himself as engaged in a great epoch-making event, far transcending any mere rupture of the British Empire or the establishment of an independent state. This is how he thinks of the meaning of the Revolution:

The form of government which you admire when its principles are pure is admirable; indeed, it is productive of everything which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed as human nature is corrupted. Such a government is only to be supported by pure religion or austere morals. Public virtue cannot exist in a nation without private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power, and glory established in the minds of the people, or there can be no republican government, or any real liberty, and this public. passion must be superior to all private passions. . . .

Is there in the world a nation which deserves this character? There have been several, but they are no more. Our dear Americans perhaps have as much of it as any nation now existing, and New England perhaps has more than the rest of America. But I have seen all along my life such selfishness and littleness even in New England that I sometimes tremble to think that, although we are engaged in the best cause that ever employed the human heart, yet the prospect of success is doubtful not for want of power or of wisdom, but of virtue.

In no unreal sense John Adams and his associates thought of themselves as undertaking something new in the history of the world; they were undertaking the novel experiment of founding that ideal community, a republic founded upon virtue and devoted to the regeneration of the human race.

III

It is thus clear that the American Revolution was a twofold movement: it was a movement for the separation from Great Britain; it was also a movement for the abolition of class privilege, for the democratization of American politics and society, in some measure for the inauguration of an ideal state. The Declaration of Independence reflects and expresses this twofold character of the Revolution. On the one hand it is a declaration of

the reasons which justified the separation from Great Britain; on the other hand it is a charter of democracy, a charter which expresses in classic form the universal rights of mankind.

The Declaration of Independence is a short document, which may be printed in four small pages; and the larger part of it is devoted to the specific grievances against the King of Great Britain. The Parliament is not mentioned because the revolutionists had accepted, at that time, the federal theory of the Empire-the theory that the Colonies had never been subject to the Parliament, but only to the king. And so the Declaration, affirming that "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," proceeds to enumerate a long list of such injuries and usurpations, all of which have to do with specific acts: laying taxes on the Colonies or designed to limit or destroy the legislative independence of the colonial governments. This part of the Declaration is now rarely read and never remembered; and rightly so, for these specific acts charged against George III, and once so vital, are now dead issues.

But there is another part of the Declara

tion-a short ten lines of print-which every one thinks of when the Declaration is mentioned, and which is the only part of that famous document which most people have ever kept in mind. This part of the Declaration, the most significant and the most famous part, is as follows:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and 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 abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

On first thought it may appear strange that the part of the Declaration of Independence which is most famous and best remembered is precisely the part which is least directly concerned with the grievances which led the Colonies to declare independence. But the reason for this is simple. It is that the specific grievances of the Colonies concern the world but little, while the principles upon which just government rests are of universal in

terest.

The few phrases which make the Declaration famous deal not with the rights of Americans or Englishmen only, but with the rights of man; and in so far as the principles which they proclaim are valid, they are valid for Frenchmen, or Russians, or Chinese no less than for Americans and Englishmen. This is why these phrases still live, and this is why the American Revolution has a universal and permanent as well as a local and temporary importance. This universal significance is that for the first time in the modern world a new and potentially powerful nation was "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," and founded upon the principle that the legitimacy of any government rests upon the will of the people instead of the will of God or of the State. And for a hundred years the example of the United States has been one of the strongest supports of this new faith which, however often forgotten or betrayed, is now accepted by the better part of the world.

When the Revolutionary War began few people in Europe supposed that the Colonies could win their independence. If they had been entirely united their chances would have been better. But the fact is that at least one-third of the people (this is the estimate of John Adams) were indifferent or actively