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The Second
Paragraph of the Declaration
 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 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 Governments
long established should not be changed for light
and transient Causes; and accordingly all
experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more
disposed to suffer, while Evils 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.
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The
Declaration is Proclaimed in Philadelphia July 8,
1776
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How the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God Limit
Government
The
Declaration's second paragraph presents the Founder's
analysis of how the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God limit
government. "Men," they said, are created equal . . . and
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,"
including, as we have seen, the rights to "Life, Liberty and
the Pursuit of Happiness." The purpose of government, they
continued, is to secure these rights. But, by "deriving
[its] just Powers from the Consent of the Governed,"
the only powers that a government can justly exercise are
the powers it is freely given by the consent of the
citizens.
Can
you see how the Founder's logic limits government? The Laws
of Nature and of Nature's God justified the Founders in
rejecting the age-old principle by which man was not only
governed but also enslaved - the rule of the jungle that
"might makes right." "Government," wrote George Washington,
"is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force." Whatever
else a government may do, the bottom line is that it can
compel citizens to do things - pay taxes, go to prison, or
surrender their property - by the use of force.
But,
if the government derives its just powers from the consent
of the citizens, then the government can acquire no greater
right to use force than the citizens themselves possess. The
government can command an army or a police force, and
thereby bring more force to bear than an individual
citizen could, but the government's right to use this
greater amount of force comes simply from the fact that it
acts with the moral authority of the entire society. The
government's right to use force is directly linked to, and
limited by, the right to use force that citizens themselves
possess. If I don't have the right to injure my neighbor or
take his property, then my government does not have that
right either, because my government cannot claim to have
acquired from me a power that is not mine to give. Thus,
through the Declaration, the Founders asserted that the
rules that governed the relationship between a free
government and its citizens - that determined when the
government could compel the actions of citizens by the use
of force - were the same rules that governed the
relationships between citizens. And these rules, they
said, are the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God.
What's
more, the Founders said that the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God gave people the right to change their
government: "[W]henever any Form of Government
becomes destructive of these Ends [protecting the rights
of the citizens], it is the right of the People to alter
or to abolish it . . . ." The right of the people to "alter
or abolish" a government that violates their rights comes
from the fact that, if the government is violating man's
God-given rights, it must be violating God's laws, and man's
first duty is always to obey God's law. It is, as Blackstone
said, "superior in obligation to any other." Thus, our
Founding Fathers could submit the case for independence to
the judgment of the world because, as Blackstone said,
"[t]his law of nature . . . is binding over all the
globe in all countries, and at all time: no human laws are
of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as
are valid derive all their force and all their authority,
mediately or immediately, from this original."
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