Winslow Warren

“ No one can dispute his marvellous capacity, the forcefulness of his dealings, and in many cases his patient, earnest attempt to better the conditions of those whom he rules; but he never has accepted nor understood the peculiar natures of his subjects nor enlisted their sympathies or affections. Without intending to be cruel, his cool assumption of the power to remake people and force them into his own mould has led him into errors which have caused great hardship and have ended in estrangement and hatred. ”

“ But taking whatever view we please of the intention of the makers in this regard, there can be no question that the Declaration announced important and high ideals for the future. Jefferson emphasized this when he said, “It is indeed an animating thought that while we are securing the rights of ourselves and our posterity we are pointing out the way to struggling nations who wish like us to emerge from their tyrannies also,” and again, “Every man and every body of men on earth possesses the right of self government. They receive it with their being from the hand of nature.” ”

“ Abandoning the principles of the Declaration, the white man’s burden means to the black or yellow man political slavery and wrong.
[18]
Even the Anglo-Saxon, with all his success in many respects, as a colonist, has utterly failed to lead an inferior race up to self-government—he may have carried with him some material advantages, but his assumed and vaunted burden cannot be separated from his love of power and soaring ambition.
His dominating superiority makes him a hard master of another race, and he fails utterly in sympathetic appreciation of racial differences and characteristics. ”

“ In many places in this country we have a practical and vulgar despotism under the forms of a Republic,—the people can and do assert themselves when thoroughly aroused, but they are long suffering, and only when the bossism becomes too flagrant and offensive can they be led to enforce that equality before the law and to exhibit that latent power which is necessary to prove that genuine Republicanism still exists. ”

“ Take a concrete case like the England of to-day, excluding, of course, her colonies—her ideals may not be the same as ours, but it would be a hazardous statement to make that the rights of the people as set forth in our Declaration are not preserved in England in their full significance quite as well as in our own boss-ridden states and cities. England has a monarchy in form, but a people’s monarchy, and subject to the people’s will, and it may well be questioned whether the people there do not express their will with quite as much facility as here. ”

“ However old the subject may be, and however hopeless the thought of adding anything new to the discussion, it may still be interesting to consider this extraordinary Declaration from a purely historical standpoint, and to revive our recollections of its truths, as well as to consider how far in reality they were intended to go. As no political party has any proprietorship in those truths, and no party has yet taken a position in opposition to them, we can freely discuss them in the hope of clarifying our view of the deeper meaning of the Revolution. ”

“ Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends (referring to the rights and liberties of the people) , it is the right of the people to alter and abolish it, and to constitute a 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. ”

“ Egypt, which on the surface shows good results, has done little but exchange a Turkish for an English ruler, so far a gain, for it has been followed by an apparent advance in material prosperity and a lightening of the burdens, but it is not easy to ascertain how far the prosperity has really benefited the people; and remembering that Egypt was once the centre of advanced civilization, it is by no means proved that as a free people they would not have been further on the road towards a hopeful self-government. ”

“ Public legislation should be impartial in the sense that it should be directed towards bettering conditions and repairing injustice to all classes of people, but none should be enacted except with the understanding that peace is always to be preserved and that the wrongs of special parties shall not be redressed at the expense of the rights of the community as a whole. ”

“ Separating from the Declaration its catalogue of specific and temporary reasons for revolt, its whole purport is to set [10] forth—the natural freedom and equality of all men before the law; the fundamental right of those governed to pass upon the form of government they shall live under, and to subvert it if not satisfactory; and the right of all men to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,—this last phrase seeming a broad generalization capable of wide interpretation. ”

“ It does not impugn their good faith or wisdom that like all great leaders of revolutions they failed to estimate the force of the current bearing them on; but it is plain to our eyes that a revolt in the name of the King against the Parliament to establish rights that King and Parliament alike desired to [8] withhold was a fiction which in the nature of things could only be temporary, and which the first clash of arms was certain to dissipate into thin air. Events moved too fast for men’s control, and independence came because no other result than that of absolute submission was possible. ”

“ No stronger exemplification can be found of the principle that a people is better fitted for self-government than any other, and that its own experience and efforts offer better tutelage than the wisest and most beneficent rule of foreign masters.
The plans of statesmen, the ambition of nations may come into conflict with the doctrines of the Declaration, but they are of no concern as compared with the truth or falsity of the principles it contains. ”

“ Consider for a moment how rapidly at last America drifted towards revolution and separation, and how each step forward, as usual, lopped off the hesitating and timid, and made it more and more difficult for the bolder leaders to retrace their path. ”

“ We are all familiar with the stated causes for revolt, but they were the excitement of the moment as compared with the pride of conscious strength and the desire America had to be left alone to work out her own problems.
The special grievances, the principles in dispute brought forth the great leaders, but probably their minds were less influenced by them than they imagined, and back of all was the feeling only partially recognized that America was a nation and needed no instruction or guidance from abroad. ”

“ To point the contrast, and to evidence the truth of the principles of the Declaration, we may well consider the rising empire of Japan, inhabited by a people differing but little from the neighboring races, a century ago not far removed from barbarism, pagan in religion, though tolerant, Asiatic in habits and thought, self-governed and independent because it has been left to work out its own problems, yet now by its own energy [20] advancing towards civilization and Christianity, and rapidly becoming a great power in the East. ”

“ The Devil’s advocates are uncommonly busy, and if Christian preachers believe in the Gospel of Peace, they have a wide field for Christian work. He who talks of war as anything but a curse to a nation and a crime against humanity should remember these words of General Sherman, who knew what war was: “I confess without shame that I am tired and sick of the war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentation of distant families appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. ”

“ Given the capacity to form some government and you have all the conditions necessary for improvement, and in the Providence of God a people can better be trusted to improve itself than it can to gain in self-government under the subjection of others. ”

“ No such qualifying phrases can be found in the Declaration itself, and if such were in the minds of the statesmen of the day it is passing strange that men who had the power to express themselves in so lucid and straightforward a way never hinted then or thereafter at any such limitations. ”

“ If it is not to be followed as a standard of governmental ethics, and is a visionary statement of unpractical theories, we seem somehow to have lost our bearings, and to have parted with our guiding lights. ”

“ The equality before the law asserted in the Declaration never implied equality of intelligence or opportunity, nor did it necessarily imply universal suffrage as a fixed principle. Between 1776, when the Declaration was issued, and 1789, the time of the adoption of the Constitution, there were in the thirteen States various forms of government, and none of them with universal suffrage. A free people may see fit to restrict or enlarge their own rights ”

“ Outside of our country it is not a cheering prospect that, despite Hague Conferences and all efforts to promote peace between nations, the opening years of this Twentieth Century witness a disastrous and bloody war between great empires of the West and East, and upon questions that seem to involve little else than extensions of territory at the expense of other nations. ”

“ The most perplexing problems before the country are, as they have long been, those connected with the continual strife between capital and labor, and it is singular and not altogether encouraging that such conditions should exist and seemingly grow worse in a country affording boundless opportunity for both laboring man and capitalist and where the chances for progress and improvement are so great. ”

“ The Peace Conference, to be held in Boston in the Fall, is a hopeful sign; for this Republic above all others should stand for peace, and this Association and all patriotic societies which venerate the Founders of this Republic and believe that the principles they advocated lead to peace and amity between nations can contribute to the hastening of the time when armaments shall be reduced and the reign of peace in the world be brought nearer. ”

“ If we look to the Dutch colonies in Asia, we find at best a condition of peonage and political servitude and a war that has had little cessation in fifty years. There again it is force and fear and not self-government. ”

“ No one assumes that the Signers foresaw all the temptations [13] and difficulties likely to arise as the nation grew stronger,—that was as impossible as for their wildest dreams to compass its marvellous growth; but they knew full well that the doctrines they asserted would have to meet severe tests and their sublime confidence in the virtue and constancy of the people is the more manifest that they were willing to take the risk of future conditions. ”

“ In dealing with our Indian tribes the government has proceeded upon the theory that they were nations, they have not been taxed, and although our treatment of them has not been creditable, our theories have been consistent; still, I have no idea that the framers of the Declaration believed that these tribes, or Oriental nations, or any semi-civilized peoples were fitted for a Republic, or that for them such a form would be wise or safe ”

“ The Declaration did not proclaim that every people in the world were fitted for a Republican form of government,—that form was unquestionably the ideal of the fathers, but the essence of the document was that each nation must determine for itself what form it preferred, and so long as the people were freely consulted, and reserved the right to change when their interests were not properly served, the principles were not infringed upon. ”

“ In German, French, or Russian colonies no one seeks for self-government, and the hopelessness of their situation is that neither fraternization with the people exists nor improvement of conditions by emigration from the ruling countries. ”

“ No day can better emphasize these thoughts than this anniversary, and if in avoiding anything of a partisan nature I have willingly laid myself open to the charge of triteness, let us remember that the trite things of this world are often of the most importance, and the more familiar they are, the more apt they are to be disregarded or forgotten. ”

“ March 17, 1776, Boston was evacuated by the British, the scene of action was transferred to a larger field at New York, and then, July 4, 1776, came the time to write the Revolution into the Declaration of Independence, so that the world might behold the new nation and find also a government with a novelty, one that based itself upon certain ideal truths, and thus differentiated the American Revolution from all preceding revolutions. ”

“ The military spirit prevailing everywhere, even in our own country, and the apotheosis of force, requiring such enormous military and naval appropriations, give food for thought, and in this connection we may well consider whether the alarming increase of crime, the lynchings at the South and West, and the disregard of law in many high quarters, are not the natural result of such a spirit. ”

“ We all must desire to ascertain if possible whether those who hold the theories I have stated are correct, and whether our predecessors have been cherishing illusory and transitory principles or eternal truths, for if the former are right our compass now points in a new direction, and we may as well change our course to correspond, even though we reach the well-worn track that European nations have been following since we originally steered away from them. ”

“ No true American, whatever his party allegiance, can avoid or lightly treat these important questions, nor can the right solution come from a consultation of his interests or prejudices, nor from any source other than the experience of the years since 1776, and a careful consideration of the wisdom or folly of the teachings of those who have made this country what it is. ”