Personal Note: All I can add to this as a personal note, is read slowly, surely, and with emotion deserving to the principles upon which we have been handed.
( Fountains of the Great Deep )
“In setting forth the justifying causes of their separation from Great Britain, your fathers opened the fountains of the great deep. For the first time since the creation of the world, the act which constituted a great people laid the foundation of their government upon the unalterable and eternal principles of human rights. They were comprised in a few short sentences and were delivered with the unqualified confidence of self - evident truths.
We hold, says the Declaration, 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 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. . . .
The history of mankind had never before furnished an example of a government directly and expressly instituted upon this principle. . . . until the Declaration of Independence. . . . and never from that to the present day has there been one moment of regret on the part of the people whom they thus declared independent at this mighty change of their condition, nor one moment of distrust of the justice of the declaration. . . .
Every individual whose name was affixed to that paper has finished his career upon earth, and who at this day would not deem it a blessing to have had his name recorded on that list? The act of abolishing the government under which they had lived, of renouncing and abjuring the allegiance by which they had been bound . . . stands recorded in the annals of the human race as one among the brightest achievements of human virtue, applauded on earth, ratified and confirmed by the fiat of Heaven. . . .
The position thus assumed by this One People consisting of thirteen free and independent States was new in the history of the world. It was complicated and compounded of elements never before believed susceptible of being blended together. . . .
This was a novelty in the moral philosophy of nations and it is the essential point of difference between the system of government announced in the Declaration of Independence and those systems which had until then prevailed among men. A moral Ruler of the Universe, the Governor and Controller of all human power, is the only unlimited sovereign acknowledged by the Declaration of Independence, and it claims for the United States of America ( when assuming their equal station among the nations of the earth ) only the power to do all that may be done of right. . . .
It was an experiment upon the heart of man. . . . - - - - John Quincy Adams. July 4th, 1837.
May God bless each of you,
David & Julie
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