" And the Declaration goes
on, in temperate and guarded language, to assert the right of a people to
change their form of government when it becomes destructive of the ends
named.
Although the genesis of these sentiments seems to be French rather than
English, and equality is not defined, and critics have differed as to
whether the equality clause is independent or qualified by what follows,
it is not necessary to suppose that Thomas Jefferson meant anything
inconsistent with the admitted facts of nature and of history. It is
important to bear in mind that the statesmen of our Revolution were
inaugurating a political and not a social revolution, and that the
gravamen of their protest was against the authority of a distant crown.
Nevertheless, these dogmas, independent of the circumstances in which
they were uttered, have exercised and do exercise a very powerful
influence upon the thinking of mankind on social and political topics,
and are being applied without limitations, and without recognition of the
fact that if they are true, in the sense meant by their originators, they
are not the whole truth. It is to be noticed that rights are mentioned,
but not duties, and that if political rights only are meant, political
duties are not inculcated as of equal moment.
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