Part 9

But the Declaration, in the part I have omitted, affirms other things, and very different. It asserts facts and rights as appertaining to man, not in the Scriptures, but contrary thereto. Here is the passage:--

"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 a 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."

This is the affirmation of the liberty claimed by infidelity. It teaches as a fact that which is not true; and it claims as right that which God has not given. It asserts nothing new, however. It lays claim to that individual right beyond the limitation God has put, which man has ever asserted when in his struggle for liberty he has refused to be guided and controlled by the word and providence of his Creator.

The paragraph is a chain of four links, each of which is claimed to be a self-evident truth.

The first and controlling assertion is, "that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL;" which proposition, as I understand it, is, that every man and woman on earth is created with equal attributes of body and mind.

Secondly, and consequently, that every individual has, by virtue of his or her being created the equal of each and every other individual, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so in his or her own keeping that that right is unalienable without his or her consent.

Thirdly, it follows, that government among men must derive its just powers only from the consent of the governed; and, as the governed are the aggregate of individuals, then each person must consent to be thus controlled before he or she can be rightfully under such authority.

Fourthly, and finally, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as each such individual man or woman may think, then each such person may rightly set to work to alter or abolish such form, and institute a new government, on such principles and in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

This is the celebrated averment of created equality, and unalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, with the necessary consequences. I have fairly expanded its meaning. It is the old infidel averment. It is not true in any one of its assertions.

All Men not created equal.

It is not a truth, self-evident, that all men are created equal. Webster, in his dictionary, defines "Self-evident--Evident without proof or reason: clear conviction upon a bare presentation to the mind, as that two and three make five."

Now, I affirm, and you, I think, will not contradict me, that the position, "all men are created equal" is not self-evident; that the nature of the case makes it impossible for it to be self-evident. For the created nature of man is not in the class of things of which such self-evident propositions can by possibility be predicated. It is equally clear and beyond debate, that it is not self-evident that all men have unalienable rights, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and may be altered or abolished whenever to them such rights may be better secured. All these assertions can be known to be true or false only from revelation of the Creator, or from examination and induction of reasoning, covering the nature and the obligations of the race on the whole face of the earth. What revelation and examination of facts do teach, I will now show. The whole battle-ground, as to the truth of this series of averments, is on the first affirmation, "that all men are created equal." Or, to keep up my first figure, the strength of the chain of asserted truths depend on that first link. It must then stand the following perfect trial.

God reveals to us that he created man in his image, i.e. a spirit endowed with attributes resembling his own,--to reason, to form rule of right, to manifest various emotions, to will, to act,--and that he gave him a body suited to such a spirit, (Gen. i. 26, 27, 28;) that he created MAN "male and female," (Gen. i. 27;) that he made the woman "out of the man," (Gen. ii. 23;) that he made "the man the image and glory of God, but the woman the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man," (1 Cor. xi.;) that he made the woman to be the weaker vessel, (1 Pet. iii. 7.) Here, then, God created the race to be in the beginning TWO,--a male and a female MAN; one of them not equal to the other in attributes of body and mind, and, as we shall see presently, not equal in rights as to government. Observe, this inequality was fact as to the TWO, in the perfect state wherein they were created.

But these two fell from that perfect state, became depraved, and began to be degraded in body and mind. This statement of the original inequality in which man was created controls all that comes after, in God's providence and in the natural history of the race.

Providence, in its comprehensive teaching, "says that God, soon after the flood, subjected the races to all the influences of the different zones of the earth;"--"That he hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him, though he be not far from every one of us." (Acts xvii. 26, 27.)

These "bounds of their habitation" have had much to do in the natural history of man; for "all men" have been "created," or, more correctly, born, (since the race was "created" once only at the first,) with attributes of body and mind derived from the TWO unequal parents, and these attributes, in every individual, the combined result of the parental natures. "All men," then, come into the world under influences upon the amalgamated and transmitted body and mind, from depravity and degradation, sent down during all the generations past; and, therefore, under causes of inequality, acting on each individual from climate, from scenery, from food, from health, from sickness, from love, from hatred, from government, inconceivable in variety and power. Under such causes, to produce infinite shades of inequality, physical and mental, in birth--if "all men" were created equal (i.e. born equal) in attributes of body and mind--such "creation" would be a violation of all the known analogies in the world of life.

Do, then, the facts in man's natural history exhibit this departure from the laws of life and spirit? Do they prove that "all men are created equal"? Do they show that every man and every woman of Africa, Asia, Europe, America, and the islands of the seas, is created each one equal in body and mind to each other man or woman on the face of the earth, and that this has always been?

Need I extend these questions? Methinks, sir, I hear you say, what others have told me, that the "Declaration" is not to be understood as affirming what is so clearly false, but merely asserts that all men are "created equal" in natural rights.

I reply that that is not the meaning of the clause before us; for that is the meaning of the next sentence,--the second in the series we are considering.

There are, as I have said, four links to the chain of thought in this passage:--1. That all men are created equal. 2. That they are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights. 3. That government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. 4. That the people may alter and abolish it, &c.

These links are logical sequences. All men--man and woman--are created equal,--equal in attributes of body and mind; (for that is the only sense in which they could be created equal;) therefore they are endowed with right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, unalienable, except in their consent; consequently such consent is essential to all rightful government; and, finally and irresistibly, the people have supreme right to alter or abolish it, &c.

The meaning, then, I give to that first link, and to the chain following, is the sense, because, if you deny that meaning to the first link, then the others have no logical truth whatever. Thus:--

If all men are not created equal in attributes of body and mind, then the inequality may be so great that such men cannot be endowed with right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, unalienable save in their consent; then government over such men cannot rightfully rest upon their consent; nor can they have right to alter or abolish government in their mere determination.

Yea, sir, you concede every thing if you admit that the "Declaration" does not mean to affirm that all men are "created" equal in body and mind.

I will suppose in the Alps a community of Cretins,--i.e. deformed and helpless idiots,--but among them many from the same parents, who, in body and mind, by birth are comparatively Napoleons. Now, this inequality, physical and mental, by birth, makes it impossible that the government over these Cretins can be in their "consent." The Napoleons must rule. The Napoleons must absolutely control their "life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," for the good of the community. Do you reply that I have taken an extreme case? that everybody admits sensible people must govern natural fools? Ay, sir, there is the rub. Natural fools! Are some men, then, "created" natural fools? Very well. Then you also admit that some men are created just a degree above natural fools!--and, consequently, that men are "created" in all degrees, gradually rising in the scale of intelligence. Are they not "created" just above the brute, with savage natures along with mental imbecility and physical degradation? Must the Napoleons govern the Cretins without their "consent"? Must they not also govern without their "consent" these types of mankind, whether one, two, three, thirty, or three hundred degrees above the Cretins, if they are still greatly inferior by nature? Suppose the Cretins removed from the imagined community, and a colony of Australian ant-catchers or California lizard-eaters be in their stead: must not the Napoleons govern these? And, if you admit inequality to be in birth, then that inequality is the very ground of the reason why the Napoleons must govern the ant-catchers and lizard-eaters. Remove these, and put in their place an importation of African negroes. Do you admit their inferiority by "CREATION?" Then the same control over them must be the irresistible fact in common sense and Scripture of God. The Napoleons must govern. They must govern without asking "consent,"--if the inequality be such that "consent" would be evil, and not good, in the family--the state.

Yea, sir, if you deny that the "Declaration" asserts "all men are created equal" in body and mind, then you admit the inequality may be such as to make it impossible that in such cases men have rights unalienable save in their "consent;" and you admit it to be impossible that government in such circumstances can exist in such "consent" But, if you affirm the "Declaration" does mean that men are "created equal" in attributes of body and mind, then you hold to an equality which God, in his word, and providence, and the natural history of man, denies to be truth.

I think I have fairly shown, from Scripture and facts, that the first averment is not the truth; and have reduced it to an absurdity. I will now regard the second, third, and fourth links of the chain.

I know they are already broken; for, the whole chain being but an electric current from a vicious imagination, I have destroyed the whole by breaking the first link. Or was it but a cluster from a poisonous vine, then I have killed the branches by cutting the vine. I will, however, expose the other three sequences by a distinct argument covering them all.