I had thought the Declaration contemplated the progressive improvement in
the condition of all men everywhere; but no, it merely "was adopted for
the purpose of justifying the colonists in the eyes of the civilized
world in withdrawing their allegiance from the British crown, and
dissolving their connection with the mother country." Why, that object
having been effected some eighty years ago, the Declaration is of no
practical use now--mere rubbish--old wadding left to rot on the
battlefield after the victory is won.
I understand you are preparing to celebrate the "Fourth," to-morrow week.
What for? The doings of that day had no reference to the present; and
quite half of you are not even descendants of those who were referred to
at that day. But I suppose you will celebrate, and will even go so far as
to read the Declaration. Suppose, after you read it once in the
old-fashioned way, you read it once more with Judge Douglas's version. It
will then run thus:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all British subjects who
were on this continent eighty-one years ago were created equal to all
British subjects born and then residing in Great Britain."
And now I appeal to all--to Democrats as well as others--are you really
willing that the Declaration shall thus be frittered away?--thus left no
more, at most, than an interesting memorial of the dead past?--thus shorn
of its vitality and practical value, and left without the germ or even
the suggestion of the individual rights of man in it?
But Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing of
blood by the white and black races.
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