Resolution upon. Conclusion of Part III. LYMAN HALL, RESOLVED, That this declaration be sent to the several assemblies, conventions, and committees, or councils of safety; and to the several commanding officers of the continental troops; that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the army. If we knew nothing more of the history of those men who guided our councils and our armies during this trying period, than that they purposed, and resolved, and wrought out our independence; that they were instrumental in erecting the fair fabric of government which has made us so free, so happy, and so prosperous a nation; we should be apt to think that heaven had endowed them with superior wisdom and THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. PART III. gress at virtue. But they were religious men; and to whatever The coloname, or creed, or sect they belonged, they forgot all nial conthese party discriminations, and remembered only Philadelthose fundamental principles of their religion which phia, 1776. were embraced alike in the faith of all. They were self-governed men; and in their exalted virtue they abandoned all considerations of self, and sought solely and only the good of their country. They periled their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to secure its liberties. They were persuaded, they felt, that the contest was one which involved the dearest and most important of human rights and human destinies; that on the issue of it depended the proudest hopes of AMERICA not only, but of all mankind. They loved justice and hated oppression; and they felt that the triumph of those principles of civil and religious liberty for which they were contending, was the sure precursor of infinite good to the whole human family. They thought not of the present alone, they thought, and acted, and lived, and struggled, and suffered for the future; they forgot all else in their zeal for posterity. Freely and cheerfully exposed their lives, devoted their property, and consecrated their blood, to achieve for and transmit to them freedom and independence; satisfied beyond all doubt, that on that independence alone, depended the most glorious prospects that had ever been opened to the world. Such were the feelings, the views, the hopes, the faith, which inspired the fathers of our revolution. The history of mankind has never before known such illustrious benefactors, such generous patriotism, such disinterested philanthropy, such unselfish regard for the liberties and the welfare of our race. They were swayed by purer, nobler, prouder, worthier, purposes than ever hallowed the council chambers of Greece or of Rome. I admire the schemes which held together those early and famed republics. I venerate the sages, and the heroes of Athens, of Sparta, and of Rome; but I admire far more our own political PART III. ORIGIN AND CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION. The colo- fabric: I venerate with a loftier and holier enthusiasm nial congress at the sages, the heroes, and the patriots, of my own native Philadel- land: And I religiously believe that the eye of the phia, 1777. Omniscient never rested with so intense an interest on any other assembly of men gathered for political purposes. END OF PART III. PART IV. THE GOVERNMENTAL HISTORY OF THE THIRTEEN ANGLO-AMERICAN ism and the THE Declaration of Independence was the necessary Protestantand legitimate result of the full development of the Declarapolitical elements of freedom embraced in the protest-tion of Independantism of the Reformation. It was inaugurated, as ence. we have seen, by Martin Luther, in his humble protest against the imperial supremacy claimed by the pontificate of Rome in matters of religion. In the same aspect of it, it was made more powerful and prominent when Henry VIII. of England protested against the power of the Pope, on his refusal to annul the religious obligation of the sacrament of marriage, by divorcing him from his queen Catharine, and sanctioning his alli-See PART ance with Anne Boleyn. In its relations with the free- II. dom of the subject in matters of religious opinion, organization, and worship, merely; it gained considerable ascendancy during the reigns of Mary, Elizabeth, and their successors. Its general political bearing was indeed first known and felt, in the severance of the crown and kingdom from all allegiance to Rome. But this phase of it was not at all developed, so as to attract the interested attention of the people, until the puritans disclosed it more distinctively in their controversies with both the Church and the Crown. They transplanted it to the shores of New England where it became more fully developed, spread itself throughout the colonies, giving origin, vitality, and protection, to their free governments, laws, and municipal institutions; while PART IV. ism and the THE REVOLUTIONARY UNION OF THE COLONIES Protestant-its reactive energies contributed to vivify the leaven of Declara- freedom already at work with the mass of mind in the tion of In-old world. Its most signal achievement in the mother depend ence. country, was its own elevation to the throne in the persons of William and Mary, and the establishment of a Protestant succession in their line by act of parliament; giving to the nation a free constitution, and to the peoTriumph ple a share in the sovereignty vested in the crown; just of protest- one century before the adoption of our present federal England. Constitution. The English revolution thus heralded antism in the more thorough development and diffusion of its elements of political freedom in both countries; while in the Anglo-American colonies it infused into the minds of the people, and the councils of the various provinces, a spirit of liberty and independence, which resulted, as now, in the severance of the relations of Its triumph political supremacy and subjection between the empire in Ameri- of Great Britain and the inhabitants of America. са. Thus it is that a Protestant Christianity has been made, and is, under Providence, the life and the conservation of our republican freedom, union, and institutions: So that by the constitutions of all the states, as well as by the consent of the whole American people, it is now regarded as an essential element in our political systems; while the Bible, whence it emanates, is the acknowledged depository and fountain of all civil and religious liberty. Though our forefathers did, yet it is to be feared that the statesmen and politicians of our own day have not, thus read the genealogical record of our free institutions and forms of government. Yet it well becomes the Christian historian and philosopher, as well as the rulers and the people, to refer to the true foundations, if they would preserve the superstructure in a healthy, vigorous, and permanent existence. The Declaration of Independence, thus initiated, it will at once be observed, opened a new and interesting era in the governmental history of the colonies. Having ventured to assume a separate and equal rank among |