Copyright by M. G. Abbey (from a Copley Print, copyright by Curtis & Cameron, Boston)

THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

IDEALS AND HEROES OF FREEDOM

INTRODUCTION

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue

That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold
Which Milton held. In everything we are sprung

Of Earth's first blood, have titles manifold.

-Wordsworth.

These lines remind us of the great inheritance, not alone of Englishmen but of all who speak the English tongue, whether they live in the United States or England, in Canada or in Australia. This inheritance is due to the fact that Englishspeaking peoples govern themselves, that they were the first to invent the means by which free government became possible. It sometimes seems a simple thing, very much a matter of course, that in America the rulers are all the people, who adopt the laws they desire; who submit to rules of life because they themselves think these rules to be wise, not because they are compelled to submit through the will of an emperor. But in reality this free government, this democracy, has grown very slowly, through centuries. It is an inheritance of freedom.

The story of this inheritance is filled with deeds of heroes. These heroes lived and died, not to win glory for themselves, but to win freedom for their fellows. Sometimes they were English barons, daring to defy a wicked king, and forcing him to sign a Great Charter that gave them a share in the government. Sometimes they were the peasants seeking the right to live more comfortably. Sometimes they were statesmen who secured for Parliament the right to levy taxes and to be consulted about the way England was to be ruled, and the right to drive a selfish. tyrant from the throne. And sometimes they were the farmers and village men forming in battle line at Lexington and Concord. It is a long story that you will read, in many places, not all of it at one time; but little by little you will come to see what meaning lies in the simple words "our inheritance of freedom," and then you will be ready to give your time, and if need be,

J.H.L. 1-11

your life, to keep this inheritance and to hand it on to those who will speak the English tongue when you are dead.

Only a few bits of the story can be given here. You will read something about Scotland's struggle for the right to be governed by her own people, not by the tyrannical kings who then ruled England and who looked upon Scotland as a mere province fit only to supply money for their selfish desires. Next you will read several selections which show that the tyranny against which Wallace and Bruce fought, like the tyranny against which Warren and Washington and Patrick Henry fought, did not spring from the English spirit, but from kings who tried to keep even Englishmen in slavery. It is all one story-at one time the action takes place in Scotland, at another in England, at still another time in America; but the story is the story of our inheritance of freedom.

"We must be free or die"-these words express the spirit of all who speak the English tongue. The stories of Wallace and Bruce tell it. The story of the last fight of the Revenge tells it a story written by the man who first began to plant English colonies in America, and who helped defend England against the tyranny which King Philip of Spain tried to establish. The stories of the Gray Champion, and of Warren at Bunker Hill, and of Patrick Henry of Virginia, and of Washington and Marion, are also a part of the great story of our inheritance of freedom.

You should keep this always in mind: the heroes who made good the Declaration of Independence and set up a new and freer government in America were men whose ideals of freedom came to them from England. They did not fight against the English people. Their spirit was also the fundamental English spirit. Many of the greatest Englishmen of that period used every effort to win fair treatment for the colonies, sympathized with their struggle for independence and rejoiced when at last George III and his ministers were told that America would no longer submit to oppression.

One of the greatest of these Englishmen was Edmund Burke, who lived in the time of George III and took the part of the colonies in their struggle against the King's tyranny. He worked for

the repeal of the taxation laws that so offended the Americans. He made many speeches in Parliament and elsewhere pleading with Englishmen not to drive their fellow Englishmen into civil. war. And when at last war came, Burke still sought to bring about reconciliation. He wrote the King a letter in which he said that the British government was not representing the British spirit of freedom in its dealings with the colonies. He wrote a letter to the colonies in which he begged them not to believe that they were at war with England. "Do not think," he said, "that the whole or even the majority of Englishmen in the island are enemies to their own blood on the American continent." And a little later he said, “But still a large, and we trust the largest and soundest part of this kingdom perseveres in the most perfect unity of sentiments, principles, and affections with you. It spreads out a large and liberal platform of common liberty upon which we may all unite forever." The whole matter he sums up by saying that the spirit of England loves not conquest or vast empire for the sake of wealth, but "this is the peculiar glory of England: those who have and who hold to that foundation of common liberty, whether on this or on your side of the ocean, we consider as the true, and the only true, Englishmen."

All Americans need to remember these words written by a great friend of the colonies during the Revolutionary War, a man who also explained more clearly and more eloquently than any other Englishman in any time the principles on which our inheritance of freedom rests. His interest in the American cause was not merely the interest of a sympathetic friend; over and over again he pointed out that the colonies, and not the King's ministry, represented the true English spirit. To him the mode of selfgovernment set up in Massachusetts and Virginia represented the very ideal for which patriotic Englishmen had struggled for centuries. The British parliament, in Burke's time, was not made up of representatives from all the population; only a small part of the population could vote, and many districts had no representation at all. Complete control of the government by the people was what Burke and thousands of other Englishmen had been trying to win. In America such a form of popular

government had developed freely, because the British King paid little attention to the colonies until they became wealthy enough. to be a source of riches. It was this fact that made the American revolution not merely a war for the establishment of a new nation, but quite as much a war for the development of free government in England itself. Burke realized this fact, and expressed it by saying, "We view the establishment of the English colonies on principles of liberty as that which is to render this kingdom venerable to future ages."

The prophecy has been fulfilled. Britain still has a king, but he is king in name only; the real power rests in the people. The struggle in which the American colonists bore a part has resulted not only in a free America, but also in a free England and in freedom for the great dominions-Canada, Australia, and New Zealand-which have much the same form of government. The inheritance of freedom belongs to all English-speaking peoples, and the spread of these ideals means freedom for the world.

These ideals center around the brotherhood of man. In our Revolutionary period Robert Burns sang of the coming of a time when these ideals should be acknowledged:

"It's coming yet, for a' that,

That man to man, the world o'er,
Shall brothers be, for a' that."

Long before the time of Burns, John Milton, a great poet, who worked throughout his life for freedom, and who held the same ideals as those held by the founders of Plymouth Colony, wrote of the same thing: "Who knows not that there is a mutual bond of brotherhood between man and man over all the world?"

The recent war has brought England and America together once more, as defenders of the right of all people to selfgovernment. For English ideals, planted on American soil, victorious over the tyranny of George III and his ministry, have not only found their most complete development in our America, but have given the vision of liberty to all men. Thus we are able to understand what President Wilson meant when he said, "And the heart of America shall interpret the heart of the world."