Show I THE DECLARATION OP INDEPENDENCE INDE-PENDENCE On the Fourth of July the New York World printed in its columns the Declaration of Independence What for Nearly everybody has heard it and all know what it means That is about all they want to know of it The Declaration of Independence was once considered a sacred instrument instru-ment a grand heaveninspired document It Js now read and listened to simply because it has a history and the average aver-age American after listening patiently to it goes off and recuperates re-cuperates after the manner of men i Those who are considered the pillars pil-lars of this great and glorious republic re-public have improved upon that oldtime document and no longer require its enunciations of principle and protestations against tyranny It says that all men are equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights some of them being life liberty and the pursuit of happiness No such thing We who live in this advanced age know better Men are not equal at the beginning or afterwards nor can they number among their inheritances any such boons as those above enumerated whenever the government and its agents see fit to cut them off The Declaration further says that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governedbut this is a mistake for governments are instituted in-stituted for no such purpose nor are they founded upon the consent of the governed Those who have made a study of statecraft might say in their blindness that the whole theory of mans relations to man was outlined in that brief sentence sen-tence but such people are ignorant else they would understand that good healthy government not only does not rest upon the consent of the governed but that the less those who are governed consent to the arrangement the more loyal and patriotic it is The founders of the nation among whom were many who signed the paper referred to conceived con-ceived in their ignorance the idea that good government was not oppression of the many by the few or vice versa but simply the cooperation co-operation and joint action of a people having a common destiny and an undivided Interest in the welfare of the whole What nonsense Good stable government means the complete deprivation of all rights except such as the majordomos see fit to grant it does not mean sovereignty sov-ereignty but dependency not manliness man-liness but vassalage not the free expression of opinion but the I cringing to a selfconstituted bureau bu-reau of autocrats not the freedom free-dom of the press but such utterances therefrom as are attuned to the active lyre It Is not right for anybody who is not a subscriber to the organ of the right side to read that paper not right for those who construe it as meaning what it says to listen to the reading and high treason for them to applaud its sentences What did tho World do it for anyway any-way T |