All this follows
from the existence and nature of man. Man is not inert, nor even
passive, merely; and his activity will continually organize itself into
facts and forms, ever changing in character, it may be, yet subject to
a law as wise and fixed as that of planetary motion.
The Independence of the British Colonies in America, declared on the 4th
of July, 1776, is not an isolated fact; nor is the Declaration itself a
hasty and overwrought production of a young and enthusiastic adventurer
in the cause of liberty.
The passions and the reason of men connected the Declaration of
Independence with the massacre in King-street, of March 5th, 1770; with
the passage and repeal of the Stamp Act; with the attempt to enforce the
Writs of Assistance; with the act to close the port of Boston; with the
peace of 1763; with the Act of Settlement of 1688; with the execution of
Charles I., and the Protectorate of Cromwell; with the death of Hampden;
with the confederation of 1643; with the royal charters granted to the
respective colonies; with the compact made on board the Mayflower; and,
finally, and distinctly, and chiefly,--as the basis of the greatest
legal argument of modern times, made by the Massachusetts House of
Representatives, from 1765 to 1775,--with the events at Runnymede, and
the grant of the Great Charter to the nobles and people of England in
1215, which is itself based upon the concessions of Edward the
Confessor, and the affirmation of the Saxon laws in the eleventh
century.
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