charles kegler -- charles conflict. distinguished professor of government. he's a senior fellow at the claremont institute and since 2000's he's edited the claremont review of books. seated next to me, our first speaker on the panel is michael. the university of notre dame's nancy reeves drew professor of political science. now professor emeritus. he's a visiting professor at arizona state university's school of civic and economic thought. his philosophyranges from locke to lincoln. his most recent book is in -- is a study of economic sovereignty. he is editing the cambridge companion for the declaration of independence. he will speak on the quality, liberty, and writes on -- equality, liberty and rights in the declaration of independence. thank you. [applause] >> our moderator has assigned us a very short time. there any, i think -- tyranny, i think, i would say. [laughter] this topic really is an interpretation of the entire declaration of independence within 25 pages, let's say. i will give only a short segment of it. i hope it stands by itself. that it will make sense to all of you. so the first two of the so-called self-evident truths in the declaration clearly speak of something original. i'm having a hard time with that light. human beings at the beginning, created equal, and what they possessed at the beginning, endowed by their creator, with unalienable rights. on reflections, these claims however cannot refer to a strictly temporal beginning, origin, because they are said to refer to all men, that is, not just to those who stand at the very beginning, literally before government, let's say, all men weatherworn into society or already possessing government somehow are created equal and possess rights, not deriving from or dependent on their existence of government. the claim that governments are instituted by a consent of the governed gives a clue as to how to understand these puzzling claims. governments derive their just powers, rightful power, or command -- the rightful powers to command and expect obedience, not from any inherent right they possess, but only from the consent of those citizens subject to the governments. so far that one can translate the claim that all men are created equal into the claim that no man is born naturally or originally subject to government or owing obedience to government. we are all originally equal in that nobody possesses inherent authority over us. that is the same claim that political philosophers of the age stated in terms of the idea of a state of nature. according to john locke, for example, the equality in question is equality in power, in jurisdiction, that is an authority, with the right to command others. in authority, all are by nature equal, and they are equal in having no authority over others. for it is, said locke, a state of perfect freedom, to order their actions as they think fit, without taking leave or depending upon the will of any other. placing the first truth about equality within the context of the political sphere outlined in the declaration's second paragraph leads us to see that equality there has a quite precise meaning. human beings are not naturally subject to the authority of any other human being. s whatever the ultimate implication of this natural equality may be, we concede that the declaration is not invoking a loose concept ready to be filled in as we please as has so often been the case in american history. nonetheless the affirmation of natural equality immediately raises an urgent question. on what basis is this equality affirmed? it's not a result of the immediately empirical observation because most of us are born under government and are thought to be subject to the authority of that government. an observation that has led many political thinkers to pronounce political authority natural. we must remind ourselves of the kind of text the declaration is and is not. the purpose of the text is to declare the causes for the american separation from the authority to whom they have tethered to old obedience. it gives a giving of reasons, not a mere assertion of will. but it is still a political document. it is not a treatise in political philosophy. the declaration presents an argument to justify the deeds of the americans but it is a truncated presentation of an argument that perhaps would require a treatise to make its case in full. so we must tailor our expectations of the declaration accordingly. i am going to turn to rights. the declaration lists three rights as among the inherent or natural rights human beings possess in a state of nature, rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. these are clearly -- there are clearly others, such as the director altar -- the right to alter or abolish governments. or the right to property, more or less universally affirmed also. we can see a kind of coherence and deep complementarity for the list of rights presented. the right to life is a right to what is most one's own, one's life. it is difficult to see how it could be anything other than one's own, how it could in any sense belong to others. given the dependence or base of life in or on the body, the right to life must contain a rate of bodily -- right to bodily immunity. not to have one's body seized, invaded, assaulted or controlled by others. the right to liberty extends the right to life, not only does one possess a rightful immunity against degradations by others on one's body, but one also has a right to the use of one's body. we can take control of our bodies were parts of our bodies to produce voluntary motion. we can invest our body's movement with our intentions and broader purposes. the natural right to liberty affirms the prima facie right fullness of active intentional use of the body. there's something more positive as well to the right of liberty, the right to exercise our faculties as we see fit, always with a caveat of course, to recognize the seem right and others -- same right in others. the text does not directly affirm the rights of property. often conjoint to the rights of life and liberty in common lists of rights. its absence from this list has led some to speculate that the authors of the declaration did not mean to affirm a natural right to property. this seems doubtful. in light of all the documents of the age, including many by thomas jefferson himself, who was as we know the chief draftsman of the declaration, these many other documents that to affirm the natural rights of property. moreover, the natural rights of property is implicit elsewhere in the declaration's text. when the americans complain of the attempt by the british to tax them without their consent. this concern implies the recognition of natural rights of property, for it is that status that leads the americans to conclude that they must themselves be represented in the body that lays taxes on them. that is to say the americans interpreted the no taxation without representation requirement of the traditional english constitution differently from the way the english themselves did, because they clearly, unequivocally swapped property to be personal natural right. the passively present right to property involves an extension of rights from the spheres of one's own life, body in actions -- and actions to the external world. it proclaims a rightful power of human beings to make the external their own in the same way that they can make their bodies their own. the three basic rights together amount to the affirmation of a kind of personal sovereignty. rightful control over one's persons, actions and possessions and the service of one's intents and purposes. when seen as an integrated system of the immunities and controls, the specific rights sum up to a comprehensive right to pursue a shape and way of life self chosen. the comprehensive or summative character of the right to pursuit of happiness both extends and subsumes the other rights. the comprehensive character of the system of rights is summed up in the right to pursuit of happy, implies a kind of individual sovereignty, and there was a way to understand the ground for the affirmation of natural equality. if there is by nature a personal right to happiness, to pursuit of happiness, i should say, that is a right to pursue a shape of life for oneself and one self chosen within the boundaries of the parallel rights of others and the needs of society, then human beings must be equal in the sense affirmed. because the personal right to pursue happiness is incompatible in its very nature with natural subjection to another. natural equality is thus a quarterly -- correlate or a derivation from the natural lights specified in the declaration. the two first truths are thus highly and logically linked together. if we push our inquiry about grounds from the grounds for equality to the grounds for rights, we reach something like a dead end. the declaration does not tell us how we know that human beings ar e rights bearers. with that, i'm going to stop. if i say anymore, it will go on a lot longer. thank you. [applause] >> that was short, but short and sweet. >> i tried to keep it within the boundaries. >> thank you all very much. i'm honored to be on this panel. in the volume we are putting together, my paper is an attempt to finally win an argument i keep losing with various friends of mine. someone will tell me america as a lockean country and they will tell me that -- and i will tell them that john locke did not believe in the judiciary or conscientious exemptions from anything just to start with. i think all those things are pretty important in our political system. americans may have improved on locke in terms of how to run the government with the original principles are still his. that contradicts the lockean principles, and they shrug. i feel a bit silly. the -- i will say that their view was a bit of john adams. he said in 1790 the french revolutionaries had learned from locke the principles of liberty, that those were the same principles he had been devoted to his whole life however the problem was the french did not know how to take the next step and defend those principles with a well-run government. they said they have the wrong principles from the start. they were lockean, although they did not use his name. what they really mean is they want to maintain the traditional inherited rights of british subjects. my paper is an effort to chart a middle course between adams and burke on the meaning of natural rights. when they speak of natural rights, i do think they mean something beyond just parliament should subducting us -- taxing us without -- our limit should stop taxing us without our consent. they also mean something crucially different from what locke meant by natural rights. some of the revolutionaries seem to have sided with locke over the americans. our independence uses partially lockean leg to state only partially lockean principles with only partially lockean conclusions. our founders push the locke idea of natural rights further away from the teaching of thomas hobbes, and perched political thought of some of the abrasion elements, that even locke himself still accepted. i want to start by listing some of the most un-american features of john locke's constitutional thought. according to his second treatise, it says the entire executive and judicial branches of government as well as all provincial legislative bodies must be completely and radically subordinate to the national legislature, which has the right to fire them, replace them or remodel them at any time, as pleasure -- at pleasure. tha that's the two other branches of government and what we would call the states, all that the complete whim of the national legislative body. in other words, the lockean constitution would not have needed anything beyond article one and would've stopped at section eight. until the people exercise their right to overthrow the national legislature, that legislature, while it remains in being, is according to locke, precisely the supreme, uncontrollable, unchecked ultimate political authority, but not a single american founders thought it should exist anywhere in any constitution. here's another way to see this. locke would actually have agreed with berg in the end that the british parliament could still be that absolute supreme ultimate authority over the american colonies, if they had just let the colonists vote on tax increases. americans since 1976 have rejected that view not only a parliamentary but any legislative omnipotence as such. why were the colonists have liked locke so much? to of the most popular american pamphlets, second ethical into common sense, from the lead up to independence, give extensive direct quotations from locke and they doctored those quotations by inserting phrases like independent judges. no one seems to have cured. they like the parts they did, and not the parts that they didn't. they ignored the parts they didn't. but i don't think we should ignore them. locke was a smart guy. he was suspicious of unchecked power. why would he have insisted to have to possess so much power where the only check would be the right of revolution? there's in answer to that question. it is found in his understanding of natural rights. the only purpose of government locke says, the only common good government can aim at is comfortable self preservation which he elaborates as the preservation of life, physical liberty, and property. his whole state of nature teaching is meant to convince you that governments secure those three rights and only those three rights. the biggest threat to those rights is the hub region state of war and the smallest disagreements among people plunges quickly into that state of war if there was no government to resolve those disagreements for us. therefore, he says, any valid government absolutely must have a single authoritative agreed-upon final voice to resolve any disagreement between anyone about what anyone is or is not allowed to do. some single human power has to always be there to say, you can do this, you can't do that, that's the final answer, stop writing about. you could not have for example a supreme court that occasionally overturns some laws, but a congress that could just pass new ones that i wanted to, an executive branch that could reinterpret them if it wanted to, with a constant risk of constitutional crisis of the branches were to disagree and we are the only thing, -- where the only thing that prevents her from falling apart is our commitment to each other and our constitutional order. is not enough for john locke. that is a risk to comfortable self preservation that could be avoided if we had a more absolutist constitution. a lockean government cannot take a risk against self preservation. it requires government to sacrifice all other considerations to long-term comfortable self preservation every time. so that is the basic connection between the lockean doctrine and constitutionalism such as it is. what would happen to that whole chain of deduction, if we americans were to alter locke's the very first premise about natural rights? suppose we don't think it is life, liberty, and physical property. among these are life and liberty but there are also others. one of which is the pursuit of happyness. and further suppose as mr. brown was emphasizing a moment ago, there's not a single one of us who thinks the is reducible to the protection of property or comfortable self preservation. all of us think there's more to happiness than that. while we may disagree about some of those components of happiness, we can agree about some others. we are not infinitely pluralist. if we then believe, as the declaration says, that it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted among them, not just the rights to life, liberty and property, but also others, including the pursuit of happyness, then of course we want the government to secure life, liberty and property, along with other goods. but what those other goods depends on what matters most in life. ultimately what we have been taught by our families and educational and religious institutions, all of which are simply presupposed by the declaration of independence. it might well be in 1776 we pretty much all agree governments should secure other common goods including the following, public morality, a healthy marriage culture, and environment in which to raise virtuous children, good public schools, the opportunity to worship god according to the dictates of our own conscience, republican self-government with full political participation not just a right to vote on tax increases, and finally the rule of law, understood as law over against any and all individuals or groups, even the national legislature, and even as much as possible the national majority, or of the bare majority. as the harvard law school building still says remarkably, not under any human beings, but under god and the law. now today, we may have a different list of the goods that we want our government to secure a long liberty and property, although i hope not radically different. any american list either we will be longer than the lockean list. therefore it will be sometimes in tangent with the lockean list. if you have a single unambiguous judge honor to resolve any possible dispute on how we should act, that judges know if the law, and you no longer have the rule of law over the rule of men, but events said you really want the rule of law in the more robust sense we americans have become accustomed to, then you have to think the common way of life under that rule of law is what some trade-offs in terms of near physical safety. are founders worried about physical safety. but also worried about other things. they that i let their fear of violence proud of their fear of losing other common goods, some of which we can only hold onto if we do not insist on habesian safetyism. alongside liberty and property, you are going to be open to the idea that constitutions should divide up our permanently, without any absolute subordination of two of the branches, legislative branch without any supreme judge on earth, with a genuinely independent executive, and even more independent judges, and 11 years later, you will be open to a world of historical innovation, whereby the supreme government is printed only enumerated powers. the subordinate governments remain supreme in their zone of sovereignty, and the risk of this sometimes ambiguous arrangement could one day lead to a civil war, as in fact it did, did not seem sufficient to say that we should not give it a try. in short, you will be open to thinking, as the founders clearly did think, that when people found a new government, they should be "laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." john locke could not have written that portion of jefferson's crucial long sentence, because locke thought there could be no question about the principles of government or how to organize powers, he had already settled both in the second treatise. but the americans who failed to go all the way with locke on the natural rights basis of government, those same americans very logically also insisted that they would need to specify the just power that -- powers that were being derived. it would need positive written constitutional enumerations of those powers. i am actually glad they did think that because a genuinely -- a genuinely lockean america would not have had our strikingly successful features and made it to 1977, let alone 2026. ♪ [applause] >> thank you very much. thank you, everyone, for being here, ladies and gentlemen. i, too, am going to skip around a little bit. in my paper. i will try to say something, however, to illuminate our theme here which is a natural rights and the common good, so i am calling this editing the declaration of independence, as you will see why in a moment. having spent the better part of 25 years editing a magazine, i am happy to confess an occupational bias. this would be a better world, if we had more and better editors. without their authority -- without their authority, but publishing, journalism, politics, especially the web, have become monarchical and ugly. the world grows hyper protestant. every man his own priest and editor or non-editor. all id and very little ego or superego. although editors are not perfect, at best, they introduce an element of reflection, circumspection, and regard for the audience and the argument that even the best authors could use from time to time. even thomas jefferson, author of the declaration of american independence, as he styled himself on his tombstone. one of the three accomplishments he thought were of inclusion there. the other two were author of the statute for virginia of religious freedom, and father of the university of virginia. he omitted from the tombstone president of the united states, vice president, u.s. secretary of state, governor of virginia, and other minor achievements. [laughter] properly speaking, however, jefferson was not author, but draftsman of the declaration. in as much as he drafted it as an official paper of and for the second continental congress. he refrain from using the definite article on his tombstone, not the author of the declaration of independence. calling himself just author because he was only one of the five members of the committee appointed by the congress to draw up a draft declaration of independence. he did not call himself principal author, presumably because as hobbs wrote, shared honors are diminished. so, he left it at the proud but slightly ambiguous or even misleading author of the american declaration of independence. now to be fair, jefferson was not always as possessive about his authorship. in his famous letter commenting on the subject, written to henry lee on may 8, 1825, he said the following -- "all american whigs thought alike on the subjects. when forced therefore to resort to arms for redress and appeal to the tribunal of the world was deemed proper for our justification. this was the object of the declaration of independence. to place before mankind the common sense of the subject. in terms of so plain and firm as to command their assent, and to justify ourselves in the independent stand we were compelled to take. it was intended to be in especially of the american mind." to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion. all its authority, it goes on to say, rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day. whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as aristotle, cicero, locke, sydney, etc. a famous list. two ancients, two, moderns and moderns, and one etc. the story has been well told. as far as we understand it at least because there are still things we don't know about. but, carl becker famously in his book "the declaration of independence," way back in 1922, and 75 years later, meyer's book "american scripture: making the declaration of independence." i want to say something briefly about the significance of jefferson's draft and the editorial changes to it that yielded the official text, especially their significance for these questions of natural rights and the common good. so, the committee of five appointed by congress to draft the declaration of independence comprised jefferson, john adams, the old and very gout-written benjamin franklin who was so sick he was unable to attend meetings of the committee of five, roger sherman of connecticut, and robert livingston of new york. this committee left no minutes of their meetings. for which we must rely on much later accounts, mostly between 25 and 50 years later. contradictory and incomplete by jefferson and adams. for example, in his autobiography in 1805, adams said the committee of five had deputed a subcommittee of two, jefferson and him, to prepare a first draft. adams says he then persuaded jefferson that he, jefferson, should take the lead, but that is his account. in 1823, the 80-year-old jefferson remembered it differently. the committee of five met, jefferson recalled, and unanimously pressed on myself alone to make the draft. no subcommittee of two. no bargaining among the subcommittee. all jefferson all the time. [laughter] he consented, but before sending his draft to the committee, he sent it separately, jefferson remembers, to dr. franklin and mr. adams, requesting their corrections because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments i wished most to have the benefit. and he said their alterations were two or three only and merely verbal. there is no written confirmation of what those alterations might have been. perhaps the most improving and memorable changes to jefferson's initial version were by his own hand. before sending the draft to adams, jefferson changed, "we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable" to, of course, "we hold these truths to be self-evident." self-evident, i would say as an editor, is an improvement. it is stronger, shorter and more specific. connecting to aristotle's logical writings and to the definition of a self-evident truth from aristotle and everyone else, one in which the meaning of the predicate is contained in the subject. subsequently, jefferson cleaned up the rest of that great sentence, which initially had stated that all men are created equal and independent. that from their equal creation, they derive equal rights, some of which are inherent and inalienable. there are too many equals there, and human beings are better off endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights rather than deriving them themselves from their equal creation by some rational process presumably. independent does not add much, if anything, to created equal. and besides, after self-evident, the paragraph does not need a second word ending in "-dent." but it was the continental congress itself, after meeting as a committee of the whole, that perform the most extensive editorial work on the committee of five's draft. the congress poured over it for three successive days. several paragraphs were greatly altered and a few, a quarter of the text according to pauline maier, was omitted altogether. she judges it one of the most successful exercises in group editing of all time. and i tend to agree with her. thomas jefferson did not. he decried the congress' deg radations and took the occasion to record one of the classic stories about franklin who was present and sitting nearby jefferson in independence hall that day. franklin perceived jefferson later recalled that i was not insensible to the congress' mutilations. so, franklin said to him, and this is jefferson's account of the story, i have made it a rule , said franklin, whenever in my power to avoid becoming the draftsman of papers to be reviewed by a public body. i took my lesson from a young friend. this is again franklin. i took my lesson from a young friend, an apprentice who was about to open a shop for himself. his first thought was to have a fine signboard made with these words -- "john thompson hatter makes and sells hats for ready money." the hatter, this young starting out hatter, asked his friends to their amendments for the sign. this is when the draftsman has to go face the public. the first one said that he dropped the word "hatter" because that was redundant with "makes hats." the second proposed that the word "maker" should go too because the customers would not care who made the hats as long as they were good quality. hold on just a second. and to taste, so he struck that word too. the third friend noted that the ready money was useless because no one in the town was accustomed to buying on credit, they expected to pay. the sign now says "john thompson sells hats." sells hats, asks the third friend. no one would expect them to give it away. so, ultimately, the sign said "john thompson" accompanied by the painted image of a hat. it is a marvelous franklin story suggesting the former printers appreciation of the ruthless art of editing. at the same time, it was advice to was young friend jefferson to beware of expecting an author's satisfaction from a draftsman 's job. it is also a lesson between nature and convention. it was not necessary, for example, to advertise a hatter makes hats for human beings and not other animals. or that one hat per head is the customary usage. nor that the image of a hat on a signboard was not meant to advertise the only model of hat that the store could sell you. it was meant to be, on the contrary, one of an infinite or a very large number of hats of various sizes, colors, patterns and styles that could be purchased. one might imagine that if fronted, franklin might have it advised his young friend it is not necessary to say everything explicitly, to decide questions not yet right or relevant, to, for example, call george iii a would-be tyrant twice in the same public paper. indeed, the declaration remains interestingly silenced on a surprising number of themes, much as franklin might have liked. it never mentions, for example, the regime types of the states made free and independent by the declaration the term republic never occurs in the declaration, nor democracy, nor commonwealth. the majority of the congress' editorial changes to the document concerned the lists of indictments against george iii, which fills the long middle part of the declaration. i don't really have time to go deeply into that, but let me say a few words about some of the changes that were pressed upon jefferson and upon his draft. first, one can sympathize with jefferson's concern. he had arranged the declaration as a kind of legal and political brief, beginning with a statement of the relevant laws, in this case, the laws of nature. then, a statement of the rights and duties americans have under those laws. the injuries against those rights and duties by the king, the long central indictment. and culminating with the injunctive relief that the americans sought. to sever the political bonds linking them to the british empire and to be recognized as free and independent states. now, neither the congress nor the committee of five had altered this basic structure of the declaration's argument. even though as franklin perhaps hinted gently, they found his argument a little overdone. john adams later said he likes the flights of oratory in jefferson's draft, including what adams called the vehement flippant against negro slavery which was known as the crescendo of the case against george iii. adams admitted there were expressions in the document he did not care for so much. and among them was a particularly that which called the king a tyrant. adams says, "i thought this was too personal, foreign never believed george to be a tyrant in disposition and in nature. i always believed him to be deceived by both sides of the atlantic. and is official capacity only. i thought the ask question two passionate and too much like scolding for such grave and solemn a document." even though adams -- and i think this is probably true of franklin too -- regarded those two charges of the king as being a tyrant is an overstatement, neither adams or franklin objected and the committee of five as far as we can tell, nor in the committee of the whole. even if the king were not an actual tyrant, he was a pretty good artificial one, or close enough impression of one to get by. but, the declaration's need to arrange george iii to show that he was a tyrant, to cite chapter and verse so to speak, to show his tyranny is a result of the implicit refusal of both the drafting committee and the second continental congress to follow thomas paine's argument in "common sense," his famous pamphlet that appeared in january 1776. but, thomas paine's argument was that -- was against both the idea of the mixed constitution and against the british example of the mixed constitution in particular. for paine, you don't need to prove george iii is a tyrant, it is enough to show he was a hereditary monarch. the effectual truth of that was tyranny already. so, "common sense" attracted hundreds of thousands of readers in america, but not one vote in the continental congress. the declaration of independence, therefore, had to prove or illustrate this long train of abuses of which george iii was guilty. degrading him from a king who would nominally or presumptively seeking the common good of people to a tyrant out to pursue his own good. that rhetorical and logical duty of the declaration silently underlined how far its signers' frame of mind was from thomas paine's. the difference would be emphasized further if the committee of five and congress had been drawn into another subject, which they were not. they kept more or less strictly apart from. which was what kinds of governments, what kinds of constitutions should the new -- assured the emerging states adopt. john adams, of course, got into the subject in a large weight. he wrote a famous pamphlet where he made the argument for a republican government with a strong separation of powers, a strong executive. all of these things specifically, this was his own published by him and under his own name, not advice coming from the committee or the congress. they stayed away from that. nonetheless, one would have to say that thomas paine and adams were bitter enemies on the question of what form of republican government is the best form of republican government. paine's position was the simpler, the better. the more democratic, the better. the less conflict ridden, the better. the more natural and his sense of the term, the better. and adams' position was the opposite on all those things. the closer the separation of powers, the more difficult it is for anyone, office of government to move without permission from the others or without pressure from the others, the better, from his point of view. this was a debate which americans would get into later on, but they were not ready for it yet so they avoided it. they managed to avoid it here at the declaration and the committee meeting. nonetheless, you could see the future faultlines already forming within the membership, at least, fo the committee -- of the committee. now, both the drafting committee and congress accepted jefferson's other rhetorical and constitutional presumption as well. namely, that the only legitimate connection between the american people and the british empire ran through the king alone. not just george iii, but his predecessors as well, each of whom had used his prerogative powers as a king to extend the empire's military and commercial protection to the colonists in exchange for their pledge of obedience to him as the head of the empire. even though a lot of ink had been spilled by the americans by this point, arguing against taxation without representation, parliament's asserted right to tax the colonies had nothing or at least very little to do with the cause of war that led to the revolutionary, according to the declaration. jefferson had been arguing this way for at least two years since his pamphlet. james wilson had come to the same conclusion and the continental congress, too, though with greater reluctance. the declaration of independence accuses the king of combining with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws. giving his assent to their act of pretended legislation. the others referred to here means parliament. another term that the declaration does not mention or does not bring up explicitly. it is mentioned once by jefferson in a phrase that was taken out. that says the following -- "submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution." our only relation was with the king, not with parliament. let's see. let me skip over a few things and wrap this up. the presence of the constitution in the declaration already is not widely acknowledged, i think. there's a kind of unwritten constitutional-ism in the declaration's moral and political arguments, with a really is a sense of an existing constitutional system that has been violated, is being violated by the british. and our -- the declaration, although it is a revolutionary document, is a pro constitutional document at the same time. our constitution also means not just legal or political arrangements, but our character traits too. you may not recognize or remember that the british people's native justice and magnanimity is spoken of in the declaration of independence. and also, they refused to listen to the voice of justice. there's a lot of things that the declaration we sort of don't think about or don't dwell on. for example, our manly spirit. the declaration speaks of america's manly spirit which condemns the british decision to send scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade us and to injure their common kindred, as he calls this. here, i will give you one more. this was a passage from jefferson that was edited out by the convention. towards the end of the declaration. "we might have been a free and a great people together. but, a communication of grandeur and freedom, it seems, is below their dignity. the road to happiness and the road to glory is open to us, too. we will climb it apart from them." a road to happiness and a road to glory, of all things. lurking there in the declaration of independence as well. let me come to one final remark. the last change that is made to the text of the declaration comes in the final paragraph in which the congress added two things that jefferson did not put in. and the first was a mention of the supreme judge of the world. and the second in that last paragraph, a reference to a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence. two out of the four mentions in the declaration of independence of god came not from jefferson himself originally, but from the -- jefferson's fellow congressmen in the meeting. this was part of that final and interesting pledge to each other of their lives, fortunes and sacred honor. that was from jefferson. sacred honor is jefferson's term. i think we don't dwell often either on the fact that the declaration of independence has a kind of -- makes the kind of moral community out of us, but it also makes a smaller moral community of the signers of the declaration of independence. they pledged to each other their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, not to us. not to the citizen body as such. and that is part, i think, of the charm of the declaration of independence, which is visible both in its adams' roots and jefferson's roots. both of those gentlemen were very interested in what it meant to be a founder. adams in particular was quite interested with the ancient founders and with the problem of how to imitate them under modern conditions and what a founder should do. a founder of republican government under modern conditions. jefferson is a little less interested in founding as a kind of theme of political science, which is how adams is interested in it, but he was, of course, himself -- he helped to rewrite the constitution of virginia, so he was not as abstract as we might think either. both he and adams were interested in an america that would work and that would not be stuck, you might say, in the parent reaches -- errant reaches of modern political philosophy, seeking a form of civic order out of a war of all -- against all. they had a very definite idea of what america already was like and it kind of prehistory america that we had to use in order to make our own history from this point on. for adams, that prehistory was the puritans and the pilgrims. for jefferson, it involved citizen farmers and the anglo-saxons, which is another tale. but, neither of them were prepared to rely merely upon abstracted natural rights or a stateless condition of masterless men in the state of nature. there had to a certain kind of character, of limitations, and a sense of belonging and of citizenship to america if it were going to work. and the declaration of independence is very much about beginning to instill that feeling of civic oneness or civic admiration for america as a project, as a civic project. all right, thank you very much. [applause] >> i think my first question -- again, we will have time for audience questions. both people in the room and if anybody watching online would like to submit a question, you can do it by email or on twitter. my first question for the group picks up with charlespaper. charles, your paper helps to really clarify and fix some of the misunderstandings of the story of the declaration's original authorship. my question -- i will start with michael and dan -- would it be better if we hadn't known the story of the declaration's authorship to begin with? what it be better if we had never known the nuances of jefferson, of adams, and the committee? from the start, we only had known the declaration as a product of continental congress, would it be better? better could mean different things. would be better understand the meaning of the document? would we better respect it today? would we have better respected in its own time? would it be better if we had not know the original story of its authorship? michael: would we be better? it is hard to say because there are several dimensions to the value of knowing it was written by these particular people. personally, i think the declaration should be read not in the light of what we know about jefferson's pri
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