Of course, in a declaration of rights, no such supreme folly was intended as that all men are created equal in form or capacity, bodily or mental,--but simply that they are created equal in rights.

This is grandest of the self-evident truths announced, leading and governing all the rest.

Announcing that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, the Declaration repeats the same proclamation of Equal Rights.

Thus is Equality the Alpha and the Omega, wherein all other rights are embraced.

Men may not have a natural right to certain things, but most clearly they have a natural right to impartial laws, without which justice, being the end and aim of government, must fail.

Because these self-evident truths, beginning with Equality, had been set at nought by Great Britain, in her relations with our fathers, Independence was declared.

Let it be remembered that it has ever been the pride and boast of America, that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.

By the blessing of the Author of these rights on the means exerted for their defence, they have prevailed against all opposition, and form the basis of thirteen independent States.

And this is the Republic which our fathers, with pride and boast, then gave as an example to mankind.

Thus has our country testified to its idea of a Republic, not only throughout long days of controversy, but in national declarations, being in themselves monumental acts.

It is for the good of the whole, and not for an odious oligarchy or an aristocratic class, that our patriot speaks, and in these words is foreshadowed the idea of a republican government.

That every man of the commonalty (excepting infants, insane persons, and criminals) is, of common right, and by the laws of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty.

In these emphatic words is a complete vindication of the equal right of representation, as essential to free government,--so much so, that, where this does not exist, Liberty does not exist.

The first principle of Republicanism is, that the lex majoris partis is the fundamental law of every society of individuals of equal rights.

To consider the will of the society enounced by the majority of a single vote as sacred as if unanimous is the first of all lessons in importance, yet the last which is thoroughly learnt.

Thus did he scout the whole wretched pretension of oligarchy and monopoly by which citizens are deprived of equal rights.

The right of suffrage is certainly one of the fundamental articles of republican government, and ought not to be left to be regulated by the legislature.

Thus, in few significant words, does this authority teach that a Republic is a government derived from “the great body of the people,” and not from “a favored class of it.” Better words could not be found for the American definition.

I repeat these two conditions of republican government according to Madison: First, the government must be derived from the great body of the people; and, secondly, it cannot spring from any favored class.

Not for an oligarchy, but for all, is a Republic created.

There can be no truer principle than this, that every individual of the community at large has an equal right to the protection of Government.… We propose a free government.

A share in the sovereignty of the State, which is exercised by the citizens at large in voting at elections, is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a Republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law.

The principles of the Revolution taught the inhabitants of this country to risk their lives and fortunes in asserting their liberty, or, in other words, their right to a share in the government.

The two ideas of Equality and a Right to Representation, so early and constantly avowed by the Fathers, are here again recognized as essential conditions of government; and this is the true definition of a Republic.

That the sovereignty resides in the people is a political doctrine which I have never heard an American politician seriously deny.… We, the people, is the style of the Federal Constitution.