Roscoe Bartlett: “Madam Speaker, it is hard for us to realize what a radical document the Declaration of Independence was. If we think…”

“Madam Speaker, it is hard for us to realize what a radical document the Declaration of Independence was. If we think back, our forefathers now, they come from all parts of the world; but our forefathers when this country was founded came from principally the British Isles and the European continent. If we remember our history, almost every one of them came from a country where the king or the emperor claimed and, incredibly from our position, was granted what was known as divine rights. In other words, what the king or the emperor claimed was that the rights came from God to him; that he would then give what rights he wished to his people. Sometimes many; sometimes very few. Our forefathers made a radical departure from this, because in the Declaration of Independence they said we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That the rights did not come from God to the king, that the rights came from God to the people, and it was the wish of our forefathers that they would found a government which had very limited rights.”