9/24 The American Revolution

9/24 The American Revolution

The Declaration of Independence

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles  and organizing its powers in such form, as to them seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than the right to themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed"(p.59)   

          In this passage Jefferson says that the people being governed have the right to choose who should governs them and what form of government should govern them. He also makes it clear that the people should not “abolish” a form of government simply because something goes wrong. Life is not perfect so neither will government.

Jefferson writes this passage because of his experience under an autocratic government, where the people don't have a say in how they are governed.

An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America, Upon Slave-Keeping

“We have many well attested anecdotes of as sublime and disinterested virtue among them as ever adorned a Roman or a Christian character. But we are to distinguish between an African in is own country and an African in the state of slavery in America. Slavery is foreign to the human mind, that the moral faculties, as well as those of the understanding are debased, and rendered torpid by it. All the vices which are charged upon the Negros in the southern colonies and the West-Indies, such as idleness, treachery, theft, and the like are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove that they were no intended by providence for it”(p.44).

In this passage Rush is making is point as to why the enslaving of humans is naturally wrong. He states that “Negroes” are as virtues as Europeans and to prove his point he ask his readers to compare an African in his homeland and one that is enslaved in America. Rush is saying this because he does not agree with the popular belief that Africans are inferior to Europeans and all the faults (“vices”) that are associated with slaves all stem from the burden of slavery.