friend of
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin and Adams.

The

DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

was the greatest event in the history of mankind since the creation of Adam
and the birth of Christ.

It was a lofty and true indictment against the crimes of monarchy, and was
the entering wedge in splitting the rotten log of robber royalty.

These words and phrases keep ever sounding in my soaring soul:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness!"

"The history of the King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the
establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States."

"The King has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns
and destroyed the lives of our people."

"The road to happiness and glory is open to us; we will climb it apart
from the British Government, and acquiesce our eternal separation, and
hold them as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace
friends."

"And for the support of this Declaration, with reliance in Divine
Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes
and our sacred honor!"

Moving along with the martyrs who have died for progress and liberty:

I stood in the English Court September 20th, 1803, beside the heroic

ROBERT EMMET,

and heard him hurl these javelins of defiant patriotic eloquence against
the brazen brutality of British judicial tyranny:

"When my spirit shall be wafted to a more friendly port; when my shade
shall have joined the bands of those martyred heroes who have shed
their blood on the scaffold and in the field, in defense of their
country and virtue, this is my hope: I wish that my memory and name
may animate those who survive me, while I look down with complacency
on the destruction of this perfidious Government, which upholds its
dominion by blasphemy of the Most High.

"The blood which you seek is not congealed by the artificial terrors
which surround your victim; it circulates warmly and unruffled through
the channels which God created for noble purposes, but which you are
bent to destroy for purposes so grievous that they cry to Heaven!

"Le