Revolutionary philosophy, essential to make
effective the right of each and every person to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. But a universal right of free statehood does not
imply a universal right of self-government. Statehood and
self-government are two different and distinct conceptions. The
Americans claimed the right of free statehood as a part of the
universal rights of man, but they claimed the right of self-government
because they were Englishmen trained by generations of experience in
the art of self-government and so capable of exercising the art. A
free state is not less or more a free state because it has
self-government. It is a free state when its just public sentiment is
to any extent ascertained and executed by its government, free from
the control of any external power. It does not prevent a region from
being a free state that its government is wholly or partly appointed
by an external power, if that government is free from external control
in ascertaining and executing the just local sentiment to any extent.
Nor does it interfere with the right of free statehood when an
external power stands by merely to see that the local government
ascertains and executes the just local sentiment to a proper extent.
The external power in that case is upholding the free statehood of the
region. It stands as surety for the continuance of free statehood.

The right of self-government, according to this view, is a conditional
universal right. When a community, inhabiting a region of such
territorial extent that it is not too large to make it possible for a
just public sentiment concerning its own affairs to be developed and
executed, and not so small as to make it inconvenient that it should
be in any respect free from external control, is of such moral and
intellectual capacity that it can form and execute a just public
sentiment concerning its internal affairs and its relations with other
communities, states and nations, it has not only the right of free
statehood,--that is, of political personality,--which is of universal
right, but also the right of self-government. The right of such a free
state to self-government is complete if there be no just political
connection or union between it and other free states, or partial, if
such a just connection or union exists, being limited, in this latter
case, to the extent necessary for the preservation, in due order, of
the connection or union.

The Declaration,