Holding Ourselves Accountable: What the Declaration Says About Just Conduct of Governments

In the summer of 1775, two of John Adams’ letters were seized by British forces. One letter was to his wife, Abigail, and another to John Warren, a friend deeply involved in Massachusetts politics. With both, he shared his frank, unfiltered opinions of the Second Continental Congress and so exposed the bitter riffs among its delegates. Of John Dickinson, the dovish delegate behind the doomed Olive Branch petition, Adams called him a “piddling Genius.” Of the work of the Continental Congress, he griped that instead of doing useful things, like establishing a treasury that would greatly aid the war effort, they dithered, in his opinion, over fruitless plans for reconciliation. To his wife, Adams groused of the “figets, the whims, the caprice, the vanity, the superstition, the irritability of some of us.” The letters left no doubt that there were deep divisions among the delegates and that Adams was one of the principal advocates for independence.

 The men who seized these letters understood their value. They promptly sent copies to pretty much anyone they could think of, chiefly, Parliament, the Massachusetts Gazette, and various British papers, to be reprinted in order to stir up internal divisions and, no doubt, despair for the patriot cause.

Reflecting on the event, John Adams was pleased the letters had been reprinted. Instead of damaging the patriot cause for independence, Adams celebrated that “the Idea was held up to the whole World, and that the People could not avoid contemplating it and reasoning about it.” As a rule, Adams was no “glass half-full” kind of guy. But here he expresses wonderful confidence in the people to deliberate thoughtfully and carefully on the justice of the cause for independence. Acquainting the people more broadly with the principles of just government, he reasoned, would build support for the patriot side. 

Adams’ confidence may seem naive to some. Such is the cynicism of our time in which our political elites keep political deliberations away from public scrutiny and participation. Too often public rhetoric is treated as a vehicle for messaging, shaping the narrative, and toeing the agreed upon line. Matters of political consequence are treated as too important to be put before the public’s consideration and unpredictable judgment. 

It’s nothing new for justice and success in politics to be in tension. In democratic political orders, a partial fix is that winning politically requires engaging in the work of persuasion and building public support. Somewhere in that inevitably messy and freewheeling process, the public might have a fair chance to consider the justice of a government’s policy and conduct. Nowadays, the public must wait until the political moment has passed for interested parties to publish their tell-all editorials and books to find out what the behind-the-scenes debates were. Little wonder that much political discourse today feels reduced to sideshows and performative “gotcha” gags. And, for its part, cut out of earnest deliberations, much of the public turns to the latest internet outrage, conspiracy theories, or disengages entirely. The public’s attention has grown flabby and distracted. 

The Declaration is an excellent starting point for the reinvigoration of serious deliberation on justice and government. It leads by example and gives an account of itself. As the phrase “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” indicates, the Declaration’s signers aimed to persuade the world. It serves as a perpetual invitation to the public to consider the principles that make for just conduct of government. It embodies a perpetual hope that political life may be based on reason and justice; that human beings may live in accord with a government of their choosing (“reflection and choice” as Alexander Hamilton put it).

While it is easy and pleasant to blame political elites for political woes, justice requires that we recognize the Declaration’s lesson in civic responsibility. Because our Declaration supposes that governments ought to be just, legitimate, and based on the consent of the governed, ordinary citizens have a duty to reason about the moral principles that guide the conduct of their government. It asserts that “we hold” certain shared beliefs about the origin and legitimacy of government, the ends of government, and what we may do should our government become destructive of those ends. 

As is well-known, the Declaration of Independence was written to justify the political separation of 13 plucky colonies from Great Britain’s rule. It is an appeal to justice. The men who voted in favor of independence did not believe that might makes right or that exigencies excused power grabs. Until the vote for independence, the colonies were engaged in rebellion against their mother country—both sides using military force to score advantages in order to bring the other to heel. The Declaration lifted the struggle for independence from being a localized conventional colonial rebellion to a war of universal interest and importance. It makes the case that the patriot cause was rooted in justice—natural rights and consent of the governed—and the king exercised power without authority. 

The Declaration sets forth, elegantly and economically, the American case for limited government. All persons are created equal and are in possession of “unalienable rights.” For the better security of these rights and by “the consent of the governed,” individuals mutually agree to establish a government. Should the government abuse its power, the people retain the right and authority to “alter or to abolish it” and to establish a new government, having organized its powers and institutions in whatever way seems most fitting to secure their “Safety and Happiness.”

The “consent of the governed” establishes both the government’s legitimacy and provides it with its “just powers.” This is the contractual foundation to our idea of legitimate government. In contrast to human beings who are natural beings, governments are conventional beings since they are “instituted among men.” This is an audacious claim. It might be useful to think of this way–the Declaration’s formulation is a reversal of the older way of thinking about government that was based on divine authority. No longer do governments receive their authority from God, nor dothe people have only whatever privileges “accident and force” have allotted to them. Instead, the people possess natural rights from the “Creator” and governments have the “just powers” vested to them by the people for the sake of protecting those rights. 

“Just powers” are derived from the people. Implicitly, when the people consent to and form a government, they part with some measure of their own natural power to enforce and judge law and vest it in the government. Since governments get their just powers from the governed, the government’s exercise of power must be traceable to a grant of power. Hence, we Americans prefer written constitutions, which make it easier for ordinary citizens to know about governing powers and institutions and better prepare us to evaluate the conduct of governing officials. 

In order to better appreciate the uniqueness of the American position on just foundings, consider it in contrast to Edmund Burke’s. Burke doubted that governments had just origins and, for that reason, a “sacred veil” must be drawn over such ignoble beginnings so that justice could be maintained. If foundings can be excluded from just scrutinity, then why not throw more “sacred veils” over any state action that seems necessary or useful but morally dubious. Ultimately, Burke’s arugment undermines the appeal to justice he wishes to support. 

If the Declaration seems vague on what sort of “just powers” governments have and what form those governments should take, then that is because these matters are left up to the people to determine. Officially, the Declaration is open-ended on the form of government a people choose, but it is clear that the primordial form of government is democracy. Popular government recommends itself, in part, for its naturalness and proximity to the people as the real source of political power. Nevertheless, its open-endedness makes considerable room for variation among political communities and so reflects differences in history, traditions, manners, climate, and other local conditions. Reflecting on particular circumstances will require prudence from the people. 

The Declaration offers a few slender clues to what the good life is for human beings under a just government. Though rights are commonly spoken of as negative limits on the state’s authority, they are also pools of personal and civil liberty that individuals have a responsibility to use well. And like the indignant signers to the Declaration, when we consider rights and justice, it’s most often to demand that the government honor them because it is treating us as second-class citizens. What is less well considered is what it means to be a created being with unalienable rights. The Second Continental Congress included “Creator” to add clarity to the full dignity of personhood. It means that individuals have purposes given to them by their creator that transcend the state and the duties of citizenship. The word “unalienable” emphatically insists on the irreducibility of the person to political convenience or necessity. We’re more than another set of hands that can contribute to the GDP or security of the state. As Peter Lawler frequently said, the Declaration embraces the Augustinian insight that every person may be a citizen of their country and every person is free to be more than a citizen.

The Declaration gently points us toward contemplation, as individuals and with others, of these higher purposes. The list of unalienable rights (“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) are interdependent, like the legs of a stool, and ordered toward a moral purpose for the individual. Life is the foundation for the sake of enjoying other rights; consequently, a person’s life is not merely for self-preservation or survival but should be characterized by personal and political liberty. Individual liberty, at minimum, means there should be no unjust state restraint and our actions should be oriented toward the pursuit of happiness. Pursuing happiness is a tall order; safeguarding it means recognizing that some portion of human life cannot be organized by the state or subordinated to the state’s interests. 

Consent may be withdrawn if the people determine that a particular government has abused its power and has become “destructive of these ends.” The “Right of the People” to abolish their government is called the right to revolution. Tucked implicitly into this sentence is the idea that while the people may dissolve their government, the particular political community—the “We” of “We hold” and of the “We the People”—endures. The people may dissolve their particular government and if so, possess full authority to reorganize its form and powers as they see fit for the sake of securing “Safety and Happiness.”

This enduring “We” points us toward our political responsibilities such as exercising prudence in judgment. The Declaration insists that we heed the “dictate” of prudence that governments “long established” ought not to be lightly overthrown. Prudence is the specific virtue of the statesmen. It is the art of being guided by principle in particular circumstances. We praise it in great individuals such as Lincoln and Washington whose gifts for discerning the right course of action was indispensable at critical moments. But prudence is hard to learn, and harder to exercise in political life. It is much easier to follow a rigid rule or to abandon principle for the sake of the expedient. 

Remarkably, the Declaration holds us, we ordinary citizens, to prudence’s high standard. Prudence is no less essential for statesmen than it is for the ordinary citizen. The Declaration charges ordinary citizens with the task of evaluating our government’s conduct in light of universal principles and our particular history and traditions. This is a lesson worth being attentive to today. Given political polarization, petty corruption, grand corruption, and general maladministration, it is tempting to abandon principle and join the fray or to turn away in disgust and retreat to a life within one’s family and friend circle. Being a free people means that we are responsible for the care of our government, which imposes some sacrifice and burdens on our time, attention, and patience. We love our personal liberty but without public responsibilities, personal liberty becomes narrow and cribbed. It broadens the mind and heart of the citizen to do their part in some corner of our shared political community. Most maladies in government and civil life ought to be remedied through everyday political means. Citizens owe it to themselves, each other, and posterity to be attentive. 

The tyrant, as the Declaration instructs, should be resisted to the point of invoking the right to revolution. The challenge is to spot the tyrant before he successfully reduces a people to despotism. Fortunately, our founders were well-read, and classical literature is replete with examples of tyrants. The tyrant is the one who uses power for the sake of private advantage over the common good and so blots out the distinction between private and public. Tyranny is vice that goes to the root of a person’s character, which is what separates the tyrant’s pursuit of private advantage from ordinary solicitude for self-interest. 

It is no accident that the first train of abuse accuses the king of refusing his assent to laws “most wholesome and necessary for the public good.” The King is careless of the public good. But a good ruler can never be careless of the public good. Instead, the King is more preoccupied with exerting more and more control over the colonists as is evidenced by the abuses. By his actions, the King reveals his tyrannical “character” and so is “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.” While there are no kings in America, the Declaration reminds us to evaluate fairly and critically the character of those persons who aspire to hold office. Moreover, it directs us to focus on a person’s actions as the best window into their motives and designs. 

To better appreciate this distinction, the Declaration’s signers offer their conduct as men of character for emulation. Unlike the tyrant whose desires and lust for power knows no boundaries, they emphasize the ways in which they treasured their character and honor more than short term success. They appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the world” to weigh “the rectitude of [their] hearts.” Here they observe their humility before God’s judgment as well as their spirited audacity for inviting divine scrutiny. Lastly, the signers appeal to each other for accountability not merely as contracting individuals but as men of honor. In addition to an appeal to “the protection of divine Providence,” they “mutually pledge to each other [their] lives, [their] Fortunes and [their] sacred honor” to uphold the Declaration. Should any of them shirk this august responsibility, his honor would be shattered. In this way, the Declaration reminds us to hold ourselves accountable to the best and highest within ourselves. 

The Declaration’s principles are ever-green and capable of renewing our public deliberations. This is because it contains more than affirming platitudes and majestic generalities. It raises perilous questions and makes high demands on the people who invoke its principles. It contains a standing challenge to us to consider whether our government serves the public good or its own good. It calls on us as citizens to exercise prudence and weigh the justice and consequences of different courses of action. Perhaps most of all, the key to the Declaration’s continued relevance 250 years later is that it is hopeful—and prudentially realistic—about justice and politics.