Of course, representative governments—although most likely to protect individual rights—could also be the means through which the rights of individuals are trampled. It could not have been lost on the Founders when they asserted that the British intended to enslave them, that their own laws enslaved hundreds of thousands of African Americans.
The way to secure inalienable rights, the Founders believed, was to consent to giving up a small amount of our freedom so that government has the authority and finances to protect our rights.
But it must be a government faithful to sound principles. In order to achieve this, the Founders believed we needed leaders who were wise enough to avoid mindless wars and destructive economic restrictions, and strong enough to enforce law and order. While many rulers in history believed they deserved authority because they had been born to powerful families, the Founders believed that leaders should rise to the top by demonstrating their abilities and goodness.
The Founders thought that a free society could only flourish if its leaders are virtuous—which means that its citizens must be able to recognize virtue when they see it. They understood that even virtuous leaders, however, can succumb to the temptation to abuse the rights of others, so they knew these leaders needed to be restrained from exercising their cleverness and strength in ways that undermine individual rights. Ultimately, however, the Founders understood that freedom would depend on citizens remembering that government derives its authority from people who consent to give it that authority, and that it therefore must work to serve the common good, treating every citizen equally.
Freedom depends on citizens who care enough about preserving it to really evaluate the people who run for office, and to elect those who demonstrate wisdom, restraint, and personal virtue. Most of all, freedom depends on citizens having the wisdom, courage, and sense of justice necessary to take action when they see government overstepping its bounds. Which of these is an example of natural rights as opposed to legal rights?
Which of these did the Founders believe could be threats to individual rights? Email Address. Equal and Inalienable Rights. George Washington is known as the "Father of His Country. In other words, even though we are born with rights, they might be rendered useless without an effective means to protect them.
Sometimes self-defense was not enough. This is why, the Founders thought, we needed a government. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:. For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:.
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:. For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:.
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us.
We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. Like the other Founders, he was steeped in the political philosophy of the Enlightenment, in philosophers such as John Locke, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Francis Hutcheson, and Montesquieu. All of them believed that people have certain unalienable and inherent rights that come from God, not government, or come simply from being human. They also believed that when people form governments, they give those governments control over certain natural rights to ensure the safety and security of other rights.
Jefferson, George Mason, and the other Founders frequently spoke of the same set of rights as being natural and unalienable. As members of the Continental Congress contemplated independence in May and June of , many colonies were dissolving their charters with England. As the actual vote on independence approached, a few colonies were issuing their own declarations of independence and bills of rights. When Jefferson wrote his famous preamble, he was restating, in more eloquent language, the philosophy of natural rights expressed in the Virginia Declaration that the Founders embraced.
The Declaration of Independence was a propaganda document rather than a legal one. It was an advertisement about why the colonists were breaking away from England. What is the relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? In the years between and , most of the 13 states drafted constitutions that contained a declaration of rights within the body of the document or as a separate provision at the beginning, many of them listing the same natural rights that Jefferson had embraced in the Declaration.
When it came time to form a central government in , the Continental Congress began to create a weak union governed by the Articles of Confederation. The Articles of Confederation was sent to the states for ratification in ; it was formally adopted in But the Articles of Confederation proved too weak for bringing together a fledgling nation that needed both to wage war and to manage the economy. As a result, Madison and others gathered in Philadelphia in with the goal of creating a stronger, but still limited, federal government.
After four months of debate, the delegates produced a constitution. During the final days of debate, delegates George Mason and Elbridge Gerry objected that the Constitution, too, should include a bill of rights to protect the fundamental liberties of the people against the newly empowered president and Congress. Their motion was swiftly—and unanimously—defeated; a debate over what rights to include could go on for weeks, and the delegates were tired and wanted to go home.
The Constitution was approved by the Constitutional Convention and sent to the states for ratification without a bill of rights. During the ratification process, which took around 10 months the Constitution took effect when New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify in late June ; the 13th state, Rhode Island, would not join the union until May , many state ratifying conventions proposed amendments specifying the rights that Jefferson had recognized in the Declaration and that they protected in their own state constitutions.
James Madison and other supporters of the Constitution initially resisted the need for a bill of rights as either unnecessary because the federal government was granted no power to abridge individual liberty or dangerous since it implied that the federal government had the power to infringe liberty in the first place. In the face of a groundswell of popular demand for a bill of rights, Madison changed his mind and introduced a bill of rights in Congress on June 8, Congress approved 12 amendments to be sent to the states for ratification.
Only 10 of the amendments were ultimately ratified in and became the Bill of Rights. The first of the two amendments that failed was intended to guarantee small congressional districts to ensure that representatives remained close to the people.
The other would have prohibited senators and representatives from giving themselves a pay raise unless it went into effect at the start of the next Congress. This latter amendment was finally ratified in and became the 27th Amendment. But the protections in the Bill of Rights—forbidding Congress from abridging free speech, for example, or conducting unreasonable searches and seizures—were largely ignored by the courts for the first years after the Bill of Rights was ratified in Like the preamble to the Declaration, the Bill of Rights was largely a promissory note.
The Bill of Rights became a document that defends not only majorities of the people against an overreaching federal government but also minorities against overreaching state governments.
Today, there are debates over whether the federal government has become too powerful in threatening fundamental liberties. There are also debates about how to protect the least powerful in society against the tyranny of local majorities. What do we know about the documentary history of the rare copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights on display at the National Constitution Center?
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