in life is stronger in the United States than in any of the countries of Europe. Relatively to the desire for equality, however, private property is held in no higher esteem here than elsewhere. The American people are no more disposed to sacrifice their ideals to the pursuit of money than arc the people of other lands. Among other evidences that this is true are the numerous communistic societies that have sprung up from time to time in the face of repeated failure.
In the main, the passion for equality and the desire for property have not been incompatible. On occasion, however, the two have conflicted and an epoch-making event has occurred in our politics. Moreover, public opinion has not always held the two in equal esteem, but has at times been more devoted to the one and then again to the other. At the outset the emphasis was upon equality. "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," runs the Declaration of Independence. These words are not to be taken in the sense that every one should wear the same sort of clothes, live in the same kind of a house, eat the same quantity and variety of food, or receive the same economic rewards and social recognition in life. Common sense and the intense individualism of the times are both opposed to any such narrow view as this. The American ideal of equality never has called for a dead level of uniformity. Owing to the strong dislike for anything that savors of titled rank or caste, there was once a popular objection to the wearing of uniforms, even by railroad conductors, but the objection was withdrawn when the practical utility of such uniforms was perceived. The colonists were no less intent upon liberty than upon equality, and their conception of the latter included a generous measure of the former. Equal in some respects, namely, in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, was Lincoln's interpretation.[1]
The Declaration of Independence was occasioned by the commercial restrictions of Great Britain. To secure freedom from these restrictions the right of self-government was asserted. More fundamental, however, than British commercial policy were the spirit of independence, the sense of self-reliance and the craving for freedom which isolation from the mother country and other conditions of frontier life helped to develop.
- ↑ Debates of Lincoln and Douglas, published by Follett, Foster and Co., Columbus, Ohio, p. 63.
