public sentiment, as the basis of government, is a basis which makes government a mighty instrument for spirituality and growth; mere public sentiment, regardless of its justness or unjustness, as the basis of government, is a basis which makes government a mighty instrument for brutality and deterioration. Human equality, unalienable rights, just public sentiment, and free statehood, are inevitably and forever linked together, as reciprocal cause and effect. All the American public men were agreed that the American Colonies, so called, were and always had been free states, and that the State of Great Britain, acting through or symbolized by its Chief Executive or its Chief Legislature, or both of them was a governmental agency, and a connecting medium, of all the free states which were connected with it, and which with it formed what they called "The British Empire." Some based this right of free statehood and political connection on the Colonial Charters; some on the doctrine of the extension to the Colonies of the Constitution of the State of Great Britain in a partial and metaphorical manner; some thought that the Colonies had always been not only free states, but also free and independent states, and that the political connection between them and the State of Great Britain was, and always had been, by consent, that is, by implied treaty. Upon careful examination, all these theories were found to be untenable. The Colonial Charters clearly did not intend to recognize the Colonies as free states, much less as free and independent states; the doctrine of the extension to them of the British Constitution was inconsistent with their statehood in any sense; and there was not a vestige of anything which could be regarded as a treaty between the Colonies and Great Britain. Finally, therefore, all were apparently brought to see that there was nothing on which to base the American claim that the Colonies were and always had been states, free or free and independent, except "the law of nature and of nations," and not even the law of nature and of nations as it was understood by the Governments of Europe, but a law of nature and of nations which was based on the broadest principles of the Reformation. Free statehood for the American Colonies was apparently asserted as a universal right of all communities, states and nations, because free statehood was considered by the framers of the Declaration to be the universal and only means of forming and expressing a just public sentiment, and therefore to be the universal and only means of securing the universal and unalienable rights of individuals. The ultimate meaning of the expression "that to secure these rights Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," seems therefore to be that by the law of nature and of nations there is a universal right of free statehood of all communities on the face of the earth within