For the first time in human history the grand idea of equality, of an equal freedom or of equal rights, was declared to be the sole foundation of government, and made the vital principle of the political order, the starting-point of a new and more glorious civilization than was ever before dreamed of in the annals of mankind. Christ had promulgated the Divine command, “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” or recognize in all other men the same rights that you claim for yourselves; but however faithful some may have been to this command in a religious sense, all the “Christian” governments that have ever existed, or that exist now, are in utter conflict with it, and therefore the government created in 1776, which embodied this glorious truth and clothed it with the flesh and blood and body and bones of material power, is unquestionably the most important worldly event that has ever happened in human affairs. The revolt against England, its success, the subsequent independence, the creation of a new government, the beginning of an independent national existence, might all occur without any radical change of principles or any revolution of ideas, as indeed it is certain would have been the case if the views of Hamilton and other Northern leaders had been embodied in the new government. But the grand idea of Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, and afterwards embodied in the federal government, was the starting-point of a revolution the greatest, most beneficent, most radical, and most important, that has ever happened in the history of the race—a revolution, moreover, that has gone on ever since, and must continue until all the governments of the Old World are overthrown, and society reorganized on the basis of the great, indestructible, and immortal truth that underlies our own—that fixed, natural, and unchangeable equality which God has stamped forever on the organism of the race. If, therefore, we compare the services of Jefferson, Madison, and their associates with those of other men in other times or other lands, it will be seen that they rise to a dignity and importance immeasurably greater than even the most elevated and most glorious among the benefactors of mankind. How paltry, in comparison, the Barons of Runymede, who overthrew a tyrant king that had oppressed their order! How mean and selfish Brutus and his follow-conspirators, when slaying the man they envied as well as feared! How insignificant even Hampden and the great leaders of revolution in England, who fought to defend themselves from the increasing oppression of a ruling class, when compared with Jefferson and his associates, who proclaimed an idea and organized a basis for the freedom of the race—for the equal rights of all whom God had made equal!