The rich emotional life aroused by the war for national independence as well as the struggle of over half a century later for the emancipation of the slave have given to these ideas of inalienable human rights a hold upon the conscience of the nation altogether incommensurate with their actual validity. It would be a thankless task and yet an altogether feasible one to show that the Revolutionary fathers did not break with English traditions in their declarations of rights. They simply stripped these principles of their original religious and political setting and persuaded themselves that through a fresh and rigorous restatement of them they had established their finality and originality. A stream is not changed by altering the name it bears at its fountain head. The very enthusiasm and loyalty of the men of '76 for what has been called "metaphysical jargon" leads one to suspect that the ultimate basis of these ideas lay in the social consciousness of the people. The democratic ideals they expressed in institutional forms--social, political or religious--belonged, of course, to the social heritage they brought with them from the old country. They did not, therefore, discover these "lost title deeds of the human race." It would be much nearer the truth to say they merely stated them clearly because by virtue of previous training and a new environment they had succeeded best in realizing those conditions, social and political, which alone make their clear statement possible. The measure of success and validity of any social doctrine, no matter how abstract, is to be found in its harmony with the background from which it springs and in the extent to which it actually succeeds in effecting needed social adjustments. It was perfectly natural that our forefathers should wish to proclaim as a new and unalterable truth, the everlasting possession of themselves and of all free people, what they already enjoyed. This did not alter the fact that the only guarantee for the perpetuity of these rights was the vigorous democracy of which they were the expression. "The Americans," writes Jellinek, "could calmly precede their plan of government with a bill of rights, because that government and the controlling laws had already long existed."[143]