"If, in reality, courage and a heart devoted to the good of mankind are the constituents of human felicity, the kindness which is done infers a happiness in the person from whom it proceeds, not in him on whom it is bestowed and the greatest good which men possessed of fortitude and generosity can procure to their fellow creatures is a participation of this happy character. Wills suggests Adam Ferguson as a good guide to what Jefferson had in mind: Garry Wills has argued that Jefferson did not take the phrase from Locke and that it was indeed meant to be a standard by which governments should be judged. In 1628, Sir Edward Coke wrote in The First Part of the Institutes of the Lawes of England, his commentary on Thomas de Littleton, that "It is commonly said that three things be favoured in Law, Life, Liberty, Dower." At common law, dower was closely guarded as a means by which the widow and orphan of a deceased landowner could keep their real property. It is noted that Franklin found the property to be a "creature of society" and thus, he believed that it should be taxed as a way to finance civil society. Independence Hall Assembly Room where Thomas Jefferson served in Congressīenjamin Franklin was in agreement with Thomas Jefferson in playing down the protection of "property" as a goal of government. The first and second article of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, written by George Mason and adopted unanimously by the Virginia Convention of Delegates on June 12, 1776, speaks of happiness in the context of recognizably Lockean rights and is paradigmatic of the way in which "the fundamental natural rights of mankind" were expressed at the time: "That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Under such an assumption, the Declaration of Independence would declare that government existed primarily for the reasons Locke gave, and some have extended that line of thinking to support a conception of limited government. Īccording to those scholars who saw the root of Jefferson's thought in Locke's doctrine, Jefferson replaced "estate" with "the pursuit of happiness", although this does not mean that Jefferson meant the "pursuit of happiness" to refer primarily or exclusively to property. He declared in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding that "the highest perfection of intellectual nature lies in a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness". In A Letter Concerning Toleration, he wrote that the magistrate's power was limited to preserving a person's "civil interest", which he described as "life, liberty, health, and indolency of body and the possession of outward things". In 1689, Locke argued in Two Treatises of Government that political society existed for the sake of protecting "property", which he defined as a person's "life, liberty, and estate". The greatest disagreement comes between those who suggest the phrase was drawn from John Locke and those who identify some other source. Ī number of possible sources or inspirations for Jefferson's use of the phrase in the Declaration of Independence have been identified, although scholars debate the extent to which any one of them actually influenced Jefferson. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Their version survived further edits by the whole Congress intact, and reads: The Committee of Five edited Jefferson's draft. We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness. This version was used by Julian Boyd to create a transcript of Jefferson's draft, which reads: Jefferson's "original Rough draught" is on exhibit in the Library of Congress. The second paragraph of the first article in the Declaration of Independence contains the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". It was then further edited and adopted by the Committee of the Whole of the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The United States Declaration of Independence was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, and then edited by the Committee of Five, which consisted of Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston.
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