States, I shall nevertheless base myself on a great American Document,
which preceded the Constitution as a statement of American principles,
and which is so far from being inconsistent with it that the
Democratic party, in its platform of 1900, called it "the Spirit of
the Constitution"--I refer to the Declaration of Independence. It is
the American principles set forth in that document which I shall try
to discover. If I shall be adjudged to have rightly interpreted that
instrument, it will follow that we ought to substitute, in our
political and legal language, for the term "colony," the term "free
state," for "dependence," "just connection," and for "empire,"
"union." In making such substitution, however, it will be necessary to
give to the terms "free state" and "union," a scientific meaning which
will differ from that which they now have in the popular mind, but
which will, I believe, be the same as was given to these terms by the
Revolutionary statesmen.

I shall not allow myself to be embarrassed by the fact that in my
first published writing I used the terms "colony," "dependence" and
"empire;" for at the same time that I used these terms, I based myself
on principles which were those of free statehood, just connection and
union, to which I adhere to this day.

Taking the Declaration of Independence, therefore, as the exposition
of the fundamental principles on which all American political theory
is based, and to which all American policy must conform, let me state
briefly the general meaning and purpose of this instrument, as I
understand it.

As a result of the discussion for twelve years preceding the
Declaration, the doctrine of the extension of the British Constitution