of universal application, and cannot be abandoned while government by
the people endures." In 1904, the Democratic party, while professing
adherence to fundamental principles declared in favor of casting into
the outer darkness of the fictitious "independence" every people
"incapable of being governed under American laws, and in consonance
with the American Constitution," but the Populists still held to the
principles of the Declaration, while the Republicans held to their
declarations of 1900.

It is an ancient and well established rule of law for the
interpretation of written instruments that when the meaning of the
words used is not so clear as to leave no room for doubt and when
there thus exists what is called in law an ambiguity, it is proper to
consider the circumstances surrounding the execution of the
instruments, so that, by placing ourselves as nearly as possible in
the same situation in which the persons who executed the instrument
were at the time of its execution, we may have a basis for forming a
reasonable opinion as to which of two or more possible constructions
is correct. That such an ambiguity exists in the Declaration is
undeniable. Opinions concerning the meaning of its philosophic
statements, and indeed of nearly all its statements, differ between
extremes at one of which are arrayed those who, with Rufus Choate and
John James Ingalls, regard its philosophic declarations as "glittering
generalities," and at the other of which stand that great body of men
and women, living and dead, who, with Abraham Lincoln, believe, and
have believed, that these declarations are the foundation of the only
true and final science of politics. Following this ancient rule of
interpretation, therefore, let us consider the circumstances
surrounding the Declaration of Independence.