The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-07-04
The Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence
 If Thomas Jefferson, the founder of the democratic party and the in- terpreter of it's principles to the American people, had left no state paper or writing save the Declaration of Independence his name would have been immortal. It fired the hearts of men with the highest patriotism and braced soldier and statesman for that long struggle which gave America its freedom from George HIS tyranny.
 One hundred and thirty-nine years have passed since the Fourth of July, 1776, when the declaration was signed, but that epochal document is still read and reread with fresh glow. Many a schoolboy has committed it to memory and all intelligent men are familiar with it's style and with it's statement of grievances against the British king.
 No holiday is more widely observed in this. country than the Fourth of July-Independence Day. It is the one occasion when the people of all sec tions manifest in some form their patriotic sentiments As the Fourth falls this year on Sunday, the festive celebration will take place tomorrow. But there could be no better day than this for reflecting upon the Declara- tion and upon the ideals of our Ameri- can democracy.
 Notwithstanding the unbounded praise with which scholars and repre- sentative Americans have spoken or written of the Declaration of Inde- pendence, it has been subjected to se- were criticism by some publicists and men of letters. The late Moses Colt Tyler, who was professor of American history in the University of Cornell, compiled the more notable of the critical observations, and in an article on the subject presented first as a critic Rufus Choate, the eminent advocate and statesman who played a large part in our national life prior to the civil war. MT. Choate character ized the great proclamation as made up of "glittering and sounding gen eralities of natural rights;" said that it could not stand the test of modern analysis and that, at best, it was "an example of florid political Reclamation belonging to the sophomoric period a period which, as We flatter our selves, we have long since outgrown."
 But Choate was a whig and could see little good in anything emanating from the philosopher of democracy. Moreover, MT. Choate, great lawyer that he was, wrote long and involved sentences and could not appreciate the fine, terse English of MT. Jeffer- son.
 Other critics, especially those of English birth and education, were as caustic as Choate; although Buckle was cordial and sweeping in his praise He said among other things: "That noble Declaration ought to be hung up in the nursery of every king and bla- zoned on the porch of every royal palace.'
 If such were the brilliant historians idea, it was as Professor Tyler re- marked, because the Declaration has become the classic statement of political truths which must at last abolish kings altogether or else teach them to identify their existence with the dignity and happiness of human nature"
 Critics may come and go, but no one of them will be able to improve upon the clear-cut eloquence or the orderly arrangement of the Declara- tion of Independence-the absolutely