In
the years between the New London Resolution (NLR) and 1776, other
municipalities and states issued their own statements of independence.
When Jefferson composed the final Declaration, he availed himself of passages
from the original New London Resolution, which had been widely circulated in
the colonies. The NLR saves its truly radical conclusion until the last
clause of the final of its six points, asserting the "duty" of all
Americans "to reassume their natural rights and the authority the laws of
nature and of God have vested them with." This marked a distinct
break from all official American reactions to the Stamp Act prior to that date.
By asserting the primacy of natural rights, the Crown's sovereignty was
declared void, marking the start of what would erupt into warfare over a decade
later.
What
the NLR reserved for its conclusion, Jefferson used for the preface of
the final
declaration:
When in the Course of human
events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands
which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the
earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
Nature's God entitle them[.]
A
comparison between the NLR and the Declaration of Independence (DOI) reveals
the paternity of several concepts. Phrasing from five of six clauses in the NLR survived into
the DOI:
NLR:
That every form of government, rightfully founded, originates from the consent
of the people.
DOI:
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed ...
NLR:
That whenever those bounds are exceeded, the people have a right to reassume
the exercise of that authority, which by nature they had,
DOI:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is
the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government,
NLR:
That every tax imposed upon English subjects without consent, is against the
natural rights and bounds prescribed by the English constitution. ... That
the Stamp Act in special, is a tax imposed on the colonies without their
consent.
DOI:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent.
No
one knows who drafted the NLR. One guess is Richard
Law, a Yale graduate. Law became a Continental Congress delegate,
Connecticut's chief justice, and a federal judge. Illness prevented Law
from signing the DOI.
In its
concise eloquence, the NLR stands alone as a freedom manifesto. Its
closing admonition against "passive obedience" and "tame
submission" offers a timeless prescription against tyranny.
