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

Those principles in America’s founding document did not seem revolutionary to Americans. Indeed, the words rang with the peal of familiarity, borne of the shared experience of over a hundred years of independent thought and self government. The one phrase that enhanced the statement was “Pursuit of Happiness”. Many of us today are not sure what that means, but I’m convinced the Americans in 1776 knew.

Just a month before, Article I of the Virginia Bill of Rights stated:

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.

Neither Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration, nor George Mason in the Virginia Bill of Rights were expressing revolutionary ideals. Those were familiar themes to the new Americans. While the Declaration did foster revolution, its ideas were not really revolutionary.

From the philosophy of Englishman John Locke nearly a century before, we find the expression of those ideals springing forth from the foundational belief that Man was created by God:

They do not make themselves, they do not own themselves, they do not dispose of themselves, the are the workmanship of God. They are his servants, sent into the world on his business, they are even his property (II S 6). To John Locke this was a proposition of common sense throughout …

From this common-sense starting point, he proceeds to two inferences, that we are all free and we are all equal; free of each other, that is to say, and equal to each other, for we are not free of God’s superiority and not equal to Him.

From “Locke – Two Treatises of Government” edited by Peter Laslett, V – The Social and Political Theory of ‘Two Treatises of Government’.

It is to Locke that we can first ascribe the common ideal of “life, liberty and pursuit of property“. But what of “happiness”?

Modern secularists like to champion the minority of Founders who were skeptical of religion, but for every Thomas Paine, there were 2 Thomas Jeffersons (a man enamored of the moral claims of Christianity, but at odds with the supremacy of Trinitarian thought). And for every Thomas Jefferson, there were a dozen John Adams; men steeped in religious thought and very much orthodox members of their various Christian denominations.

From the well known philosophy of John Locke of the 1600s to the Virginia Bill of Rights, we see the established goal of the right to life, liberty and, not happiness, but property. It is hard to imagine that governments owned everything, including their subject’s souls. Like communism later, kings and kingdoms ruled over men with a competing philosophy to these self-evident truths. While also grounded in the belief that Man is subject to God, the philosophy of kings and bureaucrats held that God appointed men to rule over men. Owning property, having your “stuff” in the modern parlance, is the ultimate expression of a personal right, it is yours personally, and only God should be able to take it away from you, not the king, not the church or the local legislator.

The Declaration of Independence did not contain revolutionary ideas, even though it advocated revolution. It did come with a twist, and today we wonder about it. Just what is this “happiness” that we must be able to pursue? Because it replaces Locke’s “pursuit of property” in the historic construction, is it simply the freedom to go after those material things you want, but with glee?

I believe the answer lies in the most influential legal text of the time, Commentaries on the Laws of England by William Blackstone. In the introduction to one facsimile of Book 1 of the Commentaries, Stanley N. Katz notes:

Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765 – 69) is the most important legal treatise ever written in the English language. It was the dominant lawbook in England and America in the century after its publication and played a unique role in the development of the fledgling American legal system.

University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-05538-8

Blackstone reasoned that Man was a created being, and that his Creator established certain rules regarding human behavior. These rules constitute what is called the “Law of Nature”, and this “Law” is in position over all other laws made by men. And because men are ruled by God individually, it is up to the individual to seek out compliance with this Law.

As therefore the creator is a being, not only of infinite power, and wisdom, but also of infinite goodness, he has been pleased so to contrive the constitution and frame of humanity, that we should want no other prompter to enquire after and pursue the rule of right, but only our own self-love, that universal principle of action. For he has so intimately connected, so irreparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter.

The state of happiness, then, is the state of aligning yourself to the Laws of Nature. But what a hard task that must be! Is happiness only found by becoming perfect, a pious being without the frailties of humanity we all possess?

… He has not perplexed the law of nature with a multitude of abstracted rules and precepts, referring merely to the fitness or unfitness of things, as some have vainly surmised; but has graciously reduced the rule of obedience to this one paternal precept, “that man should ‘pursue his own happiness.’ This is the foundation of what we call ethics, or natural law.

That doesn’t sound like a prescription for the type of religious tyranny the Colonists were living under; a church-directed regime of mandatory attendance, set asides of room in your house for the pastor or priest to use when he came, laws governing morality, etc. Blackstone differentiated this “Law of Nature” from any of man’s institutions – including religious institutions.

Blackstone established that each man’s right to pursue his own happiness — conforming himself to his Creator — was superior to any other law:

This law of nature, being co-eval with mankind and dictated by God himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding all over the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.

And that pursuit must, by necessity, be taken by each individual, because only the individual will know when he is “happy”.

Can forcing a man to worship in a certain way enhance his happiness? Can any law, restricting or limiting a man’s choices in life, be in compliance with the individual mandate and contract between man and God? It cannot! Any law that comes between the pursuit of our own compliance with the Law of Nature, with the conformity of ourselves to God’s will, is at odds with the Creator’s intent. And only the individual can know if his life is in conformance. Nothing stands between God and Man.

A shorthand phrase for “pursuit of happiness” for today’s world might be “freedom of religion”, but the committee that assisted Jefferson in writing the Declaration used a more binding, legal term: pursuit of happiness.

Today, American celebrates its independence in various ways, with parades and fireworks, hot dogs, potato salad and BBQ ribs. The flags are flying, and people are smiling, pursuing their own happiness. So may it ever be.

Quotations from Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England are from Volume 1, “Introduction the Second”, published by the University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-05538-8

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