How the Declaration and the Constitution Are Inseparable

In our introduction to President Calvin Coolidge last week in the Royal Examiner, we quoted and discussed his address in Philadelphia on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of July 4 and the Declaration of Independence.

In that address, he said of the Declaration: “In its main features, the Declaration of Independence is a spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals.”

President Coolidge viewed the Constitution as the practical framework that protects the timeless principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence. If the Declaration states why America exists, the Constitution established how it would govern while preserving those principles.

Several themes consistently appear in his speeches.

The Constitution is a charter of limited government. Coolidge believed the Constitution was deliberately written to restrain government rather than expand it. He said: “The Constitution is the sole source and guaranty of national freedom.”

He argued that the government should exercise only the powers specifically granted to it and should otherwise leave citizens free to pursue their own lives.

The Constitution protects liberty — it does not grant it. Like the Declaration, Coolidge believed rights come from spiritual principles, not from government. The Constitution’s purpose was to secure those preexisting rights. As he often explained, government exists to protect liberty, not create it.

He warned that changing the Constitution’s meaning without using the amendment process would weaken the rule of law.

The Constitution deserves reverence because it has proven itself. In a speech marking its anniversary, he observed: “To live under the American Constitution is the greatest political privilege that was ever accorded to the human race.”

He credited the Constitution with providing an unprecedented combination of liberty, stability, and prosperity.

The Declaration and Constitution are inseparable. Coolidge often treated the two documents as companions. The Declaration proclaimed the moral truths that all people possess equal rights. The Constitution created institutions capable of protecting those rights. In his view, one without the other was incomplete.

This perspective explains another of his famous observations from his 1926 Declaration address: “If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.”

For Coolidge, those “final” truths were expressed in the Declaration, while the Constitution was the enduring legal structure designed to preserve them. He believed that preserving the Constitution required not only respecting its text but also maintaining the moral convictions that gave rise to it. Without those convictions, he feared the constitutional system itself would eventually erode.

Have we maintained those moral convictions? Do we still believe in the rule of law and that the law applies to everyone, even at the highest levels? Can we find common ground in those beliefs?