tion seemed to be that there was something a little questionable about all those well-to-do landed proprietors, businessmen, and professional people getting together and cooking up a revolution.
This attitude, of course, ignored the fact that Lexington and Concord were already household words throughout the Colonies, that Bunker Hill had been fought, that Charlestown and Falmouth had been burned, that Boston had been besieged-in short, that the Revolution was in full and lusty progress!
There is less of that sort of sniping now, but it is still to be heard, especially among those who find the Constitution archaic and the Declaration outmoded because the principles asserted in those documents come between them and their plans for collectivization by force.
Well, to all such-to all who jeer or scoff or belittle-I have one short, hard question: Would you have signed it?
History Book Impressions
Let us think a little about the circumstances.
Most of us have a kind of copperplate impression of what went on in Philadelphia that summer of 1776. It centers in a tableau-like picture of the signing. Certain old history book illustrations form the basis of that impression.
A group of bewigged and clubbed-haired gentlemen in knee breeches, silk stockings, buckle shoes, baggy coats, and outsize waistcoats sit around a large room in comfortable chairs. They have been discussing the ills that
