right of consent was esteemed by the Colonists "of the utmost value and importance, as it is security for all their other rights."
Americans having fought for and won these rights, formed a government in the blaze of light afforded by their complete knowledge of them gained from their own immediate experience.
So deeply, so solemnly, were they impressed, that they felt it vital that it be known that these rights were not only "unalienable," but the direct gift from God. Jefferson splendidly said: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis—a conviction in the minds of men that these liberties are the gifts of God; that they are not to be violated but with His wrath?" And the Declaration, that made us a free nation, with unanimous approval of all taking part, asserted an identical principle. One of the grounds that justified the dissolving of our ties with the Mother Country was, of course, that she had been guilty of "'imposing taxes on us without our consent," a violation of the rights by which we were endowed by our Creator, "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," for the security of which Governments are instituted among men, from whose consent such Governments alone derive their just powers.
In this all disclosing light we must certainly find true guidance as to the meaning and vital purposes of Article I, Section 2, Clause 3, and Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, of the Constitution itself.
These provisions, indeed, stand on a parity with the provision assuring the independence of the Supreme Court (which also had been unanimously insisted upon), and have the peculiar distinction of having
